Collaborative Research: Development and Spread of Great Basin Technologies

在国家科学基金会的支持下，耶尔默·w·厄肯斯博士和卡尔·p·利波博士将研究新思想是如何产生和传播的。他们的具体研究调查了加州东部欧文斯谷和死亡谷的史前美洲原住民陶器。他们将使用发光测年法来确定新陶器类型的时间，使用仪器中子活化分析来检查罐子的组成是如何变化的，并使用形状测量来研究研究区域罐子形状的变化。这些分析使他们能够测量史前陶器技术的精细变化，从公元1300年左右的引入到公元1840年左右的废弃。这项研究在许多方面都具有创新性。首先，人们对狩猎采集者的陶器知之甚少。他们的研究将突出陶器使用的最早背景，为为什么派尤特和肖肖尼社会开始制作和使用陶罐以及他们如何随着时间的推移发展这项技术提供线索。其次，这项研究应该产生高分辨率的时间数据，这是使用其他测年技术（如放射性碳或黑曜石水合作用）无法实现的。有了这种精细的时间控制，他们应该能够追踪每一代陶工的决定。第三，利用文化传播模型，Eerkens和Lipo将提供关于人们如何在小规模社会环境中传播技术知识的重要细节。基于社会学研究，科学家们对信息在大规模和工业环境中是如何传播的了解很多（尽管肯定不是全部），特别是在电视、广播和报纸等大众媒体司空见惯的地方。然而，对小规模狩猎采集者的这些过程知之甚少。填补这一空白对于建立关于信息传递的一般人类状况的一般理论具有重要意义。第四，这项研究将涵盖很少有其他研究使用过的时间尺度。信息传递的现代研究最多是基于10到20年的信息。这项研究使用考古数据，将包括500多年的信息传播，为更长的时间间隔内的技术信息提供了一个独特的视角。该项目将对加州大学戴维斯分校和加州州立大学长滩分校的学术氛围产生重大影响。这两个项目都服务于大量在科学领域未被充分代表的学生，并将这些学生引入考古学的职业生涯。将从这群学生中聘请几名学生参与该项目。此外，Eerkens和Lipo计划将这些发现纳入UCD人类学博物馆的学生教学模块。通过UCD的外展计划，每年有500多名来自戴维斯和伍德兰地区的K-12学校的孩子参观博物馆。孩子们学习接触前印第安人的生活方式，以及考古学家如何从物质遗迹中重建过去。这种拓展活动通过提供与考古学家和真实文物的互动和实践经验，使过去栩栩如生。此外，博物馆的展品将随时向公众开放。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Jelmer W. Eerkens and Dr. Carl P. Lipo will investigate how new ideas emerge and spread. Their specific research investigates prehistoric Native American pottery in the Owens and Death Valleys of eastern California. They will be using luminescence dating to determine the timing of new pottery types, instrumental neutron activation analysis to examine how the composition of the pots changed, and measurements of form to study how pot shapes varied in the study area. These analyses enable them to measure fine-scaled changes in prehistoric pottery technologies, from their introduction around AD 1300 years ago to their abandonment around AD 1840.The research is innovative in a number of respects. First, little is known about hunter-gatherer pottery. Their research will highlight the earliest contexts of pottery use, providing hints as to why Paiute and Shoshone societies began making and using ceramic pots and how they developed the technology over time. Second, the research should generate high-resolution temporal data that is not possible using other dating techniques, such as radiocarbon or obsidian hydration. With this fine temporal control, they should be able to track the decisions of individual generations of potters. Third, using a cultural transmission model, Eerkens and Lipo will provide important details on how people transmit technological knowledge in small-scale social settings. Based on sociological research, scientists know much (though certainly not everything) about how information is transmitted in large-scale and industrial settings, particularly where mass media such as television, radio, and newspapers are commonplace. However, much less is known about these processes among small-scale hunter-gatherers. Filling in this gap is important for general theory building about the general human condition of information transmission. Fourth, the research will encompass a time scale few other studies have used. Modern studies of information transmission are based on, at most, 10 to 20 years of information. This study, using archaeological data, will include over 500 years of information transmission, providing a unique glimpse of what happens to technological information at longer time intervals. The project will have a significant impact on the intellectual climate of University of California at Davis and California State University Long Beach. Both programs serve large populations of underrepresented students in the sciences, and will introduce these students to careers in archaeology. Several students will be hired from this population to work on the project. Furthermore, Eerkens and Lipo plan to incorporate the findings into an instructional module for school children in the Anthropology Museum at UCD. Through the UCD outreach program over 500 K-12 school children from the Davis and Woodland area visit the museum each year. Children learn about pre-contact Native American lifeways and how archaeologists reconstruct the past from material remains. Such outreach brings the past alive by providing interactive and hands-on experience with archaeologists and real artifacts. Additionally, the museum display will be visible and open to the public at all times.