Adaptation and niche construction in human prehistory: a case study from the southern Scandinavian Late Glacial

Abstract

The niche construction model postulates that human bio-social evolution is composed of three inheritance domains, genetic, cultural and ecological, linked by feedback selection. This paper argues that many kinds of archaeological data can serve as proxies for human niche construction processes, and presents a method for investigating specific niche construction hypotheses. To illustrate this method, the repeated emergence of specialized reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) hunting/herding economies during the Late Palaeolithic (ca 14.7-11.5 kyr BP) in southern Scandinavia is analysed from a niche construction/triple-inheritance perspective. This economic relationship resulted in the eventual domestication of Rangifer. The hypothesis of whether domestication was achieved as early as the Late Palaeolithic, and whether this required the use of domesticated dogs (Canis familiaris) as hunting, herding or transport aids, is tested via a comparative analysis using material culture-based phylogenies and ecological datasets in relation to demographic/genetic proxies. Only weak evidence for sustained niche construction behaviours by prehistoric hunter-gatherer in southern Scandinavia is found, but this study nonetheless provides interesting insights into the likely processes of dog and reindeer domestication, and into processes of adaptation in Late Glacial foragers.

Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus

“…Riede [21] in this issue argues that this triple inheritance system (genes, culture and ecology) can provide an effective framework to study archaeological data, and he reviews a variety of cases where archaeology provides signatures of human niche construction activity within this system. A problem with using the archaeological record is that it can be difficult to distinguish causal relationships between nicheconstructing traditions and traditions selected as consequences.…”

General patterns of niche construction and the management of ‘wild’ plant and animal resources by small-scale pre-industrial societies

“…were not passive in their environment but actively altered it. Groube [1, p. 289] Humans have a long history of niche construction-of modifying their environments in a wide range of different ways, large and small, through behaviour patterns that are both deliberate and inadvertent [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Although the consequences of human niche construction are not always anticipated, one of the primary goals of environmental engineering by human societies has been to increase their share of the annual productivity of the ecosystems they occupy by increasing both the abundance and reliability of the plant and animal resources they rely on for food and raw materials.…”

Cerritos, tolas, tesos, camellones y otros montículos de las Tierras Bajas de Sudamérica

“…Algunos arqueólogos han estudiado la evolución bio-social de los cazadores paleolíticos de tierras bajas, y han propuesto una hipótesis sobre los procesos de adaptación (de larga duración) y la construcción humana de un "nicho" en la prehistoria; a partir de la relación no aleatoria entre aspectos genéticos, culturales y ecológicos (RIEDE, 2011).…”