NSF-EAGER: Eastern Mediterranean Paleoclimate and Ecosystems during the Rise of Early Civilizations (EMPIRE)

考古证据表明，直到大约6000年前，地中海东部的新石器时代人们才开始广泛使用海鱼，此后，在青铜时代早期，驯养的绵羊和山羊以及农产品成为主要的主食。人类食物供应的这种转变与非洲湿润期结束的时间相似，当时北非和南欧的降雨量下降，导致海洋生产力下降，北非的湿地和稀树草原干涸。因此，非洲湿润期的结束可能在减少新石器时代人开发的海洋渔业产量和“推动”他们寻找其他资源方面发挥了作用。该项目将通过对深海沉积物中鱼齿的计数和鉴定，重建新石器时代至青铜时代过渡时期的海洋鱼类丰度。这项研究将支持美国参与国际“帝国”远征爱琴海和亚得里亚海。在巡航期间收集的沉积物岩心将为这些文明如何受到现有鱼类资源的影响提供第一次定量评估。使用鱼牙齿是直接研究鱼类群落的一种新的代理系统，并将为该方法提供“概念验证”测试。这一结果意义重大，因为鱼牙可以量化过去的鱼类种群，显示鱼类群落与环境变化之间的关系，并评估我们通过捕捞对鱼类种群的影响。在这项关于鱼牙齿的新研究之前，几乎所有关于海洋生产力的研究都集中在单细胞浮游生物上，对人类赖以生存的渔业资源的变化视而不见。该项目将获得可用于测试人力资源利用与鱼类自然丰度之间联系的样本。虽然考古学家可以告诉我们人类消耗了多少鱼，但没有其他直接的方法来评估渔业资源的情况，或者捕捞压力如何随着时间的推移改变了这些资源。该项目将通过支持参与一项旨在量化爱琴海和亚得里亚海周围人类文明兴起期间陆地和海洋生态系统变化的国际研究巡航（帝国考察），研究人类对鱼类的开发强度和模式是否与海洋资源的可用性有关。这次探险将收集“Kasten”岩心，这些岩心可以回收鱼齿研究所需的大量沉积物。这些岩心将使用定制的塑料岩心盒（通过该项目购买）进行采样，以便岩心可以完好无损地运送到美国，以便使用XRF和x射线成像评估岩心地层学。该项目将把大量来自地中海的新核心材料送回斯克里普斯地质收藏馆，在那里它将通过正常的样品要求提供给美国社区。该项目将使鱼类群落的概念验证研究与更大的国际努力相结合，以了解人类对该地区植被、土壤侵蚀、海洋生产和古气候的影响。反过来，这项环境工作将通过考古和历史数据集与人类文化发展联系起来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Archaeological evidence shows that Neolithic people in the eastern Mediterranean made extensive use of marine fish until about 6000 years ago, after which domesticated sheep and goats and agricultural products became primary staples in the early Bronze Age. This switch in human food supply has similar timing to the end of the African Humid Period when a drop in rainfall in Northern Africa and southern Europe decreased oceanic productivity and dried-up wetlands and savanna in North Africa. Hence, it is possible that the end of the African Humid Period played a role in reducing the yields of marine fisheries exploited by Neolithic people and 'nudging' them to find other resources. This project will reconstruct marine fish abundances through the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition by counting and identifying fish teeth in deep sea sediments. The research will support US involvement in the international "EMPIRE" Expedition to the Aegean and Adriatic seas. Sediment cores collected during the cruise will provide a first quantitative assessment of how those civilizations were affected by available fish stocks. The use of fish teeth is a novel new proxy system for directly studying fish communities and will provide a 'proof-of-concept' test for the method. The results will be significant because fish teeth make it possible to quantify fish stocks in the past, show the relationship between fish communities and environmental change, and assess our impact on fish populations through fishing. Prior to this new work on fish teeth, almost all studies of ocean productivity have focused on unicellular plankton and have been blind to changes in the fisheries resources that societies rely on. The project will obtain samples that can be used to test the links between human resource use and the natural abundance of fish. While archaeologists can tell us how many fish people have been consuming, there has been no other direct way to assess what fisheries resources have been like, or how fishing pressure may have changed those resources over time. This project will examine whether the intensity and pattern of human exploitation of fish is linked to the availability of marine resources by supporting participation in an international research cruise (EMPIRE Expedition) designed to quantify changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems during the rise of human civilization around the Aegean and Adriatic. The expedition will collect "Kasten" cores that recover the large volumes of sediment needed for fish tooth research. These cores will be sampled using custom-built plastic core boxes (purchased through this project) so that the cores can be delivered intact to the US to allow for evaluation of core stratigraphy using XRF and x-ray imaging. The project will return large amounts of new core material from the Mediterranean to the Scripps Geological Collections where it will be available to the US community through normal sample requests. The project will enable proof-of-concept research on fish communities to be integrated with the larger international effort to understand human impacts on vegetation, soil erosion, ocean production, and paleoclimate in the region. In turn, this environmental work will be linked with human cultural development seen through archaeological and historical data sets.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.