Historical Ecology of the Early Mekong Delta

国家科学基金会的资金将支持米里亚姆·斯塔克博士和她的同事们对湄公河三角洲(柬埔寨南部)早期国家发展的研究。该项目汇集了西方和柬埔寨的考古学、地质考古学、地理学和孢粉学专家，研究复杂的社会是如何出现的，以及它们在公元前一千年的政治和经济基础。在向历史的过渡期间，东南亚最早的国家随着印度意识形态的出现和国际海上贸易网络的发展而出现。尽管全球对早期国家形成的比较研究兴趣浓厚，但很少有考古学家研究东南亚大陆的早期复杂社会。研究柬埔寨吴哥文明(约公元802年-公元1432年)的学者长期以来一直认为，高棉帝国的起源位于湄公河三角洲。然而，以前还没有进行过系统的考古研究来记录它的起源和出现。这个项目探索了公元前500年到公元500年之间湄公河三角洲复杂政治的组织结构的变化。项目成员评估国家形成的相互竞争的模式，这些模式在因果关系和结构上都不同。评估这些模型需要了解随着时间的推移不断变化的定居点结构、古老的农业战略以及水管理系统潜在变化的性质。研究了地理因素(土壤的变化、淡水的可获得性和潜在的运输路线)之间的动态关系，以及意识形态、政治和经济在塑造公元第一个千年的人类和自然景观中所起的作用。该项目的实地方法结合了三个季节的考古和地质考古研究，并伴随着对遥感数据的分析。项目成员将收集考古、艺术、历史、地理、古环境和金石学数据，以了解与该地区最早的国家之一的出现有关的聚落变化。地理(地理信息系统)数据库的建设为实地研究提供了基础。地理信息系统数据库还提供了一个工具，用于解释随时间变化的定居点模式，并研究改变耕作策略的证据，这些策略可能包括洪水衰退和以灌溉为基础的水稻农业。野外季节结合了四项活动：(1)考古调查，以记录大型遗址及其周围环境；(2)对这些大型遗址上倒塌的砖砌古迹进行热释光测年，以建立区域年代序列；(3)地质考古研究，以确定古代运河段的年代；(4)古环境研究(主要是沉积物取芯)，以重建该区域在过去2500年来不断变化的气候和植被制度。这项研究在几个方面都很重要。首先，它为理解世界上一个重要而研究不足的地区出现复杂社会提供了新的数据。其次，该项目融合了研究古代国家形成的政治、环境和经济方面的跨学科方法。最后，该项目将柬埔寨考古学学生的研究与培训结合起来。近25年的内战摧毁了柬埔寨考古界，破坏了其文化资源。该项目为柬埔寨的考古遗产做出了重大贡献，也为培训柬埔寨下一代考古学家做出了重大贡献。

Funding from the National Science Foundation will support Dr. Miriam Stark and her colleagues in their research on early state development in the Mekong delta (southern Cambodia). The project brings together Western and Cambodian specialists in archaeology, geoarchaeology, geography, and palynology to study how complex societies emerged, and their political and economic foundations in the first millennium A.D. During this transition to history, Southeast Asia's earliest states emerged in tandem with the appearance of Indic ideologies and the development of an international maritime trade network. Despite strong interest in comparative research on early state formation globally, few archaeologists have studied early complex societies in mainland Southeast Asia. Scholars of Cambodia's Angkorian civilization (c. A.D. 802-A.D. 1432) have long suggested that the origins of the Khmer empire lay in the Mekong delta. No systematic archaeological research has been undertaken previously, however, to document its origins and emergence. This project explores the changing organizational structure of complex polities in the Mekong delta between c. 500 B.C. and c. A.D. 500. Project members evaluate competing models of state formation, which differ both in causality and in structure. Assessing these models requires an understanding of changing settlement configuration through time, of ancient agricultural strategies, and of the potentially changing nature of water management systems. Dynamic relationships between geographical factors (variation in soils, availability of fresh water, and potential transportation routes) are investigated, as are the roles that ideology, politics and economics played in shaping the human and natural landscape of the first millennium A.D. The project's field methodology combines three seasons of archaeological and geoarchaeological research with concomitant analyses of remote sensing data. Project members will collect archaeological, art historical, geographical, paleoenvironmental, and epigraphic data to understand changes in settlement that were associated with the emergence of one of the region's earliest states. Construction of a geographic (GIS) database provides the foundation for field research. The GIS database also provides a tool for interpreting changing settlement patterns through time, and for studying evidence for changing farming strategies that may have included flood recession and irrigation-based rice agriculture. Field seasons combine four activities: (1) archaeological survey to document large sites and their environs; (2) thermoluminescence dating on collapsed brick monuments on these large sites to build a regional chronological sequence; (3) geoarchaeological research to identify and date ancient canal segments; and (4) paleoenvironmental research (primarily sediment coring) to reconstruct the region's changing climatic and vegetational regimes during the last 2500 years. This research is important in several respects. First, it provides new data for understanding the emergence of complex societies in an important and understudied region of the world. Second, the project merges interdisciplinary approaches to study political, environmental, and economic aspects of ancient state formation. Finally, the project combines research with training for Cambodian archaeology students. Nearly 25 years of civil war decimated the Cambodian archaeological community, and damaged its cultural resources. This project makes significant contributions to Cambodia's archaeological heritage, and also to training the next generation of Cambodian archaeologists.