Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Impacts of War: A Long Term Perspective

战争对人类的经济活动和健康有着深远的影响。确定战争的影响是了解战争的真正代价的关键一步，有助于认识到生活在战区的人们如何应对长期的风险。然而，理解战争、经济和卫生之间的复杂关系仍然是一个巨大的挑战。困难来自于战争可能影响生存和福祉的无数途径，反过来，一个人的健康如何影响他们对暴力的敏感性。此外，这类研究需要大量的纵向数据集，在现代情况下，由于在暴力持续地区工作的危险，可能很难获得这些数据集。考古学可以通过以下方式提供对战争的关键见解：1)关注暴力冲突的长期影响；2)评估更能代表人类共同进化历史的小规模社会之间的战争；3)允许研究人员研究经历战争的人口，而不会让研究人员或参与者处于危险之中。这项研究项目将有助于理解人们处理冲突的复杂方式，以及鼓励个人采取风险倾向或风险厌恶的战时经济战略的社会生态条件。具体地说，这项研究试图解释生活在战区的人们如何以最大限度地满足其经济和健康需求的可能性，同时将暴力遭遇的可能性降至最低的方式，积极应对战争。此外，它还将评估为什么一些人决定维持其他人早已放弃的高风险战时经济活动。研究团队还将生成新的数据集，用于评估古代安第斯山脉战争的时间和严重性，同时为传统上在STEM领域或实验室中代表性不足的学生创造教育机会。在这篇博士论文中，NSF的资金将用于确定考古遗址的年代，并进行稳定的同位素分析，以重建战时的饮食策略和流动性。该项目使用的材料包括从秘鲁纳斯卡高地出土的人类骨骼遗骸，这些遗骸来自中期晚期(LIP；公元1000-1450年)的墓地。博士生Weston McCool和他的团队之前进行的研究揭示了该地区在中期晚期的一种慢性、自相残杀的战争模式，其特征是男女和所有年龄段的致命性创伤发生率都显著高于前一中地平线时期(公元500-1000)。唇部疾病的发病率也显着增加，高比例的病理表明营养缺乏。McCool的团队将使用挖掘出的人类骨骼材料中的小样本来评估每个人的稳定同位素化学。稳定碳同位素分析将揭示饮食中的植物成分，而稳定氮分析将评估狩猎和放牧“该地区肉类蛋白的主要来源”在战时发生了怎样的变化。稳定的氧同位素化学将被用来阐明流动的模式，通过评估在这一时期嘴唇种群是否限制了它们在整个景观中的移动。这些综合分析将揭示嘴唇人如何改变经济活动，以应对与战争有关的暴力风险。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。

Warfare has profound influences on human economic activities and health. Characterizing the effects of warfare is a critical step towards understanding the true costs of war and helps to realize how people living in war zones cope with chronic risk. Nevertheless, it remains a substantial challenge to understand the complex relationships between warfare, economics, and health. Difficulties arise from the myriad pathways through which warfare can affect subsistence and well-being, and in-turn, how one's heath can impact their susceptibility to violence. Moreover, studies of this kind require large, longitudinal datasets, which can be difficult to obtain in modern contexts due to the dangers of working in areas with ongoing violence. Archaeology can provide critical insights into warfare by 1) focusing on the long-term impacts of violent conflict, 2) assessing warfare among small-scale societies that are more representative of humans shared evolutionary past, and 3) allowing researchers to study populations experiencing war without putting investigators or participants in harm's way. This research project will help to understand the complex ways in which people cope with conflict, and the socioecological conditions that encourage individuals to adopt risk-prone or risk-averse wartime economic strategies. Specifically, this research seeks to explain how people living in warzones proactively respond to warfare in ways that maximize the likelihood of attaining their economic and health needs while minimizing the probability of violent encounters. Further, it will evaluate why some individuals decide to maintain risky wartime economic activities that others have long abandoned. The research team will also generate novel datasets for evaluating the timing and severity of warfare in the ancient Andes, while creating educational opportunities for students that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields or labs.In this doctoral dissertation award NSF funding will be used to date the archaeological sites under consideration and conduct stable isotope analyses to reconstruct wartime dietary strategies and mobility. Materials used for the project include human skeletal remains excavated from the Nasca highlands of Peru from cemeteries dating to the Late Intermediate period (LIP; AD 1000-1450). Previous research conducted by the dissertation student Weston McCool and his team revealed a pattern of chronic, internecine warfare in this region during the Late Intermediate Period, defined by high rates of lethal trauma among both sexes and all age cohorts that are significantly higher than the preceding Middle Horizon period (AD 500-1000). Rates of disease also significantly increased during the LIP as revealed by high percentages of pathologies indicative of nutritional deficiencies. McCool's team will use small samples of bone from the excavated human skeletal material to evaluate each individual's stable isotope chemistry. Stable carbon isotope analysis will reveal dietary plant composition, while stable nitrogen analysis will assess how hunting and herding "the major sources of dietary meat protein in the region" changed during wartime. Stable oxygen isotope chemistry will be used to elucidate patterns of mobility, by evaluating whether the LIP population constrained their movement throughout the landscape during this period. These combined analyses will reveal how LIP peoples altered economic activities in response to the risk of warfare-related violence.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.