Most modern investigations of this question have had limited temporal data. For example, study of possible long-term cycles in populations of Steller sea lions on the North Pacific was handicapped by limited and short-term data, although cycles may be much longer. Further, attempts to model the effects of human fishing on the population dynamics of e.g., cod, Pollock, or sea lions typically begin with an assumed prefishing or prehunting state. However, humans have harvested large quantities of these species for thousands of years; thus, there would appear to be no ecologically-meaningful time period without humans, at least not since deglaciation 12,000 ybp, and archaeological data provide the essential temporal perspective.

From both anthropological and ecological viewpoints, the roles of humans must be considered as one of many linkages within ecosystems that include other biotic components, as well as abiotic constraints and drivers. A sweeping Science article (Jackson et al. 2001) suggests large-scale roles of humans in ecosystems, arguing that changes in marine ecosystems are complex, systemic, and have a long historical context. However, most of the suggested relationships between trophic structure, species extinctions, marine productivity, and human exploitation remain untested. Our research will develop methods to directly test the sorts of relationships suggested by Jackson et al., as well as provide fundamental data on the role of humans in ecosystem dynamics in the North Pacific over millennia. This project will focus on whole-ecosystem complexities of the region, which are founded on predator-prey and other food-web interactions, cultural harvesting strategies, long-term changes in the North Pacific ecosystem and climate, and direct human impacts on coastal environments.

We propose a transdisciplinary approach to studying humans as part of the northern ecosystem. We will interrelate modern and prehistoric, terrestrial and marine, local and regional, and empirical and theoretical exploration. We suggest that this multidimensional approach is not only possible, but necessary to our understanding of the region. We suggest that the Aleut were not simple and passive harvesters, but were active participants in a regional ecosystem that included them as significant forces. The implications of this approach are profound and require integration of anthropology, archaeology, geology, ecology, mathematics, climatology, and history, the perspective of many spatial and temporal scales, and the seamless merging of theoretical approaches from many fields. Since the Aleut have been harvesting resources on the north Pacific for thousands of years, we must include the Aleut in models and reconstructions of this ecosystem, in which they may function as ecosystem engineers, as more ordinary components of food webs and landscapes, or as passive responders to a world that is primarily driven by largely external forces such as climate and geomorphic evolution. This role of people also may vary temporally and spatially, or with cultural context, and our work will provide a framework and a test case for understanding the history of people as components of ecosystems, exploring these questions.

This project will be conducted in the island archipelago of Sanak Island, 50 kilometers south of the tip of the Alaska Peninsula (Figure 1), and will draw on past and on-going work on the nearby Lower Alaska Peninsula (LAP) and Aleutian regions. Sanak Island is about 250 km² in area, with 200 km of shoreline, and is the largest island of its archipelago. Caton Island is half Sanak’s size, and there are numerous smaller islands and islets. The islands have a long archaeological record only recently investigated (see below). They were populated by a number of villages at Russian contact, were the center of sea otter harvesting in the 19^th century, cod harvesting in the early 20^th century, and supported active cattle ranches until the 1960s. The islands are surrounded by a massive reef system that supported some of the largest populations of groundfish and sea mammals in the region; Captain Cook called them the ‘Halibut Islands,’ because his ships could fill their holds here in just a few days. Millions of tons of cod were harvested here in the early 20^th century, and, today, commercial fishermen from False Pass and King Cove fish here for cod in spring or halibut in summer. These islands supported the last major populations of sea otters to be commercially harvested. At least 3 river drainages have runs of sockeye, humpback, and chum salmon. Finally, local peoples lived on these islands for many years prior to their abandonment in the 1960s. Families in Sand Point, King Cove, and False Pass hold a wealth of local knowledge about the landscape. Given the archaeological, historic, and ethnographic data, the local knowledge of the region, and the relative isolation of this archipelago from the mainland peninsula, the Sanak Island region is a perfect location to investigate the complex dynamics of human-landscape relations and the role that humans have played in the structure of the North Pacific ecosystem over the last several thousand years.

              
Fig 1. The Lower Alaska Peninsula, Sanak archipelago, and eastern Aleutian region.