Utilising multiple lines of evidence for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction improves our understanding of the past landscapes in which human populations interacted with other species. Illuminating such processes is key for a nuanced understanding of fundamental transitions in human history, such as the shift from hunting and gathering to farming, and allows us to move beyond simple deterministic interpretations of climate-driven innovation. Avifaunal remains provide detailed indications of complex multi-species interactions at the local scale. They allow us to infer relationships between human and non-human animals, but also to reconstruct their niche, because many bird species are sensitive to specific ecological conditions and will often relocate and change their breeding patterns. In this paper, we illustrate how novel evidence that waterfowl reproduced at Levantine wetlands, which we obtained through biomolecular archaeology, together with modern ornithological data reveals conditions of wetlands that are conducive for breeding waterfowl. By understanding the interplay between wetland productivity cycles and waterfowl ecology, we argue that human modifications to the environment could have promoted wetland productivity inviting waterfowl to remain year-round. Within this landscape of “mutual ecologies”, the feedback resulting from the agency of all species is involved in the construction of the human niche.

利用多种证据进行古环境重建可以提高我们对人类与其他物种相互作用的过去景观的理解。阐明这些过程对于细致地理解人类历史的根本转变（例如从狩猎采集到农业的转变）至关重要，并使我们能够超越对气候驱动创新的简单确定性解释。鸟类动物遗骸提供了当地范围内复杂的多物种相互作用的详细迹象。它们使我们能够推断人类和非人类动物之间的关系，还能重建它们的生态位，因为许多鸟类对特定的生态条件很敏感，并且经常会重新安置和改变它们的繁殖模式。在本文中，我们阐述了通过生物分子考古学获得的水禽在黎凡特湿地繁殖的新证据，以及现代鸟类学数据如何揭示了有利于水禽繁殖的湿地条件。通过了解湿地生产力周期与水禽生态之间的相互作用，我们认为人类对环境的改变可能会促进湿地生产力，从而吸引水禽全年停留。在这种“共同生态”的景观中，所有物种的作用所产生的反馈都参与了人类生态位的构建。