Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Human Ecological Integration In Beringia

亚利桑那大学的博士候选人franois Lanoë将研究狩猎采集者社会和大型陆生哺乳动物种群之间的长期生态相互作用。人类在超过99%的历史中都是通过狩猎和采集的生活方式与环境相互作用的。以前的学者已经描述了这些相互作用的后果，包括过度捕捞可能导致的资源灭绝。考古学和古生物学的记录特别适合描述和解释这些生态动态，因为它们通常持续很长一段时间。然而，考古学家和古生态学家常常把这些问题分开研究，而没有把他们各自的研究问题真正地结合起来；因此，迄今为止，人类生态学的具体观点一直没有得到重视。在这个更广泛的背景下，这个项目将关注狩猎采集者的营养生态学，他们如何适应其他大型食肉动物的营养网络（“食物网”），以及他们对整个生态系统的作用和影响。该项目的创新之处在于，它将实施跨学科的方法和理论框架，以解决生态系统中狩猎采集社会长期可持续整合的新问题。它将允许各种专业人士（考古学家、古生态学家、理论生态学家）以其结果为基础。本项目将重点研究人类与其他大型食肉动物之间的资源分配模式，以及它们各自对大型哺乳动物群落的影响。该研究将在阿拉斯加和育空地区进行，在1.4万至8000年前的冰河时代末期，狩猎采集者首次在这里进入北美。这一地区的殖民化与北极最早的定居点之一相对应，通常与植被和哺乳动物物种的主要更替相吻合，包括巨型动物的灭绝。该项目将通过对选定的考古遗址的挖掘和动物分析，有助于了解阿拉斯加中部的人类定居和生存。此外，利用古生物学和化学方法的结合，本研究将记录冰河时代末期大型哺乳动物之间的摄食相互作用。然后，这个跨学科的数据集将用于模拟和理解人类定居者如何开发资源，以及他们的经济选择如何影响整个生态系统。

Ph.D. candidate François Lanoë, of the University of Arizona, will study the long-term ecological interactions between societies of hunter-gatherers and populations of large terrestrial mammals. The human species has interacted with its environment by means of hunting and gathering life-ways for over 99% of its history. Previous scholarship has described the consequences of some of these interactions, including possible resource extinction caused by overharvesting. The archaeological and paleontological records are particularly well placed to describe and provide interpretations for these ecological dynamics because they generally extend over very long periods of time. Often, however, these issues are studied separately by archaeologists and paleoecologists without real integration of their respective research questions; as a result, perspectives specific to human ecology have so far been under-emphasized. Within this broader context this project will focus on the trophic ecology of hunter-gatherers, how they fit in the trophic networks ("food webs") among other large predators and what their role and impact on the whole ecosystem is. This project is innovative in that it will implement an interdisciplinary methodological and theoretical framework in order to address novel aspects of the sustainable integration of hunter-gatherer societies in ecosystems over the long-term. It will allow a variety of professionals (archaeologists, paleoecologists, theoretical ecologists) to build upon its results.This project will focus on modeling the modes of resource partitioning between humans and other large predators, and their respective impacts on communities of large mammals. It will be conducted in Alaska and Yukon, where societies of hunter-gatherers entered North America for the first time at the end of the Ice Age, between 14,000 and 8,000 years ago. The colonization of this region corresponded to one of the first settlements of the arctic and generally coincided with major turnover in both vegetation and mammalian species, including megafauna extinction. This project will contribute to the knowledge of human settlement and subsistence of central Alaska through the excavation and faunal analysis of selected archaeological sites. In addition, using a combination of paleontological and chemical methods, this research will document feeding interactions among large mammals at the end of the Ice Age. This interdisciplinary dataset will then be used to model and understand how human settlers exploited resources, and how their economical choices impacted the ecosystem as a whole.