The application of ecological niche modeling to archaoelogical data was first explored in the 2000s by W.E. Banks et al. - an approach that they termed eco-cultural niche modeling (Banks et al., 2006). Since then, a growing number of discussions on the appropriateness of methods and algorithms to model ecological niches in the field of Ecology have flourished in the literature (e.g., Elith et al., 2006; Merow et al., 2014; Peterson et al., 2015; Qiao et al., 2015, 2017), emphasizing the need to contextualize this choice within a clear theoretical framework. In this aspect, theorizing the shape of ecological niches has been discussed recently e.g., A.T. Peterson and J. Soberón (2020). However, this concern has not really percolated into eco-cultural niche modeling (but see for instance Banks, 2017) despite the pertinence of evaluating the theoretical shape of eco-cultural niches in order to model them adequately.

An eco-cultural niche can be defined as the ecological space occupied by a culture (Banks et al., 2006). In archaeological applications, cultures are defined on the basis of the material culture of past populations at different scales (i.e., an archaeological culture; cf. e.g., Clarke, 1968 for different definitions of archaeological cultures). Eco-cultural niches are thus the environmental conditions with which the populations using a (or a group of) cultural traits interacted (Vignoles, 2021).

This workshop aims to discuss the theoretical grounds of eco-cultural niche modeling, through the prism of niche geometry in environmental space. This apparently trivial problem in fact raises fundamental questions one must ask when embracing the approach of eco-cultural niche modeling: is the shape of an eco-cultural niche comparable to that of a ecological niche? How can we model the relationship (i.e., response) between cultural data and environmental variables? Is it also unimodal as postulated for fundamental ecological niches? Is the distinction between the different types of niches operated by Hutchinson in his theoretical framework (Hutchinson, 1957) pertinent when applied to cultural data? How do the inclusion of cultural factors influence the framework of ecological niches in relation with distributional areas (e.g., BAM diagram ; Soberón & Peterson, 2005)? The workshop aims to foster interdisciplinary interactions around these questions, bringing together ecologists, anthropologists and archaeologists. We hope this will give birth to a renewed framework for defining eco-cultural niches and explore broad scale past human-environment relationships.

Selected bibliography

Banks, William E. 2017. « Improving eco-cultural niche estimations : the potential of archaeological faunal remains for taking biotic interactions into consideration ». In TaphonomieS, J.-Ph. Brugal (dir.), 1-10 (encart 10). Paris: Archives Contemporaines.

Banks, William E., Francesco d’Errico, Harold I. Dibble, Leonard Krishtalka, Dixie West, Deborah I. Olszewski, A. Townsend Peterson, et al. 2006. « Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling: New Tools for Reconstructing the Geography and Ecology of Past Human Populations ». PaleoAnthropology, 68−83.

Clarke, David L. 1968. Analytical Archaeology. Methuen&Co Ltd. London.

Elith, Jane, Catherine H. Graham, Robert P. Anderson, Miroslav Dudík, Simon Ferrier, Antoine Guisan, Robert J. Hijmans, et al. 2006. « Novel Methods Improve Prediction of Species’ Distributions from Occurrence Data ». Ecography 29 (2): 129‑51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2006.0906-7590.04596.x.

Hutchinson, George Evelyn. 1957. « Population studies: Animal ecology and demography ». Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 53 (1‑2): 193‑213.

Merow, Cory, Mathew J. Smith, Thomas C. Edwards Jr., Antoine Guisan, Sean M. McMahon, Signe Normand, Wilfried Thuiller, Rafael O. Wüest, Niklaus E. Zimmermann, Jane Elith. 2014. « What Do We Gain from Simplicity versus Complexity in Species Distribution Models? » Ecography 37 (12): 1267‑81. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.00845.

Peterson, A. Townsend, Monica Papeş, Jorge Soberón. 2015. « Mechanistic and Correlative Models of Ecological Niches ». European Journal of Ecology 1 (2): 28‑38. https://doi.org/10.1515/eje-2015-0014.

Qiao, Huijie, Jorge Soberón, A. Townsend Peterson. 2015. « No Silver Bullets in Correlative Ecological Niche Modelling: Insights from Testing among Many Potential Algorithms for Niche Estimation ». Methods in Ecology and Evolution 6 (10): 1126‑36. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12397.

Qiao, Huijie, Luis E. Escobar, Erin E. Saupe, Liqiang Ji, Jorge Soberón. 2017. « A Cautionary Note on the Use of Hypervolume Kernel Density Estimators in Ecological Niche Modelling ». Global Ecology and Biogeography 26 (9): 1066‑70. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12492.

Soberón, Jorge, A. Townsend Peterson. 2005. « Interpretation of Models of Fundamental Ecological Niches and Species’ Distributional Areas ». Biodiversity Informatics 2: 1‑10. https://doi.org/10.17161/bi.v2i0.4.

———. 2020. « What Is the Shape of the Fundamental Grinnellian Niche? » Theoretical Ecology 13 (1): 105‑15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-019-0432-5.

Vignoles, Anaïs. 2021. « Trajectoires technologiques et dynamiques de niches éco-culturelles du Gravettien moyen au Gravettien récent en France ». Thèse de doctorat, Pessac: Université de Bordeaux.