Dissertation Research: Reconstruction of Archaeological Landscapes and the Changing Environment on Easter Island

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Under the direction of Dr. William Ayres, MS Joan Wozniak will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. With support from the Fulbright Foundation MS Wozniak conducted archaeological and geological fieldwork or Easter Island. With National Science Foundation funding she will obtain radiocarbon dates to determine ages of samples collected and also contract for a range of soil and botanical analyses. She will employ geographic information system analysis to integrate and spatially organize multiple sets of data. The islands of Polynesia provide an excellent, almost laboratory, situation in which to study human adaptation. Within a relatively short period of time Polynesian peoples sailed across a vast expanse of the Pacific and settled on a large number of islands. Thus they started from a common cultural base. When first contacted by Europeans however forms of social organization varied widely between islands and for many years anthropologists have worked to find a pattern within this variation. The most convincing explanations have related social organization to natural resources and correlated larger islands with more diverse resource bases to more complex and hierarchical social systems. However researchers have come to realize that the situation is much more complicated because over millennia humans have had substantial impact on fragile island resources. Populations grew, more intensive cultivation developed and in most instances severe environmental degradation resulted. This in turn had substantial social effects. MS Woziak's research focuses on this set of interactions on Easter Island. Archaeological evidence has documented social change over time and the impact of over cultivation and exploitation is evident in the degraded environment on the island today. But researchers have not examined in detail the complex interaction between behavioral and environmental variables. With the data she has collected, MS Woziak can reconstruct changing settlement patterns, intensity and extent of agriculture and landscape changes. The work will not only yield new insight into human and environmental interaction in the Pacific but also assist in training a promising young scientist.