Understanding fire learning experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand

Purpose This paper aims to present exploratory research on how people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience and learn about fire, and how they think and feel about fire as adults. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative survey with a sample of 40 young adults aged 18–23 years in Aotearoa New Zealand were recruited through Prolific Academic. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct themes across participants experiences. Findings Four themes were constructed that described participants’ learning about fire and were named influence of context and internal responses to fire, development of normative beliefs about fire, learning how and when fire can be used and learning about fire safety. Two themes were developed that described participants thoughts and feelings about fire as an adult. These were named knowledge is power and emotional congruence with fire. Results highlight the significant role of parental modelling, reinforcement and sensory experiences in the way individuals experience and learn about fire. Practical implications Understanding fire learning is important for establishing which experiences may lead to appropriate and inappropriate fire use which in turn can inform fire prevention initiatives. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents one of the first studies to directly examine fire learning in the general population.

Tools and food on heat lamps: pyrocognitive sparks in New Caledonian crows?

Fire has substantially altered the course of human evolution. Cooking kindled brain expansion through improved energy and time budgets. However, little is known about the origins of fire use and its cognitive underpinnings (pyrocognition). Debates on how hominins innovated cooking focus on archaeological findings, but should also be informed by the response of animals towards heat sources. Here, we report six observations on two captive New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) contacting heat lamps with tools or placing raw food on them. The tools became singed or melted and the food had browned (and was removed). These results suggest that New Caledonian crows can use tools to investigate hot objects, which extends earlier findings that they use tools to examine potential hazards (pericular tool use), and place food on a heat source as play or exploration. Further research on animals will provide novel insights into the pyrocognitive origins of early humans.

The positive aspects of fire use: a grounded theory of the experiences of non-criminalised fire users

Purpose Psychological research on fire has focussed primarily on its misuse in the form of arson and firesetting, which reflects a tradition in forensic psychology for focussing on risk and pathological behaviour. However, this is inconsistent with the strengths-based approach because it fails to account for positive aspects of fire and law-abiding/ healthy interactions with fire. This study aims to explore the psychology of non-criminalised forms of fire use. It is predicated on a novel, dimensional, conceptualisation of fire-related behaviour – the continuum of fire use (CoFU; Horsley, 2020, 2021). Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 adults who use fire in law-abiding forms. Data were analysed using techniques informed by grounded theory. Steps were taken to ensure reliability and validity, including a Cohen’s Kappa calculation, which indicated an agreement level of 0.8 between two raters. Findings Four core themes were identified relating to the benefits of fire on psychological well-being, namely, immediate gratification; hope and empowerment; self-concept and emotional security. Research limitations/implications Drawing on findings from this study, a theoretical framework of the psychology of non-criminalised fire use is presented. This is a preliminary conceptualisation and more work is needed to address this under-researched topic. Practical implications The findings can inform the work of forensic practitioners. They highlight the importance of considering service users' positive interactions with fire, alongside maladaptive/ criminal use. This has implications for the assessment of fire setters, as well as rehabilitative approaches. Social implications It is argued in this paper that a society-wide approach is key to firesetting reduction. More specifically, findings can inform the development and refinement of early intervention programmes, which focus on supporting young people to develop a healthy relationship with fire. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the psychology of non-criminalised forms of fire use. It is predicated on a novel, dimensional, conceptualisation of fire-related behaviour – the continuum of fire use (CoFU; Horsley, 2020, 2021a, 2021b).

Fire in African Landscapes

Fires have burned in African landscapes for more than a hundred million years, long before vertebrate herbivores trod the earth and modified vegetation and fire regimes. Hominin use of lightning fires is apparent c.1.5 million years ago, becoming deliberate and habitual from c. 400 thousand years ago (kya). The emergence of modern humans c. 195 kya was marked by widespread and deliberate use of fire, for hunting and gathering through to agricultural and pastoral use, with farming and copper and iron smelting spreading across sub-Saharan Africa with the Bantu migrations from 4–2.5 kya. Europeans provided detailed reports of Africans’ fire use from 1652 in South Africa and the 1700s in West Africa. They regarded indigenous fire use as destructive, an agent of desiccation and destruction of forests, with ecological theories cementing this in the European imagination from the 1800s. The late 1800s and early 1900s were characterized by colonial authorities’ attempts to suppress fires, informed by mistaken scientific ideas and management principles imported from temperate Europe and colonial forestry management elsewhere. This was often ignored by African and settler farmers. In the 1900s, the concerns of colonial foresters and fears about desiccation and soil erosion fueled by the American Dust Bowl experience informed anti-fire views until mid-century. However, enough time had elapsed for colonial and settler scientists and managers to have observed fires and indigenous burning practices and their effects, and to begin to question received wisdom on their destructiveness. Following World War II, during a phase of colonial cooperation and expert-led attempts to develop African landscapes, a more nuanced understanding of fire in African landscapes emerged, alongside greater pragmatism about what was achievable in managing wildfires and fire use. Although colonial restrictions on burning fueled some independence struggles, postcolonial environmental managers appear on the whole to have adopted their former oppressors’ attitudes to fire and burning. Important breakthroughs in fire ecology were made in the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by a movement away from equilibrium-based ecosystems concepts where fires were damaging disturbances to ecosystems, to an understanding of fires as important drivers of biodiversity integral to the functioning of many African landscapes. Notably from the 1990s, anthropologists influenced by related developments in rangeland ecology combined ecological studies with studies of indigenous land use practices to assess their impacts over time, challenging existing narratives of degradation in West African forests and East African savannas. Attempts were made to integrate communities (and, to a lesser extent, indigenous knowledge) into fire management plans and approaches. In the 2000s, anthropologists, archeologists, geographers, historians, and political ecologists have contributed studies telling more complex stories about human fire use. Together with detailed histories of landscape change offered by remote sensing and analysis of charcoal and pollen deposits, these approaches to the intertwined human and ecological dimensions of fire in African landscapes offer the prospect of integrated histories that can inform our understanding of the past and guide our policies and management in the future.

