ArchSoc WC, 10 November 2020, David Braun, Coupled natural human systems on the West Coast of South

Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surrounding ecosystems (e.g. niche construction). Developing expectations to identify such phenomena is remarkably difficult because it requires understanding the multi-generational impacts of changes in behavior. These long-term dynamics require insights into the emergent phenomena that alter selective pressures at time scales which are not possible to observe, and are also not intuitive based on the ethnographic record. Generative models show promise for probing these potentially unexpected consequences of human-environment interaction. Changes in the uses of landscapes may have long term implications for the environments that hominins occupied. We explore these proxies of behavior in a series of archaeological sites on the West Coast of South Africa and examine how modelling may provide expectations for a variety of phenomena.