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调查将驯养动物纳入觅食基地如何影响干旱地区植被群落的发展。这一研究项目将以人们对农业起源的理解为基础，将粮食生产在边远地区的实施知识扩展到定居村庄以外的地区。该项目的数据将有助于更广泛的努力，以了解远古人类群体是如何创造条件的，在这种条件下，农业成为世界许多地区的主导经济实践，并最终成为排他性的经济实践。通过将这项特殊的研究置于人类生态位构建的更广泛的背景下，牧民在世界上的地位被重新定位，无论是现在还是过去。与过度开发的叙述不同(这是许多当代发展文学的特征)，牧民景观的开发和管理被视为潜在的创新和适应以前不适合大量人口水平的新环境。为了在全球范围内了解粮食生产和当地气候之间的关系，牧民及其演变的景观需要仔细考虑。联合研究员阿比盖尔·巴灵顿将研究景观管理的人为活动与也门东南部哈德拉莫特州更广泛的瓦迪萨纳地区生态之间的关系。由于政治上的不稳定，这一地区今天实际上对新的研究项目关闭了，但在史前时期很可能是地区之间的重要通道。来自黎凡特、南亚和东非的家畜最终成为该地区后来农业经济的基础食物。从这些背景下恢复了阿拉伯南部最早的家养动物，以及当地新兴的田园经济的证据，以及非常早期的植被焚烧和水管理试验。该地区的气候历史为沉积物的保存提供了有益的保护，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小二氧化硅沉积--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。虽然该项目旨在将这些植硅体类群理解为完整的实体，但在本研究过程中，有可能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.