Herbal fume inhalation similarities between Dhoopan and Hawan

Herbal fume inhalation for health benefit or disease treatment is an Ayurvedic and Vedic approach. In Ayurvedic texts it is mentioned as Dhoopan and in Vedic texts it is referred as hawan (Yagya). There are similarities in methods and procedures of both the methods. The present study identifies five areas where there are similarities i.e. herbal mixture preparation, offerings to fire, use of smokeless fire, use of chanting, dose repetition. This perspective showed similarity present between these two ancient herbal inhalation methods potentiating a great scope of further research in this direction.

From colonial forestry to 'community-based fire management': the political ecology of fire in Belize's coastal savannas, 1920 to present

This article examines the past century of fire management of the coastal pine savanna in Belize, drawing on archival evidence,interviews, and ethnographic enquiry into an international development project in Belize. It considers contemporary approaches that seek to use prescribed fire with the participation of local communities in relation to past practices. The Belizean savanna has long been shaped by human fire use. Its flora is ecologically adapted to fire. Yet fire has been repeatedly cast as a problem, from c. 1920, by British colonial and, later, USA foresters, and, most recently, by international and local non-governmental nature conservation organizations. Informed by different schools of thought, each of these organizations has designed programs of fire management aiming to reduce wildfire frequency. Yet little has changed; Belize's diverse and growing rural population has continued to use fire, and the savannas burn, year upon year. While the planned aims and methods differed, each program of fire management has, in practice, been similarly structured and constrained by its genesis within colonial or international development. Funding and leadership for fire management has been inconsistent. Each program has been shaped by a specifically Belizean ecology and politics, in excess of its definition of the fire 'problem' and 'solutions' to it. Powerful political elites and fire users in Belize have not seen clear incentives for the fire management supported by official policy. This analysis highlights that contemporary efforts to build more ecologically and environmentally just forms of fire management must be understood in the context of broader political struggles over land and resources.

Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

Control of fire is one of the most important technological innovations within the evolution of humankind. The archaeological signal of fire use becomes very visible from around 400,000 y ago onward. Interestingly, this occurs at a geologically similar time over major parts of the Old World, in Africa, as well as in western Eurasia, and in different subpopulations of the wider hominin metapopulation. We interpret this spatiotemporal pattern as the result of cultural diffusion, and as representing the earliest clear-cut case of widespread cultural change resulting from diffusion in human evolution. This fire-use pattern is followed slightly later by a similar spatiotemporal distribution of Levallois technology, at the beginning of the African Middle Stone Age and the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic. These archaeological data, as well as studies of ancient genomes, lead us to hypothesize that at the latest by 400,000 y ago, hominin subpopulations encountered one another often enough and were sufficiently tolerant toward one another to transmit ideas and techniques over large regions within relatively short time periods. Furthermore, it is likely that the large-scale social networks necessary to transmit complicated skills were also in place. Most importantly, this suggests a form of cultural behavior significantly more similar to that of extant Homo sapiens than to our great ape relatives.

Global decline in subsistence-oriented and smallholder fire use

Controlled fire use by hunter-gatherers and smallholder agriculturalists and pastoralists shapes ecologies and enhances livelihoods worldwide. Yet, at the global scale, we know little about how these practices influence human wellbeing, ecologies, and wildfire risk. As a basis for global syntheses, we collated information from the literature about fire practices in 587 case study locations spanning the globe. Here, we assess the coverage and completeness of this data. Limited quantitative data, particularly, presents a challenge for improved modelling of anthropogenic influences on fire regimes. We also analyse global trends in fire practices from these studies, finding evidence that subsistence-oriented fire practices have declined in recent decades, while market-oriented fire practices have increased. The case studies point to important drivers of these changes, especially economic pressures, and state governance. We discuss the implications of these findings for fire policy, and future research.