The Origins of Equid Domestication

在国家科学基金会的支持下，本杰明阿巴克尔博士将在土耳其中部的四个地点指导为期三年的多学科、国际实地和实验室研究。该项目汇集了来自美国、加拿大、土耳其、法国和德国的国际研究人员，他们在考古学、动物考古学、古遗传学、同位素生物化学和古植物学，提供了第一个全面的亚洲驴和野马狩猎的历史，以及随后在中东出现的家养马的图片。马的驯化代表了最重要的技术之一，古代世界的成就，以及整个旧世界的生存交换、互动和战争的革命性战略。虽然马在欧亚大陆西部草原地区的驯化历史正在慢慢地成为人们关注的焦点，但近东地区马的起源仍然是一个重大的考古学难题。虽然人们长期以来在地理上承认，古代土耳其可能在家马传播到中东地区方面发挥了重要作用，但很少有数据可以充分验证这些假设，并且负责大近东地区家马起源的社会和生物过程仍然不清楚。通过考古学、遗传学和同位素数据集的创新组合，该项目将建立一个详细的解释框架，该框架将1）定义安纳托利亚高原上新发现的密集野马和亚洲驴狩猎模式的性质，2）评估当地驯化与进口在该地区家马出现中的作用，3）了解负责家养马起源的社会过程。通过将各种方法的强大组合应用于新发现的富含马遗骸的考古组合，该项目有可能为古代世界最重要的创新之一的家养马的起源提供一个全新的视角。这项研究的学术价值是多学科的。它将对动物驯化过程和创新技术传播的研究产生重大影响，这两个问题都是考古学和人类学研究的主要课题。它还将为马的历史和起源提供新的见解，并将增加对重要牲畜物种生物多样性的理解。该研究的更广泛影响是，它将支持美国，法国，德国，加拿大和土耳其研究人员在多个学科之间的国际合作与协作。它还将为培养一名研究生提供支持，并将帮助支持古遗传学和考古学创新研究方法的发展。研究结果将通过开放获取的网络出版物公布，以确保产生尽可能广泛的影响。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Benjamin Arbuckle will direct three years of multi-disciplinary, international field and lab research at four sites in central Turkey. This project brings together an international team of researchers from the US, Canada, Turkey, France and Germany with specialties in archaeology, zooarchaeology, paleogenetics, isotope biochemistry and paleobotany to provide the first comprehensive picture of the history of Asiatic ass and wild horse hunting and the subsequent emergence of domestic horses in the Middle East.The domestication of the horse represents one of the most important technological achievements of the ancient world and revolutionized strategies of subsistence exchange, interaction and warfare across the Old World. Although the history of horse domestication in the steppic regions of western Eurasia is slowly coming into greater focus, the origins of the domestic horse in the Near East continues to represent a major archaeological puzzle. Although it has long been acknowledged on geographic grounds that ancient Turkey may have played an important role in the transmission of domestic horses into the Middle East, few data have been available to adequately test these hypotheses, and the social and biological processes responsible for the origins of domestic horses in the Greater Near East remain obscure. Through an innovative combination of archaeological, genetic and isotopic datasets this project will build a detailed interpretive framework that will 1) define the nature of the newly discovered patterns of intensive wild horse and Asiatic ass hunting on the Anatolian plateau, 2) evaluate the roles of local domestication versus importation in the appearance of domestic horses in the region, and 3) understand the social processes responsible for the origins of domestic horses. By applying a powerful combination of methods to newly available archaeological assemblages rich in horse remains, this project has the potential to provide a radically new perspective on the origins of the domestic horse, one of the most important innovations of the ancient world. The intellectual merit of the research is multidisciplinary in scope. It will significantly impact research addressing the process of animal domestication and the transmission of innovative technologies, both major topics of archaeological and anthropological inquiry. It will also provide new insights into the history and origins of equines, and will add to the understanding of the biodiversity of an important livestock species. The broader impacts of the study are that it will support international cooperation and collaboration between American, French, German, Canadian and Turkish researchers across multiple disciplines. It will also provide support for training a graduate student and will help support the development of innovative research methods in paleogenetics as well as archaeology. Results will be made accessible via open access web publications, ensuring the broadest possible impact.