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

俄亥俄州立大学的研究人员将研究将动物驯化纳入觅食基地如何影响干旱地区植被群落的发展。这个研究项目将建立在对农业起源的理解之上，通过扩大在定居村庄以外的边缘地区实施粮食生产的知识。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经济实践，并最终成为唯一的经济实践。通过在人类生态位构建这一更广泛的背景下进行这项特殊的研究，牧民在世界上的地位，无论是现在还是过去，都被重新定义了。与过度开发的叙述（这是许多当代发展文献的特征）不同，游牧景观的开发和管理被视为对新环境的潜在创新和适应，这些环境以前不适合大量人口水平。要在全球范围内理解粮食生产与当地气候之间的关系，就需要仔细考虑牧民及其进化景观。副主任阿比盖尔·布芬顿将研究景观管理的人为活动与也门东南部哈德拉毛省瓦迪萨那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，但在史前可能是地区之间的重要通道。来自黎凡特、南亚和东非的家禽肉最终成为该地区后来农业经济的基础食品。在这些环境中，阿拉伯南部最早的驯养动物，以及当地新兴的畜牧经济和非常早期的植被燃烧和水管理实验的证据都得到了恢复。该地区的气候历史为沉积物的保存提供了有利条件，从而可以确定这些离散阶段的年代。从这些沉积物中提取的植物岩组合-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标志。虽然本项目旨在将这些植物岩群作为一个整体来理解，但有可能在研究过程中恢复植物驯化的初始证据。

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.