A Human Behavioral Ecology of the Colonization of Unfamiliar Landscapes

Human behavioral ecology has proven a valuable theoretical framework for evaluating the archaeological record of human population expansion the world over. To evaluate hypotheses for the late Pleistocene human colonization of the Americas, we need to address a typical assumption built into those models: static landscape knowledge. By taking landscape knowledge as the predicting variable, rather than a constant, we can explore the behavioral mechanisms involved in the interaction of humans with new and unfamiliar environments. Acknowledging the process of adaptation produces contrasting and readily testable hypotheses for human population expansion. As a case study, we use an ideal free distribution model to test competing hypotheses for the colonization of Southeast Alaska. Our results indicate that Southeast Alaska was likely colonized by humans prior to their appearance in the extant archaeological record in the early Holocene. The locations of our oldest archaeological sites in the early Holocene are best explained as the result of a well-established population matching their settlement locations to rising sea level.