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

在三个学科的交汇处工作——古气候学，试图理解气候变化的因果力量；河流地貌学，试图理解景观在不同气候条件下如何变化和演变；考古学，将人类置于这种动态环境中，并寻找人类如何应对气候变化的模式。Mark Aldenderfer博士和他的同事们将在秘鲁西南部的的喀喀湖盆地的里约热内卢Ramis流域进行两个季节的考古研究，研究在这种恶劣的高海拔环境下农业系统是如何发展的。该项目将详细研究这一总体主题的三个具体研究问题：1)植物种植起源的时间和地点；2)高田/q'ocha农业系统的起源时间和初始规模；3)提高农田系统对干旱和日益干旱条件的适应能力。在这些问题中，他的研究小组提出了一系列相互竞争的假设，这些假设可以用考古数据进行评估，这些考古数据是由一个密集的项目产生的，包括全面覆盖的调查、地面收集，以及由地球物理调查指导的广泛的地点和景观特征测试项目。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，并将在现场和实验室密切合作，寻求答案。这种相互作用产生的各种数据包括高分辨率的、年代准确的，过去12000年里的的喀喀湖盆地西部的古气候变化记录。这些数据的含义远远超出了的的喀喀湖盆地，因为它们必然涉及到引起气候变化的区域和全球规模的力量。它还将产生新的沉积学和地貌学数据，这些数据可用于在区域气候变化背景下创建全流域河流演化模型。该模型将作为复杂、干旱、高海拔环境中景观演变的一个有价值的案例研究，可以推广到世界其他地区的类似环境，如青藏高原。最后，它将为考古学家提供对塑造景观演变的自然力量的更全面的理解，并提供新的考古数据，这些数据将开始填补我们对西部的的喀喀湖盆地史前农业技术起源和转变的知识的严重空白。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，促进研究与教育的结合。研究团队的每一位成员都将鼓励参与的学生直接参与项目的各个方面，使他们获得比只在单一学科内工作更丰富的经验。最后，该项目所解决的问题和将产生的数据与美国国家科学基金会和其他全球资助机构赞助的研究计划直接相关，这些研究计划寻求利用古气气学和考古记录的结合来了解自然气候变化和全球气候变化对人类的影响——这些目标具有直接的社会相关性。

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.