Archaeological Proxies of Early Modern Human Niche Construction in Northern Malawi

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Most archaeological literature dealing with niche construction avoids hunter-gatherer behaviors, in part because they can be difficult to detect archaeologically. As the role of humans in shaping environments over long time scales becomes increasingly apparent, it is critical to develop archaeological proxies for hunter-gatherer impacts. Modern hunter-gatherers engage in niche constructive behaviors intentionally aimed at maintaining or increasing the productivity of their environments, and these may have significant ecological and even geomorphic impacts over the long time scales of human evolution. In some cases, they may also represent behaviors unique to modern Homo sapiens. In the lateritic alluvial fan systems of northern Malawi, preservation conditions preclude development of many on-site proxies for human-environment interactions. However, by combining archaeological, geomorphic, and geochronological data from Middle Stone Age archaeological sites with off-site records of vegetation and charcoal from Lake Malawi, we can detect a fundamental shift in human niche constructive behaviors. The advent of anthropogenic burning ~85 thousand years ago altered the complexion of vegetative communities in favor of grasslands and woodlands, and facilitated alluvial fan formation in the northern basin. These impacts, starting in the Late Pleistocene, have had a long-term role in shaping the environments and landscapes of northern Malawi.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24857