Despite the importance of trees in the lives of hunter-gatherers, the economic, cultural, and spiritual roles of trees have been seldom explored empirically or theoretically. What research exists on the topic has mostly focused on economic aspects, especially firewood management, consumption of edible tree products, and tool manufacture. Here, we summarize data collected from 104 ethnographies on hunter-gatherers to analyze their relationships with trees. We focus principally on 14 societies from South America and two living in deserts in Australia and Africa, to achieve an environmental comparative perspective. We demonstrate that trees provided hunter-gatherers with multiple benefits that were not based on extraction, but also on conservation. Among these benefits are shade, temperature regulation, protection, recreation, using trees as parts of habitation structures, and soil fertilization. With these data we examine the roles that trees might have played as important constituents of places. We propose that it is possible to assess human-tree relationships at different geographic scales archaeologically. Moreover, based in the collected ethnographic data, archaeologists should consider past distribution of trees to understand hunter-gatherer settlement patterns, since trees appear to always have provided with immovable benefits, especially related to shelter.

中文翻译：

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在世界上创造一席之地：对狩猎采集者与树木关系的人种学回顾和考古学视角

尽管树木在狩猎采集者的生活中很重要，但树木的经济、文化和精神作用却很少从经验或理论上进行探索。有关该主题的研究主要集中在经济方面，特别是木柴管理、可食用树木产品的消费和工具制造。在这里，我们总结了从 104 个狩猎采集者民族志中收集的数据，以分析他们与树木的关系。我们主要关注南美洲的 14 个社会以及澳大利亚和非洲沙漠中的两个社会，以实现环境比较的视角。我们证明，树木为狩猎采集者提供了多种好处，这些好处不是基于开采，而是基于保护。这些好处包括遮荫、温度调节、保护、娱乐、利用树木作为居住结构的一部分以及土壤施肥。通过这些数据，我们研究了树木作为地方重要组成部分可能发挥的作用。我们认为可以通过考古学的方式评估不同地理尺度的人与树的关系。此外，根据收集的民族志数据，考古学家应该考虑树木过去的分布，以了解狩猎采集者的定居模式，因为树木似乎总是提供不可移动的好处，特别是与庇护所有关的好处。