This symposium will highlight the integration of archaeological and ecological data, using novel analytical frameworks, to improve our understanding of the reciprocal interactions of people, cultures, and ecosystems. Our goal includes providing information that will inform understanding of the roles that people have played over several millennia of the development of our increasingly human-influenced world. Studies now make clear that past land and resource use is important in structuring modern ecosystems. In North America, most of this work has focused on large-scale, post-colonial activities such as agriculture, logging, grazing, and fire suppression. But what about human activities prior to European contact? Collaborative research between archaeologists and ecologists, with an explicit focus on documenting the long-term processes and mechanisms that led to the contemporary landscape, is uncommon but sorely needed to inform the increasing emphasis on understanding sustainable societies (i.e., those in which the health of both people and the ecosystems that sustain them are promoted and maintained). A growing body of archaeological evidence shows that the indigenous people of the Americas significantly influenced a variety of ecosystems. Several ongoing interdisciplinary teams have produced a rich database from which the long-term history and prehistory of people and their ecosystems can be reconstructed and analyzed. This symposium will bring together anthropologists/archaeologists and ecologists, including those with particular analytical expertise, from 3 such studies (Hawaiian archipelago, southwestern desert, North Pacific) to compare and contrast the history of people, their cultures and natural resource economies, and the diversity and dynamics of their ecosystems in ancient and contemporary times. The presentations will include 3 archaeological background talks, 3 ecological talks, and 3 talks that present different modeling approaches to analyzing and integrating archaeological, social, and ecological data. This format, along with coordination among speakers in preparing their talks, will highlight similarities and differences in the history of these 3 distinct regions and cultures. The symposium will conclude with a panel of all speakers to synthesize and answer questions from the audience.