New Insights from Legacy Archaeology Collections

来自加州大学伯克利分校和旧金山州立大学的研究人员将对世界各地的人们在许多河流和沿海地区用贝壳和其他材料建造的令人印象深刻的土丘进行研究。5000多年来，土著居民创造了以这种人工山丘为主的沿海景观，这些山丘是用数吨贝类建造的，为研究数千年来的社会和环境变化留下了遗产。考古学可以为人们如何以及为什么建造这些土丘景观提供新的见解，在这些土丘景观中，贝壳被用来建造建筑特征（金字塔、山脊、人行道、广场）、建造墓地和建造高架村庄。研究贝壳丘的一个主要挑战是，世界各地沿海地区的迅速发展使许多贝壳丘受到严重破坏。该项目将开发和实施新的创新方法，以处理从被摧毁的遗址中恢复的“遗产”博物馆藏品。研究人员将对贝壳丘的性质产生新的见解，为本科生和研究生提供考古和博物馆方法方面的培训，并为突出这些地方的重要文化遗产的公共宣传项目做出贡献。该项目的一个核心内容将是与当地部落、社区成员、博物馆和市政府合作，开展一项有关贝壳丘的公共宣传计划。研究小组的成员将更好地了解那些使用新技术建造土丘景观的人，以突出他们的经济、社会组织和殡葬/仪式实践。这项研究将包括对从现在被破坏的遗址中恢复的博物馆藏品进行细致的再分析，采用恢复植物遗骸和淀粉颗粒的新方法，使用分子指纹识别小动物骨骼，调查“微型”文物，使用最先进的技术确定材料的年代，并采用计算机生成的制图方法。研究将集中在旧金山湾区（加州北部）的贝壳丘上，那里曾经有数百个遗址点缀在海岸线上，后来被城市发展破坏了。西伯克利的贝壳堆是这些土堆中最大和最古老的一个，将作为一个测试案例。菲比赫斯特人类学博物馆（Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology）收藏的20世纪50年代（被毁前）发掘的考古材料，为研究博物馆物品和土壤、培训学生和评估这个重要地方4000多年的历史提供了一个难得的机会。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。

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University will undertake the study of impressive mounds constructed of shell and other materials by people worldwide in many riverine and coastal places. For more than 5000 years, indigenous groups created coastal landscapes dominated by such artificial hills built from many tons of shellfish that left a legacy from which to study social and environmental change over millennia. Archaeology can provide new insights about how and why people built these mounded landscapes where shell was used to build architectural features (pyramids, ridges, walkways, plazas), to create mortuary mounds, and to construct elevated villages. A major challenge in the study of shell mounds is that many have been heavily damaged by the rapid development of coastal areas worldwide. This project will develop and implement new and innovative methods for working with "legacy" museum collections recovered from sites before they were destroyed. Researchers will generate new insights about the nature of shell mounds, provide training for undergraduate and graduate students in archaeological and museum methods, and contribute to a public outreach program highlighting the significant cultural heritage of these places. A centerpiece of this project will be the development of a public outreach program about shell mounds in collaboration with local tribes, community members, museums, and city governments. Members of the research team will engender a better understanding of the people who built mounded landscapes using new techniques to highlight their economies, social organizations, and mortuary/ceremonial practices. The research will involve the fine-grained reanalysis of museum collections recovered from sites now destroyed employing new methods for recovering botanical remains and starch grains, identifying small animal bones using molecular fingerprinting, investigating "micro" artifacts, dating materials using state-of-the art techniques, and employing computer-generated mapping approaches. Research will focus on the shell mounds in the greater San Francisco Bay Area (northern California) where hundreds of sites once dotted the shoreline before their destruction by urban development. The West Berkeley shell mound, one of the largest and oldest of these mounds, will serve as a test case. Archaeological materials from the 1950s excavation (before its destruction) now curated in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology provide an exceptional opportunity for implementing new analytical approaches for the study of museum objects and soils, for training students, and for evaluating the history of this important place over more than 4000 years.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.