Abstract

Indigenous land use occurring on temporal scales over centuries or millennia shapes forests in specific ways and influences thedynamics of forest ecosystems. It is challenging to study such land use, but analysis of“culturally modified trees”(CMTs) cangive precise spatial and temporal information on past land use by indigenous people. The aim of this study was to increase ourknowledge of indigenous use of land and resources inNothofagusforests by identifying CMTs and analyzing the forest structuredynamics in an ancient Kawésqar settlement site in western Patagonia. Our results show that there are CMTs at Río Batchelor andthat the forest structure varies significantly within the site, indicating that Kawésqar people altered the forest by extracting variousresources. We conclude that CMT studies have great potential inNothofagusforests in southernmost America, but also facespecific challenges due to environmental conditions and lack of corroborating historical information