Niche Construction Theory Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Philosophy of Biology, Affordance Theory, Niche Construction Theory, Organismal Biology

Prehistoric water management in the northern US Southwest was integral to successful subsistence. On the Mesa Verde cuesta in southwestern Colorado, several types of water management features have been identified in the archaeological record, but research into these features has typically focused on the efficacy of reservoirs—a large-scale, labor-intensive, and community-oriented means of collecting and storing water. This focus on large-scale water management features has largely ignored the productive potential of small-scale and low-cost strategies for water management executed by individual households. There is considerable evidence, for example, that extensive check dam networks were constructed and used on the Mesa Verde cuesta, but their actual utility as a small-scale risk-aversion strategy to resource stress has not systematically been explored. This paper identifies all ephemeral drainages on the Mesa Verde cuesta where check dam construction was possible, then applies a maize growing niche model to estimate total yields from check dam farming plots for each year from AD 890–1285. A demographic reconstruction is then used to estimate the percentage of the total cuesta population that could have been supported using only check dam maize yields through time. Results suggest that check dam farming could have supplied a reliable source of surplus annual maize sufficient for household storage needs even during the most populous time periods across the cuesta landscape.

We explore contemporary evolutionary perspectives on children’s psychological development, questioning the view that high-fidelity, inter-individual transmission of information explains the cumulative character of human cultures, and children’s ontogenesis within these cultures. We argue that humans construct an environmental niche that is unique in being composed of institutions, which function to coordinate activity over multiple time scales. Institutions involve not simply customs or conventions but a deontology of future-binding rights, responsibilities, duties, and obligations. The origins of institutions can be traced in hominin evolution to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, where kinship, the first institution, made possible community support of an extended and demanding form of ontogenesis. Since the human environmental niche is an institutional reality, children today need to acquire the ability to understand and act effectively within institutions. We propose that this ability emerges not as an adaptation solely to past conditions but through differentiation and reintegration of an ‘extended ontogenetic system’ of which the child is a constituent, leading to a quality of self-consciousness on the part of the child that makes possible the ability to live in an institutional reality.

Le concept de niche imprègne l’écologie. Comme le concept de fitness en biologie évolutive, c’est un concept central, au sens parfois peu explicité, apte à subir des glissements, jusqu’à finalement pouvoir être qualifié de tautologique (Griesemer 1992). Comme définition préliminaire, disons, sans préciser davantage, que la niche est ce qui décrit l’écologie d’une espèce, ce qui peut signifier son rôle dans l’écosystème, son habitat, etc. Le concept, inspiré par la biologie darwinienne, a connu une fortune croissante au cours du XXe siècle, à la croisée des disciplines écologiques en développement, avant de tomber en disgrâce dans les années 1980 (Chase & Leibold 2003). Dans une première partie, nous retraçons l’histoire du concept et de ses sens, de ses diverses fortunes et infortunes. Dans une deuxième partie, nous examinons plus précisément les rapports que le concept entretient avec les explications de la coexistence et de la diversité. Dans une troisième partie, nous exposons la récente controverse entre la théorie basée sur le concept de niche et la théorie neutre, et discutons son bien-fondé. En conclusion, nous revenons sur les vertus et difficultés des différents sens du concept.

This paper describes a series of experiments in creating autonomous drawing robots that generate aesthetically interesting and engaging drawings. Based on a previous method for multiple software agents that mimic the biological process of niche construction, the challenge in this project was to re-interpret the implementation of a set of evolving software agents into a physical robotic system. In this new robotic system, individual robots try to reinforce a particular niche defined by the density of the lines drawn underneath them. The paper also outlines the role of environmental interactions in determining the style of drawing produced.

- by Jon McCormack
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- Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Contemporary Art, Evolutionary Computation

Built structures to aid hunting activities, such as drive lanes and hunting blinds, have been documented on every continent with the exception of Antarctica. This global phenomenon dates to at least 12,000 years ago and is found across time, space, environments, and cultures. While there is increasing study and documentation of such sites, they are prone to destruction and are not always recognized, resulting in a lack of large-scale comparative studies. However, this widespread pattern deserves greater attention as it can reveal unique facets of social and economic life, particularly in the context of hunter-gatherer societies. Such constructions are literal niche construction, created to increase the yield and predictability of wild animal resources. They represent an investment in the landscape, organization of communal labor, a detailed knowledge of animal behavior, all the while creating socioeconomic tensions concerning permanent facilities and who owns them and the resources they generate among otherwise egalitarian populations. This paper presents a global overview of such features, and the anthropological theory and archaeological method to systematically study such sites. This methodology will be applied to a brief case study, analyzing some of the oldest hunting architecture on the planet, those submerged beneath Lake Huron.

