Wetlands to Desertification. Human Social-Ecological Dynamics in a Late Holocene Context

过去11,000年来的气候变化对世界各地的半干旱和干旱牧场产生了深远的影响，过去5,000年来最严重的干旱加速了。依赖这些地区谋生的人类人口必须适应这些变化，并学会在数千年的过程中管理这些地貌及其食物资源。考古学可以很好地理解采集者、农民、牧场主和牧场主如何通过可持续或不可持续的方式利用这些旱地资源。蒙古南部的戈壁沙漠是一个研究很少的旱地草原地区，至少有4万年的人类占领历史，长期记录着剧烈的环境变化。德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的Arlene Rosen博士将带领一个由蒙古和美国考古学家以及环境专家组成的团队前往蒙古南部戈壁的Ikh Nart自然保护区，以研究过去5000年气候变化期间人类和自然系统的社会、经济和环境动态。考古队将包括蒙古考古学家和学生，他们的遗产来自于牧场维护和利用的悠久文化传统。该项目将受益于蒙古和美国科学家之间关于传统牧民做法、生态知识和文化历史的信息交流，以及重建该地区景观和植被历史的专业知识。这项研究的目的是开发一个模型，用于研究其他地区和戈壁的旱地范围。这项研究将调查戈壁沙漠的人类居民如何在有目的的或由于其对植被和景观的影响而产生的意外后果的情况下，在改变沙漠草原环境方面发挥积极作用。人们普遍认为，古代牧民在半干旱环境中定居时，加速了荒漠化。然而，地貌学和考古植物学的初步证据表明，第一批使用该地区的牛、绵羊-山羊牧民群体可能无意中将北方草原草的种子连同他们的牛群一起带进了该地区的可持续性，从而改善了他们经济生活方式的可持续性。通过挖掘这些早期时期的遗址，该项目将扩大对这些牧民猎人和后来的专门牧民在数千年来气候日益干燥的过程中维持生计的许多方式的了解。通过对文物、聚落结构和动植物遗骸的分析，发掘位于Ikh Nart保护区的Burgny Enger遗址将提供文化历史、生活方式和经济导向的元素。这将与场地附近地貌变化和水源的地貌研究相配合。其结果将是世界旱地草原地区可持续实践的整体图景和路线图。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Climate change over the past 11,000 years has had a profound impact on semi-arid and arid rangelands worldwide, with the most severe desiccation accelerating over the last 5,000 years. Human populations which depend on these regions for their livelihood have had to adapt to these changes and learn to manage these landscapes and their food resources over the course of millennia. Archaeology is well-positioned to understand how foragers, farmers, pastoralists, and ranchers have used these dryland resources through time in sustainable or unsustainable ways. The Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia is a yet little-studied region of dryland steppe, which has had at least 40,000 years of human occupation, and a long record of dramatic environmental change. Dr. Arlene Rosen, of the University of Texas at Austin, will lead a team of Mongolian and US archaeologists, and environmental specialists to the Ikh Nart Nature Reserve in the southern Mongolian Gobi in order to study the social, economic, and environmental dynamics of human and natural systems during episodes of climate change over the past 5,000 years. The team will include Mongolian archaeologists and students whose heritage derives from a long cultural tradition of rangeland maintenance and use. The project will benefit from the exchange of information between Mongolian and US scientists about traditional herding practices, ecological knowledge, and culture histories, combined with expertise in reconstructing landscape and vegetation histories for the region. The aim is to develop a model for studying dry-land ranges of other regions as well as the Gobi.This research will investigate how human inhabitants of the Gobi Desert took an active role in altering the desert-steppe environments either with purposeful intent or as a result of unintended consequences of their impact on vegetation and landscapes. It is commonly believed that ancient pastoralists accelerated desertification when they settled in semi-arid environments. However, preliminary evidence from geomorphology and archaeological botany suggests that the first cattle, sheep-goat pastoralist groups to use this region might have improved the sustainability of the area by inadvertently bringing in the seeds of northern steppe grasses along with their herds, thus improving the sustainability of their economic way of life. By excavating sites from these early time periods, the project will expand knowledge of the many ways in which these herder-hunters and later specialized herders were able to maintain their livelihood over the course of thousands of years of increasing climatic desiccation. The excavation of the Burgasny Enger site, in the Ikh Nart Reserve will provide elements of culture history, lifeways, and economic orientation through the analyses of artifacts, settlement structures and plant and animal remains. This will be paired with geomorphological studies of landscape change and water sources in the immediate vicinity of the site. The result will be a holistic picture and roadmap to sustainable practices in dry-land steppe regions of the world.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.