Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Human Subsistance Practices And Environmental Change - A Botanical Analysis

俄亥俄州州立大学的研究人员将研究如何将驯化动物纳入觅食基地，影响干旱地区植被群落的发展。这一研究项目将在对农业起源的理解的基础上，扩大对定居村庄以外边缘地区粮食生产实施情况的了解。该项目的数据将有助于更广泛地了解古代人类群体如何创造条件，使农业成为世界许多地区的主导性经济活动，并最终成为排他性经济活动。通过在人类生态位构建的更广泛背景下进行这一特定研究，重新构建了当代和过去牧民在世界上的地位。与过度开发的叙述（当代发展文献的特点）不同，牧民景观的开发和管理被视为潜在的创新和对新环境的适应，而这些新环境以前不适合大量人口。为了了解全球范围内粮食生产和当地气候之间的关系，牧民和他们的进化景观需要仔细考虑。共同PI阿比盖尔·巴芬顿将研究景观管理的人为活动和也门东南部哈德拉毛州瓦迪萨纳更广泛地区的生态之间的关系。由于政治不稳定，该地区今天实际上对新的研究项目关闭，但在史前时期可能是区域之间的重要通道。来自黎凡特、南亚和东非的国产食品最终成为该地区后来农业经济体的基础食品。阿拉伯半岛南部最早的动物驯化已经从这些背景中恢复，以及当地出现的畜牧经济和植被燃烧和水管理的早期实验的证据。该地区的气候历史为沉积物提供了有利的保护，可以确定这些离散阶段的年代。从这些沉积物中提取的植硅体组合-植物腐烂时积累的微观二氧化硅沉积物-将被用作与这些生态位构建活动相关的当地植物生态的签名。虽然这个项目的目的是了解这些植硅石组作为整个实体，有可能在本研究过程中恢复植物驯化的初步证据。

Researchers at The Ohio State University, will investigate how incorporating animal domesticates into a foraging base impacts the development of vegetation communities in arid regions. This research project will build on what is understood of agricultural origins by expanding knowledge of food production's implementation in marginal zones beyond sedentary villages. The project data will contribute to a broader effort to understand how ancient human groups created the conditions in which agriculture became the dominant, and eventually exclusive, economic practice across many regions of the world. By setting this particular research in this broader context of human niche construction, the place of pastoralists in the world, both contemporary and past, is reframed. Instead of overexploitation narratives (which characterize much contemporary development literature), pastoralist landscape development and management are viewed as potential innovations and adaptations to new environs which were previously unsuitable to significant population levels. To understand the relationship between food production and local climate on a global scale, pastoralists and their evolutionary landscapes require careful consideration.Co-PI Abigail Buffington will examine the relationship between the anthropogenic activities of landscape management and the ecology of the broader region of Wadi Sana in the Hadramawt state of southeastern Yemen. This region is today effectively closed to new research projects due to political instability but likely was a significant conduit between regions in prehistory. Domestics from the Levant, South Asia and East Africa eventually became foundational foods in the later agricultural economies of the region. The earliest animal domesticates in Southern Arabia have been recovered from these contexts, as well as evidence of a locally, emergent pastoral economy and very early experiments in vegetation burning and water management. The climatic history of the region provided a beneficial preservation of the sediments in which dating of these discrete phases can be determined. Phytolith assemblages - the microscopic silica deposits that accumulate when plants decay - extracted from these sediments, will be used as signatures of the local plant ecology associated with these niche constructing activities. While this project aims to understand these phytolith groupings as entire entities, there is a possibility that the initial evidence of plant domesticates may be recovered in the course of this study.