Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Prehispanic Settlement Systems and Landscapes in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, Michoacan, Mexico

在海伦·波拉德博士的指导下，克里斯托弗·斯塔夫斯基将研究塔拉斯坎帝国自公元前100年末(公元前100年)以来对Pátzcuaro湖盆地(LPB)的定居。追溯到西班牙征服时期(约公元1525年)。位于墨西哥米却肯州高地的LPB是塔拉斯坎帝国的核心，塔拉斯坎帝国是阿兹特克人的主要竞争对手。这个湖盆不仅是考古学和人类学研究的重点，也是地质、地理、民族史学和古生态研究的重点。斯塔夫斯基的研究将把所有这些类型的数据结合成一项多学科、多标度的分析，探索定居过程，以及塔拉斯坎人及其祖先如何修改、适应和培育这片土地。这项研究很重要，因为该地区在这段时间内经历了重大的环境变化，这项工作将展示生活在传统社会中的人类如何应对这种变化，以维持一个正常运作和不断扩大的社会制度。这项工作直接很重要，因为它将增加对当今世界多个地区的许多社会的了解。由于来自西班牙人的第一手记录，以及丰富的民族历史和考古数据，人们对导致西班牙征服的后古典时期(公元1350年至1525年)的塔拉斯卡纳国有了很多了解。然而，相对未知的是，这个湖盆是如何成为一个主要的中美洲帝国的核心的。这项研究的目标是提供对湖盆人口的纵向研究，包括将回答某些社区在特定时间段如何以及为什么被定居、迁移或增长的问题的分析。关键是湖盆中人与环境关系的性质，以及它们如何改变了该地区社会政治环境的基础。通过使用地理信息系统(GIS)、高分辨率卫星图像以及从LPB过去40年的工作中收集和积累的数据的考古数据库，Stawski先生将能够绘制和分析1600年来的社区和景观。这将提供一种手段来确定影响文化变革、环境波动和不同规模的国家出现的变量，并提供多条证据。这项研究将产生更广泛的影响，既通过其学术价值，也通过对社会科学社区。它将延续多学科工作的悠久传统，并为美国、墨西哥和法国研究人员在考古学、人类学、历史学和自然科学方面正在进行的合作努力做出贡献。该项目应对有关人类-环境关系和次级状态出现的文献作出直接贡献。此外，这项研究将成为Pátzcuaro湖盆地40年来积累的研究数据的一个渠道，并将能够为该区域提供尚未公布和提出的新的和最新的数据。这项拟议的研究将提供一种手段，将这些数据传播到其他学术和专业论坛，希望这种对西墨西哥人类学、考古学和生态学重新产生的兴趣将引发一场走向学术合作的国际和跨学科运动。

Under the guidance of Dr. Helen Pollard, Christopher Stawski will examine the settlement of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) by the Tarascan Empire from the Late Preclassic (100 B.C.) to the time of Spanish Conquest (circa A.D. 1525). Located in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán, the LPB was the core of the Tarascan Empire, a major rival of the Aztecs. This lake basin has been the focus of not only archaeological and anthropological research, but also geological, geographical, ethnohistoric, and paleoecological research. Mr. Stawski's research will combine all these types of data into a multi-disciplinary, multi-scalar analysis that will explore the process of settlement and the ways in which the Tarascans and their ancestors modified, adapted and cultivated the landscape. The research is important because the region underwent significant environmental change over this time period and the work will show how humans living in a traditional society responded to this change to maintain a functioning and expanding social system. The work is directly important because it will increase understanding of many societies in multiple parts of today's world.Due to firsthand accounts from the Spanish, and the rich ethnohistoric and archaeological data, much is known about the Tarascan State during the Late Postclassic time period that led into the Spanish conquest (A.D. 1350 to 1525). However, what is still relatively unknown is the manner in which the lake basin became the core of a major Mesoamerican empire. The goal of this research is to provide a longitudinal study of the peopling of the lake basin, including analysis that will answer questions of how and why certain communities were settled, moved, or grew during certain time periods. Key to this is the nature of the human-environmental relationships in the lake basin, and how they changed the foundations of the socio-political setting of the area. Through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), high resolution satellite imagery, and an archaeological database that has collected and accumulated data from the past 40 years of work in the LPB, Mr.Stawski will be able to map and analyze the communities and landscape over a period of 1,600 years. This will provide a means to determine the variables that affected cultural transformations, environmental fluctuations, and state emergence at varying scales and with multiple lines of evidence. This research will have a broader impact, both through its intellectual merit as well as on the social science community. It will continue a long tradition of multi-disciplinary work, and contribute to on-going collaborative efforts between American, Mexican and French researchers in archaeology, anthropology, history and the physical sciences. The project should make a direct contribution to the literature on human-environmental relationships and the emergence of secondary states. Furthermore, this research will be an outlet for the accumulated data of 40 years of research in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, and will be able to provide new and updated data for the region that has yet to be published and presented. This proposed research would provide a means for this data to be disseminated to other academic and professional forums, in hopes that this renewed interest in West Mexican anthropology, archaeology, and ecology will spark an international and inter-disciplinary movement towards intellectual collaboration.