Advances in Archaeoecology

Human societies have shaped ecosystems for millennia through cultivation, harvesting, hunting, species translocation, and landscape engineering such as cultural burning. Yet ecology and archaeology have often approached these dynamics separately: ecologists frequently treat humans as recent disturbances to “natural” systems, while archaeologists have tended to examine human-environment interactions at scales that are difficult to integrate with contemporary ecological theory or through a lens that doesn’t incorporate full ecosystems. Archaeoecology bridges these divides by combining archaeological, palaeoecological, and ecological datasets and methods to understand how humans and ecosystems have co-developed across space and through time.

This micro working group brings together archaeologists and ecologists to advance an emerging research agenda in archaeoecology and develop collaborative publications building on recent conceptual and empirical work. The meeting will focus on integrating ecological network analysis, historical baselines, and archaeological records to better understand long-term human influences on biodiversity, ecosystem function, and environmental change. By drawing together researchers working across disciplinary boundaries, the group aims to refine shared conceptual frameworks, identify key methodological challenges, and work together on a set of collaborative papers that demonstrate how archaeological records can contribute directly to contemporary ecological science and conservation.