Ponomarenko E. Ershova E.G.
Traces of slash-and-burn cultivation, from Siberia to Canada
Reporter: Ponomarenko E.
Diagnostic features of slash-and-burn cultivation were described for forest soils of the Northern hemisphere within a wide geographic range.The features include diagnostic , indicators of swidden cultivation in soil morphology, pollen spectra, and charcoal and phytolith pools in the soil. Our resultd show that essential the same slash-and-burn agriculture technologies persisted in the forest zone during the last two millennia. The earliest evidence of slash-and-burn cultivation comes so far from the layers dated by the Bronze Age (4800 BP) in the forest-steppe zone of Southern Russia, but the number of study sites older than 2000 years is still insufficient for conclusions on the onset of this agricultural system.
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