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Created
March 01, 2021 08:57
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dsd40
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Added Creator Dylan Davis
March 01, 2021 09:00
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dsd40
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Added Creator Kristina Douglass
March 01, 2021 09:00
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dsd40
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Added
R_Code.R
March 01, 2021 09:17
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dsd40
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March 01, 2021 09:18
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dsd40
Description
- Archaeologists interested in the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes have productively adopted Niche Construction Theory (NCT), in order to track and evaluate cumulative anthropogenic impacts. Applications of NCT have especially been used to elucidate co-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural and pastoral systems. Meanwhile, foraging economies, often thought of as less intensive in terms of land-use than agropastoral economies, have received less theoretical and analytical attention from a landscape perspective. Here we address this lacuna by contributing a novel remote sensing approach to investigating co-evolutionary dynamics in landscapes that have a long history of co-evolution with foraging communities. Our study is centered on coastal southwest Madagascar, a region inhabited by foraging and fishing communities for close to two millennia. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, including a wave of faunal extinctions, little is known about the scale, pace and nature of anthropogenic landscape modification. Archaeological deposits in this area generally bear ephemeral traces of past human activity and lack the intensive kinds of landscape modification that archaeologists typically look for as evidence of human environmental impacts (e.g., agricultural modifications, monumental architecture, etc.). In this paper we use high-resolution satellite imagery and machine learning to reveal a legacy of human-landscape co-evolution by comparing the characteristics – vegetative productivity and geochemical properties – of archaeological sites to those of locations with no documented archaeological materials. Then, we use a random forest algorithm to quantify the extent of archaeological activity and contextualize modern-day landscape impacts in this region. The results of this analysis demonstrate that coastal foraging economies in southwest Madagascar over the past thousand years have made – and continue to make – significant, long-standing impacts to the modern landscape. Our study thus expands the spatial-scale at which we can evaluate human-environment dynamics on Madagascar, including during early periods of the island’s human history when mobile foraging communities were the dominant drivers of landscape change.
Publication Date
License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Added
Kernel_Density_Test.zip
March 09, 2021 15:55
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dsd40
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Planet_NDVI.zip
March 27, 2021 08:55
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dsd40
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March 27, 2021 08:55
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dsd40
Description
Archaeologists interested in the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes have productively adopted Niche Construction Theory (NCT), in order to track and evaluate cumulative anthropogenic impacts. Applications of NCT have especially been used to elucidate co-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural and pastoral systems. Meanwhile, foraging economies, often thought of as less intensive in terms of land-use than agropastoral economies, have received less theoretical and analytical attention from a landscape perspective. Here we address this lacuna by contributing a novel remote sensing approach to investigating co-evolutionary dynamics in landscapes that have a long history of co-evolution with foraging communities. Our study is centered on coastal southwest Madagascar, a region inhabited by foraging and fishing communities for close to two millennia. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, including a wave of faunal extinctions, little is known about the scale, pace and nature of anthropogenic landscape modification. Archaeological deposits in this area generally bear ephemeral traces of past human activity and lack the intensive kinds of landscape modification that archaeologists typically look for as evidence of human environmental impacts (e.g., agricultural modifications, monumental architecture, etc.). In this paper we use high-resolution satellite imagery and machine learning to reveal a legacy of human-landscape co-evolution by comparing the characteristics – vegetative productivity and geochemical properties – of archaeological sites to those of locations with no documented archaeological materials. Then, we use a random forest algorithm to quantify the extent of archaeological activity and contextualize modern-day landscape impacts in this region. The results of this analysis demonstrate that coastal foraging economies in southwest Madagascar over the past thousand years have made – and continue to make – significant, long-standing impacts to the modern landscape. Our study thus expands the spatial-scale at which we can evaluate human-environment dynamics on Madagascar, including during early periods of the island’s human history when mobile foraging communities were the dominant drivers of landscape change.
- Archaeologists interested in the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes have productively adopted Niche Construction Theory (NCT), in order to assess long-term legacies of human-environment interactions. Applications of NCT have especially been used to elucidate co-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural and pastoral systems. Meanwhile, foraging economies, often thought of as less intensive in terms of land-use than agropastoral economies, have received less theoretical and analytical attention from a landscape perspective. Here we address this lacuna by contributing a novel remote sensing approach for investigating legacies of human-environment interaction in landscapes that have a long history of co-evolution with highly mobile foraging communities. Our study is centered on coastal southwest Madagascar, a region inhabited by foraging and fishing communities for close to two millennia. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, including a wave of faunal extinctions, little is known about the scale, pace and nature of anthropogenic landscape modification. Archaeological deposits in this area generally bear ephemeral traces of past human activity and do not exhibit readily visible signatures of intensive land-use and landscape modification (e.g., agricultural modifications, monumental architecture, etc.). In this paper we use high-resolution satellite imagery and vegetative indices to reveal a legacy of human-landscape co-evolution by comparing the characteristics – vegetative productivity and geochemical properties – of archaeological sites to those of locations with no documented archaeological materials. Then, we use a random forest algorithm and spatial statistics to quantify the extent of archaeological activity and use this analysis to contextualize modern-day human-environment dynamics. Our results demonstrate that coastal foraging communities in southwest Madagascar over the past thousand years have made – and continue to make – significant, long-standing impacts to the modern landscape. Our study thus expands the temporal and spatial scales at which we can evaluate human-environment dynamics on Madagascar, providing new opportunities to study early periods of the island’s human history when mobile foraging communities were the dominant drivers of landscape change.
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Planet_NDVI.zip
March 27, 2021 09:22
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dsd40
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NDVI_AN.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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SAVI_WS.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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SAVI_DS.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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SAVI_AN.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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NDWI_AN.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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NDVI_WS.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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NDVI_DS.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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SWIR_PS.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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SWIR_PS2.tif
March 27, 2021 09:23
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dsd40
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March 27, 2021 09:26
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dsd40
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acknowledgments
- All vegetative indices (NDVI, SAVI, NDWI) were calculated using PlanetScope Imagery (Copyright Planet Labs Inc. 2021).
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RF_128_prob.tif.zip
March 27, 2021 09:35
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dsd40
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March 27, 2021 09:49
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dsd40
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Added
README.md
March 27, 2021 09:51
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dsd40
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March 27, 2021 09:53
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dsd40
Keyword
- Foraging, niche construction , landscape archaeology, remote sensing, ecological legacies, Madagascar
Geographic Area
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README.md
March 27, 2021 09:57
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dsd40
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Added
README.md
March 27, 2021 09:57
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dsd40
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Published
March 31, 2021 07:47
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dsd40
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Updated
March 22, 2022 16:17
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[unknown user]
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Updated
April 04, 2024 10:21
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[unknown user]