In Reading in the Brain, Stanislas Dehaene presents a compelling account of how the brain learns to read. Central to this account is his neuronal recycling hypothesis: neural circuitry is capable of being ‘recycled’ or converted to a different function that is cultural in nature. The original function of the circuitry is not entirely lost and
constrains what the brain can learn. It is argued that the neural niche co-evolves with the environmental niche in a way that does not undermine the core ideas of neuronal recycling, but which is quite different from the models of cognitive and cultural evolution
provided by evolutionary psychology and epidemiology. Dehaene contrasts neuronal recycling with a naïve model of the brain as a general learning device that is unconstrained in what it can learn. Consequently a tension develops in Dehaene’s account of the role of plasticity in the acquisition of language. It is argued that the functional and structural changes in the brain that Dehaene documents in great detail are driven by learning and that this learning-driven plasticity does not commit us to a naïve model of the brain.

- by Richard Menary
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- Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Neuropsychology

Given the complex and multidimensional nature of human evolution, we need to develop theoretical and methodological frameworks to account for and model the dynamic feedbacks between co-operational biological and cultural evolutionary systems to better understand the processes that produced modern human behavior. Equally important is the generation of explicit theory-based models that can be tested against the empirical paleoanthropological record. We present a case study that examines evidence for culturally-driven behavioral change among Late Pleistocene hominins that altered the social niche occupied by hominins in western Eurasia, with consequences for subsequent biological and cultural evolution. We draw on a large sample of 167 Pleistocene assemblages across western Eurasia and employ mathematical and computational modeling to explore the feedbacks between cultural and biological inheritance. Shifts in land-use strategies changed the opportunities for social and biological interaction among Late Pleistocene hominins in western Eurasia with a cascade of consequences for cultural and biological evolution, including the disappearance of Neanderthals from the fossil and archaeological records, and the acceleration of cultural evolution among ancestors of modern humans.

This thesis is an investigation of the niche concept and of some related major theoretical frameworks: the niche theory and neutral theory in ecology, the niche construction theory in evolutionary biology, and stem cell niche in intra-organism ecology.
The first chapter traces the history of the niche concept and compares the niche theory to a competing theory, the neutral theory. The niche concept appears to be an explanans of species diversity and ecosystem structure.
The second chapter compares the standard evolutionary theory to the theory of niche construction, in which an organism can affect its environment and thus influence the selection to come. We show how to characterize this confrontation in terms of time scales of processes involved, which allows us to identify the range of validity truly unique to the theory of niche construction more explicitly than it has been in the past.
The third chapter develops the research of the previous two chapters in the modeling of a gene therapy as a process of competition and ecological niche construction by cells. We present a family of models applied to different time scales of cellular dynamics, among which the careful modeler can not choose without specific experimental results.
We conclude on the conceptions of the relationship between an organism and its environment attached to the various facets of the concept.

This thesis is an investigation on the niche concept and related theoretical frameworks: niche theory and neutral theory in ecology, niche construction theory in evolutionary biology, and the stem cell niche in intraorganism ecology. The first chapter traces the history of the niche concept and compares niche theory to a competing theory, the neutral theory of biodiversity. The niche concept appears to be an explanans of species diversity and ecosystem structure. The second chapter compares standard evolutionary theory to the theory of niche construction, in which an organism can affect its environment and thus influence the selection to come. I show how to characterize this confrontation in terms of the time scales of the processes involved, which allows us to identify the range of validity truly unique to niche construction theory more explicitly than it has been in the past. The third chapter develops the research of the previous two chapters in the modeling of a gene therapy as a process of competition and ecological niche construction by cells. I present a family of models applied to different time scales of cellular dynamics , among which the careful modeler cannot choose without specific experimental results. I conclude on the conceptions of the relationship between an organism and its environment attached to the various facets of the concept.

- by Arnaud Pocheville
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- Evolutionary Biology, Gene Therapy, Ecology, Evolution

I will explain why the ‘playing God’ objection, described in secular terms as the ‘desire for mastery’ objection, is incompatible with the current discussion in the fields of biology and evolutionary psychology. Specifically, I will argue that Sandel’s objection is unsound in light of Wheeler and Clark’s view of human nature: that it is conceived partly as a product of our own agency . This approach estimates that our desire to master our nature began the moment our ancestors started to construct niches that ultimately transformed the way we are. From a niche construction perspective, altering human nature by genetic engineering is not dehumanizing but rather is in accordance with the way humans are. We have always engineered our environment, which in turn shapes the architecture of the human mind - ultimately changing our DNA with no need of direct genetic manipulation.

