Charismatic megafauna, regional identity, and invasive species: what role does environmental archaeology play in contemporary conservation efforts?

Abstract

The popular prioritization of climate change issues over biodiversity loss in environmental archaeology and palaeoecology has been argued to be in part due to agenda-setting created by the ripple effects of widespread media coverage of climatic change. In this paper, we argue that direct scientific evidence for past human landscapes can act as a powerful tool in modern conservation efforts to combat species loss when taking regional identities, historical ecology, and modern political ecologies into account. How to rank and prioritize conservation efforts in the Anthropocene and best make use of archaeological data are lingering questions within Anthropocene anthropology and archaeological science. By engaging with notions of deep-time enchantment and identity, archaeology can aid conservation biology with revealing the religio-philosophical dimensions that exist between humans and other species, in particular charismatic megafauna that lend themselves to high engagement at a local or regional level.

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