Collaborative Research: Changes In Landscape, Labor And Livelihood In Long Chronological Context

本项目考察家庭和社区在应对经济和环境不确定性时所采取的策略。调查的重点是全球和当地食糖市场的波动、政治变化、人口减少和环境变化如何影响田地和工厂工人的家庭和社区，从殖民时代征召的土著以及被奴役和混血儿社区开始。考古重建将现在和过去的压力源、风险评估和在其历史背景下的反应置于一个视角，这是无法通过关注任何一个时间点或仅通过文献来获得的。该项目有助于在深刻的文化变革时期对经济趋势、人与环境的相互作用、复原力和身份进行比较评估，并促进对社区发展采取细致入微的方法。它包括多个参与者的协作和教育机会。研究人员与当地社区接触，以确定他们认为研究的哪些组成部分在应用于政策和社区恢复力方面最有用。该项目的历时性意味着它考察了考古学上揭示的过去的过程是如何影响当代生计的，以及面对快速的经济变化时它们的多样化。全球经济一体化、农业集约化和经济作物生产的扩大已经改变并继续影响着曾经受到殖民统治的社区。研究人员对全球经济一体化如何影响当地社区和家庭的恢复力策略特别感兴趣。人们是如何评估和应对风险的？他们采用了什么替代市场参与的方法？研究区域拥有复杂的土著农业社区，殖民者征召这些社区在当地的糖厂工作。对家庭适应策略恢复力的考古方法将使全球经济因素能够在历史糖社区的背景下进行检查。古环境重建、集约化农业对地区土壤和水道影响的地貌评估以及档案分析将对这些遗址的考古研究进行补充和背景化。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 examines the strategies that households and communities undertake when dealing with economic and environmental uncertainty. The investigation focuses on how global and local fluctuation in sugar markets, political shifts, demographic decline, and environmental change, have affected the households and communities of field and mill workers, beginning with conscripted indigenous as well as enslaved and mestizo communities of the colonial era. Archaeological reconstructions situate present and past stressors, evaluations of risk, and responses within their historical context, a perspective that is not accessible through a focus on any single point of time, or through documents alone. This project contributes to the comparative assessment of economic trends, human-environmental interactions, resilience, and identity during periods of profound cultural change, and facilitate nuanced approaches to community development. It includes collaboration and education opportunities for multiple participants. The researchers engage local communities to determine what components of the study they find most useful in terms of application to policy and community resilience. The diachronic nature of the project means that it examines how past processes, revealed archaeologically, have influenced contemporary livelihoods and their diversification in the face of rapid economic change. Global economic integration, agricultural intensification, and the expansion of cash crop production has transformed and continues to affect communities that were once subjected to colonial domination. The researchers are specifically interested in how global economic integration has affected resilience strategies of local communities and households. How have people evaluated and responded to risk? What alternatives to market participation have they adopted? The study region hosted complex indigenous agricultural communities, which colonists conscripted to work in local sugar mills. An archaeological approach to the resilience of household adaptive strategies will enable global economic factors to be examined within the context of historical sugar communities. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions, geomorphological assessments of the impact of intensive agriculture on area soils and waterways, and archival analysis will complement and contextualize the archaeological study of these sites.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.