Anthropology Commons^™

Bayesian Assessment Of Northern Alaskan Chronological Issues: Implications For Future Research, Thomas J. Brown, Shelby Anderson, Justin Andrew Junge, Jonathan Duelks

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cultural interaction and exchange across the Bering Strait of northern Alaska played a central role in the emergence of Arctic maritime adaptations. Yet poor chronological control limits our ability to explore processes of cultural change over the last 5000years. We address this problem by synthesizing the available radiocarbon record for the region, carrying out Bayesian analysis of a regional radiocarbon database, and analyzing the BAR-1 (Birnirk) site using new dates published in this paper. Our synthesis and our illustrative analysis of the BAR-1 site highlights several intriguing temporal and spatial trends with implications for interaction between cultural groups. Our analysis …

Human Ecodynamics: A Perspective For The Study Of Long-Term Change In Socioecological Systems, Ben Fitzhugh, Virginia L. Butler, Kristine M. Bovy, Michael A. Etnier

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Human ecodynamics (H.E.) refers to processes of stability, resilience, and change in socio-ecological relationships or systems. H.E. research involves interdisciplinary study of the human condition as it affects and is affected by the rest of the non-human world. In this paper, we review the intellectual history of the human ecodynamics concept over the past several decades, as it has emerged out of classical ecology, anthropology, behavioral ecology, resilience theory, historical ecology, and related fields, especially with respect to the study of long-term socioecological change. Those who study human ecodynamics reject the notion that humans should be considered external to the …

Human Settlement And Mid-Late Holocene Coastal Environmental Change At Cape Krusenstern, Northwest Alaska, Shelby Anderson, James Jordon, Adam Freeburg

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Archaeologists hypothesize that mid-late Holocene environmental variability played a role in several significant western Arctic cultural developments including population fluctuations, the evolution of Arctic maritime adaptations, and Arctic-wide migrations. Further evaluation of these hypotheses requires higher resolution archaeological and paleoecological datasets than are currently available. In response, we undertook an interdisciplinary study at Cape Krusenstern, a large coastal site complex in northwest Alaska, which was occupied over the last ca. 5000–6000 years. Our goals were to refine local cultural and paleoenvironmental chronologies and to explore the question of how local environmental change may have influenced local settlement history. The resulting …

High Latitude Coastal Settlement Patterns: Cape Krusenstern, Alaska, Shelby L. Anderson, Adam Freeburg

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Why, when, and how people developed highly specialized marine economies remains the focus of considerable anthropological research. Study of maritime adaptations at high latitudes has potential to contribute to this debate because low biodiversity and increased resource seasonality at high latitudes made reliance on marine resources particularly risky. New research at the Cape Krusenstern site complex, located in northwest Alaska, offers a rare opportunity to study the evolution of maritime adaptations across the environmentally dynamic mid-to-late Holocene Arctic. Large-scale and systematic survey of this important site complex was undertaken to address questions about the timing and character of early Arctic …

Mapping Human-Environment Connections On The Olympic Peninsula: An Atlas Of Landscape Values, Rebecca J. Mclain, Lee Cerveny, Diane Besser, David Banis, Alexa Todd, Stephanie Rohdy, Corinna Kimball-Brown

Occasional Papers in Geography

Occasional Papers in Geography Publication No. 7

The advent of computerized mapping has land managers’ ability to map the biophysical services provided by forested ecosystems. However, mapping the cultural services of those systems is more challenging. Human ecology mapping (HEM), which provides spatially-explicit depictions of the complex connections between humans and their environment, is an approach that can be used to improve understandings of the cultural services associated with landscapes. This atlas provides an overview of what HEM is and draws on experiences with a pilot project on the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington to illustrate what HEM data looks …

Enculturing Nature, William Lloyd Cornett

Dissertations and Theses

Human activity is embedded within a myriad of seldom-acknowledged ecological relationships. Anthropology and ecology, two holistic disciplines concerned with these activities, struggle with the topic of human/nature relationships because both are grounded within larger western discourses separating human behaviors from those of the natural world. This thesis examines the histories of anthropology and ecology in the 20th Century, and the effect these disciplines have had upon the formulation of contemporary urban worldviews that are based upon the separation of humans from nature.