How do human adaptive behaviors affect the evolution of ecosystems

How do human adaptive behaviors affect the evolution of ecosystems?

Joseph L. Chartkoff

Professor, Anthropology

Prehistoric Archaeology, Population Ecology, Ecosystem Evolution

My research has focused on the adaptive strategies of prehistoric human hunter-gatherer populations in paleolithic Italy, Western North America, and here in Michigan. I have been particularly interested in the subsistence behaviors and options used by human populations in dealing both with climatic fluctuations over time and with the resource variations resulting from the dynamics of ecological succession, and how the human extractive strategies have in turn affected the composition and operation of the ecosystems within which they have lived. These interests incorporate macroscopic and microscopic biota as evidenced in archaeological remains. Since the survival and representativeness of paleobiological data in archaeological sites can be extremely variable, the ability to relate the surviving archaeological remains with paleobiological data recovered by other researchers can be especially important in this area.

Selected Publications

Chartkoff, Joseph L. and Randolph E. Donahue. 1982. Petriolo III: An Epigravettian Occupation Site in Southern Tuscany: First Season. Current Anthropology 22 (5):575-576.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. and Kerry K. Chartkoff. 1984. The Archaeology of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.

Chartkoff, Joseph. L. 1984. Shores: Perspectives on Paleoamerican Habitat, Subsistence, and Society in the Far West. In: Woman, Poet, Scientist: Essays Honoring Dr. Emma Lou Davis, edited by Thomas Blackburn, pp. 37-55. Ballena Press, Los Altos, CA.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. 1989. Exchange, Subsistence and Sedentism Along the Middle Klamath River. In: Research In Economic Arthropology, 11:265-303. Barry L. Isaac, ed. JAI Press, Lew London, CT.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. 1990. Cracking and grinding, chipping and swapping: Summers on Skunk Creek. Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology 3:21-34. San Diego.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. 1993. The dry meadow site (CA-Tuo-2604): A possible Miwok cattle herding camp in the Central Sierras. Proceedings of the Society of California Archaeology 6:327-336. San Diego.

Adams, Walter R. and Joseph L. Chartkoff. 1995. The utility of r/K selection theory in anthropology and its application to California archaeology. Archives of California Prehistory 41:26-51. Coyote Press, Salinas, CA.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. 1997. The prehistoric component of the dry meadow site (CA-Tuo-2604). Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology 11:75-90. Fresno, CA.

Chartkoff, Joseph L. 2002. Exchange systems and sociocultural complexity in the central Sierra Nevada. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol. 21 (In press).