CNH2-L: The Dynamics of Socio-Environmental Systems, Urban Depopulation, and Societal Stability

该项目将汇集一个跨学科的科学家团队，以解决考古学中最引人注目的问题之一：古典时期的崩溃是由环境变化引起的吗？这一时期的社会急剧变化涉及统治者和统治机构的崩溃，以及城市人口的减少，在某些情况下，整个地区。几十年来，考古学家和古生态学家一直在争论环境变化在崩溃中的作用，但很难在环境和社会变化之间建立因果关系。关于环境变化的原因和后果的辩论大多是由于缺乏旨在解决环境变化影响社会和环境系统的具体方式的跨学科项目。这种跨学科的方法对于证明社会崩溃的原因至关重要，使该项目对更普遍的政治崩溃研究具有变革性。该项目包括STEM教育和教育者发展;提高公众科学素养和参与度，支持妇女和代表性不足的少数民族充分参与STEM研究，以及发展多元化，具有全球竞争力的STEM劳动力。STEM教育将涉及为K12学生开发教育资源。将通过继续开发双语网站和为东道社区举办讲习班，促进公众的科学素养和参与。有意义的研究经验将提供给12名本科生和研究生，其中许多人是妇女和在干少数民族代表性不足的成员。合作将加强跨学科的方法来理解社会崩溃和环境变化，并为未来的研究建立新的合作关系。该项目整合了考古学，地质考古学，古生态学，古气候学和生物考古学的实地考察和实验室分析，旨在测试有关环境变化和人类对社会崩溃中环境影响的作用的假设。先前对古典时期崩溃的研究往往集中在特定的地点或小区域。本研究集中在两个相互关联，但对比，生态区域：亚热带低地和温带高原地区。这种创新的社会崩溃的比较方法允许审查社会环境系统的人类和环境组成部分及其相互关系，促进或抑制在这两个地区的社会崩溃的恢复力和脆弱性。这两个遗址的考古发掘将研究环境和景观退化对古典晚期和后古典早期土地利用、国内经济、人类健康和饮食的影响。地质考古学研究将通过侧重于农业梯田来审查土地使用和景观退化的变化，而洪泛区地貌分析将审查人类和气候对河流系统的影响。将对湖泊沉积物岩心及其生物和化学特征进行调查，以确定环境变化和人类景观的影响。年代学的精确性将通过放射性碳、古地磁学和光释光测年的结合来实现，而年代学建模将更有效地将不同的数据集联系起来。通过结合这些不同的数据集，这项研究将提供一个新的详细的古气候记录的研究区域。研究结果将为人类当前和未来面临的问题提供一个长期的视角，有助于建立长期环境变化和人类对环境影响的模型，并对未来的土地使用规划和资源管理产生影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

The project will bring together a transdisciplinary team of scientists to address one of the most compelling questions in archaeology: was the Classic-period collapse caused by environmental change? This period of dramatic social change involved the collapse of rulers and ruling institutions as well as the depopulation of cities and, in some cases, entire regions. For decades, archaeologists and paleoecologists have debated the role of environmental change in the collapse but have had difficulty in establishing causal connections between environmental and social change. Much of the debate over the causes and consequences of environmental change results from the lack of transdisciplinary projects designed to address the specific ways in which environmental change impacted social and environmental systems. Such a transdisciplinary approach is crucial for demonstrating the causes of societal collapse, making the project transformative for research on political collapse more generally. This project includes STEM education and educator development; increased public scientific literacy and engagement, support of full participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM research, and development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce. STEM education will involve development of educational resources for students in K12 to college. Public scientific literacy and engagement will be facilitated through the continued development of a bilingual website, and through workshops for host communities. Meaningful research experiences will be provided to twelve undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom are women and members of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Collaborations will enhance transdisciplinary approaches to understanding societal collapse and environmental change, and forge new collaborations for future research.The project integrates archaeological, geoarchaeological, paleoecological, paleoclimatological, and bioarchaeological fieldwork and laboratory analyses designed to test hypotheses concerning the role of environmental change and human impact on the environment in societal collapse. Prior research on the Classic-period collapse has tended to focus on specific sites or small regions. This study focusses on two interrelated, but contrasting, ecological regions: a semi-tropical lowland and a temperate highland region. This innovative comparative approach to societal collapse allows for the examination of the human and environmental components of the socio-environmental system and their interrelationships that promote or inhibit resilience and vulnerabilities to societal collapse in the two regions. Archaeological excavations at the two sites will examine the impact of environmental and landscape degradation on land use, domestic economy, and human health and diet during the Late Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Geoarchaeological research will examine changes in land use and landscape degradation by focusing on agricultural terraces while floodplain geomorphologic analysis will examine human and climatological impacts on the river system. Lake sediment cores and their biological and chemical signatures will be investigated to determine environmental change and human landscape impacts. Chronological precision will be achieved through a combination of radiocarbon, paleomagnetism, and optically stimulated luminescence dating, while chronological modeling will more effectively link the diverse datasets. By combining these different datasets, this research will provide a novel detailed paleoclimatological record for the study region. The results will provide a long-term perspective on current and future problems facing humanity by contributing to models of long-term environmental change and human impacts on the environment with implications for future land use planning and resource management.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.