Paleoclimate, Landscape Evolution, and the Transformations of Prehistoric Agricultural Technology in the Western Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru

Mark Aldenderfer博士和他的同事们将在三个学科的交叉领域开展工作--试图了解气候变化的原因的古气候学，试图了解不同气候条件下地形变化和演变的河流地貌学，以及将人类置于这种动态环境中并寻找人类如何对气候变化做出反应的模式的考古学。马克·阿尔登德费尔博士和他的同事将在秘鲁西南部的喀喀湖盆地的里奥拉米斯流域进行为期两个季度的考古研究，调查农业系统如何在这种恶劣的高海拔环境中随着时间的推移而发展。该项目将详细审查关于这一总主题的三个具体研究问题：1)植物栽培起源的时间及其地点；2)凸起农田/Q‘Ocha农业系统起源的时机和初始规模；3)凸起农田系统对干旱和日益干旱条件的适应能力。在每个问题中，他的研究团队都提出了一系列相互竞争的假设，可以使用由全面覆盖的调查、地表收集和地球物理调查指导的遗址和景观特征的广泛测试计划生成的考古数据进行评估。该项目最重要和最令人兴奋的特点之一是来自不同科学学科的学者之间的密切互动，他们精心设计了具有广泛重要性的详细研究问题，并将在实地和实验室密切合作，寻求答案。这种相互作用将产生的数据类型包括过去12,000年来西喀喀湖盆地古气候变化的高分辨率、日期确定的记录。这些数据的影响远远超出了喀喀山盆地，因为它们必然涉及到对引起气候变化的区域和全球范围的力量的考虑。它还将产生新的沉积学和地貌学数据，可用于在区域气候变化的背景下建立整个盆地的河流演变模型。这个模型将作为复杂、干旱、高海拔环境中景观演变的案例研究，这种环境可能会推广到世界其他地区的类似环境，如青藏高原。最后，它将使考古学家更全面地了解形成地貌演变的自然力量，并提供新的考古数据，这些数据将开始填补我们对西部喀喀湖盆地史前知识中关于农业技术起源和变革的严重空白。其更广泛的影响包括通过在大学和学科之间建立新的伙伴关系来促进教学、培训和学习。它将通过让本科生和研究生参与研究来促进研究和教育的融合。研究团队的每个成员都将鼓励参与研究的学生直接参与项目的各个方面，使他们能够获得比仅在单一学科内工作更丰富的经验。最后，这个项目解决的问题和将产生的数据与国家科学基金会和世界各地其他资助机构赞助的研究倡议直接相关，这些研究倡议试图利用具有直接社会相关性的古气候和考古记录--目标--来理解自然气候变异性和全球气候变化对人类的影响。

Working at the intersection of three disciplines-paleoclimatology, which attempts to understand the causal forces of climate change, fluvial geomorphology, which seeks to understand how landscapes change and evolve under different climatic conditions, and archaeology, which places humans into this dynamic environment and searches for patterns of how humans respond to climatic variability, Dr. Mark Aldenderfer and his colleagues will conduct two seasons of archaeological research in the Rio Ramis drainage of the Lake Titicaca basin of southwestern Peru investigating how agricultural systems in this harsh, high elevation environment developed through time. The project will examine in detail three specific research questions on this general theme: 1) the timing of the origins of plant cultivation and its location; 2) the timing of the origins and the initial scale of raised field/q'ocha agricultural systems; and 3) the resilience of raised field systems to draught and increasingly arid conditions. Within each of these questions, his research team has posed a set of competing hypotheses that can be evaluated with archeological data generated by an intensive program of full-coverage survey, surface collection, and an extensive testing program of sites and landscape features directed by geophysical survey. One of the most important and exciting features of this project is the close interaction of scholars from different scientific disciplines who have crafted detailed research questions of broad importance and who will work together closely in both the field and laboratory seeking answers to them. The kinds of data to be created by this interaction include a high-resolution, well-dated, record of paleoclimatic change in the western Lake Titicaca basin for the past 12,000 years. The implications of these data go far beyond the Titicaca basin, because they will necessarily involve consideration of regional and global-scale forces that give rise to climatic change. It will also generate new sedimentological and geomorphological data that can be used to create a basin-wide model of fluvial evolution in the context of regional climate change. This model will be valuable as a case study of landscape evolution in a complex, arid, high elevation environment, one that may be extended to similar environments in other regions of the world, such as the Tibetan plateau. Finally, it will provide archaeologists with a fuller understanding of the natural forces that shaped landscape evolution and with new archaeological data that will begin to fill the very serious gaps in our knowledge of the prehistory of the western Lake Titicaca basin on the origins and transformations of agricultural technologies. Among its broader impacts are its promotion of teaching, training and learning by building new partnerships among universities and disciplines. It will promote the integration of research and education by involving both undergraduate and graduate students in research. Each member of the research team will encourage participating students to work directly with every aspect of the project, enabling them to obtain a richer experience than would be possible by working only within a single discipline. Finally, the problems this project addresses and the data that will be produced are directly relevant to research initiatives sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other granting agencies worldwide that seek to understand both natural climate variability and the human impact of global climatic change using the combined paleoclimatological and archaeological record--goals with direct societal relevance.