- by Victor Garcia-Belaunde
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- Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology
- by Thomas Tweed
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- Religion, Comparative Religion, History of Religion, Theory of Religion

Organisms are niche constructors: they impact the environment and modify selective pressures that direct their own evolution as well as that of their non-conspecific fellows in ecological systems at various scales. The theoretical acknowledgement of niche construction has inspired many reflections about the active role of organisms in evolution, often proclaiming a revolutionary theoretical change. But if we look at formal models the claim is not yet justified. Ecologists have specified population-scale models of niche construction, but these cannot be adopted as evolutionary models: they don't incorporate heritable variation nor allow for directional selection and cumulative change. As evolutionists point out, these models are mere phenotype dynamics or population fluctuations with different possible outcomes - extinction or sustainability. Evolutionary models of niche construction, on the other hand, are not so revolutionary in their foundations, often being just classical population genetics provided with feedback loops between loci and selective pressures acting on them. The idea that variation among organisms boils down to genetic differences captured by gene frequencies dates back to the heart of the Modern Synthesis. But niche construction points directly to the world of physical and chemical interactions. This is the world where resource-impacting phenotypes are built through developmental processes, in turn subject and sensitive to the surrounding environment and the resources left over by previous generations. The produced phenotypes and their effects are hardly summarized by gene frequencies, yet evolutionary models need some kind of heritable variation and selection. The future challenge of evolutionary modeling beyond the Modern Synthesis is thus ecological, plastic variation that allows for inheritance with varying degrees and not-always-allelic mechanisms.

- by Emanuele Serrelli
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- Philosophy of Biology, Ecology, Evolution, Phenotypic Plasticity

How can archaeologists contribute to tracing the evolutionary dynamics of the coupled human-natural systems that characterize the Anthropocene? We present a Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework to integrate models of human and natural landscape formation processes in the mid to late Holocene on the Talgar alluvial fan on the north slope of the Tian Shan Mountains in the area known as "Semirech'ye" ("Seven Rivers"). We compare our model to the physical evidence from sediment profiles and the archaeological record of subsistence and settlement over the Holocene. The resulting coupled model situates "niche construction theory" and the idea of "transported landscapes" within the SES perspective to focus on how couplings and feedbacks between humans and biophysical processes create or limit opportunities for different modes of subsistence over time, especially during periods of expansion and colonization of new territories. In the Talgar region, we hypothesize that initial, low-level human manipulations of surface water flow across an alluvial fan coupled with aeolian and fluvial sediment dynamics in a series of positive feedbacks to increase the possibilities for agricultural production over time. The human niche in Talgar therefore became increasingly sedentary and agricultural in emphasis compared to niches constructed in other parts of Central Eurasia. Graphical Abstract: Highlights: • A Socio-Ecological Systems framework integrates geological and social process models. • Humans construct new subsistence niches by exploiting positive and negative feedback. • Temporal dynamics of SES feedback loops are integral to landscape evolution. • The conditions of different territories can lead to different constructed niches.

"In archaeology, biotic phenomena (e.g. human behaviour) must be inferred from a-biotic traces, requiring the process model to be conceptually unified. This unification has been prevented by dualistic ontologies that conceive humans and their purported unique traits as epi-phenomena, ontologically separated from their environment. The resulting encapsulation of phenomena within separate theoretical fields is proposed to be the source of our inability to apply evolutionary theory in archaeology.
The symptoms manifest as ontological deletion, isolation or “freezing“ of the organism within explanatory models, consequently, processes that span the divide for example those that include both biotic and a-biotic components such as technology or culture, have been impossible to integrate with evolutionary theory. "

- by Dylan G Foley
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- Archaeology, Philosophy, Ontology, Philosophy of Science

In this chapter, we first trace the history of the concept of ecological niche and see how its meanings varied with the search for a theory of ecology. The niche concept has its roots in the Darwinian view of ecosystems that are structured by struggle for survival and, originally, the niche was perceived as an invariant place within the ecosystem, that would preexist the assembly of the ecosystem. The concept then slipped towards a sense in which the niche, no longer a pre-existing ecosystem structure, eventually became a variable that would in turn have to be explained by the competitive exclusion principle and the coevolution of species. The niche concept used at that time, while more operational from an empirical point of view than the previous one, suffered however from an ill-founded definition. A recent refoundation by Chase & Leibold enabled to overcome some of the definitional difficulties.
We then present how, in contemporary ecology, the niche concept is recruited to explain biodiversity and species coexistence patterns. We show how, in parallel, neutralist models, by succeedingly explaining some ecological patterns without resorting to explanations in terms of niche, have questioned the explanatory virtues of the niche concept.
In conclusion, it seems that the forunes and misfortunes of the niche concept can be seen as a reflection of the difficulties of ecology to give birth to a theory that would be both predictive and explanatory.

Philosophical work exploring the relation between cognition and the Internet is now an active area of research. Some adopt an externalist framework, arguing that the Internet should be seen as environmental scaffolding that drives and shapes cognition. However, despite growing interest in this topic, little attention has been paid to how the Internet influences our affective life—our moods, our emotions, and our ability to regulate these and other feeling states. We argue that the Internet scaffolds not only cognition but also affect. Using various case studies, we consider some ways that we are increasingly dependent on our Internet-enabled “techno-social niches” to regulate the contours of our own affective life and participate in the affective lives of others. We argue further that, unlike many of the other environmental resources we use to regulate affect, the Internet has distinct properties that introduce new dimensions of complexity to these regulative processes. First, it is radically social in a way many of these other resources are not. Second, it is a radically distributed and decentralized resource; no one individual or agent is responsible for the Internet’s content or its affective impact on users. Accordingly, while the Internet can profoundly augment and enrich our affective life and deepen our connection with others, there is also a distinctive kind of affective precarity built into our online endeavors as well.

