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Historical ecology is a fairly new field of study that takes a human/nature dialectical approach to the history of landscapes, cultures, and regions. It is similar in some ways to environmental history, cultural ecology, and evolutionary ecology though different enough that many scholars identify instead with this field.

In a forthcoming volume entitled "Time, Complexity, and Historical Ecology" by William Balée and Clark Erickson, special emphasis is placed on landscape, "a multidimensional physical entity that has both spatial and temporal characteristics and has been modified by human actiivty..." Where historical ecology differs from landscape ecology is the recognition and predominance of anthropocentric forces upon the landscape.

One of the first pioneers of historical ecology, Carole Crumley, notes that "historical ecology traces the ongoing dialectical relations between human acts and acts of nature, made manifest in landscape." Her belief is that the physical evidence of these activities provide the scholar a totality for study and analysis that is multiscalar, diachronic, and holisitic.

• Balée, W., ed. (1998). Advances in Historical Ecology. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-10632-7.
• Crumley, Carole L. ed. (1993). Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press; [Seattle]: Distributed by the University of Washington Press.
• Egan, D. and E.A. Howell, ed. (2001). "The Historical Ecology Handbook: A Restorationist's Guide to Reference Ecosystems." Island Press, Washington, D.C.

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