ECOSYSTEMIC CHANGE AND EARLY HUMAN SETTLEMENT OF NORTHERN SOUTH AMERICA

Evidences for ecosystemic change in northern South America at the time of early human settlement of the region are abundant; these evidences would seem to support reductionist interpretations in which cultural trajectories were very much determined by ecological constrains. Yet, there are also evidences suggesting human intervention of the ecosystems occupied and territorial land-use strategies, which underscore the active role of culture. These two sets of evidences, which would pose a conundrum to traditional archaeological interpretations, can nevertheless be reconciled if reductionist perspectives are abandoned in favor of an approach based on social theory, that is, if the early human settlement of the Americas is not seen as a passive process in which cultural change was only activated by external factors but as a complex process in which cultural agency was constantly operating.