Historical ecology is a research program that focuses on the interactions between humans and their environment over long-term periods of time, typically over the course of centuries.Crumley, C. L. (1987). Historical ecology. In Regional dynamics: Burgundian landscapes in historical perspective, eds. C. L. Crumley, W. H. Marquardt, pp. 237-264. New York:Academic Press. In order to carry out this work, historical ecologists synthesize long-series data collected by practitioners in diverse fields.Scholl, Michael D., D. Seth Murray and Carole L. Crumley 2010 Comparing trajectories of climate, class and production: an historical ecology of American yeoman. In Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. pp. 322-348. Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, editors, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rather than concentrating on one specific event, historical ecology aims to study and understand this interaction across both time and space in order to gain a full understanding of its cumulative effects. Through this interplay, humans both adapt to and shape the environment, continuously contributing to landscape transformation. Historical ecologists recognize that humans have had world-wide influences, impact landscape in dissimilar ways which increase or decrease species diversity, and that a holistic perspective is critical to be able to understand that system.Balée, W. (1998). "Historical ecology: Premises and postulates". In W. Balée (Ed.), Advances in Historical Ecology, (pp 13-29). Columbia University Press, New York.
Piecing together landscapes requires a sometimes difficult union between natural and social sciences, close attention to geographic and temporal scales, a knowledge of the range of human ecological complexity, and the presentation of findings in a way that is useful to researchers in many fields.Crumley, Carole L.
1994. Historical Ecology:a Multidimensional Ecological Orientation. In Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, ed. C.L. Crumley, pp. 1-16. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Those tasks require theory and methods drawn from geography, biology, ecology, history, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Common methods include historical research, climatological reconstructions, plant and animal surveys, archaeological excavations, ethnographic interviews, and landscape reconstructions.
History The discipline has several sites of origins by researchers who shared a common interest in the problem of ecology and history, but with a diversity of approaches. Edward Smith Deevey, Jr. used the term in the 1960s to describe a methodology that had been in long development. Deevey wished to bring together the practices of "general ecology" which was studied in an experimental laboratory, with a "historical ecology" which relied on evidence collected through fieldwork. For example, Deevey used radiocarbon dating to reconcile biologists’ successions of plants and animals with the sequences of material culture and sites discovered by archaeologists.
In the 1980s, members of the history department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock organized a lecture series entitled "Historical Ecology: Essays on Environment and Social Change"Bilsky, L. J., ed. (1980) Historical ecology: essays on environment and social change. Port Washington, NY: Kenniket Press. The authors noted the public's concerns with pollution and dwindling natural resources, and they began a dialogue between researchers with specialties which spanned the social sciences. The papers highlighted the importance of understanding social and political structures, personal identities, perceptions of nature, and the multiplicity of solutions for environmental problems.Moneyhon, C. H. (1980). Introduction. In Historical ecology: essays on environment and social change.ed. L. J. Bilsky, pp. 3-8. Port Washington, NY, Kenniket Press.
The emergence of historical ecology as a coherent discipline was driven by a number of long-term research projects in historical ecology of tropical, temperate and arctic environments:
E.S. Deevey's Historical Ecology of the Maya Project (1973-1984) was carried out by archaeologists and biologists who combined data from lake sediments, settlement patterns, and material from excavations in the central Petén District of Guatemala to refute the hypotheses that a collapse of Mayan urban areas was instigated by faltering food production.
Carole L. Crumley's Burgundian Landscape Project (1974–present) is carried out by a multidisciplinary research team aimed at identifying the multiple factors which have contributed to the long-term durability of the agricultural economy of Burgundy, France.Carole L. Crumley, W. H. Marquardt (1987) Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective. New York: Academic Press.
Thomas H. McGovern's Inuit-Norse Project (1976–present) uses archaeology, environmental reconstruction, and textual analysis to examine the changing ecology of Nordic colonizers and indigenous peoples in Greenland, Iceland, Faeroes, and Shetland.McGovern, T. 1981. The economics of extinction in Norse Greenland. In Climate and history: studies in past climates and their impact on man, eds. T.M. L. Wrigley, M.J. Ingram, and G.Farmer, pp. 404-433. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In recent years the approaches to historical ecology have been expanded to include coastal and marine environments:
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Project (1984–present) examines Massachusetts, USA cod fishing in the 17th through 19th centuries through historical records.
