Human Niche Construction and Population Growth in Pre-Columbian Amazonia

Abstract

The use of Niche Construction Theory in archaeological research demands that we establish empirically how human-constructed niches acted as legacies that shaped the selection pressures affecting past human populations. One potential approach is to examine whether human demography changed as a result of the continued use of landscapes enduringly transformed by past societies. This paper presents proxies for Amazonian population growth during the late Holocene and discusses their significance within the broader context of landscape legacies resulting from cumulative anthropic environmental alteration during pre-Columbian times.