Across cultures there are known signs that signal the availability of certain foods, predict the weather or warn people of impending events. In Central Australia the call of the spotted nightjar (Eurostopodus argus) signals the time when dingo pups are born. This article identifies indicator events known by speakers of the Arandic languages in Central Australia. Indicator events can be described as the presence or behavior of a particular species or phenomenon that signals some other species or phenomenon. Arandic people group these into five broad domains: indicators of food, water, weather, danger and news (e.g., an imminent visitor). A diverse range of ecological, meteorological and human (bodily) phenomena serve as indicators, with birds being the most prevalent. This study explores the basis of indicator events, finding both an ecological and cultural basis for many signs. It also draws attention to the significance of the indicator relationship in terms of how people make sense of co-occurring events around them. We also consider some implications for natural resource management and phenology.

Many California Indian tribes utilized mushrooms for food, medicine, and/or technological purposes. This paper summarizes which mushrooms were important to different California Indian tribes in historic and modern times and how they were harvested, prepared, and stored. Oral interviews were conducted and the ethnographic literature reviewed to detail the extent and complexity of indigenous knowledge about fungi harvesting and associated burning to enhance mushroom populations and their habitats. Through two case studies, we review indigenous burning practices of several tribes in the lower montane mixed conifer forests of the central and southern Sierra Nevada, and the mixed evergreen forests of northern California. We explore the potential ecological effects of burning on these forests at different levels of biological organization and conclude by offering suggestions for research, management, and restoration practices needed to perpetuate usable mushrooms.

People in the French Western Pyrenees have used fire for millennia in order to shape and manage landscapes. This history has left cultural and ecological legacies that both reflect and ensure the relative persistence of landscape patterns and processes. In this paper I draw on ethnographic research, ethnohistorical evidence, and Bayesian spatial analyses of historical fire use locations and land use maps to shed some light on human-fire-landscape dynamics in the Pyrenees for the years 1830 to 2011. I show how cultural and ecological legacies reflect a self-organized fire management regime that emerges from fire use driven by the production goals of individual households. I frame the self-organizing dynamic inherent in Pyrenean pastoral fire use as “landscape memory.” This conclusion has implications for the future direction of fire-related conservation policy for the Pyrenees and for analogous systems characterized by self-organized land management regimes.

This paper examines the relationship between botanical composition of homegardens and the cultural background of their owners, as well as the multiple functions of tropical homegardens and the high diversity of plant species found there. In 2008, an ethnobotanical research study was conducted in 20 Maya and Mestizo homegardens in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico, a zone of outstanding biocultural diversity. Interviews, inventories and a ranking system were used to identify the botanical composition, structure and infrastructure of the homegardens as well as the knowledge and behavior of Maya and Mestizo farmers related to the management and product processing of the homegardens. A total of 310 plant species from 94 families were identified, with a varied number of species within the sampled homegardens (32–141 plant species) and the villages (111–203 plant species). The most frequent use of plants was ornamental (41%), followed by food (35%) and medicinal use (30%). The floristic composition of the homegardens is strongly related to the socioeconomic conditions and cultural background of the farmer, and ornamental plants show the greatest difference between cultures. But neither gender nor culture has an impact on the farmers' evaluation of the different functions of homegardens.

Eurasian mobile pastoralists living in semiarid environments focus on specific locations on the landscape where pasture resources and water are available. Ecotones –or intermediary zones between the mountain and steppe environments– create mosaic landscapes composed of forage-rich patches and other discrete enclaves of useful biota for pastoralist communities. Ecotopes (ecological patches) provide vital resources for the herding systems used in Central Asia today as well as in the past. We document and discuss wild seed composition of archaeobotanical samples from the Bronze and Iron Age site of Begash in southeastern Kazakhstan noting that much of the archaeobotanical assemblage represents carbonized animal dung, which is currently and historically used as fuel in this region by mobile pastoralists. The seeds offer a window into prehistoric herding patterns and provide a nuanced view of prehistoric land use, social interaction, and community formation across discrete ecological nodes in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The question of when the Diné (or Navajo) became a distinct ethnic group has been the focus of research for over a century. Recent archaeological work in the Dinetah region of the American Southwest suggests that the Gobernador phase of Diné prehistory –roughly dated from A.D. 1650 to 1780– was a critical period for Diné ethnogenesis. Archaeological faunas from the Fruitland Data Recovery Project have been used to support this argument; these faunas seem to indicate a shift in subsistence from diets focused on small prey to those focused on larger animals between the Dinétah (A.D. 1500–1650) and Gobernador phases. A reanalysis of the Fruitland Project faunas, involving both refitting of bone and attention to taphonomic issues, does show an increase in representation of large prey during the Gobernador phase; however, this trend does not seem to be related to improved hunting efficiency or encounter rates. Rather, the increase may reflect changes in Diné subsistence and mobility in response to climate change.