But... The population density around here wasn't that high, so maybe forraging was easy enough. And how would they cut the trees without metal tools? Pounding the bejabbers out of a trunk with a stone axe seems like a way to induce rot, not new growth, in the stump. So maybe they didn't.
But reading around tells me that it was done in central America, and in California they had "Fire, Pruning, and Coppice Management of Temperate Ecosystems for Basketry Material".
I hadn't thought of fire, but that could work. So maybe they did. I'll ask if somebody knows.
Along the way I found Plants Used by the Bois Fort Chippewa Indians, which describes food, medicinal herbs, intoxicating herbs, and a revolting recipe for seasoning wild rice: though some of us buy kopi luwak and Black Ivory Coffee.
One finds the strangest rabbit holes sometimes. About hazel: "If you have never tasted a hazelnut, there is no way I can describe it.... Softly erotic, it's like making love in a sauna, heated by burning birch." Maybe the hazelnuts I ate weren't the special ones.
2 comments:
I'm thinking that coppicing could be done by girdling (gooving the bark right through the cambium in order to stop nutrient flow). Then harvesting of the dead wood could be done later.
The Ojibwe had knapped-flint axes before contact, the technique is quite different from a steel ax, but they're still pretty effective when used by someone who knows how.
But based on no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to suggest that they domesticated beaver, and trained them to do the coppicing.
Oddly...specific way of describing hazelnut there.
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