Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Long Term Cultural Ties Across Environmental Zones

人类具有独特的能力，能够适应和生活在各种具有挑战性的环境中。生活在高海拔地区的群体，如秘鲁安第斯山脉，不仅面临生理挑战，而且面临着重大的环境限制，有可能极大地影响生产性的生存做法。除了这些挑战之外，古代人口还受到印加帝国等大规模政治实体和/或接触后殖民主义的不同程度的影响，这可能改变了传统的生存模式、社区组织和文化习俗。该项目将调查个人和社区如何能够适应，以调解环境挑战和政治/文化变化的影响。拟议的研究将涉及以下问题：这些挑战如何影响人们的生存能力，政治结构的变化如何改变社区组织和文化习俗(即场地使用和太平间做法)，以及马尔卡吉尔卡考古遗址从中期晚期到殖民早期(约公元1000-1640年)的人口构成是否发生变化。这项研究的目的是补充当地考古学家的工作，并为他们提供宝贵的资源，他们正开始构建更详细的人类在以前研究不足的环境中居住的图景。费伦-施密茨博士和沃什伯恩夫人将利用稳定同位素(碳和氮)和古代DNA分析相结合的方法来探索社会经济和生存模式的变化。在整个安第斯山脉的生物考古项目中都可以看到稳定同位素分析或aDNA的使用；然而，结合使用这两种方法的做法并不常见，如果不这样做，可能会限制研究项目的范围，因为每套数据都有可用的限制。通过将这两种方法结合起来，该项目可以解决环境挑战和文化/政治稳定或变化最终如何影响社区组织和日常生活的问题。此外，与南美洲其他区域不同，该区域内的人类aDNA数据代表性不足，阻碍了全面重建南美洲人口密度、历史和相互作用的能力，以及欧洲殖民的影响。为这项研究收集的数据将提供关键信息，这些信息可能会形成对安第斯高地长期人口发展的基本理解。这一奖项反映了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。

Humans have the unique ability to adapt and live in a wide variety of challenging environments. Groups living at high altitudes, like in the Peruvian Andes, experience not only physiological challenges but also significant environmental limitations that have the potential to drastically affect productive subsistence practices. In addition to these challenges, ancient populations were subjected to varying levels of influence of large-scale political entities such as the Inca Empire, and/or post-contact colonialism, which likely changed traditional subsistence patterns, community organization, and cultural practices. This project will investigate how individuals as well as communities were able to adapt in order to mediate the effects of environmental challenges and political/cultural changes. The proposed research will address questions surrounding how these challenges affected people's ability to subsist, how changes in political structure altered community organization and cultural practices (i.e. site usage and mortuary practices), and whether there were changes in population composition at the archaeological site of Marcajirca from the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) through the Early Colonial Period (ca. 1000-1640AD). The goal of this research is to complement the work of and provide valuable resources to local archaeologists who are beginning to construct a more detailed picture of human habitation in previously under-researched environments. Dr. Fehren-Schmitz and Mrs. Washburn will utilize a combination of stable isotope (Carbon and Nitrogen) and ancient DNA analysis in order to explore changes in socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. The use of either stable isotope analysis or aDNA can be seen in bio-archaeological projects throughout the Andes; however, it is not common practice to utilize a combination of both methodologies, which if not done has the potential to limit the scope of research projects because each set of data has usable limitations. By combining these two methodologies, this project can address questions of how environmental challenges and cultural/political stability or change ultimately affected community organization and daily life. Moreover, unlike other regions of South America, the under-representation of human aDNA data from within this region inhibits the ability to fully reconstruct South American population density, history and interaction, as well as the impact of European colonization. The data collected for this research will provide key information that will potentially shape fundamental understanding of long-term population development in the Andean highlands.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.