A nice article
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Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
And much further north, differently structured but similar. Last I heard they were finding more through remote sensing:
and
I definitely use both (long-plan succession as in the milpa article, and drawing heavily on the long-lived local northern structural practices of the more local forest gardens) as inspiration for my garden’s five, ten, twenty, and fifty-year arcs.
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Love everything but the burning. Thanks for sharing 
Burning would only be an issue if the burn rate were to outstrip the full cycle. Back then, I’m guessing, this would not have been the case. Today of course it would be an issue because of our rapidly increasing population. Madagascar, unfortunately, is very much a case in point.
A lot of burning stuff coming across my desk today.
Saw this just now and thought of the conversation
I think in some places (low-oxygen, specific styles of) burning is necessary to make nutrients “stick” in specific tropical soils, where otherwise they’d pass through and be lost very quickly. My info on that might be old or misinterpreted, and I don’t have the wherewithal to dig up a paper right now though.
It’s not the sustainability angle that gets me, it’s the avoidable death and suffering brought about by intentionally burning a forest landscape. It is at least comforting that if a grower were only stewarding one location at a time, they would only cause this kind of death and destruction a few times in their lifetime.
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Interesting, thanks for sharing.
I’m mostly inclined to agree with Stuart Andrews (and I suspect his dad based on this excerpt) on the subject of burning.
If you need biochar I feel like that might be different. There it seems well-motivated it if not necessary to control conditions for a prolonged low-oxygen burn and thus intentionally or as a consequence protect the natural residents of a forest environment.
Anyway, not trying to start a discussion about burning, just wanted to respond to what had been said. I don’t argue the non-existence of motivating contexts, merely the existence of alternatives that cause less suffering.
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I spent hours and hours hacking away at small trees and vines last year to expand my garden. It’s really hard work to go from the growth where the forest meets and open area with only hand tools.
According to my dad and grandmother, this would definitely have been done with a controlled burn by our family in the old days. That requires experience and labor that I don’t have access to, but I would be tempted if I had the option.
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I really appreciate your sensitivity and kindness towards plants, as well as animals. 
In large part because you inspired me to go look up information on the approach, I’m going to try not pruning my seedling apple trees at all. Instead, I’ll try encouraging them to be small and productive through training alone. I think I can do it, and I think the trees will be happier and probably more productive, because they’ll be comfortable putting almost all of their energy into producing fruit after the first few years.
I’m quite intrigued by the idea that if trees don’t feel the need to grow new limbs all the time, they’re far more likely to fruit sooner, and once they start fruiting, they’re likely to grow very little from then on, as long as they aren’t pruned. I’ve seen that a few places, and it sounds like a win all around for my goals. I doubt it would work for a grafted tree, or even a transplanted seedling, but a direct sown seedling may very act that way.