Causes and socio-economic implications of the Castilian wildfire of 949

ABSTRACT According to medieval records, on 1 June 949 a devastating wildfire swept across the northern Meseta, with notable intensity in the Bureba region of northeastern Castile. This study examines the possible causes of the conflagration with special emphasis on anthropogenic factors. In more modern and better documented conflagrations, human mismanagement of woodland, leading to a disastrous build up of fuel in the years before the fire, is consistently observed as a significant contributing factor. Here I argue that the exposed lowland areas flanking the Roman road that passes through Briviesca, which were vulnerable to Muslim incursions, would have been relatively under-exploited until the early tenth century. Thereafter they would have started to be fully exploited, leading to a period of uncontrolled deforestation of the valley floor, a dynamic that then contributed to the severity of the ensuing fire of 949.