Assessing the Distribution and Variability of Marine Mammals through Archaeology, Ancient DNA, and History in the North Atlantic.

通过考古学、古代 DNA 和北大西洋历史评估海洋哺乳动物的分布和变异性。

• 批准号: 1503714
• 负责人: Vicki Szabo
• 金额: $ 47.32万
• 依托单位: Western Carolina University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1503714&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Assessing; Distribution; Variability; Marine; Mammals

This project seeks to understand prehistoric and historical Norse uses of whales, seals and walruses in the North Atlantic and Eastern Arctic over the course of the Middle Ages, from 800-1500 CE (Common Era). Evidence from Arctic and North Atlantic historical and literary sources and archaeological sites reveals frequent use of marine mammals by prehistoric hunters and scavengers and Norse settlers, but details about the uses of whale, seal, and walrus are unquantified, broad and approximate. These northern regions are critically important ecosystems to current North American economies and interests. They were home to the world's earliest whaling industries and support ongoing sealing and whaling traditions. However, we know almost nothing about the origins and scale of whale, seal, and walrus use in these once fertile waters. Given the complexity of marine food webs in regions like the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, reconstruction of preindustrial or 'pristine' maritime ecosystems is critical in modern restoration efforts and for the preservation and sustainable use of fish and mammal populations today. Without clear knowledge of ancient and early historic marine mammal populations, we cannot gauge what healthy marine mammal populations would look like today.The fourteen-member research team, from the disciplines of humanities, history, archaeology, biology, genetics and others, aims to investigate the deep history of whale, seal, and walrus use in the Eastern Arctic and North Atlantic. This research will span the first settlements of the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland in the Viking Age (beginning around 800 CE), through the Medieval Warm Period (circa 1000-1250), and concluding with the Little Ice Age at the end of the Middle Ages (1300-1500). In addition to assessing the social, cultural, and economic importance of marine mammal use among Norse populations, the research study uses cutting-edge genetic and chemical analyses to provide a far better understanding of marine mammal populations in the Arctic and North Atlantic before the major changes resulting from industrial-scale hunting beginning in the sixteenth century. Evidence from houses, burials, and trading sites, from current archaeological excavations and museum collections, as well as histories, sagas, maps, illuminated manuscripts and other traditional sources of knowledge, are combined with scientific approaches to ancient animal bones and the genetic stories that they can tell. This project will build interdisciplinary connections across the social and natural sciences, will bring together researchers and students from six countries and eleven academic institutions and museums, and will employ the most current technologies and scholarship in genetics, biology, digital humanities, and zooarchaeology. The research team hopes to uncover new evidence about the marine animals that populated medieval seas, and the manners in which medieval Icelanders, Greenlanders, and others encountered and exploited these mammals. The project team will produce scholarly