ABSTRACT
In anthropology, historical ecology focuses on human–environment interactions throughout time as well as the outcomes that those interactions have had and may have both locally and globally (Balée 2006; Crumley 1994; Szabó 2014). Historical ecology is a research program, meaning it is composed of proposed interdependent and fundamental principles with which some, but not necessarily all, members of the scientific community agree (Balée 2006; Lakatos 1980). Like much of anthropology, historical ecology is interdisciplinary, relying on a wide variety of data from archival sources to the natural sciences (Szabó 2014). The four fundamental principles (Balée 2006) of historical ecology are:
nearly all of Earth’s environments have been affected by humans;
humans are not inherently harmful or helpful to the environment;
different societies impact landscapes to varying degrees and in different ways depending on socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors;
a wide variety of human–environment interactions differing in both historical and ecological contexts may be studied as a total phenomenon.
