Charcoal indicators of Native American fire use in Yosemite National Park's Crane Flat Meadow complex

Fires of increasing magnitude in California have called the state's longstanding policy of fire suppression into question, prompting an interest in alternative management strategies. Current research supports the use of prescribed burning by Native Americans to manage the landscape long before the arrival of Europeans. Insight into the ecological effects of such burning could prove useful in guiding future fire management decisions. Rightly interpreting any evidence, however, requires first distinguishing between naturally occurring and human-directed fires in the distant past.