Resource Resilience, Human Niche Construction, and the Long-Term Sustainability of Pre-Columbian Subsistence Economies in the Mississippi River Valley Corridor

Abstract In small-scale human societies, a variety of factors contribute to the sustainability of subsistence economies, including premeditated conservation measures, low human population levels and predation pressure, and limited technological capacity to adversely impact environments. Here I suggest that it is worthwhile to look beyond simple characterizations of small-scale societies as being “low impact” in terms of their limited population, predation, and technology. Instead, we should look more closely both at the degree to which primary prey species are resilient to human predation and at the extent to which the niche construction efforts of small-scale human societies may modify vegetation communities in ways that result in their capture of a larger percentage of an ecosystem's total biotic energy. The small-scale Pre-Columbian societies occupying the Mississippi River Valley provide a case study. Throughout the Middle and Late Holocene, indigenous groups in this major north-south environmental co...