- by Joel Krueger and +1
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- Philosophy of the Emotions, Extended Mind, Emotion Regulation, Affect/Emotion

In the dry steppes of eastern Eurasia, domestic horses (E. caballus) provide the economic and cultural foundations of nomadic life. With no written records and sparse archaeological data from early nomadic societies, however, the ecological context of the first horse herding and transport, and its role in the formation of herding societies is poorly understood. Some of the earliest evidence for domestic horses in the region come from small ritual horse burials at sites belonging to the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur (DSK) culture, a late Bronze Age cultural often linked with the first mobile pastoral societies in Mongolia. This dissertation employs archaeological and archaeozoological techniques to assess how DSK people used domestic horses, and evaluates the role of horse herding and transport in the emergence of mobile herding in eastern Eurasia. I present results in five discrete published studies.
The first study identifies evidence for selective culling of young and old animals as part of maintaining a breeding herd, with the selective burial of adult male transport horses in prominent ritual mounds along the eastern perimeter of DSK monument sites. A second set of three closely related studies investigates the skulls of contemporary wild and domestic horses, identifying anthropogenic changes to the equine skull caused by exertion, bridling, and pressures related to horseback riding. Applying these criteria to the late Bronze Age DSK archaeological record indicates that DSK people bridled and used horses for transport, and may have engaged in early mounted horseback riding. Finally, a precision radiocarbon model suggests a rapid expansion of DSK horse use around ca. 1200 BCE – during a period of climate amelioration and increased rainfall, and concurrent with major changes in ritual practice and the spread of horses to new parts of the continent. These results provide compelling links between the adoption of horseback riding, new ecological opportunities, and the development of mobile pastoralism in eastern Eurasia.

- by William T T Taylor
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- Archaeology, Globalization, Zooarchaeology, Ethnoarchaeology

The discipline of biosemiotics applies semiotic terms to nonhuman organisms, even to those that lack neural system and brain. It views semiosis as the core property of life, rather than an advanced type of activity which appears at later stages of evolution when organisms became sufficiently complex. The origin of life was associated with the emergence of most primitive hereditary signs capable of carrying functions to descentent primordial agents. Accordingly, biological evolution is rooted in semiosis – a process of active interpretation by hereditary signs (both, genetic and epigenetic) in the context of other signs that come from the parts of the body and the environment. The biosemiotic concept of agency-driven evolution is opposed to neo-Darwinism that views evolution as a passive change of gene frequency via natural selection, drift, and other processes. The latter gene-centered approach is usually combined with genetic determinism and assumption that innovations are based solely on mutations. In contrast we consider mutations as disturbances that are creatively interpreted by cell subagents based on their experience, encoded genetically and epigenetically. Thus, mutation are not primary causes of adaptation, but being interpreted by subagents, they indirectly facilitate robustness, adaptive plasticity, and genetic assimilation. This reasoning resembles components of Lamarck’s theory. The genome may change passively and randomly, but its interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent functions and embryo development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of the genome, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel purposes. The biosemiotic approach to evolution can explain challenging questions, such as (i) emergence of interpretation capacity in primordial systems at the origin of life, (ii) remarkable consistency of phenotypic traits in the absence of genetic determinism, (iii) capacity of lineages to generate new solutions of living problems in critical conditions, (iv) the origin and nature of species, and (v) capacity to integrate into higher-level semiotic systems, such as colonies or super-organisms.

- by Kalevi Kull
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- Evolutionary Biology, Speciation, Adaptation, Symbiosis

A runaway model of agricultural evolution was developed to account for patterns of development and sustainability among the Pre-Pottery Neolithic societies of the southern Levant, and to provide insights into contemporary patterns of development and sustainability. A Darwinian theory of subsistence evolution was developed from first principles, framed in terms of cultural transmission or dual-inheritance theory. An approach to sustainability was formulated in terms of niche construction theory and resilience thinking. Adaptive models from human behavioural ecology (e.g. optimal foraging theory and nutritional ecology) and cultural transmission theory (e.g. cultural group selection and tribal social instincts) were scrutinised, and shown to be inadequate for modelling the evolution of early agriculturally-dependent societies. A maladaptive model of runaway agricultural evolution was developed, and a series of preconditions and predictions were derived. These preconditions and predictions were assessed against early Holocene archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records from the southern Levant. Data from more than 50 archaeological sites spanning more than 3000 years was examined across a range of disciplines, materials and methodologies, including: archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, osteology, genomics, palaeodemography, palaeopathology, site catchment analysis, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, mortuary practices, architecture, material culture and stone tools. A distinctive pattern of development was identified, involving: increasing agricultural investment, increasing ritual investment, demographic growth, increasing social differentiation and inequality, the accumulation of sustainability problems, the accumulation of sustainability solutions, the possible evolution of formal regulative social institutions, and the erosion of social-ecological resilience leading to ‘niche cracking’. Socio-political and economic relationships critical to the instigation and maintenance of runaway agricultural evolution could have rendered LPPNB societies particularly vulnerable to disruption, triggering a de-escalation or reverse runaway. The most plausible triggers to the LPPNB/PPNC release (Ω) and reorganisation (α) appeared to be climate change, crop disease or anthropogenic landscape alteration. The runaway model sufficiently explained numerous dimensions of the PPN archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records in the southern Levant. A number of predictions received strong support (e.g. patterns of agricultural investment, demography and ritual performance and the development of sustainability problems and solutions) and others existed at the limits of archaeological detectability (e.g. the development of LPPNB regulatory social institutions). The idea that sustainability problems elicited genetic responses from PPN populations, and that those responses generated problems of their own, received precursory support from recent genome-wide SNP and WGS data, constituting particularly auspicious areas of future research. The runaway model could plausibly be extended to explain dominant patterns of Holocene socioeconomic development – e.g. patterns of increasing socioeconomic complexity, agricultural dispersals, the ‘origins of the state’, and even present-day patterns of sustainability and development.

