Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Adaptation to Long Term Environmental Unpredictability

该项目调查了生存策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，了解当地环境和知识系统在长时间尺度上的复杂动态，以帮助维持干旱地区的人类生活方式，这一点非常重要。这对干旱地区粮食生产至关重要的耕地尤其重要。考古学通过提供人类和环境如何塑造当代景观的深度视角，为适应性和弹性生存策略的发展提供了信息。它还提供了人类与环境相互作用以及应对环境变化的各种方式的例子。尽管传统上旱地的特征是静态的、不宜居住的和农业边缘的，许多干旱地区随着时间的推移发生了巨大的变化，并且有很长的人类占领历史。该项目建立在最近的研究基础上，这些研究认为干旱地区是具有丰富自然资源的波动景观。这项研究的重点是人类生存策略，这对气候适应能力很重要，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。该项目将在一个多年的合作领域项目的基础上建立研究伙伴关系，该项目已经培养了博士生和本科生。风险管理通常嵌入文化实践中，包括饮食多样化、食物储存、集约化资源生产或资源交换等策略。该项目将研究这些类型的风险缓冲技术如何在极度干旱的沿海景观中发挥作用，该景观受到El Niño气候波动和构造活动的千年影响。该项目侧重于一个具有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，以确定当地的生存方式和占领期间沿海沙漠微环境的开发。这项工作将把微生物学分析纳入这项全面的生存重建，以调查沿海村民如何管理和获取各种野生和农业资源。该项目将使用沉积物的地质考古分析来创建该地区的古环境记录，这将在当地环境变化的长期历史中建立风险管理和资源采购的背景。该项目将有助于了解世界各地干旱地区不同的生存系统与风险经历之间的关系。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。

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.