An Analysis of Cultural Interaction

南卫理公会大学（Southern Methodist University）的卡伦·卢波（Karen Lupo）博士将带领一个国际研究小组，调查具有不同种族身份、生存取向和政治组织的人群之间合作互惠关系的本质。史前人口之间的相互作用被广泛认为是引发文化变革的过程，并对语言、宗教、技术、社会政治组织、经济模式和人口的传播产生了深远的影响。一些最深刻的影响发生在史前粮食生产（农民和牧民）人口扩散并迁移到新的地区时，在那里他们遇到了不生产粮食的土著狩猎采集者或觅食者。人口之间的相互作用可以采取许多不同的形式，从完全同化到竞争性排斥。互动也可以导致形成合作的相互关系，在这种关系中，两个群体保持他们的种族身份，但经常以互利的方式互动（也称为互惠主义）。互惠互动在当代的觅食者和食物生产者中是众所周知的，但很难用现有的知识来解释。以前的学术研究主要集中在经济交换作为这些相互作用背后的驱动力，但观察表明，这些相互关系非常复杂，对参与者具有经济、社会和营养效益。研究人员现在面临的问题是，为什么一些种群的相互作用会导致互惠关系的建立，而另一些则不会？一个同样重要的问题是，考古学家如何在考古记录中认识到类似的合作安排？民族考古学使用人类学的方法来识别不同行为过程的物质痕迹，它处于调查所有这些问题的独特位置。这个研究项目将通过向中非研究人员提供民族考古学培训，帮助建立学术能力。来自美国和中非共和国的一个国际研究小组将使用民族考古学方法研究中非雨林中采集者和粮食生产者之间的合作互惠互动。中非雨林是世界上最后几个存在这种相互关系的地区之一。该小组将通过对采集者和农民的观察和访谈，收集有关如何维持这些相互作用的信息。该团队还将收集这些相互作用产生的物质痕迹的信息，这些信息可以作为识别考古记录中互惠相互作用的框架。其中包括来自头发样本的饮食和营养健康的生物标志物，以及通过动物记录和家庭清单的内容对经济和社会互动的代理测量。这个跨学科项目将创建一个独特的交叉数据集，记录互惠互动是如何工作的，并反映在材料记录中。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。

Dr. Karen Lupo of Southern Methodist University will lead a team of international researchers to investigate the nature of cooperative mutualistic relationships among populations with different ethnic identities, subsistence orientations and political organization. Interactions among prehistoric populations are widely recognized as processes that ignited cultural change and had far-reaching consequences influencing the spread of languages, religion, technology, sociopolitical organizations, economic patterns and human demography. Some of the most profound impacts occurred when prehistoric food producing (farmers and herders) populations spread and migrated into new areas where they encountered indigenous hunter-gatherer's or foragers who did not produce food. Interactions among populations can take many different forms, from complete assimilation to competitive exclusion. Interactions can also result in the formation of cooperative interrelationships in which both groups maintain their ethnic identities but regularly interact in ways that are mutually beneficial (also called mutualism). Mutualistic interactions are well-known among contemporary foragers and food producers but are difficult to explain with current knowledge. Previous scholarship focused largely on economic exchange as the driving force behind these interactions, but observations show that these interrelationships are very complicated and have economic, social and nutritional benefits for the participants. The question faced by researchers now is why some population interactions result in the establishment of mutualistic interrelationships and others do not? An equally important question concerns how archeologists might recognize similar kinds of cooperative arrangements in the archaeological record? Ethnoarchaeology, which uses anthropological methods to identify the material traces of different behavioral processes, is uniquely situated to investigate all of these questions. This research project will help build scholarly capacity by providing ethnoarchaeological training to Central African researchers.An international team of researchers from the United States and Central African Republic will use ethnoarchaeological methods to study cooperative mutualistic interactions among foragers and food producers in the Central African rainforest, one of the last remaining areas in the world where these interrelationships persist. The team will collect information on how these interactions are maintained through observations and interviews with foragers and farmers. The team will also collect information on the material traces that result from these interactions and that can serve as a framework for identifying mutualistic interactions in the archeological record. These include biomarkers of diet and nutritional health from hair samples and proxy measurements of economic and social interactions through the contents of faunal records and household inventories. This interdisciplinary project will create a unique intersecting dataset that documents how mutualistic interactions work and are reflected in the material record.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.