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Ecology is an attempt to understand the reciprocal relationship between living and nonliving elements of the earth. For years, however, the discipline either neglected the human element entirely or presumed its effect on natural ecosystems to be invariably negative. Among social scientists, notably in geography and anthropology, efforts to address this human-environment interaction have been criticized as deterministic and mechanistic.
Bridging the divide between social and natural sciences, the contributors to this book use a more holistic perspective to explore the relationships between humans and their environment. Exploring short- and long-term local and global change, eighteen specialists in anthropology, geography, history, ethnobiology, and related disciplines present new perspectives on historical ecology.
A broad theoretical background on the material factors central to the field is presented, such as anthropogenic fire, soils, and pathogens. A series of regional applications of this knowledge base investigates landscape transformations over time in South America, the Mississippi Delta, the Great Basin, Thailand, and India. The contributors focus on traditional societies where lands are most at risk from the incursions of complex, state-level societies.
This book lays the groundwork for a more meaningful understanding of humankind's interaction with its biosphere. Scholars and environmental policymakers alike will appreciate this new critical vocabulary for grasping biocultural phenomena.
Foreward, by Carole L. Crumley
Human and Material Factors in Historical Ecology
Historical Ecology: Premises and Postulates, by William L. Balée
Ecological History and Historical Ecology: Diachronic Modeling Versus Historical Explanation, by Neil L. Whitehead
A Historical-Ecological Perspective on Epidemic Disease, by Linda A. Newson
Forged in Fire: History, Land, and Anthropogenic Fire, by Stephen J. Pyne
Diachronic Ecotones and Anthropogenic Landscapes in Amazonia: Contesting the Consciousness of Conservation, by Darrell A. Posey
Metaphor and Metaphorism: Some Thoughts on Environmental Metahistory, by Elizabeth Graham
Regional Research and Landscape Analyses in Historical Ecology
The Rat That Ate Louisiana: Aspects of Historical Ecology in the Mississippi River Delta, by Tristam R. Kidder
Cultural, Human, and Historical Ecology in the Great Basin: Fifty Years of Ideas About Ten Thousand Years of Prehistory, by Robert L. Bettinger
Ancient and Modern Hunter-Gatherers of Lowland South America: An Evolutionary Problem, by Anna C. Roosevelt
Potential Versus Actual Vegetation: Human Behavior in a Landscape Medium, by Ted Gragson
Domestication as a Historical and Symbolic Process: Wild Gardens and Cultivated Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon, by Laura Rival
Independent Yet Interdependent "Isode": The Historical Ecology of Traditional Piaroa Settlement Pattern, by Stanford Zent
Whatever Happened to the Stone Age? Steel Tools and Yanomami Historical Ecology, by R. Brian Ferguson
Missionary Activity and Indian Labor in the Upper Rio Negro of Brazil, 1680--1980: A Historical-Ecological Approach, by Janet M. Chernela
Cultural Persistence and Environmental Change: The Otomi of the Valle del Mezquital, by Elinor G. K. Melville
The Great Cow Explosion in Rajasthan, by Carol Henderson
The Historical Ecology of Thailand: Increasing Thresholds of Human, by Environmental Impact from Prehistory to the Present Leslie E. Sponsel
Epilogue, by T. R. Kidder and William Balée