Collaborative Research: Bronze and Iron Age prehistory on the margins of the Eurasian Steppe: Modeling Interactions between Climate and Ancient Herders and Farmers

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Irina Panyushina博士和Claudia Chang博士将进行研究，研究气候、景观和史前社会在中亚是如何相互作用的。该项目涉及考古学、树木年代学、古气候学、孢粉学、生态学和水文地质学等领域的专家合作者和伙伴关系，以考察哈萨克斯坦南部2000年的史前历史中过去的气候变化和社会变革。这项研究将产生新的基于现场的数据集，用于模拟草原平原和森林覆盖的山区的人口动态、土地利用模式。其目标是确定从青铜时代中期到青铜时代晚期(约公元前1600年至公元前900年)和铁器时代(约公元前800年至公元500年)开始的人类对气候和环境变化的反应。这项研究很重要，因为它将测试气候变化对欧亚草原古代社会和文化的直接影响。它将拓宽关于气候-人类相互作用的性质的视角，这种相互作用影响了后来文明的社会演变，并导致了现代世界的发展。来自Semirechye(咸海盆地的山区)的考古数据表明，在青铜时代晚期，分散的少量流动牧民占据了关键牧场和水资源附近的高地山谷和山脉。后来，在公元前1000年，这些边缘的高地地区导致了两种不同类型的定居点的形成：利用冲积扇的肥沃可耕地的农业牧民聚集的较大人口和搬迁到高海拔地区的分散的跨人类牧民人口较少。到公元100年左右，村庄的人口密度和储存能力与世界其他地区早期定居的农业村庄相当。铁器时代遗址的数量在公元200年后明显减少，可能是由于迁出或冲突的结果。这项研究将把考古数据集与复杂的气候可变性重建联系起来。这些综合数据将为古代人口对气候和环境变化的适应性反应提供关键见解。这一多学科项目包括：(1)考古调查和现场测试；(2)使用磁力计进行地球物理沉降调查；(3)C14扭动匹配和树轮测年；(4)利用树轮和花粉替代物以及相应的冰芯进行多尺度气候和环境重建。收集的证据将被用来估计气候变化对该地区人口规模和景观生产力的影响。此外，它还将记录铁器时代社会中可能导致环境压力的社会和经济因素，如水资源枯竭、木材燃料和土壤肥力。更广泛的影响包括1)研究生在管理和解释大型和复杂数据集方面的实地和最先进的培训，以及2)美国、英国、哈萨克斯坦、德国、匈牙利和俄罗斯的考古和环境科学界之间的强大国际合作。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Irina Panyushkina and Claudia Chang will conduct research to examine how climate, landscapes and prehistoric societies have interacted in Central Asia. This project involves expert collaborators and partnerships in the fields of archaeology, dendrochronology, paleoclimatology, palynology, ecology and hydrogeology in order to examine past climate changes and social transformations throughout a 2000-year prehistory of southern Kazakhstan. The research will generate new field-based datasets for modeling population dynamics, land use patterns in the grassland plains and forested mountains. The goal is to determine human response to climatic and environmental changes beginning at the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 to 900 BC) and through the Iron Age (ca. 800 BC to AD 500). The research is important because it will test the direct impact of climate change on ancient societies and cultures of the Eurasian Steppe. It will broaden perspectives on the nature of climate-human interactions which influenced the social evolution of the subsequent civilizations and led to the development of the modern world. Archaeological data from Semirechye (the mountain zone of the Aral Basin) suggest that during the Late Bronze Age, small, dispersed populations of mobile pastoralists occupied the upland valleys and mountains near critical pasture and water resources. Later, in the first millennia BC, these marginal upland regions led to the formation of two distinct types of settlement: larger, aggregated populations of agro-pastoralists who utilized the fertile, arable land of alluvial fans and smaller, dispersed populations of transhumant pastoralists who relocated to high elevations. By ca. 100 AD, population density and storage capacity at villages was comparable to that of early sedentary farming villages in other world regions. A marked reduction in the number of Iron Age sites took place after AD 200 probably a result of out-migration or conflict. The research will interrelate the archaeological datasets with sophisticated reconstructions of climate variability. These integrated data shall provide key insights into the adaptive responses of ancient populations to climate and environmental changes. This multi-disciplinary project includes: (1) archaeological survey and site testing; (2) geophysical settlement surveys using a magnetometer; (3) C14 wiggle-match and tree-ring dating; (4) multi-scale climate and environment reconstructions from tree-ring and pollen proxies, and corresponding ice-cores. The assembled lines of evidence will be used to estimate the impact of climate change on population size and landscape productivity in this region. Furthermore, it will document the social and economic factors within Iron Age society that led to possible environmental stress such as the depletion of water sources, wood fuel and soil fertility. The broader impacts include 1) graduate students' field and state-of-art training in the management and interpretation of large and complex data sets, and 2) strong international collaborations between the archaeological and environmental science communities of US, UK, Kazakhstan, Germany, Hungary and Russia.