PREHISTORIC HUMAN USE OF FIRE, THE EASTERN AGRICULTURAL COMPLEX, AND APPALACHIAN OAK-CHESTNUT FORESTS - PALEOECOLOGY OF CLIFF PALACE POND, KENTUCKY

Fossil pollen assemblages from Cliff Palace Pond. Kentucky, characteri ze changes in forest composition through the past 9,500 years of the H olocene. Early-Holocene spruce and northern white cedar stands were re placed bq mixed mesophytic forests after 7300 B.P. Hemlock declined ar ound 4800 B.P., and eastern red cedar became locally important. After 3000 B.P., mixed oak-chestnut and pine forests were dominant. The foss il charcoal record from Cliff Palace Pond demonstrates that Late Archa ic and Woodland peoples cleared forest gaps to cultivate native plants in the Eastern Agricultural Complex and that anthropogenic fires serv ed to increase populations of fire-tolerant oaks, chestnut, and pines in upland forests of the the northern Cumberland Plateau.