Paleoecological Research on Easter Island

Insights on Settlement, Climate Changes, Deforestation and Cultural Shifts

Valentí Rull

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780128227275
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128227473
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Paleocological Research on Easter Island: Insights on Settlement, Climate Changes, Deforestation and Cultural Shifts examines the area's climatic and ecological history, a topic not usually addressed in other literature. The book provides a thorough and synthetic account of all paleoecological works developed to date, including the latest discoveries. Finally, it attempts to match paleoecological evidence with the results of other disciplines creating a multidisciplinary framework. This approach to the field is ideal for researchers, university professors and graduate students in a varied range of disciplines and subdisciplines, including ecology, paleoecology, paleoclimatology, biogeography, sedimentology, and paleontology. Users will find synthesized information on Easter Island from the last millennia that will help pave the way towards an integrated interdisciplinary vision of the island's environmental-ecological-cultural system as a complex functional unit. Human and environmental deterministic views are avoided and the Easter Island enigmas are analyzed under a holistic perspective of continuous feedbacks and synergies among the different components of the system. - Provides the first synthesis of the available paleoecological knowledge on Easter Island - Furnishes clues on how to integrate paleoecological information with evidence from other disciplines - Addresses the complexity of the environmental-ecological-cultural system by analyzing the interactions (feedbacks and synergies) among its components

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Rapanui glossary
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The island at present
• Chapter 2: The prehistory: From human settlement to European contact
• Chapter 3: Introduction to Easter Island’s paleoecology: Why, where, and how?
• Chapter 4: Paleoecological pioneers: The rising of the ecocidal paradigm
• Chapter 5: The transitional phase: Paleoecological impasse
• Chapter 6: The revival: An opportunity for climate change
• Chapter 7: Contributions of paleoecology to Easter Island’s prehistory
• Chapter 8: From human determinism to environmental, ecological, and social complexity
• Epilogue: A plea for true interdisciplinarity
• References
• Species index
• Subject index