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。描述战争的影响是了解战争真正代价的关键一步，并有助于了解生活在战区的人们如何应对长期风险。然而，理解战争、经济和健康之间的复杂关系仍然是一项重大挑战。困难来自战争可能影响生存和福祉的无数途径，以及反过来，一个人的健康如何影响他们对暴力的易感性。此外，这类研究需要大量的纵向数据集，由于在暴力持续的地区工作的危险，在现代背景下很难获得这些数据集。考古学可以通过以下方式为战争提供重要的见解：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过去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群，而不会让调查人员或参与者受到伤害。这个研究项目将有助于理解人们应对冲突的复杂方式，以及鼓励个人采取风险倾向或风险厌恶的战时经济策略的社会生态条件。具体来说，这项研究试图解释生活在战区的人们如何积极应对战争，以最大限度地实现其经济和健康需求的可能性，同时最大限度地减少暴力遭遇的可能性。此外，它还将评估为什么有些人决定维持其他人早已放弃的高风险战时经济活动。该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程度，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，美国国家科学基金会的资助将用于确定正在考虑的考古遗址的年代，并进行稳定同位素分析，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的墓地中挖掘出的人类骨骼遗骸，这些遗骸可以追溯到中晚期（LIP；公元1000-1450年）。论文学生Weston McCool和他的团队之前进行的研究揭示了该地区在中后期的一种慢性，自相残杀的战争模式，其特点是男女和所有年龄组的致命创伤率明显高于之前的中后期（公元500-1000年）。在LIP期间，疾病发病率也显著增加，这表明营养缺乏的病理比例很高。麦库尔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。稳定的碳同位素分析将揭示膳食植物成分，而稳定的氮分析将评估狩猎和放牧（该地区膳食肉类蛋白质的主要来源）在战时是如何变化的。稳定氧同位素化学将通过评估LIP种群在这一时期是否限制了它们在整个景观中的移动来阐明迁移模式。这些综合分析将揭示LIP人民如何改变经济活动以应对与战争有关的暴力风险。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。

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.