The Culture of Fire and the Fire in Culture

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Key words
“cold” fire, fire-ally, Australian aborigines, “fire-stick farming”, minimizing efforts and risks, intellectual management
Author
Olga Yu. Artemova
About the Author
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0937-6920
E-mail: artemova.olga@list.ru Tel.: +7 (499) 954-93-43
32а, Leninskii av., Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
DSc in History, Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Center of Asian and Pacific Studies, N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Tel.: +7 (495) 973-40-94
6, Miusskaya square, Moscow, 125993, Russian Federation
Vice-Director, Research-Educational Center of Social Anthropology, Russian State University for the
Humanities
Received
Date of publication
DOI
https://doi.org/10.26158/TK.2020.21.4.006
Acknowledgements

Published in accordance with the research plans of the N.N. MiklukhoMaklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Special thanks to Vladimir Syvorotkin for his personal assistance.

Body

This article is devoted to one of the leading cultural traditions of the pre-colonial aborigines of Australia — the burning of forests and savannas, which has received the conventional name of “fire-stick farming” in ethnographic literature. The environmental and economic effects of this activity are so significant that many researchers assimilate it with a method of land management by producing economies. One of the main effects of burning is the thinning of forests and the destruction of dead wood, which prevents or significantly reduces the risk of spreading wildfires, which in Australia have often taken on a catastrophic character due to the special geological structure of the continent.

References

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For citation

Artemova O. Yu. The Culture of Fire and the Fire in Culture. Traditional Culture. 2020. Vol. 21. No. 4. Pp. 72–89. In Russian.