The Affect Of Environmental Variation On Social Organization

Drs。Thomas Pluckhahn（南佛罗里达大学）和Victor Thompson（佐治亚大学）将研究共同财产制度随着时间的推移而随着环境和社会政治背景的变化而变化的方式。长期以来，公共财产资源只有通过国家控制或私有财产制度才能有效管理的观念，已经被人类学和历史案例研究一再驳斥，这些研究表明，从小社区到民族国家的社会群体如何设计出有效的资源管理系统，其中一些系统持续了很长时间。然而，共同财产制度随着时间的推移而发展和变化的方式却鲜为人知。因此，研究人员也缺乏可靠地预测现有制度如何随着未来自然和社会环境的扰动而变化的能力。普拉卡恩和汤普森将与一组研究生和一名博士后学者一起，研究全新世晚期（约公元250年至1650年）坦帕湾河口的土著社会中海洋权位（集体管理的渔业使用权）的变化。这一时期末期的西班牙人描述了一个由交战的、以领土为基础的酋长管辖地组成的破碎的社会政治景观，而这一时期早期的考古证据表明，人口更分散，社会分层更少，群体间冲突也更少。该研究通过一个考古和古生态测试项目，验证了这种转变是海洋使用权变化与自然和社会环境变化相结合的结果这一假设。为了重建古代海洋使用权系统，该研究采用了牡蛎壳的同位素研究，并分析了具有不同盐度耐受性的贝类物种的相对丰度，以模拟收集栖息地。为了重建全球气候变化的局部和区域表现，研究人员将从考古遗址附近的湿地收集花粉和沉积物。社会政治组织的变化将通过考古测试和土丘和村庄建筑群的浅层地球物理方案加以确定。时间控制由严格的放射性碳定年程序提供。这个跨学科的数据集将有助于更好地理解公共财产资源管理系统如何随着时间的推移而重塑，并在此过程中，为预测当代公共财产资源（如空气、水、基因库和互联网）的公共政策变化提供潜在有用的见解。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。

Drs. Thomas Pluckhahn (University of South Florida) and Victor Thompson (University of Georgia) will undertake research regarding the manner in which common property regimes shift over time in relation to changes in environmental and socio-political contexts. The longstanding notion that common property resources are effectively managed only through state control or private property regimes has been refuted time and again by anthropological and historical case studies demonstrating how social groups ranging from small communities to nation-states have devised effective systems of resource management, some of which endure for long periods of time. However, the manner in which common property institutions develop and change over time is poorly understood. As a result, researchers also lack the ability to reliably predict how existing regimes may change with respect to future perturbations in natural and social environments.Drs. Pluckhahn and Thompson, along with a team of graduate students and a post-doctoral scholar, will study changes in sea tenure - the collectively-managed use rights to fisheries - among the native societies of the Tampa Bay estuary during the late Holocene, from around AD 250 to 1650. Spanish accounts from the end of this time range describe a fractured socio-political landscape comprised of warring, territorially-based chiefdoms, while archaeological evidence from the earlier range of the time frame suggests a more dispersed population with less social stratification and little inter-group conflict. The research tests the hypothesis that this transformation was the result of changes in sea tenure occurring in conjunction with shifts in the natural and social environments, through a program of archaeological and paleoecological testing. For the reconstruction of ancient systems of sea tenure, the research employs isotopic studies of oyster shells in concert with the analysis of the relative abundance of shellfish species with varying salinity tolerances, to model habitat of collection. To reconstruct the local and regional manifestations of global shifts in climate, the researchers will collect pollen and sediments from wetlands adjacent to archaeological sites. Changes in socio-political organization will be identified through a program of archaeological testing and shallow geophysics at mound and village complexes. Temporal control is provided by a rigorous program of radiocarbon dating. This interdisciplinary dataset will contribute to a better understanding of how common property resource management systems may be remade over time and, in doing so, offer insights potentially useful for predicting changes in contemporary public policies regulating common-property resources as diverse as air, water, gene pools, and the internet.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.