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Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day

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A special issue of Quaternary (ISSN 2571-550X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2019) | Viewed by 27694

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Encarni Montoya

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Guest Editor

Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera (ICTJA-CSIC), 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Interests: human impact; Northern South America; palaeoecology; vegetation responses

Dr. Bronwen S. Whitney

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Guest Editor

Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Interests: tropical palaeoecology; historical biogeography; seasonally-dry tropical ecosystems; human–environment interactions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

For their very short existence in geological history, as a species, humans have demonstrated an unparalleled capacity to directly and indirectly impact the Earth’s system at a global scale and we are arguably one of the most influential recent drivers of the planet’s dynamics. The relationship between humans and the environment is complex and the velocity of change and variability of interactions through time are poorly understood. Despite the uncertainties, it is clear that modern humans colonised most of the globe outside the poles by the late Glacial–Holocene transition, thereby introducing a new forcing factor in the environment over at least the last 10,000 years. Human impacts on these different environments, however, were heterogeneous and influenced by a wide range of factors including the cultural development of the emerging societies, historical biogeography, climate change and human migration. From a socio-ecological point of view, the European arrival on the American continent is considered among the most important events that drastically transformed the environmental history of such a large area in the last millennium. In this sense, indigenous depopulation by wars, diseases or slavery, development of new land use strategies, and the introduction of new species promoted a profound change in the socio-ecological scenario of the Americas. Such activities also altered the dynamics and trends of the American ecosystems by introducing new drivers of change.

In this Special Issue, we will explore the signal of the European arrival in past American environments, from local to continental scales, and we welcome contributions from a wide range of Quaternary disciplines. Contributions could be focused in any Quaternary time scale including the determination of the environmental baselines prior to intensive human influence, the arrival of the first Europeans, and present-day socio-ecological dynamics resulting from the invasion. We would encourage studies with an interdisciplinary approach in order to assess the complex interactions resulting from this transformative shift in the history of the American continents.

Dr. Encarni Montoya
Dr. Bronwen S. Whitney
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Quaternary is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Anthropogenic vegetation
Archaeology
European invasion
Land use
Pre-European peopling
Late Quaternary
American depopulation
Palaeobiogeography
Palaeoecology
Vegetation responses

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 7540 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Between Foragers and Farmers: Climate Change and Human Strategies in Northwestern Patagonia

by Adolfo F. Gil, Ricardo Villalba, Fernando R. Franchetti, Clara Otaola, Cinthia C. Abbona, Eva A. Peralta and Gustavo Neme

Quaternary 2020, 3(2), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat3020017 - 17 Jun 2020

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4121

Abstract

In this paper we explore how changes in human strategies are differentially modulated by climate in a border area between hunter-gatherers and farmers. We analyze multiple proxies: radiocarbon summed probability distributions (SPDs), stable C and N isotopes, and zooarchaeological data from northwestern Patagonia. Based on these proxies, we discuss aspects of human population, subsistence, and dietary dynamics in relation to long-term climatic trends marked by variation in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Our results indicate that the farming frontier in northwestern Patagonia was dynamic in both time and space. We show how changes in temperature and precipitation over the last 1000 years cal BP have influenced the use of domestic plants and the hunting of highest-ranked wild animals, whereas no significant changes in human population size occurred. During the SAM positive phase between 900 and 550 years cal BP, warmer and drier summers are associated with an increase in C₄ resource consumption (maize). After 550 years cal BP, when the SAM changes to the negative phase, wetter and cooler summer conditions are related to a change in diet focused on wild resources, especially meat. Over the past 1000 years, there was a non-significant change in the population based on the SPD. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day)

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9 pages, 1562 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Sparse Radiocarbon Data Confound Culture-Climate Links in Late Pre-Columbian Amazonia

by Philip Riris

Quaternary 2019, 2(4), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat2040033 - 27 Sep 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3291

Abstract

It has recently been argued that pre-Columbian societies in the greater Amazon basin during the Late Holocene were subject to “adaptive cycling”. In this model, cultures practicing “intensive” land use practices, such as raised field agriculture, were vulnerable to perturbations in hydroclimate, whereas “extensive” land use patterns, such as polyculture agroforestry, are viewed as more resilient to climate change. On the basis of radiocarbon data, the relative rise and fall of late pre-Columbian cultures and their inferred patterns of land use in six regions are highlighted to exemplify this model. This paper re-examines the radiocarbon evidence marshalled in favour of adaptive cycling, demonstrating that alleged temporal patterning in these data are overwhelmingly likely due to a combination of sampling effects, lack of statistical controls, and unacknowledged uncertainties that are inherent to radiocarbon dating. The outcome of this combination of factors seriously limits the possibility of cross-referencing archaeological data with palaeo-ecological and -climatological data without controlling for these effects, undermining the central archaeological pillar in support of adaptive cycling in Amazonia. This paper illustrates examples of such mitigation measures and provides the code to replicate them. Suggestions for how to overcome the serious limitations identified in the Late Holocene radiocarbon record of Amazonia are presented in the context of ongoing debates on inferring climatic causation in archaeological and historical datasets. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day)

