Ethnobiology Letters

Cultural Keystone Places and Historical Ecology: Conceptual Benefits and Ethical Impacts

2025-12-01T09:12:29-08:00

The papers in this special issue employ cultural keystone places (CKPs) as a concept to engage scholarship about land. The CKP concept is used in contrast to Eurocentric understandings of place and instead acknowledges the deeper meanings of place to local communities. Research employing the concept is increasingly common through the lens of historical ecology, an integrative research paradigm in ethnobiology and archaeology. In this introduction we articulate what the CKP concept has to offer ethnobiology and archaeology, particularly in terms or practices of ethical inquiry about research, which we term ethical sufficiency. Addressing ethical sufficiency of research also requires addressing the limitations of and challenges to disciplines and academic communities steeped in settler-colonial histories.

Rethinking Cultural Keystone Practices: Conflict Resolution Practices as Examples of Salience and Well-Being

2025-12-01T09:12:29-08:00

We explore and expand on the concept of Cultural Keystone Practices as an extension of the concept of Cultural Keystone Species and Places. These concepts have helped raise awareness of traditional human-environment interactions by focusing on community well-being and salience. We discuss several keystone-related terms and link them as interdependent for well-being, where salience itself might fall within one keystone concept or another. We focus on three illustrative examples of Cultural Keystone Practices (tribunal de les aigües, Potlatch and dônga) which share conflict resolution as a well-being function. In these three cases, the salience resides in the practice itself, rather than in a particular place or species. Moreover, since the societies that host these practices perceive them as traditions that are not easily substituted with other ‘functional’ equivalents, we can consider them as keystones. Furthermore, we emphasize the need for an assessment strategy for these practices and highlight the limitations of other approaches for the direct and indirect protection of cultural practices, such as UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). Cultural Keystone Practices can be a key enabler for people’s recognition of culture as essential for well-being. A standardized, cross-cultural, community-driven measurement of Cultural Keystone Practices has the potential to serve as a foundation for evaluating the risk of cultural loss associated with significant cultural practices, as well as the consequences of such loss, across diverse contexts.

Archaeofaunal Remains, Geography, and the Investigation of Cultural Keystone Places

2025-12-01T09:12:26-08:00

Cultural Keystone Places (CKPs) are areas on the landscape crucial to individual and group identities, especially descendant communities. As such, they are often significant components of Indigenous land claims and cultural continuity. CKPs commonly have deep temporal roots and unclear spatial boundaries, and archaeological investigation is often relied upon to define them. However, relying on archaeological prospection and data to define a CKP can be problematic. The discovery of archaeological material and, by extension, a CKP is a probabilistic endeavor, often constrained by preservation conditions and sampling strategies. While many archaeologists understand that the material record will always be incomplete and that the absence of archaeological materials does not indicate the absence of a CKP, this view is juxtaposed with comparatively simple legal or regulatory understandings of CKPs as areas exclusively defined by either the presence or absence of archaeological materials in places such as British Columbia, Canada, which we discuss in this paper. To frame that discussion, we turn to the archaeological record from a different region; we use a large multisite database from southwestern Colorado—created and curated by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center—to illustrate the variability in the quality of the archaeological record across the landscape. By modeling the fragmentation and sample size of animal remains, we demonstrate how even systematically collected archaeological data can still lead to knowledge gaps, potentially resulting in a false negative for the presence of a CKP. We therefore urge regulatory agencies to more thoroughly consider the sampling strategies and preservation conditions of remains related to the investigation of CKPs and to highlight the value of using robust archaeological databases to support Indigenous land rights and the identification and protection of CKPs.

Centering Indigenous Cultural Resurgence to Improve Ecological Restoration: Learnings from the Revitalization of Cultural Keystone Places of the Quw’utsun Peoples

2025-12-01T09:12:25-08:00

Many places of ancestral and cultural importance to the Quw’utsun (Cowichan) Nation, have long been recognized by settlers as important contributors to biodiversity as habitat for rare and/or at-risk species and ecosystems. This recognition has resulted in numerous settler-led ecological restoration efforts of cultural keystone places such as Garry oak (Quercus garryana) meadows, Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) forests, and Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) estuaries. While such efforts are well-intentioned, lack of understanding of pre-colonial baselines such as historical uses and stewardship practices and exclusion of cultural practices via the focus on fortress conservation have contributed to poor long-term restoration outcomes. Our research alongside Quw’utsun (Cowichan Tribes) and Spune’luxutth (Penelakut Tribe), is showing that centering cultural resurgence in restoration planning is a critical methodology that ensures projects respect the true history of lands, uphold community values, are culturally appropriate, protect Indigenous knowledges from misuse and misapplication, and ensure the reciprocal, human-land relationships required for long-term successful outcomes. Our learnings have broad implications for land restoration that suggest that finding ways to strengthen human relationships (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) to land, could provide the commitment and stewardship needed for lands to thrive into the future.

Threats to Heritage in Cultural Keystone Places: Fitting Western Concepts into Gitxsan Legal Orders and Laws

2025-12-01T09:12:28-08:00

Resource extraction poses significant threats to cultural heritage sites and landscapes across British Columbia (BC, Canada), particularly in Gitxsan Territories, where people’s values are often overlooked in archaeological heritage management and consulting contexts. This research explores how Gitxsan legal orders and stewardship principles can contribute to conserving and restoring culturally and ecologically significant places—crucial work in the face of ongoing colonial policies and an increasingly changing climate. Cultural landscapes, characterized by the Lax’yip (Gitxsan Wilp/House Territories), provide a foundation for understanding long-standing stewardship practices and relationships that underscore cultural and environmental values and well-being. A key challenge, however, is how to effectively represent these landscapes to outsiders who may not share the same cultural connections to the land or understand Gitxsan heritage, histories, laws, and protocols. Reviewing these tensions in the context of resource extraction in one Territory, Lax Xsin Djihl, Wilp/House histories and stewardship practices are routinely ignored by archaeological consultants, leading to the destruction of cultural heritage. Evocative metaphors, such as cultural keystone places, may offer a way to convey the ecological and cultural realities of Territories for Gitxsan Houses, fostering a broader understanding and deeper regard for Gitxsan cultural heritage within archaeological regulatory frameworks.

Expanding Cultural and Natural Heritage Through Archaeology: An Application of Cultural Keystone Places (CKP) in the Medieval Mediterranean

2025-12-01T09:12:27-08:00

In this article we apply the Cultural Keystone Place (CKP) framework to the island of Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, to explore the importance of archaeology in enhancing connections to and valuation of natural and cultural landscapes. Through a brief overview of recent investments made on the island in the environment, agricultural and food heritage, as well as cultural heritage, we discuss the implications of the narrative created by what is and is not claimed or designated as heritage. We are writing from the position of archaeologists working on the island and argue that archaeological investigation of the often-overlooked medieval Islamic era on the island is key to understanding more fully the historical ecology and historical narrative of the island. Following the tenets of CKP, we argue that archaeological visibility can ensure the enduring cultural importance of a place, demonstrating not just its importance to people in the past, but also preserving it for the present and future.