In viewing language as multi-scale co-ordination, the distributed perspective challenges two dominant orthodoxies. First, it denies that language is essentially ‘symbolic’ and, second, that verbal patterns are represented inside minds (or brains). Rather, language is, at once, collective, individual and constitutive of the feeling of thinking. It is distributed between us. In illustration, the opening Chapters report empirical work on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, its cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke and solving insight problems. Having given reason to consider this challenge to linguistic autonomy, the collection concludes with theoretical papers. First, it is argued that language depends on a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second, it is suggested that realizing values is a central function of language. Third, as with all social activity, this is traced to how cultural and biological symbols co-regulate human dynamics. Finally, Steffensen (this volume) argues, far from being organism-centred, language gives us access to an extended ecology in which, through co-ordination, we enact our own history.

- by Stephen J. Cowley
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- Semiotics, Cognitive Science, Philosophy Of Language, Dynamical Systems

This essay outlines one way to conceptualise the relation between cultural identity, collective memory, and artifacts. It starts by characterising the notion of cultural identity as our membership to cultural groups and briefly explores the relation between cultural and narrative identity (section 2). Next, it presents how human memory is conceptualised on an individual and collective level (section 3) and then distinguishes between small-scale and large-scale collective memory (section 4). Having described cultural identity and collective memory, it argues that cultural identity is materialised in the environment when we retrieve and construct collective memories by integrating information from our biological memory with information in artifacts or in other people's embodied brains (section 5). This essay ends with analysing how materialised cultural identities are constructed by using a niche construction approach from evolutionary biology (section 6).

- by Richard Heersmink
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- Social Identity, Cultural Identity, Extended Mind, Social and Collective Memory

This chapter compares standard evolutionary theory to niche construction theory, in which an organism can affect its environment and can thus influence the selective process to come. We show how to characterize this confrontation in terms of the time-scales of the processes involved, which allows us to identify the range of applicability truly proper to niche construction theory, and to suggest the existence of evolutionary phenomena that are not describable by standard evolutionary theory.

This project analyses a wide range of current literature concerning the origins and evolution
of language. A major focus is on constraining the time in which language evolved, covering
recent and gradual origins hypotheses. Included are models that interpret the foundations
of language as a sudden emergent property, as well as models that propose an accretionary
accrual of a modern suite of linguistic abilities. A ‘gesture-first’ model is presented in line
with the gradual evolution of language, and tool-making is suggested as a reinforcement
framework for language lateralization and even syntactical operations. Finally, the
supportive biological evidence (including the Kebara 2 hyoid bone and FOXP2) is determined
to reinforce the gradual and gestural models rather than emergent models of language
evolution. What we are left with is a model that posits that language cannot have originated
later than 100kya, could have gained prominence between then and 400,000 years ago and
was already subject to a functional cultural-ecological development prior to this.

- by Ryan Leahy
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- Archaeology, Paleoanthropology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Biological Anthropology

The explication of altruistic behavior in primates remains complex. Gregarious, socially complex primates are characterized by a diverse array of social behavior patterns with seemingly altruistic behavior being relatively commonplace. Human societies are a form of primate society but with much higher levels of social complexity and extremely high levels of cooperative and apparently altruistic behavior. It is likely that there are elements of primate (at least anthropoid) sociality that act as baseline for subsequent expansion and elaboration during human evolution. Can understanding patterns and contexts of primate social complexity and cooperation help us understand human altruism? In this chapter we have two primary objectives: to examine three non-human primate genera to show how social cooperation, social bonding, and niche construction can affect our understandings of altruism, and to illustrate where we think that such non-human primate information is a good model for humans, and where it is not.

