When keystone species converge: a transdisciplinary study of human-beaver interactions in Atlantic north-west Europe (6000-3000 BC)

The European beaver (Castor fiber) is central to rewilding schemes in north-west Europe today due to its role as a keystone species. However, its engineering feats are also an increasing source of human-wildlife conflict.

While these challenges are unique to our time, prior to near-extinction beavers interacted with humans and their environments for over 10,000-years. Yet, there is little systematic data on these dynamics in the past.

KEYCON comparatively investigates the changing interactions between humans and beavers – two keystone species – during the Atlantic period (6000-3000 BC) in Denmark and the Netherlands, across the pivotal transition from foraging to farming and a period of changing climate.

Few studies have considered how the critical changes in human land use and subsistence impacted human-wildlife relationships beyond diet.

Achieving new understanding of these issues is hampered by the lack of knowledge of how human and wild fauna domains intersected in the past, a lack of focused studies of wild fauna remains, and a persevering anthropocentric perspective on past human-nonhuman relationships.

To address these challenges, KEYCON integrates computational ecological modelling and zooarchaeological techniques in a transdisciplinary approach encompassing archaeology, multi-species anthropology, and conservation biology.

Utilising the rich yet untapped dataset of prehistoric beaver assemblages from Denmark and the Netherlands, KEYCON provides a novel perspective on human-beaver interactions in the past.

Using the resulting insights, KEYCON seeks also to contribute a data-driven, deep-time perspective on current rewilding schemes, the success of which is predicated on how the socio-ecological dynamics between humans and wild animals are addressed, and on robust ecological baselines.

Mobilising a unique archaeological dataset, KEYCON will provide essential longue durée data and perspectives on both of these aspects.