Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Production of Agriculturally Valuable Soils

在整个巴西亚马孙下游盆地，对改良的人类改良土壤或亚马逊黑土(ADE)的研究揭示了亚马逊原住民与不同环境相互作用的复杂方式。虽然在欧洲人到来之前，对ADE的研究已经证明了它在复杂社会发展中的重要性，但关于欧洲人殖民亚马逊期间ADE的转变，还没有任何重要的研究。研究人员将收集和分析位于新谷河和亚马逊河交汇处的卡拉泽多遗址的ADE土壤样本，以研究该遗址前殖民、殖民和现代占领之间ADE转变的过程和原因。这项研究将提供有关ADE土壤转化和与其生产相关的政治经济的生态学和人类学知识。殖民主义在该地区造成的破裂，为确定最初面向自给自足农业的ADE生产如何转型以满足新兴资本主义的需求提供了一个理想的机会。在卡拉泽多社区内，该项目将有助于促进对社区考古历史的更多了解，将为保护考古遗址免受未来开发的影响提供激励，将有助于在该遗址发展以社区为基础的旅游项目，并将为社区成员和本科生提供考古培训。该项目还具有巨大的潜力，可持续地为亚马逊地区的农村农业制定富有成效的可持续战略。由于该项目微调了对ADE变异性的复杂性的分析，农业社区可能会利用这一知识，并从ADE的高肥力水平必须提供的更大产量中受益。减少森林砍伐和增加碳固存的机会也使对ADE的研究成为亚马逊地区更可持续发展的重要途径。该项目的研究人员将解决有关该遗址前殖民、殖民和现代占领之间的ADE的化学、物理和文化差异的问题。具体地说，这项研究将试图理解ADE生产背后的意向性，以及这种传统生态知识随着时间的推移而转化。这些土壤是在欧洲人到来后被复制的吗？或者是因为殖民主义而失去了ADE生产的技术和知识？这项研究将通过在不同活动区域内进行挖掘和收集土壤样本来回答这些问题，这些活动区域涵盖了场地的广泛时空范围，目的是了解ADE的增量和系统变化。一旦收集，将对这些样本进行分析，以了解它们的化学、物理和文化成分。这些结果将与档案研究的结果相结合，以深入了解大兴谷-亚马逊地区农业生产和社区模式的历史战略的性质。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Throughout the lower Amazon basin of Brazil, the study of enhanced, human-modified soils, or Amazonian Dark Earth soils (ADE), has shed light on the complex ways in which Native Amazonians interacted with diverse environments. While the study of ADE has demonstrated its importance in the development of complex societies before the arrival of Europeans, there have yet to be any significant studies concerning the transformations of ADE during European colonization of the Amazon. Researchers will collect and analyze samples of ADE soils at the Carrazedo site, located at the confluence of the Xingu and Amazon Rivers, to examine the processes and causes behind transformations of ADE between precolonial, colonial, and modern occupations of the site. This study will provide ecological and anthropological knowledge concerning both the transformations of ADE soils and the political economies associated with their production. The rupture caused by colonialism in this region presents an ideal opportunity to identify the ways in which ADE production, which was originally geared towards subsistence agriculture, transformed to meet the needs of emerging capitalism. Within the Carrazedo community, this project will help to foster greater appreciation of the community's archaeological past, will provide incentive to protect the archaeological site from future development, will contribute to the development of a community-based tourism project at the site, and will provide archaeological training to both community members and undergraduate students. The project also holds great potential towards the ongoing development of productive, yet sustainable strategies for rural agriculture in the Amazon. As the project fine tunes the analyses of the complexities of ADE variability, farming communities may harness this knowledge and benefit from the greater production that high fertility levels of ADE have to offer. Opportunities for less deforestation and greater carbon sequestration also make the study of ADE an important avenue for greater sustainability in the Amazon. Researchers of this project will address questions concerning the chemical, physical, and cultural variability of ADE between precolonial, colonial and modern occupations of the site. Specifically, this study will seek to understand both the intentionality behind ADE production, and the transformation of this traditional ecological knowledge over time. Were these soils being reproduced after the arrival of Europeans? Or were the techniques and knowledge of ADE production lost as a result of colonialism? This study will answer these questions by conducting excavations and collecting soil samples within various activity areas that cover a broad spatial and temporal scope of the site with the intention of understanding the incremental and systematic changes to ADE. Once collected, these samples will be analyzed in order to understand their chemical, physical, and cultural components. These results will then be integrated with findings from archival research in order to gain insight to the nature of historic strategies for agricultural production and community patterning in the greater Xingu-Amazon region.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.