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31 pages, 10684 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Paleoamerican Occupation, Stone Tools from the Cueva del Medio, and Considerations for the Late Pleistocene Archaeology in Southern South America

by Hugo G. Nami

Quaternary 2019, 2(3), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat2030028 - 12 Aug 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6020

Abstract

Archaeological excavations at the Cueva del Medio performed during the 1980s and 1990s yielded an important record of both faunal and stone tool remains, as well as data, to discuss issues that occurred during the Terminal Pleistocene. Due to that, the shaped Paleoamerican artifacts collected in the author’s excavations were partially informed. The present article provides unpublished data on the field-work, the results of a techno-morphological analysis of the stone tools, and considerations about early hunter-gatherer societies along with their regional paleo-environmental interactions, as well other topics regarding the regional archaeological process during the last millennium of the Pleistocene. Findings from there have been extremely useful for discussing diverse paleo-ecological and archaeological topics and have extended the knowledge and discussions about different Pleistocene scientific issues, mainly related with flora, fauna, and the colonization of southern Patagonia. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day)

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20 pages, 2733 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Two Thousand Years of Land-Use and Vegetation Evolution in the Andean Highlands of Northern Chile Inferred from Pollen and Charcoal Analyses

by Alejandra I. Domic, José M. Capriles, Katerine Escobar-Torrez, Calogero M. Santoro and Antonio Maldonado

Quaternary 2018, 1(3), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat1030032 - 19 Dec 2018

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4924

Abstract

The European conquest of the New World produced major socio-environmental reorganization in the Americas, but for many specific regions and ecosystems, we still do not understand how these changes occurred within a broader temporal framework. In this paper, we reconstruct the long-term environmental and vegetation changes experienced by high-altitude wetlands of the southcentral Andes over the last two millennia. Pollen and charcoal analyses of a 5.5-m-long core recovered from the semi-arid puna of northern Chile indicate that while climatic drivers influenced vegetation turnaround, human land use and management strategies significantly affected long-term changes. Our results indicate that the puna vegetation mostly dominated by grasslands and some peatland taxa stabilized during the late Holocene, xerophytic shrubs expanded during extremely dry events, and peatland vegetation persisted in relation to landscape-scale management strategies by Andean pastoralist societies. Environmental changes produced during the post-conquest period included the introduction of exotic taxa, such as clovers, associated with the translocation of exotic herding animals (sheep, cattle, and donkeys) and a deterioration in the management of highland wetlands. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day)

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Review

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22 pages, 12986 KiB

Open AccessReview

Setting the Stage: The Late Pleistocene Colonization of North America

by Michael J. O’Brien

Quaternary 2019, 2(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat2010001 - 21 Dec 2018

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 8519

Abstract

The timing of human entrance into North America has been a topic of debate that dates back to the late 19th century. Central to the modern discussion is not whether late Pleistocene-age populations were present on the continent, but the timing of their arrival. Key to the debate is the age of tools—bone rods, large prismatic stone blades, and bifacially chipped and fluted stone weapon tips—often found associated with the remains of late Pleistocene fauna. For decades, it was assumed that this techno-complex—termed “Clovis”—was left by the first humans in North America, who, by 11,000–12,000 years ago, made their way eastward across the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia, and then turned south through a corridor that ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, which blanketed the northern half of the continent. That scenario has been challenged by more-recent archaeological and archaeogenetic data that suggest populations entered North America as much as 15,300–14,300 years ago and moved south along the Pacific Coast and/or through the ice-free corridor, which apparently was open several thousand years earlier than initially thought. Evidence indicates that Clovis might date as early as 13,400 years ago, which means that it was not the first technology in North America. Given the lack of fluted projectile points in the Old World, it appears certain that the Clovis techno-complex, or at least major components of it, emerged in the New World. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Changing Nature of Socio-Ecological Interactions in the Americas: From PalaeoAmerican Through to Present Day)

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