Fire and Mesolithic subsistence — managing oaks for acorns in northwest Europe?

The possible role of fire in manipulating, maintaining or improving European Mesolithic subsistence supplies has long been discussed, in relation to both animal and plant resources, though the latter have received far less attention. Here it is considered in relation to one potentially important food resource — the acorn. Little consideration has been given to a possible role for fire in manipulating oaks in the Mesolithic — perhaps because northern European oaks are not generally perceived as being fire-responsive or fire-tolerant. This paper will examine ethnographic and ecological data that allow us to suggest the possibility that fire could have been used to manipulate the acorn supply, and question how such a process might be detected in the palaeoenvironmental record. An attempt is made to extend and apply the model for Mesolithic burning suggested by Moore (in 1996) to two pollen and microcharcoal sequences from Mesolithic Britain. This leads to a general conclusion that previous attempts to detect Mesolithic environmental impacts may have been misled by an emphasis on clearances, and that an alternative approach may be required to detect subtler impacts of European hunter-gatherers on vegetation.