Frontier Landscapes and Community Responses

南佛罗里达大学的凯瑟琳·威德曼·亚瑟博士将与来自美国、意大利、法国和埃塞俄比亚的同事一起，探索人类在遭受灾难后如何改变他们的环境和社会习俗。重要的是，该小组建议研究人类冲突对森林的历史影响，以及冲突期间和冲突后人类保护的程度和类型。森林是为周边农业稳定土壤、提供木材、纸张、薪材、清洁空气和生物医药等资源的关键资源。考古学特别适合为人们如何成功地保护或重建基本的森林景观提供过去的解决方案。这项研究期望建立一个与今天非洲大陆人民以及美国有关的模式，以减轻未来气候和社会经济对森林环境的脆弱性。国际团队希望促进不同国家科学家之间在解决问题方面的智力交流，并为几名考古学和环境研究方面的美国研究生提供教育和技能培训。亚瑟和她的研究团队提议研究在巨大的冲突和悲剧之后，人们如何以及是否能够恢复他们的景观，比如历史上的大西洋和红海奴隶贸易造成的后果。该项目计划研究埃塞俄比亚南部自公元13世纪至19世纪的历史定居点周围的200多片森林，这是一个北部和东部各州为贩卖奴隶而遭到袭击的地区。学者们争论的问题是，这些森林是否代表着通过历史保护努力保护的原始“自然”环境，以抵抗外部政治变化，或者森林是否代表着为冲突后的未来提供社会政治和环境弹性的做法的变化。在亚瑟？S博士的领导下，她的团队计划对森林进行小规模测试，以取回土壤样本和文物，更新和重建森林的环境和文化历史。该小组还打算进行环境评估和绘制活森林地图，以及对高地泉水进行核心采样，以获取用于环境重建的历史花粉。该团队预计将构建一个模型，概述过去和现在的文化和环境因素之间的关系，研究生活在各州边界的人们如何能够通过森林保护来抵抗冲突或对冲突具有弹性。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。

Dr. Kathryn Weedman Arthur of the University of South Florida, along with colleagues from the United States, Italy, France, and Ethiopia will explore how humans modified their environment and social practices in the aftermath of inflicted disasters. Importantly, the team proposes to study the historical impacts of human conflict on forests and the extent and type of human conservation practiced during and after conflict. Forests are critical resources for stabilizing soils for surrounding agriculture and providing timber, paper, fuel-wood, clean air, and biomedicine among other resources. Archaeology is particularly suited to offer past solutions for how people successfully conserved or rebuilt essential forest landscapes. This study expects to construct a model relevant today to the peoples of the African continent, as well as the United States in mitigating future climate and socio-economic vulnerabilities to forested environments. The International team wishes to foster intellectual exchange for problem solving between scientists of different nations and offer educational and skill training for several US graduate students in archaeology and environmental studies.Dr. Arthur and her research team propose to study how and if people are able to recuperate their landscape in the aftermath of immense conflict and tragedy, such as that created by the historic Atlantic and Red Sea slave trades. The project proposes to study more than two-hundred forests that surround historic settlements that date from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries AD in southern Ethiopia'a region northern and eastern states raided for the slave trade. Scholars debate over whether these forests represent pristine "natural" environments preserved through historic conservation efforts in resistance to outside political change or if the forests represent change in practices to provide social-political and environmental resilience for the future after conflict. With Dr. Arthur?s leadership, her team plans for small scale testing of the forests to retrieve soil samples and artifacts, to date and reconstruct the environmental and cultural history of the forests. The team also intends to conduct an environmental assessment and map the living forests, as well as core sample the highland springs to obtain historic pollen for environmental reconstruction. The team anticipates the construction of a model outlining the relationship between the past and present cultural and environmental factors examining how people living on the borderlands of states are able to resist or be resilient to conflict through forest conservation.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.