Understanding Formative Period Vertebrate Subsistence Strategies In Southern Pacific Mesoamerica

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Wake博士和一个本科研究实习生团队将对中美洲西南太平洋Soconusco地区四个形成期考古遗址中发现的脊椎动物动物群遗骸进行为期两年的详细分析。 该项目将研究脊椎动物资源在大约2000年的形成期在太平洋恰帕斯州，墨西哥和邻近的太平洋危地马拉的Soconusco沿海平原的西南中美洲社会的发展中所起的作用。 这一地区的形成期包括从移动的狩猎采集适应到早期定居的农业社会，到简单和复杂的酋长制，在早期国家中达到顶峰。 该项目将提供急需的新信息和脊椎动物区系收藏的综合，这些收藏自其最初的挖掘以来一直在理论和实质性层面上受到冷落。 对形成期饮食、饮食随时间的变化以及人类对该地区脊椎动物资源的影响知之甚少。 该项目将审查几个研究问题，包括人类开发是否影响当地可用资源，如果是，人口如何应对资源压力。 在形成期，对狗作为食物和高产量低营养级鱼类的网捕鱼的日益依赖是对该地区资源紧张和人口增加的一种可能的反应。 该项目将用至少四个最近挖掘的考古遗址（Paso de la Amada、La Blanca、Canton Corralito和Cuauhtemoc）的新数据来检验这一假设和其他假设。 这些分析的结果将与先前在UCLA检查的其他8个区域站点的收集进行比较，以调查当地的变异性和广泛的区域趋势。这项研究的更广泛的影响包括说明，从一个没有密集的动物驯化和畜牧业的地区的动物骨骼的仔细检查可以提供有关经济和政治变化的重要信息，与社会政治复杂性的发展。 该项目将分析和综合衰弱，信息丰富的脊椎动物古动物群，以提供一个更完整的综合脊椎动物开发，人类的影响，以及在该地区的社会复杂性的发展中的饮食作用。 该项目的一个重要组成部分是支持和培训本科生研究助理在动物考古学和动物区系分析的方法。 该项目将增加在加州大学洛杉矶分校举行的脊椎动物比较收藏。 最终，该项目希望通过提供高质量的数据和解释，训练有素的未来动物考古学研究生，以及加速脊椎动物考古动物研究驱动分析的收藏和设施，鼓励对新热带地区动物考古学研究的更多投资。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Wake and a team of undergraduate research trainees will conduct two years of detailed analysis of vertebrate faunal remains recovered from four Formative Period archaeological sites in the Soconusco Region of Southwest Pacific Mesoamerica. This project will examine the role vertebrate resources had in the development of SW Mesoamerican societies across the roughly 2000 year Formative Period on the Soconusco coastal plain of Pacific Chiapas, Mexico and adjacent Pacific Guatemala. The Formative Period in this region includes the transition from mobile hunter-gatherer adaptations to early sedentary agricultural societies, into simple and complex chiefdoms, culminating in early states. This project will provide much needed new information and synthesis of vertebrate faunal collections that have been languishing since their initial excavation at both theoretical and substantive levels. Little is known about Formative Period diets, dietary change through time and human effects on available vertebrate resources through time in the region. The project will examine several research questions including whether human exploitation impacted locally available resources and, if so, how human populations responded to resource stress. Increasing reliance on dogs as food and net fishing for high yield low-trophic level fishes is one possible response to resource stress and increasing populations in the region during the Formative Period. This project will test this and other hypotheses with new data from at least four recently excavated archaeological sites: Paso de la Amada, La Blanca, Canton Corralito and Cuauhtemoc. The results of these analyses will be compared to collections from 8 other regional sites previously examined at UCLA to investigate local variability and broad regional trends. The broader impacts of this study include the illustration that the close examination of animal bones from a region absent of intensive animal domestication and husbandry can provide important information concerning economic and political changes related to the development of socio-political complexity. This project will analyze and synthesize languishing, information-rich vertebrate archaeofaunas in order to provide a more complete synthesis of vertebrate exploitation, human impacts, and dietary roles during the development of social complexity in the region. An important part of this project is the support and training of undergraduate research assistants in the methodology of zooarchaeology and faunal analysis. The project will augment the vertebrate comparative collections held at UCLA. Ultimately this project hopes to encourage greater investment in zooarchaeological study in the neotropics by supplying high-quality data and interpretations, well-trained future zooarchaeology graduate students, and the collections and facilities to expedite research-driven analysis of vertebrate archaeofaunas.