Anthropocene Dynamics in the Prehistoric Pacific

Abstract

How will human societies evolve in the face of the massive changes humans themselves are driving in the earth systems? Currently, few data exist with which to address this question. I argue that archaeological datasets from islands provide useful models for understanding long-term socioecological responses to large-scale environmental change, by virtue of their longitudinal dimension and their relative insulation from broader biophysical systems. Reviewing how colonizing humans initiated biological and physical change in the insular Pacific, I show that varied adaptations to this dynamism caused diversification in social and subsistence systems. This diversification shows considerable path dependency related to the degree of heterogeneity/homogeneity in the distribution of food resources. This suggests that the extent to which the Anthropocene modifies agroeconomic land surfaces toward or away from patchiness will have profound sociopolitical implications.

The influence of emergency food aid on the causal disaster vulnerability of remote Indigenous food systems: a case study of the Bedamuni of Western Province, Papua New Guinea

“…These anthropogenic processes and feedbacks are often captured under the term 'global change' (e.g., Sage 2020, Turner et al 1991. Even though industrial societies have had the greatest impact, even smaller scale preindustrial societies durably altered landscapes and their sustained influence can be found within the multifarious palaeoecological records (e.g., Dubois et al 2017, Leppard 2019.…”