Understanding Long Term Relationships Between Environmental Change, Human Resilience And Territoriality

了解环境变化、人类复原力和领土性之间的长期关系

• 批准号: 1535841
• 负责人: Robert Hard
• 金额: $ 21.68万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at San Antonio
• 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: 2015-09-01 至 2021-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1535841&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Long; Term; Relationships; Between

This project will investigate the evolution of human territoriality across deep time and will allow Drs. Robert Hard, Raymond Mauldin, Jacob Freeman, and Deborah Bolnick to address fundamental questions about the emergence of territorial systems. How and why territorial systems emerge is poorly understood although its importance as a fundamental social process is clear. Territoriality has been linked to the development of property rights and social scientists have argued that territoriality enhances the sustainable use of natural resources such as fisheries and forests. Anthropologists know that human societies develop widely varying approaches to maintaining and holding territories. Some hunter-gatherer societies have little concern for maintaining territorial boundaries while others closely patrol and defend small patches, yet the conditions underlying this variability are not well understood. While most information about human territoriality comes from ethnographic cases, the archaeological record is the only source of data concerning the changing nature of human territoriality across hundreds of generations. Such information contextualizes and has the potential to shed new insight on territorial changes occurring in the world today.Over thirty years ago, anthropologists used ethnographic data to propose the Model of Economic Defensibility. The model states that as resources become more dense and predictable, given a sufficient level of competition, individuals will maximize their fitness by claiming ownership over a territory. In the Model of Economic Defensibility, the productivity and predictability of resources determines the area (i.e., the home-range) an individual needs to find food. In turn, the size of an individual's home-range changes the costs versus benefits of investment in territoriality. To adopt territoriality, individuals must expend time and energy to monitor boundaries and attack intruders. As an individual's home-range size increases, the costs associated with restricting access rise more quickly than the benefits attained. That is, holding competition equal, the larger an individual's home-range, the lower the net benefit of territoriality. Despite its fundamental importance, this model has yet to be rigorously evaluated with archaeological data. The Morhiss site, located in the Texas Coastal Plain, is an ideal setting to evaluate this model. Located 20 miles from the coast, Morhiss represents at least 6000 years of use, and contains a record of shifting territoriality. Excavated 75 years ago, these collections hold data necessary to evaluate this model. Drs. Robert Hard (University of Texas at San Antonio), Jacob Freeman (Utah State University), Raymond Mauldin (University of Texas at San Antonio), and Deborah Bolnick (University of Texas at Austin) will use an array of laboratory analyses including, radiocarbon dating, carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotopes, and ancient DNA to conduct this research. This work will be fundamental to the formation of regional databases, will contribute to a general procedure to assess the assumptions of the Model of Economic Defensibility, and will contribute to understanding the evolution of property rights. Finally, our approach will establish a protocol to use minimally destructive techniques to build datasets from curated collections. The team's work will contribute to the education of graduate and postdoctoral students as well as an outreach program for high school teachers.

该项目将调查人类领土的演变跨越深时间，并将允许罗伯特·哈德，雷蒙德·莫尔丁，雅各布·弗里曼和黛博拉·博尔尼克博士解决有关领土系统出现的基本问题。尽管领土制度作为一个基本社会进程的重要性是显而易见的，但人们对它是如何以及为什么出现的了解甚少。领土权与财产权的发展有关，社会科学家认为，领土权加强了渔业和森林等自然资源的可持续利用。人类学家知道，人类社会发展了各种各样的方法来维护和保持领土。一些狩猎采集社会很少关注领土边界的维护，而另一些社会则密切巡逻和保卫小块土地，但这种变化背后的条件还没有得到很好的理解。虽然大多数关于人类领土的信息来自人种学案例，但考古记录是关于数百代人中人类领土性质变化的唯一数据来源。这些信息将背景化，并有可能为当今世界发生的领土变化提供新的见解。30多年前，人类学家使用人种学数据提出了经济防御模型。该模型指出，随着资源变得更加密集和可预测，如果有足够的竞争，个人将通过声称对领土的所有权来最大限度地提高自己的适应性。在经济防御性模型中，资源的生产力和可预测性决定了区域（即，一个人需要找到食物。反过来，一个人的家庭范围的大小改变了投资领域的成本与收益。为了采取领土，个人必须花费时间和精力来监视边界和攻击入侵者。随着个体活动范围的扩大，与限制进入相关的成本上升得比所获得的收益更快。也就是说，保持竞争平等，个体的活动范围越大，领地的净收益就越低。尽管这一模型具有根本性的重要性，但它还有待于用考古数据进行严格的评估。Morhiss网站，位于得克萨斯州沿海平原，是一个理想的设置来评估这个模型。 莫希斯距离海岸20英里，代表了至少6000年的使用，并包含了领土转移的记录。这些藏品是75年前挖掘出来的，保存着评估这一模型所需的数据。Robert Hard博士（德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校）、Jacob Freeman博士（犹他州州立大学）、Raymond Mauldin博士（德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校）和Deborah Bolnick博士（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）将使用一系列实验室分析，包括放射性碳测年、碳、氮和锶同位素以及古代DNA来进行这项研究。这项工作将是建立区域数据库的基础，将有助于建立一个评估经济防御模型假设的一般程序，并将有助于理解产权的演变。最后，我们的方法将建立一个协议，使用破坏性最小的技术从精选的集合中构建数据集。该团队的工作将有助于研究生和博士后学生的教育，以及高中教师的推广计划。