Niche construction theory (NCT) has emerged as a promising theoretical tool for interpreting zooarchaeological material. However, its juxtaposition against more established frameworks like optimal foraging theory (OFT) has raised important criticism around the testability of NCT for interpreting hominin foraging behavior. Here, we present an optimization foraging model with NCT features designed to consider the destructive realities of the archaeological record after providing a brief review of OFT and NCT. Our model was designed to consider a foragers decision to exploit an environment given predation risk, mortality, and payoff ratios between different ecologies, like more‐open or more‐forested environments. We then discuss how the model can be used with zooarchaeological data for inferring environmental exploitation by a primitive hominin, Homo floresiensis, from the island of Flores in Southeast Asia. Our example demonstrates that NCT can be used in combination with OFT principles to generate testable foraging hypotheses suitable for zooarchaeological research.

中文翻译：

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利用利基构建理论在梁布亚产生可检验的觅食假设

生态位构造理论（NCT）已经成为解释动物考古材料的一种有前途的理论工具。然而，其与更完善的框架（如最佳觅食理论（OFT））的并置引起了围绕NCT可解释人均觅食行为的可测性的重要批评。在这里，我们提供了带有NCT特征的优化觅食模型，该模型旨在在对OFT和NCT进行简要回顾后考虑考古记录的破坏性现实。我们的模型旨在考虑觅食者在给定捕食风险，死亡率和不同生态之间的收益比的情况下开发环境的决定，例如更加开放或森林更加茂密的环境。然后，我们讨论如何将该模型与动物考古学数据一起用于推断原始人参素对环境的利用，Homo floresiensis，来自东南亚弗洛雷斯岛。我们的示例表明，NCT可与OFT原理结合使用，以生成适用于动物考古学研究的可测觅食假说。