Paleoecology

Paleoecology is both a field of ecology concentrated on the study of the ecology of fossil organisms and a branch of cultural and environmental anthropology aimed at the detection of the mutual influence and interdependence of prehistoric culture (or society) and its natural environment.

The formation of paleoecology as special field of knowledge coincided with the middle of the 20th century, and was the crucial time for the initial comprehension that human livelihood systems' diversity is directly connected with the features of the natural geographic environment. As a result, the analysis of the geographic components of certain ambient adjoining areas inhabited by separate groups of population has become a subject of principal importance. From the early1960s the process of the creation of a database necessary for cataloging prehistoric fauna, flora, relief, and any climate reconstruction has been significantly intensified.

As a result one can trace the formation of new direction in the field of archaeological investigation– environmental archaeology, which developed mainly in the context of European Stone Age archaeology. From the very beginning its primary goal has been postulated as an interdisciplinary analysis of the geographic environment inhabited by Prehistoric populations. Since the late 1970s two fundamental approaches could be distinguished in its frameworks, and gradually each of them has become an independent discipline. The first one—geoarchaeology—concentrates its attention predominantly on the natural geographic context of archaeological objects. Methods of geology, geomorphology, and climatology are used in conjunction by the highly skilled geoarchaeologists in order to reconstruct the circumstances that have had local influence on archaeological sites, that have led to the formation of cultural remnants, and also to reconstruct the further history of their fossilization. In recent years artifact and site conservation, preservation of the same from natural ruination, technical analysis of artifacts and their raw material source base, artifact absolute dating, and other issues have also become the part of the scientific concerns of the representatives of this discipline. The other group of environmental archaeologists concentrates their attention on ecological links between human society and natural environment.

In the former Soviet Union the prehistory of the ecological context of separate settlements became the subject of intentional investigation during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since that time representatives of a broad spectrum of natural sciences have taken part in numerous archaeological excavations, and the results of their activity have enabled them to reconstruct in concrete the natural geographic environment inhabited by a certain group of hunter-gatherers. The first attempt by Soviet archaeologists to theoretically generalize the results of such interdisciplinary excavations was made by S. Bibikov. In 1969 he proposed the method of paleoeconomic simulation, the frameworks of which call for the specificity of the material culture and household activities of the concrete settlements' inhabitants, on the one hand, and the features of their natural environment, on the other, to be taken into account. During the 1970s to 1980s, he and his many apprentices explored this method in many prehistoric settlement case studies. As a result, it was established that natural environment had significantly influenced the formation and development of separate groups of the populations and their culture, and, in its turn, was subjected to many essential changes caused by these human collectives' activities. Based on this conclusion Bibikov elaborated his concept of paleoecological and paleoeconomic crisis, which is regarded as an objective theory and a natural result of prehistoric populations' advances and activities taking place in a permanently changing environment. It also becomes possible to distinguish several [Page 1803]stages of such crisis development during 9000–6000 B.C., development which is correlated with phases of geographic ambient evolution as well as with changes of the “livelihood activities” of hunter-gatherers. As a result, a new specific direction of archaeological and historical investigation—an ecological one—was founded. Its purpose is often regarded as the detection and analysis of connections that exist between a specific cultural object and its natural environment.

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