The Near East is situated at the crossroads between the genus Homo’s African evolutionary core and the Eurasian periphery (Fig. 1). The Paleolithic and Neolithic prehistory of the Near East is literally central for understanding the genus Homo as a globally distributed lineage,
whose single surviving species – Homo sapiens – continues to shape and be shaped by the terrestrial, omnivorous, extractive, and socially intensive niche with which it has coevolved. This essay examines the general theoretical issue of biocultural evolution in the context of Near Eastern geography, climate, ecology, and Stone Age prehistory. In doing so, it offers an overview of Paleolithic and Neolithic paleoanthropology and archaeology, with basic introductory information about industries, technocomplexes, fossils, and key sites in chronological context.

- by Aaron Stutz
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- Near Eastern Archaeology, Human Evolution, Niche Construction Theory, Paleolithic

After the domestication of plants and animals, the subsequent spread of agriculture represented a process of adaptation of both species and landscapes. Crop species moved beyond their original ecological limits, and their range expansion, when successful, was generally the result of adaptive post-domestication genetic changes on the part of the plants, human-induced changes in agricultural landscapes, and the dynamics of cultural food choice. This chapter explores the patterns by which agriculture became established as a consequence of the diffusion of domesticated plants (and sometimes people), as well as the ways in which agricultural systems were gradually transformed through the diversification of crop packages. Comparisons from across Eurasia are drawn to identify general patterns in crop dispersal, with three categories playing the largest role in the diffusion of grain-based agriculture. These agricultural systems are discussed and their modes of diffusion, stories of collapse, and examples of new adaptations on the part of the crops and agricultural systems detailed.

- by Dorian Q Fuller and +1
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- Archaeobotany, Origins of Agriculture, Niche Construction Theory, Domestication

Through the application of Material Engagement Theory (MET) to enactivist analyses of social cognition, this paper seeks to examine the role of material culture in shaping the development of intersubjectivity and long-term scalar transformations in social interaction. The deep history of human sociality reveals a capacity for communities to self-organise at radically emergent scales across a variety of temporal and spatial ranges. This ability to generate and participate in heterogenous, multiscalar relationships and identities demonstrates the developmental plasticity of human intersubjectivity. Perhaps human sociality's most unique feature is this intersubjective plasticity, that is, the ability for diverse collectivities of individuals and groups to adopt and transition between numerous social identities and behaviours with profound rapidity and flexibility. However, the most influential models in the study of social cognition, the Social Intelligence Hypothesis and Theory of Mind, promote a view of intersubjectivity that is rooted in methodological individualism and primarily understood as a capacity for observation and prediction. This approach leads to significant issues when confronted with the diversity and plasticity of hominin social organisation, particularly in regards to the computational burdens and information processing bottlenecks such scalar changes imply for cognitivist models. This paper examines the metaphysical assumptions in computational models of the mind that result in representational apriorism and an epiphenomenal treatment of material culture that hinder our understanding of the evolution and development of social cognition. Specifically, this article critiques the logics of computation, information processing, representationalism, and content within Neo-Darwinian frameworks that obscure and distort the interrelationship of evolutionary, developmental, ecological and cultural processes. Through a synthesis of material engagement and enactivist approaches to social cognition, this article argues that it is possible to explain the emergent and multiscalar dynamics of hominin sociality in terms of ecologically distributed and developmentally plastic interactions between brains, bodies and material culture.

In the common imagination, the studio is a special place where artists toil in seclusion to work their magic. This notion is often reinforced by artists themselves. Michael Craig-Martin, for instance, is straightforward about the importance of his studio: "Everything is planned here, everything is worked out here. It's kind of the centre of my thinking. I come here every morning and stay into the evening." (Christie's, 2015.) While such brief disclosures confirm the general importance of studios for artists, they also leave us wondering about the more specific ways in which workspaces are customized to support their occupants' creative pursuits. This curiosity is not limited to laypersons only, as artists too are interested in the where-and-how of their colleagues' craft. Tellingly, Jenny Saville recalls falling in love with the studios of Giacometti and Bacon before fully appreciating any of their paintings. She also claims-with a hint of irony, perhaps-that seeing De Kooning's brushes and mixing bowls in their original surroundings taught her more about painting than art school ever had. (Luke & Saville, 2020.)

- by Jussi A Saarinen and +1
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- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics, Creativity

Post-Anthropocentric Creativity; Call for Submissions, special issue of Digital Creativity, 27:1, January 2016; Guest editors: Stanislav Roudavski and Jon McCormack. This special issue aims to audit existing conceptions of creativity in the light of non-anthropocentric interpretations of agency, autonomy, subjectivity, social practices and technologies. Specifically, it seeks to explore how 1) the agents, recipients and processes of creativity and 2) the purpose, value, ethics and politics of creativity relate to phenomena of computation. The editors encourage innovative narrative or visual strategies that can express relevant scenarios better that more typical forms of academic writing. Dialogues, conversations, plays, scripts, instruction sets, games or visual essays (for example) might be suitable alongside logical arguments or formulae.

