Support for the Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This award provides partial support for the 6th Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research, to be held on the campus of the Univ. of California, Santa Cruz in September 2001.The Advanced Seminars have been the premier forum for high-level discussionamong anthropologists, geochemists, paleobiologists, and ecosystemscientists about the ways that fossil chemistry can be used to reconstructthe ecology, physiology, and migration patterns of humans and othermammals. Approximately 30 seminar participants will explore the diversechemical approaches to hominid paleobiology. The list ranges from seniorscientists to graduate students and from archaeologists to chemists,including speakers from 8 nations. The speakers will examine the followinggeneral topics: 1) how biological isotope signals are influenced by theeffects of growth dynamics and post-mortem alteration, 2) how isotopes canbe used to study the scale and pattern of human mobility, 3) new isotopictools for studying hominid diets and habitat use, and 4) how physiology andnutritional status are reflected in the isotope composition of fossils.For example, several speakers will focus on the ecology and diet ofaustralopithecines that are several million years old, determining theextent to which these relatives of modern humans consumed meat versusplants. Another set of speakers will focus on the diets and foodprocessing technologies of modern humans over the past few thousand years.A number of speakers will examine shifts in human migration patterns andnutritional status, looking at the interplay between climate and culturalchange as causal agents. As has been the case with all of previousseminars, we will publish a set of papers resulting from the presentations,preferably as a special issue of an archaeological journal. Thepublication will summarize important advances, making results available ina centralized format to both specialists and non-specialists. If the pastis any guide, the chemical approaches to human and animal ecology,biogeochemistry, and environmental reconstruction explored in thepublication will extend to workers in many other fields. For thepast 30 years, anthropologists and archaeologists using chemical methodshave been blazing a trail, a trail that has recently been picked up bywildlife biologists, terrestrial paleoclimatologists and global changeresearchers. The 6th Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research shouldcontinue this tradition.