Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Adaptation to Long Term Environmental Unpredictability

该项目研究生存战略如何帮助干旱地区的人们管理环境风险和不确定性。随着全球干旱化的加剧，必须了解当地环境和知识体系在长期内的复杂动态，以帮助维持干旱地区的人类生活方式。这对干旱地区粮食生产至关重要的可耕地尤为重要。考古学通过提供关于人类和环境如何塑造当代景观的深时间视角，为适应性，弹性生存战略的发展提供信息。它还提供了人类与环境相互作用和应对环境变化的各种方式的例子。尽管旱地的传统特征是静止的、不适于居住的和农业边缘的，但许多干旱地区随着时间的推移发生了巨大变化，并有着长期的人类占领历史。该项目的基础是最近的研究，这些研究认为干旱土地是具有丰富自然资源的起伏不定的地貌。这项研究的重点是人类的生存战略，这对气候弹性很重要，因为生存是风险管理系统的核心，与不断变化的气候和环境条件密切相关。该项目将在多年合作实地项目的基础上建立研究伙伴关系，该项目已培训了博士生和本科生。风险管理通常嵌入在文化实践中，包括饮食多样化、食物储存、强化资源生产或资源交换等战略。该项目将研究这些类型的风险缓冲技术如何在受厄尔尼诺气候波动和构造活动影响数千年的极端干旱沿海景观中运作。该项目的重点是一个有着长期占领历史的小山谷。研究人员将分析沉积物样本和各种考古植物和动物遗骸，以确定当地的生存实践和占领期间沿海沙漠微环境的开发。这项工作将把微植物学分析纳入这一全面的生计重建，以调查沿海村民如何管理和采购各种野生和农业资源。 该项目将利用对沉积物的地质考古分析，为该地区建立一个古环境记录，这将把风险管理和资源采购置于当地环境变化的长期历史背景下。该项目将有助于理解不同的生存系统如何与世界各地干旱地区的风险经验相关联。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知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This project investigates how subsistence strategies helped people in an arid region manage environmental risk and uncertainty. As aridification increases worldwide, it is important to understand the complex dynamics of local environments and knowledge systems over long timescales to help sustain human lifeways in arid zones. This is especially important for arable areas that are crucial for food production within arid regions. Archaeology informs the development of adaptive, resilient subsistence strategies by offering a deep-time perspective on how humans and the environment shaped contemporary landscapes. It also provides examples of the diverse ways that humans have interacted with the environment and dealt with environmental change. Despite traditional characterizations of drylands as static, uninhabitable, and agriculturally marginal, many arid zones have changed dramatically over time and have long histories of human occupation. This project builds on recent studies contending that arid lands are fluctuating landscapes with rich natural resources. This research focuses on human subsistence strategies, which are important for climate resiliency because subsistence is central to risk management systems and deeply tied to shifting climate and environmental conditions. The project will generate research partnerships building upon a multi-year collaborative field project that has trained both doctoral and undergraduate students. Risk management is typically embedded in cultural practice and includes strategies like diet diversification, food storage, intensified resource production, or resource exchange. This project will examine how these types of risk buffering techniques operated within a hyperarid coastal landscape, which has been impacted for millennia by El Niño climatic fluctuations and tectonic activity. The project focuses on a small valley with a long-term occupation history. The researchers will analyze sediment samples and various archaeological plant and animal remains to determine local subsistence practices and the exploitation of coastal desert microenvironments during the occupation. The work will incorporate microbotanical analyses into this comprehensive subsistence reconstruction to investigate how coastal villagers managed and procured diverse wild and agricultural resources. The project will use geoarchaeological analyses of sediments to create a paleoenvironmental record for the region, and this will contextualize risk management and resource procurement within a long-term history of local environmental change. The project will contribute to understanding how different subsistence systems relate to experiences of risk in arid regions worldwide.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.