articles, translations, new genetic and zooarchaeological data sets, will participate in academic conferences and public presentations, and will design both curricular and museum materials to communicate our results to a broader audience. Undergraduate and graduate students will be guided through transdisciplinary research collaborations in the US and abroad. Finally, the team scientists think that their results may also aid colleagues in the natural sciences in reconstruction of ancient seas, climates, animal populations, and environmental change, with direct application to major issues of future sustainability.This project seeks answers to fundamental questions about medieval marine mammal exploitation, focusing on Norse uses of whales, seals and walruses in the North Atlantic prior to 1500 CE. In a region dominated by charismatic Arctic megafauna, where modern industrial whaling was born and where current whaling and sealing attract global attention, the prehistory and early history of marine mammal use remain unclear in its scale and purpose. The researchers' transdisciplinary approach employs Local and Traditional Knowledge (LTK), digital humanities, environmental histories, and innovative technologies of genetic analysis to new and existing sea mammal archaeofaunal assemblages to produce a holistic long-term perspective on the social, cultural, and economic history of marine mammal use in medieval northern Europe. This research spans the first settlements of the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland in the Viking Age and the Medieval Climatic Optimum, through the Little Ice Age onset in the high Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. The length of the project survey period (+ 700 years) will result in samples across a broad range of time and space, which allows the science team to contextualize newly-generated aDNA marine mammal data across several documented periods of major climate change in the North Atlantic and Subarctic.The project will also provide a far better understanding of marine mammal dynamics in these regions prior to the major changes resulting from industrial-scale hunting impacts beginning in the sixteenth century. The project utilizes: 1) a new integration with the rich medieval written record for Iceland aided by digital and environmental humanities approaches; 2) a greatly expanded zooarchaeological database created since the International Polar Year (IPY) by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) research cooperative; 3) newly expanded capabilities in ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis, allowing species-level identification on a wide range of otherwise unidentifiable sea mammal bones; 4) new data management and visualization tools providing more effective cross disciplinary communication and wider public engagement through cooperation with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NISDC) and NABO project management system; and 5) facilities for wide transdisciplinary dissemination of results through the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) program as part of the Future Earth global change initiative. This project will build capacity for scientific collaboration and data management, dissemination, and visualization, while improving species-level identification, exceeding current capabilities of simple morphometric analysis or collagen fingerprinting of sea mammal bones from archaeological contexts and museum collections. In addition, it offers the promise to create