Assessing relationships between human adaptive responses and ecology via eco-cultural niche modeling William E. Banks To cite this version: William E. Banks. Assessing relationships between human adaptive responses and ecology via eco- cultural niche modeling. Archaeology and Prehistory. Universite Bordeaux 1, 2013. hal-01840898 HAL Id: hal-01840898 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01840898 Submitted on 11 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Thèse d'Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches Université de Bordeaux 1 William E. BANKS UMR 5199 PACEA – De la Préhistoire à l'Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie Assessing Relationships between Human Adaptive Responses and Ecology via Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling Soutenue le 14 novembre 2013 devant un jury composé de: Michel CRUCIFIX, Chargé de Cours à l'Université catholique de Louvain, Belgique Francesco D'ERRICO, Directeur de Recherche au CRNS, Talence Jacques JAUBERT, Professeur à l'Université de Bordeaux 1, Talence Rémy PETIT, Directeur de Recherche à l'INRA, Cestas Pierre SEPULCHRE, Chargé de Recherche au CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette Jean-Denis VIGNE, Directeur de Recherche au CNRS, Paris Table of Contents Summary of Past Research Introduction ................................................................................................................... 3 Human-environment interactions at the site scale: Solutré ......................................... 4 Human-environment interactions at the regional scale ............................................... 6 Eco-cultural niche modeling .......................................................................................... 6 Examining Human-Environment Relationships via Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling Introduction ................................................................................................................. 10 Eco-cultural niche modeling ........................................................................................ 16 Data Requirements and Selection .......................................................................... 23 Occurrence Data ................................................................................................. 23 Environmental Data ........................................................................................... 24 Selected Predictive Modeling Architectures ........................................................... 25 Genetic Algorithm for Rule-Set Prediction ......................................................... 26 Maxent ............................................................................................................... 28 Characterizing Eco-Cultural Niche Predictions ....................................................... 30 ECNM applied to the Paleolithic archaeological record .............................................. 33 The Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition ............................................................ 35 Adaptive shift between the Proto- and Early Aurignacian ..................................... 36 The Last Glacial Maximum ...................................................................................... 38 Research Perspectives ................................................................................................. 45 Eco-Cultural Niche Variability across the Upper Paleolithic ................................... 46 Adaptive Responses during Marine Isotope Stages 5a–4 ....................................... 48 Identifying Long-term Mechanisms ........................................................................ 50 Résumé en Français .......................................................................................................... 52 Teaching Statement .......................................................................................................... 60 References Cited ............................................................................................................... 66 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................... 75 Selected Publications ........................................................................................................ 84 2 SUMMARY OF PAST RESEARCH INTRODUCTION All human cultures, whether they be complex societies that practice food production or hunter- gatherer societies at the other end of the spectrum, exist within an environmental context. Therefore, many of their cultural solutions related to food resource acquisition and social organization are directly or indirectly influenced by the environment(s) within which they operate. One important preoccupation within the discipline of archaeology is how to identify and capture the complexity of these influences through examinations of the particularities and geographic distributions of past material culture. The purpose of this document is describe the theoretical and methodological efforts I have made to investigate such influences and interactions. My research has always been oriented towards understanding the complex relationships that exist between prehistoric hunter-gatherer cultural systems and the environmental contexts that they exploited. One of my key objectives has been to identify and interpret the processes of cultural adaptation that have occurred across periods of environmental change. Throughout my career, I have pursued this objective by applying a wide-range of methodologies to a variety of archaeological records. These include: • Typo-technological and functional studies of lithic industries associated with the Paleoindian and Archaic records of the North American Great Plains and the European Upper Paleolithic; 3 • Studies of settlement-subsistence systems and chronology within the Central Plains; • Investigations on the impact of rapid-scale climatic variability during MIS 3 and 2 on Paleolithic hunter-gatherer and large mammal populations. These various research endeavors have allowed me to study, at differing geographic scales, the complex relationships between a cultural system and its environmental framework. This work, conducted both in the field and in the laboratory, has led me to acquire expertise in high-power use-wear analysis, the examination of lithic economies and reduction sequences or "chaînes opératoires", the calibration and Bayesian modeling of 14C ages, the construction and management of archaeological relational databases, Geographic Information Systems, paleoclimatology, and ecological niche modeling. These expertise are necessary for conducting interdisciplinary studies and serve as the foundation of eco-cultural niche modeling (ECNM), the methodological approach to which I have devoted my attention since obtaining my Ph.D. Before describing ECNM in detail, I think it is necessary to briefly summarize the research that led me in this direction. HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS AT THE SITE SCALE: SOLUTRÉ The microscopic wear traces left on the surface of stone tools reflect the relationship between lithic technical systems and their human users. Use-wear traces serve as tangible evidence of a culture's adaptation to and exploitation of its environment. My doctoral dissertation detailed a high-power use-wear analysis of the Upper Paleolithic stone tool assemblages recovered from the site of Solutré (Banks, 2004, 2009). That study allowed me to investigate the interface 4 between culture and environment at a specific spot on the landscape and evaluate how it varied over time. Solutré is an ideal site for such an analysis since it served as a kill-butchery site throughout the Upper Paleolithic despite the major cultural, technological, and environmental changes documented for this same period. I thought that it was highly probable, however, that these cultural and environmental changes influenced the way in which the site was incorporated into the settlement-subsistence systems of different Upper Paleolithic populations. I used high- power use-wear methods to identify changes in secondary site function through time, characterizing these collateral activities, as well as to identify how specific tool types performed within the larger technical system (e.g., changing relationships between tool type and function, maintenance of tools, recycling of tools to be used in different functions). The results of these analyses indicated that secondary site functions at Solutré varied significantly through time and served to improve our understanding of how Solutré was incorporated into various settlement-subsistence systems throughout the Upper Paleolithic. However, it became evident to me that I needed to develop and employ methods with which I could better determine how environmental changes influenced the way in which human groups organized their activities within a larger landscape. 5 HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS AT THE REGIONAL SCALE My research on the late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological records of the Central Plains of North America focused on technological