Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Risk Management in Unpredictable Environments

考古记录具有独特的地位，可以为社会适应当前和未来气候的现代战略提供信息，因为它对各种社会如何成功或不成功地适应不断变化的环境条件具有深刻的时间观。然而，考古学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学证据通常规模太大（例如，生计转移、定居模式的变化和移民），让普通人发现日常生活的意义。该项目利用了一个独特的机会，研究北美最大的前哥伦布定居点的考古背景下的本地化变化，以确定人类决策的变化与水位波动在每年，十年，半世纪，百年尺度。通过建立与城市建设历史相关的局部变化年表，研究人员将解决城市社会如何反应的问题。在Tristram Kidder博士的指导下，Caitlin兰金女士将研究联合国教科文组织世界遗产卡霍基亚土丘城市中心区内的湿地土墩和广场群的建设年表和局部环境序列。研究人员将收集和分析从土丘，子土丘，广场和子广场环境中采集的连续系列土壤样本，采用各种科学方法，包括稳定碳同位素分析，粒度分布分析，烧失量，磁化率和土壤微形态，以确定环境条件。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造历史。贝叶斯统计将用于完善环境和建筑历史的年表。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劳动力来维持空间的原始设计和功能，或者他们是否选择调整空间的功能和设计以适应新的环境条件。这个项目将为兰金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.