Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Ecology of Early Farming: A Mogollon Case Study

在玛格丽特·c·纳尔逊博士的监督下，史蒂夫·斯旺森将分析考古、环境和卫星数据，回答有关美国西南部农业发展过程中人类对环境的影响的问题。在新墨西哥州西部和亚利桑那州东部的莫高伦环地区，土著群体在公元200年至公元1000年之间过渡到农业，标志着人与环境之间关系的变化。虽然人们通常认为，农业的采用迅速导致了定居主义和村庄的形成，但在莫高伦地区，在采用农业后的数百年里，早期的农业定居点实际上仍然很小，居民也在流动。这些早期的农业遗址被反复占领和遗弃了数百年，只有少数在公元1000年发展成为农业村庄。在美国西南部，向农业转型期间的早期农业尝试为这些长期的人类环境动态提供了丰富的数据库。本研究将以最新的卫星环境数据作为考古数据的补充，探索环境恢复力、土地利用对环境的影响和村庄形成的相互关联过程。考古记录可以为从狩猎和采集到农业的转变提供重要的见解，以及干旱地区农业战略的生态学。在Mogollon地区，有跨越800年向农业过渡的遗址。在每一个地点，都有一系列不同的职业，每个职业一次只有几所房子。通过检查不同年代房屋中的花粉和被烧毁的植物残骸，人们可以为这些地点建立一个环境历史，记录植被干扰（如森林砍伐）以及植被随时间的恢复。将此与基于卫星的现代植被群落数据相结合，可以评估可能影响定居和农业发展的环境因素。首先，早期农业对环境的影响是否影响了农民长时间在一个地方成功生活的能力？第二，景观上的一些地方是否天生对环境退化更有抵抗力，我们看到的是农村的发展吗？最后，气候在影响早期农业定居点的位置和持久性方面发挥了什么作用？从这项研究中获得的见解不仅对社会科学家有用，而且对解决社会面临的现代环境问题具有更广泛的意义。当人类使用土地的做法对环境的影响已达到对生活质量造成严重的全球性危险的程度时，重要的是要认识到，针对当前环境危机提出的解决办法必须解决社会文化因素以及长期可持续性问题，否则将是不成功的。这项研究特别适用于具有类似人口或环境背景的区域，例如移徙或流动人口，或世界干旱地区。通过对长期数据集的研究，本研究可以为全球干旱环境中流动土地利用实践的可持续性问题提供科学信息。鉴于全世界干旱环境中流离失所人口最近和正在发生的许多情况，这类资料是及时的。

Under the supervision of Dr. Margaret C. Nelson, Steve Swanson will analyze archaeological, environmental, and satellite-based data to answer questions about human impacts on the environment during the development of agriculture in the Southwestern U.S. In the Mogollon Rim area of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, native groups made the transition to agriculture between 200 A.D. and 1000 A.D., marking a change in the relationship between people and their environment. While it is often assumed that the adoption of agriculture rapidly leads to sedentism and village formation, in the Mogollon region the early farming settlements actually remained small and residents mobile, for hundreds of years after the adoption of agriculture. These early agricultural sites were repeatedly occupied and abandoned for hundreds of years, and only a few developed into agricultural villages by AD 1000. In the US Southwest, early attempts at farming during the transition to agriculture provide a rich database on these long-term human-environment dynamics. By supplementing the archaeological data with recent satellite-based environmental data, this research will explore the inter-related processes of environmental resilience, environmental impact of land use, and of village formation.The archaeological record can provide critical insights into the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, as well as the ecology of farming strategies in an arid landscape. In the Mogollon area there are sites that span the 800-year transition to agriculture. At each of these sites, there is a series of different occupations, each with only a few houses at a time. By examining pollen and burned plant remains in houses of different ages, one can develop an environmental history for the sites, documenting vegetation disturbance (such as deforestation) as well as vegetation recovery over time. Combining this with satellite-based data on modern vegetation communities permits an assessment of the environmental factors that might influence the development of sedentism and agriculture. First, did the environmental impacts of early agriculture influence the ability of farmers to successfully live in a single place for long periods of time? Second, are some places on the landscape inherently more resistant to environmental degradation, and is that where we see the development of farming villages? Finally, what role does climate play in influencing the location and persistence of early farming settlements?Insights gained from this research are not only useful for social scientists: they have broader implications for developing solutions to modern environmental problems facing society. At a time when the environmental impacts of human land use practices are reaching the level of a critical, global-scale danger to quality of life, it is important to recognize that proposed solutions to current environmental crises must address sociocultural factors as well as issues of long-term sustainability, or they will be unsuccessful. This research is especially applicable to regions with a similar demographic or environmental context, such as for migrant or mobile populations, or in arid regions of the world. By examining a long-term dataset, this study can contribute scientific information to the problem of the sustainability of mobile land use practices in arid environments across the globe. Information of this sort is timely given the numerous recent and ongoing instances of displaced populations in arid environments worldwide.