Man and nature. Reflections on culture and ecology

Man is an important part of the ecosystem of nature. All cultural activity interferes with the ecological balance of the local environment, and every human society is more or less dependent on natural conditions and resources. The study of how mankind has adapted itself through its cultural forms in order to exist in its environment, and the study of the reciprocity between nature and culture, can be defined as cultural ecology. In this context environment also includes neighbouring groups of people. Ecologically orientated research in archaeology can provide useful information on the subject of man as an ecological factor and will undoubtedly have great value for the discipline itself. Archaeology must, however, to a large degree draw analogies from ethnographic studies of living societies. In this paper some principal points of anthropological theory on the reciprocity between man and nature are discussed in an archaeological context, such as: the problem of natural determinism in prehistoric cultures, nature as a barrier against innovations, culture as an ecological dominant, culture and the disposition of resources, man as a negative ecological factor and land utilisation as a conservational cultural‐ecological factor. Finally two interdisciplinary research projects in the cultural‐ecological field in Western Norway are presented. One is the investigation of how man has utilised the Hardangervidda mountain plateau from the earliest Stone Age up to last generation; the other concentrates on a limited area of the coast west of Bergen, and the aim of the research is to gain knowledge of the processes which have contributed to the shaping of the landscape and the mode of living.