Population Growth and Human Behavioral Change

人口增长和人类行为变化

• 批准号: 1939019
• 负责人: Robert Kelly
• 金额: $ 9.44万
• 依托单位: University of Wyoming
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-03-01 至 2023-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1939019&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Population; Growth; Human; Behavioral; Change

Robert Kelly and his research team will investigate the relationships between environmental change and human population growth and decline on human behavior over a 12,000-year period in northwest Wyoming. With its ability to study long spans of time, archaeology is uniquely positioned to study, as in a laboratory, the impact of these two crucial variables on human societies. In doing so, this research helps determine if environmental change, including both long-term trends and short-term fluctuations, or human population density individually are sufficient to produce change in human behavior, or if the greatest change is produced by their combined effect. Given that world population will reach 11 billion by AD 2100, and on-going environmental changes, planning for the future should make use of the best laboratory available, deep human and environmental history. Three graduate students will assist in this analysis and use the site’s data for their dissertations. Continuing a long tradition, Kelly will use the site’s analysis in public lectures to discuss the impact of environment and population on human behavior.The project employs existing data, e.g., pollen cores from nearby lakes and a regional database of radiocarbon dates, to reconstruct environment and regional human population. The project’s main contribution is analysis of evidence of human behavioral change based on data recovered from an archaeological site, Alm Shelter, recently excavated by Kelly and his team in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. Alm Shelter provides a 12,000-year record of human use, and, lying beneath an overhanging cliff, is dry and thus provides excellent preservation of organic materials. Often, the layers of earth that comprise a site have been disturbed, with artifacts moved about by burrowing animals or human activities such as digging pits. Thinking of an archaeological site as a book that one reads from the bottom up, such disturbances move paragraphs – artifacts and bones – from one chapter to another, making the book difficult to read. But that is not the case at Alm Shelter; this site’s layers are intact and accumulated at a slow rate that remained constant over time. This permits a unique analysis. Archaeologists use a statistical method known as an “age-depth model” to assign an age-range to artifacts based on their depth. Given this site’s careful excavation, a tight age-range can be assigned to literally every single artifact, bone, and other item recovered from the site. This allows a new analytical approach, one where the changing abundances of artifacts and other remains can be examined as distributions of age-ranges. These distributions can then be statistically analyzed to determine when different kinds of artifacts, such as projectile points, or different kinds of animal remains are changing in sync and how those changes relate to the known environmental and human population changes of the region’s past. Using artifacts, and discarded plant and animal remains as evidence of past human behavior, this analysis provides a way to examine how behavior changed in relation to environmental changes and human population density.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.

罗伯特·凯利和他的研究团队将在怀俄明州西北部12000年的时间里调查环境变化与人口增长和人类行为下降之间的关系。考古学具有研究长时间跨度的能力，在研究这两个关键变量对人类社会的影响方面具有独特的地位，就像在实验室中一样。在这样做的过程中，这项研究有助于确定环境变化，包括长期趋势和短期波动，或者人口密度是否单独足以导致人类行为的变化，或者最大的变化是否是它们共同作用的结果。考虑到到公元2100年世界人口将达到110亿，以及持续的环境变化，规划未来应该利用现有的最好的实验室，深厚的人类和环境历史。三名研究生将协助进行这项分析，并使用该网站的数据撰写论文。延续了悠久的传统，凯利将在公开讲座中使用该网站的分析来讨论环境和人口对人类行为的影响。该项目利用现有的数据，例如来自附近湖泊的花粉岩心和一个地区放射性碳测年数据库，以重建环境和地区人口。该项目的主要贡献是基于从考古遗址阿尔姆庇护所恢复的数据分析人类行为变化的证据，该遗址最近由凯利和他的团队在怀俄明州的大角山挖掘。ALM避难所提供了12000年的人类使用记录，并且位于悬崖下，是干燥的，因此提供了良好的有机材料保存。通常，构成遗址的土层受到了干扰，文物被挖洞的动物或人类活动(如挖坑)移动。将考古遗址视为一本自下而上阅读的书，这种干扰会将段落-文物和骨骼-从一个章节移动到另一个章节，使这本书难以阅读。但在阿尔姆庇护所，情况并非如此；这个遗址的土层完好无损，并以缓慢的速度积累，随着时间的推移保持不变。这允许进行独特的分析。考古学家使用一种被称为“年龄-深度模型”的统计方法，根据文物的深度为其分配一个年龄范围。鉴于该遗址的仔细挖掘，从该遗址发现的几乎每一件文物、骨骼和其他物品都可以被指定一个严格的年龄范围。这使得一种新的分析方法成为可能，在这种方法中，文物和其他遗骸的丰度变化可以作为年龄范围的分布来检查。然后可以对这些分布进行统计分析，以确定不同类型的文物(如投射点)或不同类型的动物遗骸何时同步变化，以及这些变化与该地区过去已知的环境和人口变化之间的关系。使用人工制品和被丢弃的动植物遗骸作为过去人类行为的证据，这项分析提供了一种方法来检查行为是如何随着环境变化和人口密度的变化而变化的。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。