Florida Keys Coral Reef Eco-region Project (1990–present) researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography are examining archival records including natural history descriptions, maps and charts, family and personal papers, and state and colonial records in order to understand the impact of over-fishing and habitat loss in the Florida Keys, USA which contains the third largest coral reef in the world.
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Historical Ecology (2008–present) seeks to collect relevant historical data on fishing, whaling, and trade of the furs of aquatic animals in order form a baseline for environmental restorations of the California, USA coast.Selbie, Hugo (2008) Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Historical Ecology Phase 1: Historical Sources Survey Report. Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Monterey California. (http://montereybay.noaa.gov/research/techreports/trselbie2008.html)
accessed August 01, 2013.
Relations with other disciplines
Historical ecology is interdisciplinary in principle; at the same time, it borrows heavily from the rich intellectual history of environmental anthropology. Western scholars have known since the time of Plato that the history of environmental changes cannot be separated from human history. Several ideas have been used to describe human interaction with the environment, the first of which is the concept of the Great Chain of Being, or inherent design in nature. In this, all forms of life are ordered, with Humanity as the highest being, due to its knowledge and ability to modify nature. This lends to the concept of another nature, a manmade nature, which involves design or modification by humans, as opposed to design inherent in nature.Glacken, C. (1956). Changing ideas of the habitable world. In W. L. Thomas (Ed.), Man's role in changing the phase of the Earth (pp 73). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Interest in environmental transformation continued to increase in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, resulting in a series of new intellectual approaches. One of these approaches was environmental determinism, developed by geographer Friedrich Ratzel. This view held that it is not social conditions, but environmental conditions, which determine the culture of a population. Ratzsel also viewed humans as restricted by nature, for their behaviors are limited to and defined by their environment. A later approach was the historical viewpoint of Franz Boas which refuted environmental determinism, claiming that it is not nature, but specifics of history, that shape human cultures. This approach recognized that although the environment may place limitations on societies, every environment will impact each culture differently. Julian Steward's cultural ecology is considered a fusion of environmental determinism and Boas' historical approach. Steward felt it was neither nature nor culture that had the most impact on a population, but instead, the mode of subsistence used in a given environment.
Anthropologist Roy Rappaport introduced the field of ecological anthropology in a deliberate attempt to move away from cultural ecology. Studies in ecological anthropology borrow heavily from the natural sciences, in particular, the concept of the ecosystem from systems ecology. In this approach, also called systems theory, ecosystems are seen as self-regulating, and as returning to a state of equilibrium. This theory views human populations as static and as acting in harmony with the environment.Balée, W. (2006). "The research program of historical ecology". Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 35, pp5.1-5.24.
The revisions of anthropologist Eric Wolf and others are especially pertinent to the development of historical ecology. These revisions and related critiques of environmental anthropology undertook to take into account the temporal and spatial dimensions of history and cultures, rather than continuing to view populations as static. These critiques led to the development of historical ecology by revealing the need to consider the historical, cultural, and evolutionary nature of landscapes and societies. Thus, historical ecology as a research program developed to allow for the examination of all types of societies, simple or complex, and their interactions with the environment over space and time.
Landscapes in historical ecology
In historical ecology, the landscape is defined as an area of interaction between human culture and the non-human environment. The landscape is a perpetually changing, physical manifestation of history.Barnes, T. G. (2000). Landscape, ecology and ecosystems management. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from Cooperative Extension Service, University of Kentucky Web site: http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/for/for76/for76.htm Historical ecology revises the notion of the ecosystem and replaces it with the landscape. While an ecosystem is static and cyclic, a landscape is historical. While the ecosystem concept views the environment as always trying to return to a state of equilibrium, the landscape concept considers "landscape transformation" to be a process of evolution. Landscapes do not return to a state of equilibrium, but are palimpsests of successive disturbances over time. The use of "landscape" instead of "ecosystem" as the core unit of analysis lies at the heart of historical ecology.