Introduction
The assumption that "culture has triumphed over nature," is mistaken, and characterizes an outdated nature-culture dualism. While in Anthropological human evolution textbooks the first part of the story is couched in evolutionary and environmental terms, the second part denies the environment a meaningful role in human history. Instead values, beliefs and issues, history, and culture constitute the key elements of the explanatory framework. This also reflected in the disciplinary separation of archeologist/physical anthropologists versus sociocultural anthropologists: neither acknowledges their mutual reliance.

Few efforts have been made that incorporate information about how humans have altered the environment or about how environmental change revised human activity. Examples of such changes are subsistence strategies, demographical patterns, and perceptions. To achieve this, there exists a need to develop a multidisciplinary framework. Multidisciplinarity in science is, and has been difficult to establish (Snow). Anthropology plays an important role in the development of such an framework. Its current perspective is integrative and comparative; inclusive of temporal, spatial and cultural dimensions; and dynamic. It motivates an historical focus on the dynamics of change.

Ecology
Ecology is the study of the "relationships among living organisms or between them and the physical environment."
Some characteristics of the scientific study of ecology: :

• Macro-scale ecologists (global-scale ecology, '60's) have lost political ground to micro-scale ecologists.
• Landscape ecology recognizes human influence on non-human species, yet persist in distinguishing human from natural landscapes.
• Human ecology concentrates on systematic and evolutionary aspects, while social ecology emphasizes behavior. Both study human-environmenal relationships in distant past or present. Sociobiology is a paradigm within human social ecology
• Cultural ecology and cultural geography examine adaptive strategies. Both are cognizant of the role of culture in human adaptation, but not interested  in long term change.
• Environmental History is the intellectual history of the environmental movement, including the political and economical implications of environmental interaction.
• Environmental Ethics explores value systems as they relate to human conduct.

Historical Analogs
Global climate change is one of the most pressing event of current times. The anticipated changes demand investigations into patterns of human adaptation to climatic variability and change. However, the global climate change models used by physical scientists to predict climatic changes do not discriminate among biotic zones or anywhere near a human scale. Furthermore, many physical scientists assume that "novel circumstances" render any historical analogy to current anticipated global climatic change irrelevant. This attitude is due to:
1) the lack of high quality long term (>100 yr.) instrumentally obtained data
2) local proxy data (such as tree ring) are only valid at the broadest temporal scales.
3) dismay of the comparative messiness of soft social science data
4) vested interest in favor of novel technologies and undervalue of traditional solutions
A regional approach could overcomes this. A region's air mass data, hydrology, soil, topography and species distribution can be used in regional models. Regionally documented ethnography, archeology, and documentary evidence evidences results of human activities and past choices which encompass the entire system. Multiple regional environmental changes can identify sensitive geographical locations. Interregional relationships may then be established and integrated with global data. This approach fosters creativity and the development of local and regional answers to global situations in which sensitive cultural issues play an important part.

Historical Analogs and Landscapes
Two types of historical analogs can be made:
1) purely environmental: the global effects of the volcanic eruption of El Chichon in 1982 was similar to Krakatoa in 1883
2) environmental and human interactions in different time periods

To study the dialectical human-environmental relationships, interactive long term sequences may be traced through the study of changing landscapes. Landscape ecology is the study of structure, function, and change of a heterogeneous land area composed of interacting ecosystems. Historical ecology or landscape history is study of past ecosystems by charting the change in landscapes over time. Thus, evidence for the historical interrelatedness of humans and environments may be read in the landscape. By interference, changing human attitudes may also be identified and their effects studied. For example, the existence of a forest is the result of both location--which determines temperature and rainfall patterns--and previous and current human management practices.

The introduction of historically informed environmental analyses into regional studies offers an important opportunity for anthropologists, archeologists, historians, and geographers. Archeology is multidisciplinary in nature (natural/physical sciences + humanities) and temporal and spatial breath required for long term analyses. Regional archeology has gone beyond the individual site, seeking to understand distribution, population and economies. Ethnohistorians are anthropologists who critically examine documents for evidence of human actions, relations and attitudes. This includes written (diaries, government documents), oral (stories about storms or pest invasions), and visual (dated drawings) documents. Enthographers study customs based on observations and understandings that guide indigenous peoples' adaptive strategies. This cultural information is transferred in complex ritual behavior or casual conversation.

Historical Ecology is the practice of a globally relevant archeology, ethnohistory, ethnography and related disciplines. While geographic information systems can give practical integration of spatial structures (habitations, soils, river drainage), practical understanding of past and current relationships among these environmental and human systems require a culturally specific temporal and spatial perspective applied at a regional scale.
 

An Historical Ecological approach to Global Climate Change expects to identify:
 

• The duration and frequency of air mass patterns that characterizes earlier warm episodes (bv. middle Holocene, Roman Climatic Optimum, Medieval Climatic Optimum)
• What regions where affected?
• How did biotic and human communities respond to these conditions?
• What spatial patterns are characteristic of biotic communities (species diversity and distribution) and human communities (settlement and land-use, population and agglomeration) in the earlier warm episodes?
• How might patterns be mapped in advance of contemporary global warming?
• What measures could contemporary societies employ to cope with supra-annual cycles?
• What human behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, economic strategies, and forms of governance are associated with periods of stable or unstable climate?
• What measures could contemporary societies employ to cope with a marked increase in climatic instability?
• What values ensure the greatest flexibility in adapting to changed or unstable environment. ?
• Can environmental flexibility be taught?
• How can a global environmental ethic also be culturally sensitive?
• Are some governmental structures better able than others to employ the necessary strategies of adaptation?

Practices are maintained or modified, decisions are made, and ideas are given shape; a landscape retains the physical evidence of these mental activities.
 

• Contradictions

• Scale

• Culture

• Region

• Boundaries

• Biodiversity

• Heterachy

Summary by Danny de Vries, December 1998