Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Risk Management in Unpredictable Environments

考古记录具有独特的定位，可以为社会适应当前和未来气候的现代策略提供信息，因为它从长远的角度了解了各种社会如何成功或不成功地适应不断变化的环境条件。然而，考古研究很少被纳入当前的辩论，因为人类对环境变化的反应的考古证据通常在规模太大（例如，生存转移，改变定居模式和迁移），普通人无法找到对日常生活有意义的东西。该项目利用了一个独特的机会，在北美最大的前哥伦布定居点的考古背景下研究局部变化，以确定人类对年、十年、50年和100年尺度上与波动的地下水位变化相关的决策。通过建立与城市建设历史相关的局部变化年表，研究人员将解决有关城市社会反应的问题。在Tristram Kidder博士的指导下，凯特琳·兰金女士将研究位于伊利诺伊州南部联合国教科文组织世界遗产卡霍基亚土丘城市中心区的湿地土丘和广场群的建筑年代学和局部环境序列。研究人员将通过稳定碳同位素分析、粒度分布分析、着火损失、磁化率和土壤微观形态等多种科学方法，收集和分析从土丘、次土丘、广场和次广场环境中连续采集的一系列土壤样本，以确定随时间变化的环境条件。考古发掘将在土丘边缘和广场范围内进行，以确定湿地土丘和广场群的使用和建设历史。贝叶斯统计将用于完善环境和建设历史的年表。调查人员将利用风险管理的角度来解决社会反应，确定卡霍基亚人是否投入了劳动力来保持空间的原始设计和功能，或者他们是否选择使空间的功能和设计适应新的环境条件。这个项目将为Rankin女士的博士论文提供数据。

The archaeological record is uniquely positioned to inform modern strategies for social adaptation to current and future climate because of its deep time perspective of how a wide range of societies successfully or unsuccessfully adapted to changing environmental conditions. However, archaeological research is rarely incorporated into current debates because the archaeological evidence for human response to environmental change is typically at a scale too large (e.g., subsistence shifts, changing settlement patterns, and migration) for the average person to find meaningful to everyday life. This project takes advantage of a unique opportunity to study localized variation within the archaeological context of the largest pre-Columbian settlement in North America to determine human decision making to changes related to fluctuating water tables at yearly, decadal, semicentennial, and centennial scales. By establishing a chronology of localized variation associated with urban construction history, researchers will address questions about how urban societal response.Under the direction of Dr. Tristram Kidder, Ms. Caitlin Rankin will study construction chronology and localized environmental sequence at a wetland mound and plaza group within the urban central precinct of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Cahokia Mounds in southern Illinois. The investigators will collect and analyze a continuous series of soil samples taken from mound, sub-mound, plaza, and sub-plaza contexts with a variety of scientific methods including stable carbon isotope analysis, grain size distribution analysis, loss-on-ignition, magnetic susceptibility, and soil micromorphology to determine environmental conditions through time. Archaeological excavations will be conducted at the edge of mounds and within plaza limits to determine the use and construction history of the wetland mound and plaza group. Bayesian statistics will be used to refine a chronology for both environmental and construction history. Investigators will utilize a risk management perspective to address social response by determining if the people of Cahokia invested labor to maintain the space to its original design and function or if they choose to adapt the function and the design of the space to new environmental conditions. This project will provide the data for Ms. Rankin's doctoral dissertation.