Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Landscapes of Pastoral Nomads in Southeastern Turkey

博士论文改进：土耳其东南部游牧民族的风景

• 批准号: 1203140
• 负责人: Jason Ur
• 金额: $ 1.04万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-04-15 至 2015-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1203140&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Landscapes; Pastoral

Under the supervision of Dr. Jason Ur, Emily Hammer will examine the spatial organization of nomadic pastoral inhabitation over the last 500 years in Diyarbakýr province, southeastern Turkey. The study area is located at the northern edge of ancient Mesopotamia, along the Tigris River at the interface between a fertile plain and an agriculturally marginal area of eroded limestone hills. For approximately 9000 years Middle Eastern economy and society was composed of both sedentary agriculturalists and transhumant pastoral nomads. To date however, Mesopotamian archaeologists have collected data almost exclusively on the sedentary sector of ancient societies with economies based on agriculture. The ephemeral traces of nomadic pastoral encampments rarely survive in the archaeological record because they are typically destroyed by modern farming activities. The study area is of particular importance because it has preserved the remains of both campsites and surrounding landscape features such as cisterns, corrals, and caves resulting from at least 500 years of nomadic pastoral land-use. This provides a unique opportunity to begin to correct biased, "sedentary-centric" understandings of Middle Eastern history. The project will contribute to anthropological theory by investigating an enduring anthropological phenomenon - the transformation of natural resources into socially constructed places of significance. Many studies of space and place have focused on the cultural transformations associated with public and urban spaces; the proposed research extends these studies by focusing on the meaning invested in landscapes by past mobile groups through seasonal re-inhabitation and the manipulation of natural resources. By investigating cisterns as spatial nodes in the landscape orienting people's camping and pasture patterns over long periods of time, the project will contribute to ongoing discussions of how people inscribe their presence on the environment in an enduring way.Archaeological survey and satellite imagery work have mapped features that provide evidence for diachronic patterns in nomadic pastoral winter land-use, including campsites and spatially associated landscape features such as cisterns, corrals, and caves. In the current phase of the project, analyses will focus on how water accessibility relates to inhabitation and herding patterns. Via sediment coring and radiocarbon and terrestrial in-situ cosmogenic nuclide dating methods, the project will determine the relative dates of campsite use and cistern creation in order to evaluate hypotheses about the evolution of mobile settlement and landscape. The research has broader implications for internationally collaborative salvage research, geoarchaeology, and anthropology. As the Ilýsu Dam reservoir on the Tigris River will soon flood the study region, the proposed fieldwork and analysis will gather data on features and landscapes that will soon be destroyed. Collaborative fieldwork, analysis, and publication will strengthen cooperation between American and Turkish archaeologists. Fieldwork will involve training both Turkish and American graduate students in field methodology and GIS technology. Results will be published in peer-reviewed publications and presented at scientific conferences in Turkey and the US. The application of terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclide dating, a geological technique whose archaeological applications have been limitedly realized, will help add another method for dating inorganic materials to the archaeological toolkit. The proposed methodology is novel and will have wider geological applications.

在Jason Ur博士的指导下，Emily Hammer将研究土耳其东南部迪亚巴克省过去500年游牧民族聚居的空间组织。研究区域位于古代美索不达米亚北部边缘，底格里斯河沿岸，在肥沃的平原和被侵蚀的石灰岩丘陵的农业边缘地区之间。在大约9000年的时间里，中东的经济和社会都是由定居的农场主和迁徙的游牧民族组成的。然而，到目前为止，美索不达米亚的考古学家收集的数据几乎完全是关于古代社会中以农业为基础的经济的定居部分。游牧田园营地的短暂痕迹很少在考古记录中幸存下来，因为它们通常会被现代农业活动摧毁。该研究区域具有特别重要的意义，因为它保存了露营地和周围景观特征的遗迹，如蓄水池、畜栏和洞穴，这些特征是至少500年游牧土地使用的结果。这提供了一个独特的机会，可以开始纠正对中东历史有偏见的、“以久坐为中心”的理解。该项目将通过研究一种持久的人类学现象--将自然资源转化为具有社会意义的有意义的地方--来为人类学理论做出贡献。许多关于空间和场所的研究侧重于与公共和城市空间相关的文化变革；拟议的研究通过关注过去流动群体通过季节性重新居住和对自然资源的操纵赋予景观的意义，从而扩展了这些研究。通过研究蓄水池作为景观中的空间节点，指导人们长时间的露营和牧场模式，该项目将有助于正在进行的关于人们如何以持久的方式将他们的存在记录在环境中的讨论。考古调查和卫星图像工作绘制了地图特征，为游牧牧区冬季土地利用的历时模式提供了证据，包括露营地和空间相关的景观特征，如蓄水池、畜栏和洞穴。在该项目的当前阶段，分析将侧重于水的可获得性与居住和放牧模式之间的关系。通过沉积物取芯和放射性碳和陆地原位宇宙成因核素测年方法，该项目将确定露营地使用和蓄水池创建的相对日期，以评估关于流动聚落和景观演变的假说。这项研究对国际合作的打捞研究、地质考古学和人类学具有更广泛的影响。由于底格里斯河上的伊尔·阿克苏大坝水库不久将淹没研究地区，拟议的实地工作和分析将收集即将被摧毁的地貌和景观的数据。合作的实地考察、分析和出版将加强美国和土耳其考古学家之间的合作。实地考察将包括对土耳其和美国研究生进行实地方法学和地理信息系统技术方面的培训。研究结果将发表在同行评议的出版物上，并在土耳其和美国的科学会议上公布。陆地原位宇宙核素测年是一种地质技术，其考古应用已经有限，这将有助于为考古工具包增加另一种无机物测年方法。该方法新颖，具有广阔的地质应用前景。