Periodic Reporting for period 1 - KEYCON (When keystone species converge: a transdisciplinary study of human-beaver interactions in Atlantic north-west Europe (6000-3000 BC))
Período documentado: 2023-05-01 hasta 2025-10-31
The European beaver (Castor fiber) is central to rewilding schemes in north-west Europe today due to its role as a keystone species. However, its engineering feats are also an increasing source of human-wildlife conflict. While these challenges are unique to our time, prior to near-extinction beavers interacted with humans and their environments for over 10,000 years. Yet, there is little systematic data on these dynamics in the past. KEYCON comparatively investigates the changing interactions between humans and beavers – two keystone species – during the Atlantic period (6000-3000 BC) in Denmark and the Netherlands, across the pivotal transition from foraging to farming and a period of changing climate. Few studies have considered how the critical changes in human land use and subsistence impacted human-wildlife relationships beyond diet. Achieving new understanding of these issues is hampered by the lack of knowledge of how human and wild fauna domains intersected in the past, a lack of focused studies of wild fauna remains, and a persevering anthropocentric perspective on past human-nonhuman relationships. To address these challenges, KEYCON integrates computational ecological modelling and zooarchaeological techniques in a transdisciplinary approach encompassing archaeology, multi-species anthropology, and conservation biology. Utilising the rich yet untapped dataset of prehistoric beaver assemblages from Denmark and the Netherlands, KEYCON provides a novel perspective on human-beaver interactions in the past. Using the resulting insights, KEYCON seeks also to contribute a data-driven, deep-time perspective on current rewilding schemes, the success of which is predicated on how the socio-ecological dynamics between humans and wild animals are addressed, and on robust ecological baselines. Mobilising a unique archaeological dataset, KEYCON will provide essential longue durée data and perspectives on both of these aspects.
KEYCON compiled an overview of beaver finds from the Atlantic period (6000-3000 BC) from Denmark and the Netherlands, tracing how intensive human-beaver interactions were in this period and region. It has been possible to determine that human-beaver interactions varied in the Atlantic period; however, unexpectedly not due to the advent of farming. In Denmark, interactions decreased already prior to this transition. In the Netherlands, the adoption of farming appears to have little influence on human-beaver interactions and instead this relationship continues to be a close one even 1000 years after the transition to farming. Through computational modelling, it was possible to determine that the environment was favourable for beavers in both regions throughout the Atlantic period, and that therefore the differences in human-beaver interactions were not primarily due to climate. In the Netherlands, climate conditions were a little more favourable for beavers, which may explain the intense emphasis on beaver hunting in that region. The main reason for the decrease in beaver hunting in Denmark, through, appears to be a switch to a subsistence focused on marine resources. Comparing the presence of beavers in the past with the presence of other fauna, such as mammals, birds, and fish, revealed that whereever beavers occurred in Denmark and the Netherlands, they provided positive ecosystem functions for other animals and behavioural affordances for humans.
The discovery that beaver hunting continued intensively after the adoption of farming in the Netherlands has demonstrated for the first time quantatively that the transition to agriculture did not have a huge impact on how people interacted with their environment. This has the potential to help shape the debate on the effects of the emergence of farming in Europe. Furthermore, there are significant new results that beaver clearly had positive influence on the ecosystem in the Stone Age and that humans benefitted from this. This result received a lot of media attention after its publication and has the potential to influence current public sentiments on beavers and therefore beaver conservation. It also has the potential to contribute to archaeology's more active role in current conservation debates.