- by Stanislav Roudavski
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- Critical Theory, Architectural Engineering, Bioinformatics, Landscape Ecology

The environmental extremes of the Last Glacial Maximum and the
subsequent warming and sea-level rise into the Holocene had profound
implications for human behavior across much of the world.
In northern New Guinea, the Maluku Islands, and the Philippines,
shell adzes appear during this period alongside contact between
islands. In this paper we present new data from the site of Asitau
Kuru, Timor-Leste, to show that the creation of shell adzes and
greater inter-island connectivity also characterizes the early and
middle and early Holocene in the Nusa Tenggara archipelago of
southern Wallacea. We suggest that one of the functions of these
shell adzes was in making dugout canoes enabling regular access to
neighboring islands; the import of exotic stone materials; long-term
occupation of very small islands; and, with new hook and line technology, the capture of more fish. This evidence predates the
Neolithic in the region and corroborates a linguistic hypothesis that
there was a pre-Austronesian interaction sphere covering much
of Wallacea.

- by Ceri Shipton
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- Ground Stone Technology, Niche Construction Theory, Seafaring, Shell Artifacts
- by Jani Galland
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- Evolutionary Biology, Biological Anthropology, Epistemology, Creativity

Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth's history, have emerged as a global force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet. It is no longer possible to understand, predict, or successfully manage ecological pattern, process, or change without understanding why and how humans reshape these over the long term. Here, a general causal theory is presented to explain why human societies gained the capacity to globally alter the patterns, processes, and dynamics of ecology and how these anthropogenic alterations unfold over time and space as societies themselves change over human generational time. Building on existing theories of ecosystem engineering, niche construction, inclusive inheritance, cultural evolution, ultrasociality, and social change, this theory of anthroecological change holds that sociocultural evolution of subsistence regimes based on ecosystem engineering, social specialization, and non-kin exchange, or “sociocultural niche construction,” is the main cause of both the long-term upscaling of human societies and their unprecedented transformation of the biosphere. Human sociocultural niche construction can explain, where classic ecological theory cannot, the sustained transformative effects of human societies on biogeography, ecological succession, ecosystem processes, and the ecological patterns and processes of landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere. Anthroecology theory generates empirically testable hypotheses on the forms and trajectories of long-term anthropogenic ecological change that have significant theoretical and practical implications across the subdisciplines of ecology and conservation. Though still at an early stage of development, anthroecology theory aligns with and integrates established theoretical frameworks including social–ecological systems, social metabolism, countryside biogeography, novel ecosystems, and anthromes. The “fluxes of nature” are fast becoming “cultures of nature.” To investigate, understand, and address the ultimate causes of anthropogenic ecological change, not just the consequences, human sociocultural processes must become as much a part of ecological theory and practice as biological and geophysical processes are now. Strategies for achieving this goal and for advancing ecological science and conservation in an increasingly anthropogenic biosphere are presented.

- by Erle C Ellis
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- Human Evolution, Ecology, Evolution, Cultural Evolution

Among the several main reasons for the present gradual demise of the hitherto dominant hypotheses of 'modern' human origins, the replacement or 'out of Africa' models, are the issues of genetic drift and introgression. The operation and consequences of genetic drift are considered, especially in terms of their effects on the evolution of the human species during the Late Pleistocene period. The complexity of the subject is reviewed in the light of several relevant frames of reference, such as those provided by niche construction, gene-culture co-evolutionary theories, and by the domestication hypothesis. The current cultural, genetic and paleoanthropological evidence is reviewed, as well as other germane factors, such as the role of neurodegenerative pathologies, the neotenization of humans in their most recent evolutionary history, and the question of cultural selection-based self-domestication. This comprehensive review leads to a paradigmatic shift in the way recent human evolution needs to be viewed. This article explains fully how humans became what they are today.

- by Robert Bednarik
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- Genetics, Paleoanthropology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Gene Culture Coevolution

The technological advances of contemporary society have outpaced our moral understanding of the problems that they create. How will we deal with profound ecological changes, human cloning, hybrid people, and eroding cyberprivacy, just to name a few issues? In this book, Lorenzo Magnani argues that existing moral constructs often cannot be applied to new technology. He proposes an entirely different ethical approach, one that blends epistemology with cognitive science. The resulting moral strategy promises renewed dignity for overlooked populations, both of today and of the future.

- by Lorenzo Magnani
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- Information Technology, Philosophy, Ethics, Free Will, Moral Responsibility

In view of the philosophical problems that vex the debate on situated affectivity, it can seem wise to focus on simple cases. Accordingly, theorists often single out scenarios in which an individual employs a device in order to enhance their emotional experience, or to achieve new kinds of experience altogether, such as playing an instrument, going to the movies or sporting a fancy handbag. I argue that this narrow focus on cases that fit a ‘user/resource model’ tends to channel attention away from more complex and also more problematic instances of situated affectivity. Among these are scenarios in which a social domain draws individuals into certain modes of affective interaction, often by way of attunement and habituation to affective styles and interaction patterns that are normative in the domain in question. This can lead to a phenomenon that is not so much ‘mind extension’ than ‘mind invasion’: affectivity is dynamically framed and modulated from without, often contrary to the prior orientations of the individuals in question. As an example, I discuss affective patterns prevalent in today’s corporate workplace. I claim that workplace affect sometimes contributes to what is effectively a ‘hack’ of employees’ subjectivity.

