Doctoral Dissertation Research: Volcanoes and Lakes in the Science and Culture of the Spanish Empire

博士论文研究：西班牙帝国科学和文化中的火山和湖泊

• 批准号: 1656187
• 负责人: Matthew Restall
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-07-01 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1656187&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Volcanoes; Lakes

General Audience Summary This award is a doctoral dissertation improvement grant. It supports a study of the production, circulation, and use of knowledge about volcanoes and lakes in Guatemala and Mexico during the early modern period (sixteenth through eighteenth centuries). The focus of the study is two indigenous groups that inhabited both volcano and lake regions: the Nahua in Central Mexico and the Kaqchikel Maya in highland Guatemala. The investigator will use ethno-historical methods to evaluate archival documents, travel accounts, natural historical treatises, and Spanish chronicles, as well as visual materials including indigenous codices, cartographies and maps, and engravings. An analysis of these materials will facilitate a reconstruction of the variety and circulation of interpretations regarding volcanoes and lakes, and thereby situate nascent volcanology and the methods of empirical observation among indigenous groups and Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century and beyond. The results of this project will be shared at conferences on environmental history and published in professional journals. Transcriptions and translations of certain documents will also be published. More broadly, the results of this project may provide useful information for contemporary volcanology, a "slow science," meaning one that draws from extended periods of observations and historical information to understand the present. The investigator plans to engage with volcanologists in Mexico and Guatemala to help strengthen exchanges between volcanologists and historians. Capturing the efficacy of indigenous knowledge may also contribute to indigenous revitalization efforts. Technical Summary This project is significant for several reasons. It focuses on volcanoes and lakes in Mexico and Guatemala, which represent an understudied area in environmental history and history of science/STS studies. It grapples with the problem of historical erasure of indigenous epistemologies in the early modern period by emphasizing indigenous knowledge and cosmology in the study of lakes and volcanoes. In doing so, it contributes to STS debates about tensions between "western" science and localized indigenous knowledge. This project also evaluates the implications of hybridity and translation in cultural exchanges to push beyond the indigenous/western dichotomy in scientific development. The project will also serve to increase our understanding of how people engaged with volcanic and lacustrine terrain and lived in potentially unstable landscapes.

本奖项为博士论文改进奖。它支持对近代早期（16世纪至18世纪）危地马拉和墨西哥火山和湖泊知识的生产、流通和使用的研究。这项研究的重点是两个居住在火山和湖泊地区的土著群体：墨西哥中部的纳瓦人和危地马拉高地的卡奇克尔玛雅人。研究者将使用民族历史方法来评估档案文件、旅行记录、自然历史论文和西班牙编年史，以及包括土著法典、制图和地图以及雕刻在内的视觉材料。对这些材料的分析将有助于重建关于火山和湖泊的解释的多样性和循环，从而定位16世纪及以后土著群体和西班牙探险家中新生的火山学和经验观察方法。该项目的结果将在环境史会议上分享，并在专业期刊上发表。还将出版某些文件的抄本和译文。更广泛地说，这个项目的结果可能会为当代火山学提供有用的信息，这是一门“缓慢的科学”，意思是通过长时间的观察和历史信息来了解现在。研究者计划与墨西哥和危地马拉的火山学家接触，以帮助加强火山学家和历史学家之间的交流。捕捉土著知识的功效也可能有助于土著振兴的努力。由于几个原因，这个项目很重要。它的重点是墨西哥和危地马拉的火山和湖泊，这是环境史和科学史/STS研究中研究不足的领域。它通过在湖泊和火山的研究中强调土著知识和宇宙学，努力解决近代早期土著认识论的历史抹去问题。在这样做的过程中，它有助于STS关于“西方”科学与本地化本土知识之间紧张关系的辩论。本项目还评估了杂交和翻译在文化交流中的意义，以推动科学发展超越本土/西方二分法。该项目还将有助于增加我们对人们如何与火山和湖泊地形以及如何在潜在的不稳定景观中生活的理解。