Remote Sensing Reveals Lasting Legacies of Land-Use by Small-Scale Foraging Communities in the Southwestern Indian Ocean

Archaeologists interested in the evolution of anthropogenic landscapes have productively adopted Niche Construction Theory (NCT), order to assess long-term legacies human-environment interactions. Applications NCT especially been used elucidate co-evolutionary dynamics agricultural and pastoral systems. Meanwhile, foraging and/or highly mobile small-scale communities, often thought as less intensive terms land-use than agropastoral economies, received theoretical analytical attention from a landscape perspective. Here we address this lacuna by contributing novel remote sensing approach for investigating interaction on that long history co-evolution with communities. Our study is centered coastal southwest Madagascar, region inhabited fishing communities close two millennia. Despite significant environmental changes Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, including wave faunal extinctions, little known about scale, pace nature modification. Archaeological deposits area generally bear ephemeral traces past activity do not exhibit readily visible signatures modification (e.g., modifications, monumental architecture, etc.). In paper use high-resolution satellite imagery vegetative indices reveal legacy human-landscape comparing characteristics – productivity geochemical properties archaeological sites those locations no documented materials. Then, random forest (RF) algorithm spatial statistics quantify extent analysis contextualize modern-day dynamics. results demonstrate Madagascar over 1,000 years extensively altered landscape. thus expands temporal scales at which can evaluate providing new opportunities early periods island’s when were dominant drivers change.