There are many hardwood species in the South that could be considered fire tolerant. Some of them are considered pyrophytic, meaning that they have flammable characteristics (flammable leaf litter) and adaptive strategies for protection or recovery from fire (thick bark, ability to resprout). There are some fire-scar studies in oaks! Mike Stambaugh comes to mind as one researcher who has done some fire-scar work in oaks - see: https://treerings.missouri.edu/publications/ That said, some oaks have challenging tree rings to work with or do not scar as frequently as some of the pines we use for this research.