Humans must be considered, in ecology and anthropology, one of many primary linkages in ecosystems. Embracing this perspective, this session explores roles played by prehistoric, historic, and modern Aleut people in changing the structure and functioning of the north Pacific ecosystem. This address requires multidimensional approaches; speakers in this session will interrelate modern and prehistoric, terrestrial and marine, local and regional, and empirical and theoretical explorations. Speakers will merge different disciplinary perspectives, combining archaeological, ecological, anthropological, and geological knowledge to create a synthetic transdisciplinary understanding of how the north Pacific system has changed since the last ice age, particularly focusing on the role of humans in that system through time. Session themes include: abiotic foundations – the geological and volcanic history – of the regional ecosystem; the paleoecology of the region, focusing on dynamics of key ecological components of the system over the last ten thousand years; overview of human adaptations to changes in the surrounding environment over the last six millennia; analyses of the marine intertidal ecosystem as a primary human food source from ancient to modern times; long-term ecological signatures of human settlement; analysis of the human-inclusive food web through deep time; and the dynamics of social-ecological systems and feedbacks from the perspective of complex adaptive systems and social and ecological sustainability in this ecosystem.