## 2 Archaeological Setting
### Data Collection  
For the current case study, an inventory was made of published archaeobotanical (macro-remains and pollen) and zooarchaeological data from the sites of Switzerland S3, S4, and S25, and Noordoostpolder P14. This last site is located some 12 km northeast of Switzerland, but shares many similarities. In total, we have identified 186 species, of which 48 are animal species (see Table 1 and Supplementary Materials S1). To develop the use categories to record our data, participants of the ArchaeoEology Project met at the Santa Fe Institute in 2016 to determine how to assess the uses of various taxa in the past. Here we focus only on biotic remains, necessarily leaving out lithics from our analyses, but as our question is nominally \"how do people exploit ecosystems?\", it is necessary to remove the abiotic environment as a variable. These identified categories are listed in Table 2 and are intended to be as cross-cutting as possible. In Table 3 we list, in descending order, the counts of representation for each of our use types. Figure 2 shows these results graphically. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline
**Class** & **Number of Species** \\ \hline bird & 13 \\ fish & 15 \\ fungus & 2 \\ mammal & 20 \\ moss & 18 \\ plant & 99 \\ tree & 19 \\ total & 186 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Breakdown of species by class. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c} \hline
**Category** & **Explanation** \\ \hline artifact & anything used to make portable artifacts such as tools, bowls, utensils \\ clothing & includes personal adornment such as garlands and perfume \\ companion & commensal animals and pets such as dogs \\ food & anything ingested for nutrition, including spices \\ fuel & anything used for heat, cooking, illumination \\ housing & anything used for timber, thatch, mats, posts, etc. \\ medicinal & anything ingested or applied for health reasons \\ ornamental & any taxa used for secular aesthetic reasons beyond personal adornment \\ ritual & includes tribute and religious use, momuments, shrines \\ structural & for constructing structures aside from houses \\ trade & anything used as a trade/exchange good, or that was traded/exchanged in from elsewhere \\ transportation & anything used to move across the land/sea such as boats, horses, etc. \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Categories used in this analysis identified by ArchaeoEology Project members. The assignment of uses to species is mostly based on direct evidence of consumption, the presence of specific artifacts, and evidence for ritual uses from the Switzerland sites. Because of the lack of evidence for trade and/or exchange of plant and animal species, this use category is not represented in our data set. However, we have attributed various other, not directly attested, uses on the basis of historical and ethnographic accounts, evidence from archaeological sites outside the region, and/or ecological knowledge (see Supplementary Materials S1). In particular, this is true of species that may have been used for medicinal purposes, and for edible species that have not been observed directly in archaeological contexts. However, we do not claim that this inventory is fully exhaustive, or that the assignment of unrecorded uses is necessarily correct. Food is the predominant use category identified. This is partly a consequence of the focus of much archaeological research on identifying food resources, but it also shows the position of humans as an omnivorous species. The most frequently occurring uses are the ones that are directly related to individual human needs (food, medicine, artifacts, and