Doctoral Dissertation Research: Greek, Phoenician, and Roman Colonization versus Holocene Climatic Change: Economic Implications on a Developing Indigenous Society, Western Sicily

在Michael Kolb博士和Jay Stravers博士的指导下，Chad Heinzel先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。他将继续参与西西里岛西部萨莱米地区西西里-斯堪的纳维亚考古项目的考古发掘工作。该项目正在调查导致西西里岛从青铜时代晚期到铁器时代早期（公元前1100年至600年）过渡期间土著社会兴衰的主要社会和环境因素。萨莱米地区提供景观沉积组合，河流和冲积扇沉积，包含保存完好的地质考古记录。这些记录尤其重要，因为它保留了过去气候、景观和社会变化的重要指标。初步的挖掘和调查已经成功地揭示了一个主要的山顶定居点的存在，包括街道，墙壁，防御塔，附近的泉水和溪流，化石陆地蜗牛壳，以及邻近的农业丰富的斜坡。了解在任何地质背景下导致景观发展的环境因素是识别自然与人为引起的景观变化的关键一步。海因策尔先生的研究将提供西西里岛西部过去15000年的重要的高分辨率气候数据集。这些信息将为西地中海地区正在进行的考古（从青铜时代晚期到罗马时代）发掘提供物理背景。这些数据将提供一个平台，据此对当地和区域的文化发展和景观使用模式作出解释。Heinzel先生使用蜗牛壳化石作为沉积/占领的时间（碳定年）和过去气候变化（稳定同位素碳和氧地球化学）的指标，这在西西里岛是第一次。从该项目的地质和考古发掘中恢复的保存完好的蜗牛壳将提供有关过去降雨、温度和植被覆盖变化的深刻数据。这项研究很重要，因为它提供了关于西西里岛西部过去气候突变和农业发展的新环境信息，这些信息在我们目前的知识状态中是必不可少的未知变量。这些环境数据将为解释西西里岛史前和历史上不断发展的职业阶段的日常生活提供见解。此外，这些数据将可用于地中海地区未来的气候模式。可以预测未来气候变化和土地利用方式对我们发展中社会影响的模型。Heinzel先生的研究还从当代破坏性的农业实践中拯救和记录信息，并协助培训一位有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Michael Kolb and Dr. Jay Stravers, Mr. Chad Heinzel will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will continue his participation in archaeological excavations of the Sicilian-Scandinavian Archaeological Project in western Sicily's Salemi Region. The project is investigating the primary, social and environmental, factors leading to the rise and fall of an indigenous society during Sicily's Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age (1100 to 600 BC) transition. The Salemi Region provides landscape sediment-assemblages, fluvial and alluvial fan sedimentation that contains a well-preserved geoarchaeological record. This record is especially significant because it retains important indicators of past climatic, landscape, and social changes. Preliminary excavations and survey have successfully revealed the presence of a major hilltop settlement that includes, streets, walls, fortification towers, nearby springs and streams, fossil land snail shells, and adjacent agriculturally rich slopes.Understanding the environmental factors responsible for landscape development in any geologic setting is a critical step towards identifying natural versus human induced landscape modifications. Mr. Heinzel's research will provided an important high-resolution climatic data set for the past 15,000 years in western Sicily. Such information will provide a physical context for on-going archaeological (Late Bronze through Roman Age) excavations in the western Mediterranean region. These data will provide a platform from which local and regional interpretations of cultural development and landscape usage patterns will be made. Mr. Heinzel's use of fossil snail shells will serve as an indicator of time (Carbon dating) of deposition/occupation and past climate change (stable isotopic Carbon and Oxygen geochemistry) is a first in Sicily. Well-preserved snail shells recovered from the project's geologic and archaeological excavations will provide insightful data regarding past changes in rainfall, temperature, and vegetative cover. This research is important because it contributes new environmental information regarding past abrupt climatic changes and agricultural developments in western Sicily that are essential unknown variables in our current state of knowledge. These environmental data will provide insight when interpreting the daily lives of Sicily's pre-historic and historic evolving occupational phases. In addition, these data will be available for future climate models in the Mediterranean region. Models that may predict the effects of future climatic change and land use practices on our own developing society. Mr. Heinzel's research also rescues and records information from contemporary destructive agricultural practices and assists in the training of a promising young scientist.