Collaborative Research: Speleothem Proxies for Mayan Culture-Climate Interactions

该奖项将允许尤金·佩里博士和布鲁斯·达林博士开始收集墨西哥洞穴中的洞穴石笋记录。这些过去环境变化的替代记录将使玛雅考古学家能够以足够的特异性研究文化与环境的相互作用，以建立因果关系。该项目将使利用U/Th测年记录的石笋中的气候事件的时间、强度和持续时间比现有的古气候重建技术具有更高的精度，这将提供对考古记录中可观察到的文化变化的气候与纯粹文化变化驱动因素的相对重要性的更深层次的洞察。特别是，这项工作将为更好地理解9世纪玛雅文明的崩溃奠定基础，特别是活动因素(S)是否是这次气候变化的突发性、特大干旱的严重性和空间范围、与全球变暖和尤卡坦半岛特大灾害的开始相关的飓风的日益频繁和破坏潜力，或者完全是其他什么。在未来对过去区域环境变化的时空模式的研究中，代理校准将有助于进一步探索前哥伦布时代横跨玛雅低地的气候-文化相互作用的洞穴记录。拟议的项目将为新的洞察环境变化与人类社会反应之间的关系提供基础，从而影响观察到的和预测的全球气候变化的未来影响。该项目将测试当今流行的气候导致的文明崩溃的标志的真实性：9世纪古典玛雅文明的崩溃。拟议项目的多学科性质将汇集具有广泛专业知识的科学家，并将为研究生和本科生提供实验室和实地经验。这一合作将汇集来自不同学科的科学家，包括美国和墨西哥的几个机构，并将进一步开展科学合作，加强这些学科和国家之间的学术交流。该项目将为两到三名研究生提供论文研究项目，并将支持一名年轻的女性终身教职教授的职业生涯。

This award will permit Drs. Eugene Perry and Bruce Dahlin to initiate collection of speleothem (stalagmite) records from Mexican caves. These proxy records of past environmental changes will enable Maya archaeologists to address culture-environment interactions with sufficient specificity to establish causal relationships. The project will enable the timing, intensities and durations of the climatic events recorded in stalagmites with much higher precision using U/Th dating than is available with existing paleoclimate reconstruction techniques, and this will provide deeper insights into the relative importance of climatic versus purely cultural drivers of the culture changes observable in the archaeological record. In particular, this work will set the stage for a better understanding of the 9th century collapse of Maya civilization, specifically whether the active agent(s) was the abruptness of this climate change, the severity and spatial extent of the megadroughts, the increasing frequency and damage potential of hurricanes associated with global warming and the onset of megadrought conditions on the Yucatan peninsula, or something else entirely. The proxy calibrations will be useful in further exploring cave records of pre-Columbian climate-culture interactions across the Maya lowlands in future studies of spatial and temporal patterns of past regional environmental change.The proposed project will provide the basis for new insights into the relationships between environmental change and the response of human societies, and thus bear on future impacts of observed and projected global climate changes. The project will test the veracity of the icon of climate induced civilizational collapse that is so popular today: the 9th century collapse of Classic Maya civilization. The multidisciplinary nature of the proposed project will bring together scientists with a wide variety of expertise and will give graduate and undergraduate students laboratory and field experience. This collaboration will bring together scientists from a wide variety of disciplines, include several institutions in the U.S. and Mexico and will further scientific cooperation and enhance scholarly exchange between these disciplines and countries. This project will provide thesis research projects for two to three graduate students, and also will support the career of a young female tenure-track professor.