Dissertation Research: Medicinal Plants in the Greater Mississippi River Valley

论文研究：大密西西比河流域的药用植物

• 批准号: 9731555
• 负责人: Gayle Fritz
• 金额: $ 0.7万
• 依托单位: Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-02-01 至 2000-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9731555&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Medicinal; Plants; Greater

Under the direction of Dr. Gayle Fritz, MS Michele Williams will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will study archaeological records and excavated material in four museums and universities in the United States. Her work focuses on botanical materials from native American sites in the Midwest which span an approximately 1,000 year period and which document the transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to a mode of subsistence based on agriculture. Archaeological data clearly demonstrate that over this span sedentary settlements of ever larger size appeared, population density increased and that societies assumed an increasingly hierarchical structure. It is interesting to note that these conditions resulted in a net decrease in health and skeletal analysis indicates decreasing age of death and a heavier disease load. MS Williams is interested in the changes in medicinal practice which accompanied this transition. Ethnographic accounts of extant native American societies indicate the utilization of a wide range of wild plants for medicinal purposes and it is reasonable to assume that this practice has considerable antiquity. While carbonized plant remains have been recovered from many sites and have been extensive analyzed to provide insight into subsistence, none have ever been examined from a medicinal perspective. Seeds and other plant parts attributable to this function are assumed to be rare and hard to identify and the analytic results from a single site are unlikely to paint a convincing picture. Through a multisite analysis which spans both a considerable geographic region and time period, it should be possible to search for patterns, especially when the results are interpreted in light of ethnographic data. Such is the goal of MS Williams' research. The study gains power because it makes use of medical data derived from skeletal analysis and it should be possible to determine how cultural practices change (or do not change) in response to changing disease patterns. This is innovative research which will make use of extant data and museum collections. It will provide new insight into prehistoric native American adaptation and provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will also assist in training a promising young scientist.

在盖尔·弗里茨博士的指导下，米歇尔·威廉姆斯女士将为她的博士论文收集数据。她将在美国的四家博物馆和大学研究考古记录和出土材料。她的工作重点是来自中西部美洲原住民遗址的植物材料，这些材料跨越了大约1000年的时间，记录了从狩猎和采集生活方式向以农业为基础的生活方式的转变。考古数据清楚地表明，在这段时间里，出现了规模越来越大的定居聚落，人口密度增加，社会呈现出越来越多的等级结构。有趣的是，这些情况导致健康状况的净下降，骨骼分析表明死亡年龄降低，疾病负担更重。威廉姆斯女士对伴随这一转变而来的医疗实践的变化很感兴趣。对现存美洲原住民社会的人种学描述表明，大量野生植物被用于医疗目的，因此有理由认为这种做法具有相当古老的历史。虽然从许多地点发现了碳化植物遗骸，并进行了广泛的分析，以深入了解生存状况，但从未从医学角度对其进行检查。可归因于这一功能的种子和其他植物部分被认为是罕见的，很难识别，来自单个地点的分析结果不太可能描绘出令人信服的图景。通过跨越相当大的地理区域和时间段的多地点分析，应该可以搜索模式，特别是在根据人种学数据解释结果的情况下。这就是威廉姆斯女士的研究目标。这项研究之所以获得力量，是因为它利用了来自骨骼分析的医学数据，而且应该有可能确定文化习俗如何改变(或不改变)，以应对不断变化的疾病模式。这是一项创新研究，将利用现有数据和博物馆藏品。它将为史前美洲原住民的适应提供新的见解，并提供许多考古学家感兴趣的数据。它还将帮助培养一位有前途的年轻科学家。