Dissertation: Landscape Learning in the Late Glacial Recolonization of Northwestern Europe

在史蒂文·库恩博士的支持下，Marcy Rockman女士将为她的博士论文收集和分析数据。她将以上一次冰河时代结束时欧洲西北部的重新安置为例，研究人类如何在只能从风景本身了解自然资源的情况下认识和利用自然资源。在大约20,000到14,000年前的上一个冰河时代，冰盖几乎达到了今天伦敦的位置，人口集中在法国西南部和莱茵河流域中部。到冰层消退时，从巴黎盆地向北穿过不列颠群岛的地区已经被遗弃了至少6000年。第一批重新进入这一地区的人类必须重新了解该地区自然资源的位置和局限性，只利用他们对自己所在地区的风景的知识和他们自己在陌生环境中的经验。虽然在人类历史上，这样的殖民在有限的信息下发生了很多次，但人类学习新景观的实际过程还没有被很好地理解。洛克曼的研究将开发一种研究这一过程的方法，并将密切关注现代人类占领欧洲西北部的最初阶段。在这项研究中，将从人类发现和早期使用硅质岩露头的角度来研究景观学习过程。硅质岩是一种细粒岩石，在史前通常用于制造石器。Rockman女士将从英格兰、法国北部和比利时东部约14,000至9,500年前的遗址收集已公布的石器来源、放射性碳年代和其他文物组装信息。将根据所代表的岩石范围，特别是硅质岩类型，对代表这一完整时间范围的现存石器收藏进行研究。Rockman女士将使用石材工具来源信息作为特定地质特征和地区的指南，对硅质岩来源的地形进行实地测量。然后，所有这些数据将被合并到地理信息系统(GIS)分析中。最后的解释将来自个别硅质岩来源的特征和使用模式，以及冰川晚期和冰川后早期土地利用的整体复杂性的比较。这个项目将有助于解释人类如何学会在一个新的地方生活。它将为考古学家测试其他殖民者提供数据和方法基础。它将作为考古学、地质学和计算机模型研究相结合的潜力的一个例子，并将有助于对一位有前途的年轻科学家进行跨学科培训。

With the support of Dr. Steven Kuhn, Ms. Marcy Rockman will collect and analyze data for her doctoral dissertation. Using the example of the resettlement of northwestern Europe at the end of the last Ice Age, she will study how humans come to know and use natural resources when they can only learn about them from the landscape itself. During the last Ice Age, which dates to approximately 20,000 to 14,000 years ago, the ice sheets reached almost to the location of present-day London and human populations were concentrated in southwestern France and in the central Rhine valley. By the time the ice retreated, the region from the Paris Basin northward through the British Isles had been abandoned for at least 6,000 years. The first humans to re- enter this area had to learn the locations and limitations of the region's natural resources anew, using only their knowledge of landscape from which they had come and their own experiences in the unfamiliar environment. While such colonizations with limited information have taken place many times throughout human history, the actual process by which humans learn a new landscape is not yet well understood. Ms. Rockman's research will develop a means of studying this process and focus closely on the very beginnings of the modern human occupation of northwestern Europe.In this study, the landscape learning process will be studied from the perspective of human discovery and early use of outcrops of chert, a fine-grained rock commonly used to make stone tools in prehistory. Ms. Rockman will collect published stone tool sourcing, radiocarbon date, and other artifact assemblage information from sites dating between approximately 14,000 and 9,500 years ago from England, northern France, and eastern Belgium. Selected extant stone tool collections representing this full time range will be studied in regard to the range of rock and particularly chert types represented. Using the stone tool sourcing information as a guide to specific geological features and areas, Ms. Rockman will take field measurements of the topography of the chert sources. All this data will then be combined in geographic information systems (GIS) analyses. Final interpretations will be made from the characteristics and use patterns of individual chert sources and comparison of the overall complexity of land use across the late glacial and early post-glacial time periods.This project will provide help to explain how humans learn to live in a new place. It will provide a base of both data and method against which archaeologists may test other colonizations. It will serve as an example of the potential of combined archaeological, geological, and computer modeling research, and it will contribute to the interdisciplinary training of a promising young scientist.