important new bodies of evidence for a range of scholarly disciplines across a broad temporal and geographical series of case studies.Finally, the proposed project's use of extant data sets - textual, archaeological, biological - may provide an innovative new model for transdisciplinary analysis of premodern marine mammal use that can be applied across the North Atlantic and circumpolar Arctic. The researchers hope to establish a historical baseline of marine mammal use that reveals a more complete economic and ecological portrait of the Norse North Atlantic. Through collaborations with North Pacific and Western Arctic colleagues, the research team's work will complete a circumpolar perspective of prehistoric and early historic marine mammal exploitation. By answering fundamental questions of marine mammal use, this research has the potential to provide context or evidence for lost genetic diversity among key marine species, now under pressure from both natural and human drivers of environmental change. This integrative approach, including collaboration of scholars and students from twelve institutions across North America and Europe, also provides new models and innovative methodologies for transdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities, with direct application to major issues of future sustainability.

该项目旨在了解中世纪（公元800-1500年）期间，在北大西洋和北极东部，史前和历史上挪威人对鲸鱼、海豹和海象的使用。来自北极和北大西洋的历史和文学资料以及考古遗址的证据表明，史前猎人、食腐动物和挪威定居者经常使用海洋哺乳动物，但关于鲸鱼、海豹和海象使用的细节是无法量化的、广泛的和近似的。这些北部地区是对当前北美经济和利益至关重要的生态系统。它们是世界上最早的捕鲸业的发源地，并支持着持续的海豹和捕鲸传统。然而，我们对鲸鱼、海豹和海象在这些曾经肥沃的水域使用的来源和规模几乎一无所知。鉴于大西洋和北冰洋等地区海洋食物网的复杂性，重建工业化前或“原始”海洋生态系统对于现代恢复工作以及今天鱼类和哺乳动物种群的保护和可持续利用至关重要。如果没有对古代和早期历史海洋哺乳动物种群的明确认识，我们就无法估计今天健康的海洋哺乳动物种群是什么样子。这个由14名成员组成的研究小组，来自人文、历史、考古学、生物学、遗传学等学科，旨在调查鲸鱼、海豹和海象在北极东部和北大西洋的深层历史。这项研究将跨越维京时代（大约始于公元800年）的法罗群岛、冰岛和格陵兰岛的第一批定居点，通过中世纪温暖期（大约1000-1250年），并结束于中世纪末期的小冰河期（1300-1500年）。除了评估挪威人使用海洋哺乳动物的社会、文化和经济重要性之外，这项研究还利用尖端的遗传和化学分析，更好地了解了16世纪开始的工业规模狩猎造成重大变化之前北极和北大西洋海洋哺乳动物的数量。来自房屋、墓葬和贸易场所的证据，来自当前考古发掘和博物馆收藏的证据，以及历史、传说、地图、彩绘手稿和其他传统知识来源的证据，与研究古代动物骨骼及其所能讲述的遗传故事的科学方法相结合。该项目将建立跨社会科学和自然科学的跨学科联系，将汇集来自6个国家和11个学术机构和博物馆的研究人员和学生，并将采用遗传学、生物学、数字人文科学和动物考古学方面最新的技术和奖学金。研究小组希望发现中世纪海洋中海洋动物的新证据，以及中世纪冰岛人、格陵兰人以及其他人遇到和利用这些哺乳动物的方式。项目团队将编写学术文章、翻译、新的遗传和动物考古数据集，将参加学术会议和公开演讲，并将设计课程和博物馆材料，将我们的成果传达给更广泛的受众。本科生和研究生将通过在美国和国外的跨学科研究合作指导。最后，该团队的科学家认为，他们的研究结果还可以帮助自然科学领域的同事重建古代海洋、气候、动物种群和环境变化，并直接应用于未来可持续性的主要问题。该项目寻求关于中世纪海洋哺乳动物开发的基本问题的答案，重点关注公元1500年之前北欧人对北大西洋鲸鱼、海豹和海象的利用。在一个以迷人的北极巨型动物为主的地区，现代工业捕鲸诞生于此，目前的捕鲸和海豹活动也引起了全球的关注，但在其规模和目的方面，史前和早期海洋哺乳动物利用的历史仍不清楚。研究人员的跨学科方法采用了当地和传统知识（LTK）、数字人文学科、环境历史和创新的遗传分析技术，对新的和现有的海洋哺乳动物考古组合进行分析，以产生一个关于中世纪北欧海洋哺乳动物使用的社会、文化和经济史的整体长期视角。这项研究跨越了维京时代和中世纪气候最佳时期法罗群岛、冰岛和格陵兰岛的第一批定居点，以及中世纪盛期和现代早期的小冰河期。项目调查周期（+ 700年）的长度将产生跨越广泛时间和空间的样本，这使得科学团队能够在北大西洋和亚北极主要气候变化的几个记录时期内将新生成的aDNA海洋哺乳动物数据背景化。该项目还将更好地了解这些地区在16世纪开始的工业规模狩猎影响造成重大变化之前的海洋哺乳动物动态。该项目利用：1)在数字和环境人文方法的帮助下，与冰岛丰富的中世纪书面记录进行新的整合；2)自国际极地年（IPY）以来，北大西洋生物文化组织（NABO）研究合作组织建立了一个大大扩展的动物考古数据库；3)古DNA （aDNA）分析的新扩展能力，允许对广泛的其他无法识别的海洋哺乳动物骨骼进行物种水平的鉴定；4)新的数据管理和可视化工具，通过与国家冰雪数据中心（NISDC）和NABO项目管理系统的合作，提供更有效的跨学科沟通和更广泛的公众参与；5)作为未来地球全球变化倡议的一部分，通过地球上人类的综合历史和未来（IHOPE）项目广泛跨学科传播结果的设施。该项目将建立科学合作和数据管理、传播和可视化的能力，同时提高物种水平的识别能力，超越目前对考古背景和博物馆收藏的海洋哺乳动物骨骼进行简单形态计量分析或胶原蛋白指纹识别的能力。此外，它还有望在广泛的时间和地理系列的案例研究中为一系列学术学科创造重要的新证据。最后，提议的项目使用现有的数据集-文本，考古，生物-可能为前现代海洋哺乳动物使用的跨学科分析提供一个创新的新模型，可以应用于整个北大西洋和环极地北极。研究人员希望建立一个海洋哺乳动物使用的历史基线，以揭示北欧北大西洋更完整的经济和生态肖像。通过与北太平洋和西北极同事的合作，研究小组的工作将完成史前和早期历史海洋哺乳动物开发的环极地视角。通过回答海洋哺乳动物利用的基本问题，这项研究有可能为主要海洋物种遗传多样性的丧失提供背景或证据，这些物种现在受到自然和人类环境变化驱动因素的压力。这种综合方法，包括来自北美和欧洲12个机构的学者和学生的合作，也为社会科学和人文学科的跨学科研究提供了新的模型和创新的方法，并直接应用于未来可持续性的主要问题。