Alaska's Sanak Island ecosystem has been the focus of prehistoric, historic, and modern exploitation by Aleut peoples for over 5000 years. Extensive village deposits measure a dynamic history of demographic expansion and contraction, changes in economic focus, stress on marine resources, and regional interaction with other peoples. The paleoecological records show distinct shifts in marine productivity, climate, coastal geomorphic processes, and shifts in the distributions of key economic/subsistence resources. Keys to our understanding of the interactions between peoples and the landscapes they inhabit are grounded in finding the drivers of social and demographic change in the context of humans interacting with nearly every part of the greater ecosystem.

Results/Conclusions

Using faunal data from dozens of archaeological sites, demographic reconstructions, and temporal changes in the scale and distribution of occupation of Sanak Island, in consort with a suite of paleoenvironmental records and proxies, we show that many of the social changes visible in the archaeological record are a direct response to changing environmental conditions, especially climate driven marine productivity and patterns of storminess. Much like problems facing the modern peoples of the region, climate structures the spatial and temporal distributions of key species, as well as their absolute abundances in the marine environment. Reversely, we also show that humans have had a key role in structuring the distributions and abundances of many species in the regional ecosystem, especially Steller sea lions, some species of birds, and certain intertidal species. Conversely, we demonstrate that despite substantial and prolonged harvests of Pacific cod in both prehistoric subsistence and modern commercial contexts, the local peoples have had little impact on cod populations.