Beyond depression? Human-environmental impacts and foraging theory in zooarchaeology

The use of optimal foraging theory in zooarchaeology has been criticized for focusing heavily on negative human-environmental interactions – particularly, anthropogenic resource depression, or cases in which prey populations are reduced by foragers’ own foraging activities. In this presentation, I assess this critique. I first review the foraging theory/zooarchaeology literature, and then use examples from Pleistocene-Holocene transition Southwestern Europe to explore how foraging theory can address questions beyond “was there resource depression?”