Domesticated seed crops first appear in the archaeological record of the Cumberland Plateau region of eastern Kentucky (USA) at 3500 BP. Both the archaeobotanical and paleoecological records indicate a substantial increase in forest opening, seed storage, residential stability, and use of food production technology after 3000 BP. The Holocene pollen and microcharcoal record obtained from one upland pond additionally shows a concomitant increase in frequency of local fires and the abundance of fire-tolerant tree taxa, including oaks, chestnut, and pines. In this location, the establishment of an anthropogenic fire regime for agricultural clearing also transformed forests to include larger numbers of economically important nut-producing trees. However, an archaeological wood assemblage from the Mounded Talus shelter shows that human foragers in the region had access to these mixed oak forests and their products as early as 8000 BP. Comparison of multiple wood charcoal data sets shows considerable continuity in the species composition of upland forests across the transition to food production. Rather than indicating a deep history of fire management, this pattern is explainable as the result of human groups' reliance on productive resource patches that concentrate on naturally xeric sites. The role of fire in the spread of economically important mixed oak forests of the Cumberland Plateau may have been overestimated.