The Culture of Fire and the Fire in Culture
This article is devoted to one of the leading cultural traditions of the pre-colonial aborigines of Australia - the burning of forests and savannas, which has received the conventional name of “fire-stick farming” in ethnographic literature. The environmental and economic effects of this activity are so significant that many researchers assimilate it with a method of land management by producing economies. One of the main effects of burning is the thinning of forests and the destruction of dead wood, which prevents or significantly reduces the risk of spreading wildfires, which in Australia have often taken on a catastrophic character due to the special geological structure of the continent.