- by Jan Slaby
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- Cultural Studies, Emotion, Philosophy of Mind, Situated Cognition
- by Catherine (Katie) Kendig
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- Botany, Zoology, Ontology, Philosophy of Biology

Three decades have passed since Keeley published his comprehensive exploration of cross-cultural variation in hunter-gatherer social complexity, sedentism, and storage across diverse environmental and demographic conditions (Keeley, L.H., 1988. Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and "population pressure": A cross-cultural analysis. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 7, 373-411. https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(88)90003-7). This article reconsiders Keeley's work, shifting theoretical focus to niche construction, biocultural adaptation, and the biopolitics of inclusion and exclusion. In recent millennia, human niche construction has become defined by intense matter and energy extraction at or across key hydrospheric, atmospheric, and lithospheric regime boundaries. Associated global population growth has depended on the biocultural evolution of positive elasticity in energy extraction rates, with respect to labor inputs. This article presents a statistical reanalysis of Keeley's cross-cultural data, documenting the niche-divergence between immediate-returns hunter-gatherers and delayed returns , storage-dependent foragers. It is argued that the intricate relationships among niche elasticity, population-growth elasticity, niche diversification, and the biopolitics of inclusion and exclusion have dynamically shaped ecological enrichment-in the form of patch engineering-and demographic disruption-mainly in the form of dispersal, migration, raiding, and warfare. This article aims to offer new perspectives on the systemic coupling among political complexity, economic development, inequality, and environmental impacts in post-Pleistocene human systems.

- by Samuel Veissiere
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- Linguistic Anthropology, Ritual, Social Interaction, Affordance Theory

The paper discusses the concept of the cognitive niche and distinguishes the latter from the metabolic niche. By using these posits I unpack certain ideas that are crucial for the enactivist movement, especially for its original formulation proposed by Varela, Thompson and Rosh. Drawing on the ontology of location, boundaries, and parthood, I argue that enacting the world can be seen as the process of cognitive niche construction. Moreover, it turns out that enactivism—as seen through the lens of the conceptual framework proposed in the paper—considers cognition as a kind of connection between the subject and the world. This post is pointed to as the key idea laid down in enactivism.

- by Konrad Werner
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- Philosophy of Mind, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Niche Construction Theory

Increasing diet breadth, a distinguishing characteristic of human foraging strategies at the end of the Pleistocene and in the early Holocene, is known to be a key development contributing to domestication and the spread of agriculture and pastoralism. Many scholars have focused on broad-spectrum foraging as a result of resource depression due to demographic stress and/or environmental degradation. However, these factors are absent in an increasing number of cases. New research in the Gobi Desert shows that a dramatic change in organizational strategies, including the intensified use of low-ranked foods from dune-field and wetland habitats, is closely correlated with the establishment of dispersed patches boasting high species diversity and a concentrated abundance of small prey. According to a global suite of paleoenvironmental and archaeological data, it appears that the fragmentation of more homogeneous grassland habitats coincided with the rise of broad-spectrum foraging and that these fragmented ecosystems were ideally suited to the unique set of foraging strategies employed by modern humans. This study shows how broad spectrum foraging, increased human population density, and the shift toward food production should be considered by-products of major environmental changes that created an ecological setting ideal for enhanced human reproduction.

- by Lisa Janz and +2
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- Landscape Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sociology, Archaeology

As we have seen in the previous chapters, humans continuously delegate and distribute cognitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They create models, representations and other various mediating structures, that are thought to be aid for thinking. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on these design activities. In the first part of the chapter I will argue that these design activities are closely related to the process of niche construction. I will point out that in building various mediating structures, such as models or representations, humans alter the environment and thus create cognitive niches. In this sense, I argue that a cognitive niche emerges from a network of continuous interplays between individuals and the environment, in which people alter and modify the environment by mimetically externalizing fleeting thoughts, private ideas, etc., into external supports. Cognitive niche constructionmay also contribute to making available a great portion of knowledge that would otherwise remain unexpressed or unreachable. This can in turn be useful in all those situations that require the transmission and sharing of knowledge, information and, more generally, of cognitive resources.

- by Lorenzo Magnani
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- Cognitive Science, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Niche Construction Theory

How do human and landscape histories reciprocally affect each other? Can we distinguish between deliberate and unintended anthropic transformations of the landscape? This chapter summarizes evidence from pre-Columbian Amazonia in order to discuss the relation between three dimensions of anthropic landscape transformations: landscaping, landscape legacies, and landesque capital. Conflation between these three categories can lead to theoretical road closures and certainly risks oversimplifying both causality and consequence when anthropic landscape modifications are considered. On the other hand, paying attention to their differences defines a rich field of research in which historical ecology, earth-scientific thinking, and human niche construction theory converge.

- by Manuel Arroyo-Kalin
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- Geoarchaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Amazonia, Amazonian Archaeology