Prehistoric Human-Environment Interactions: People, Fire, Climate, and Vegetation on the Columbia Plateau, USA

Description

Modern ecological studies are unable to examine long-term processes operating on the order of hundreds of years. Because of the limited length of modern and historic records, questions about long-term interactions between people and the environment can only be answered using paleoecological and archaeological information. This volume presents prehistoric records that span over a millennium to examine issues of human paleoecology on the Columbia Plateau of Washington State, USA. Unlike many previous studies, this study (1) quantifies past human population, (2) compares relative inputs of humans, climate, fire, and vegetation using multivariate statistics, (3) examines relationships between variables when leads and lags of different lengths are introduced, and (4) identifies multicollinearity, allowing variables of no unique explanatory value to be eliminated. This study indicates that research on human impacts that focuses on bivariate patterns, such as simple comparisons of coeval human population and fire, can suffer from the problem of equifinality. The multivariate statistical procedures employed in this work avoid these problems, however, and can be used in any study that employs observations taken at equally-spaced time intervals. Additionally, the protocols developed and used in this volume can be easily adapted and applied in new geographical areas —the methods and research design used need not be tied to this particular location. Front Cover Title Page Copyright Abstract Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Chapter 1. Introduction: Environment-Human Interactions Chapter 2. Selecting a Study Region: The Plateau Culture Area of North America Chapter 3. Rufus Woods Lake Study Area (WA, USA) Chapter 4. Field Work, Laboratory Work, and Preliminary Results Chapter 5. Isotope Record (Climate Proxy) from Hidden and Rinker's Lakes Chapter 6. Pollen Record (Vegetation Proxy) from Five Lakes Chapter 7. Charcoal Record (Fire Proxy) from Five Lakes Chapter 8. Results and Discussion Chapter 9. Conclusions Appendix A. Abbreviations, Symbols, and Conventions Used Appendix B. Lake Locations Appendix C. Details of Laboratory Procedures Appendix D. LOI Results Appendix E. Oxygen Isotope Results Appendix F. Pollen Data from Five Lakes Appendix G. Charcoal Data from Five Lakes Appendix H. Proxies Taken at 50 cal-year Intervals from cal A.D. 950 to 1900 References Cited