Swidden:
a plot of land cleared for farming by burning away vegetation. [Dictionary.com]
Noted in “Reading Jefferson’s Landscape,” David Malakoff, American Archaeology (winter 2017-18, partially online):
That shift from tobacco to wheat had far-reaching effects on Monticello’s landscape and enslaved workers, archaeologists have found. One big change was increased deforestation and erosion: while tobacco could thrive in holes dug in small clearings in forests called swiddens, wheat required bigger expanses of flatter, cleared land that could be plowed.
The usage seems somewhat divergent from the definition.
