About this Research Topic
This thematic issue centers on the question: how have people adapted to island homes through distinctive ways of using and/or managing biological resources and how does that reflect the insular circumstances of their environment? Global in scope and temporal period, the issue seeks to engage a comparative perspective of the diversity of ways in which island societies have shaped or been shaped by relatively insular resources bases, including biogeographic, geophysical, and cultural circumstances, as well as variable scales of isolation, social interactions, and the introduction of non-local biological resources. Cases highlighting sustainable management or cultural transformations with applications to contemporary conservation and climate change action are encouraged, but we also welcome studies that reflect adaptation as a continuous process through time, that reveal patterns of “trial and error” or that focus on punctual events of successful or unsuccessful strategies.
We accept both research and review papers that focus on elucidating or synthesizing archaeological perspectives of how people have engaged with island biological resources through time. Through the lens of subsistence, topics of interest may include but are not limited to:
- the process and outcome of plant or animal introductions
- woodland management strategies
- diachronic evolution of land and/or seascape exploitation
- response to climate change or catastrophic events
- the role of contacts vs. the duration of isolation
- biodiversity loss or augmentation, as well as the integration of plant and animal data sets
We accept works that address new research questions with a traditional approach, but also the ones with the application of new methodological frontiers in research (such as transdisciplinary approach, seda- and aDNA, biomolecular analysis, dendroprovenancing).
Keywords: Island archaeology, Archaeobotany, Zooarchaeology, Livestock husbandry strategy, Isotope analyses, Storage systems, Genetic isolation, Wood management
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.