Wetlands and the Transition to Agriculture in Europe: The Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project

在国家科学基金会的支持下，苏珊·E·艾伦博士和一个国际同事团队将进行为期三个季度的考古和古环境研究，主题是人类经济史上的一个关键转变，即农业在起源中心以外的广泛传播和采用。特别是，这项研究侧重于大约9000年前欧洲向农业的过渡，并检验了最早的农民优先选择湿地交错带定居和农业土地使用的假设。虽然湿地在世界不同地区许多初级农业中心的植物初步驯化过程中的重要性得到了广泛承认，但由于对记录土著居民和移民农民在这一过程中的作用给予了不成比例的关注，湿地在将农业扩散到这些中心之外的过程中的重要性被掩盖了。因此，很少有人考虑早期农民在不同的空间、社会和时间背景下协商环境变量的方式。通过采用一种生态方法，强调早期农民对关键地点的精心选择，并认识到农业战略在时间和空间上的差异是农业分散的关键方面，该项目旨在测试从欧洲放射性碳测年数据出现的从东南到西北的时间超越型模式的广泛模型。巴尔干东南部处于这一转型的前沿，是了解欧洲农业转型的关键地区。为了实现他们的目标，该小组将从位于阿尔巴尼亚南部前湿地环境和邻近环境环境的新石器时代早期(EN)遗址恢复相关数据。研究的重点是瓦希特米遗址的重新挖掘、地面测量和取心。Vashtëmi被选中的依据是该小组2006年的地面调查和取心结果，这些结果表明，恢复与他们的研究问题有关的数据的潜力很大，以及非法开发对该地点构成的潜在威胁，因为它靠近Korça市，毗邻一条主要公路。该团队将恢复动植物遗骸、其他有机材料以及地形变化的证据，这些证据将使他们能够重建遗址的环境和土地利用做法。特别重要的是收集可在14C之前确定日期的材料，以便建立区域环境年表，而这是尚不可能的。该项目的学术价值和更广泛的影响在以下四个方面尤为明显：1)了解欧洲向农业过渡的过程以及早期耕作做法的多样性，由于这一关键地区缺乏植物和动物遗骸以及放射性碳日期，因此对这些做法知之甚少；2)研究湿地在这一过渡时期的重要性以及它们在人类历史上长期而广泛的文化意义；3)从未经授权的开发中挽救潜在的重大考古数据；以及4)为阿尔巴尼亚的年轻人提供环境考古培训机会，以便将这些方法纳入阿尔巴尼亚的标准考古实践中，并为整个欧洲史前考古工作做出贡献。

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Susan E. Allen and an international team of colleagues will conduct three seasons of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research on a critical shift in human economic history, the widespread dispersal and adoption of agriculture beyond its centers of origin. In particular, this research focuses on the transition to agriculture in Europe approximately 9,000 years ago and tests the hypothesis that the earliest farmers preferentially selected wetland ecotones for settlement and agricultural land use. While the significance of wetlands in the process of initial domestication of plants in many primary centers of agriculture in different areas of the world is widely acknowledged, their importance in the dispersal of agriculture beyond those centers has been obscured by the disproportionate attention given to documenting the role of indigenous populations and immigrant farmers in this process. In consequence, there has been little consideration of the way that early farmers negotiated environmental variables in various spatial, social, and temporal contexts. By adopting an ecological approach that emphasizes early farmers' deliberate selection of key locations and recognizes variation found in agricultural strategies across time and space as key aspects of the dispersal of farming, the project is designed to test the broad model of a time-transgressive pattern from southeast to northwest that emerges from radiocarbon dates for Europe. Situated at the leading edge of this transition, the southeastern Balkans are a key area for understanding the shift to agriculture in Europe. To address their objectives, the team will recover relevant data from Early Neolithic (EN) sites located in a former wetland setting and adjacent environmental settings in Southern Albania. Research focuses on renewed excavation, surface survey, and coring at the site of Vashtëmi. Vashtëmi was selected on the basis of results from the team's surface survey and coring in 2006 that demonstrate high potential for recovering the data relevant for their research question and the potential threat posed to the site by illicit development due to its location near the city of Korça and adjacent to a major highway. The team will recover plant and animal remains, other organic materials, and evidence of landform changes that will enable them to reconstruct the site's environment and land use practices. Of particular importance is the collection of materials datable by 14C in order to construct a regional chronology for the EN which has not yet been possible. The intellectual merits and broader impacts of this project are particularly apparent in four areas: 1) understanding the transition to agriculture in Europe and variability among early farming practices, which are poorly understood due to the paucity of floral and faunal remains and radiocarbon dates in this key region; 2) examining the importance of wetlands in this transition and their long-term and widespread cultural significance in human history; 3) salvaging potentially significant archaeological data from destruction by unauthorized development; and 4), offering environmental archaeology training opportunities for young Albanians in order to foster the incorporation of these methods into standard archaeological practice in Albania and contributing to European prehistoric archaeology as a whole.