Christopher Roos: Humans and Fire in Deep Time

Fire is one of the most powerful forces humans have learned to live with—and one of the most difficult to understand archaeologically. In this episode, I sit down with archaeologist Christopher Roos to talk about his research on anthropogenic fire regimes, and human-environment relationships in the American Southwest. We discuss what archaeological evidence can tell us about how people have used, managed, and shaped wildfires over long periods of time. We also step back from the Southwest to consider fire from a global perspective: how different societies have interacted with fire, how those relationships have changed environments, and what archaeology can contribute to our understanding of fire management in a rapidly changing world.