Special Issue on Historical Ecology and Cultural Keystone Places

The concept of cultural keystone place describes the deeper meanings of places for Indigenous peoples and local community members. The concept serves as a heuristic that underscores local and traditional epistemologies about places that hold deep spiritual, economic, ecological, and political understandings for local peoples and that are difficult to perceive using Western biogeographic approaches. Highly localized and deeply apprehended ecologies, particularly those in historical-ecological contexts, are presented in the papers in this special issue on cultural keystone places.

Guest Editors: Steve Wolverton and Chelsey Geralda Armstrong
Co-editors: Maria Bruno, Molly Carney, Andrew Flachs, and Janelle Baker
Reviews Editor: Sarah Walshaw
Editorial Assistants: Andrew Gillreath-Brown, Marc Morris, Annalise Boydston, and Andrea Cloutier

Cover image: Culturally modified hemlock tree in Guutginuuxs territory in northwestern British Columbia. Field school student Nova Hutchings in foreground. Photograph by Chelsey Armstrong in 2023.