Doctoral Dissertation Research: Diet Alteration in a High Altitude Environment

这个博士论文项目研究了动态适应机制和文化互动，有助于大规模持续的人类职业的高海拔环境。海拔超过2500米的高海拔环境对人类的适应带来了严重的生物，生态和后勤挑战。虽然人们认识到，数千年来，人类只是短暂地利用了这些环境，但人类全年持续占据这些地方的催化剂仍然是一个有争议的问题。该项目在一个平均海拔超过4500米的地区研究这一问题，重点是引进适应寒冷的驯化物种，这些物种被认为对人类的永久居住做出了重大贡献。然而，该地区的史前考古学还处于起步阶段。这些高海拔地区可以为人类学家提供适当的实验室，以研究新技术和互动对生活在高海拔极端地区的人们的影响。学者们必须转向这些地区，以发现人类参与的原因和过程。使用一个理论框架，将高海拔觅食者的风险降低和优化模型与文化接触动力学相结合，博士生及其同事开发了一系列假设，试图捕捉当地居民在该地区强大的自然约束下采取的风险管理策略。这些假设进行评估，通过一个综合方案的挖掘在一个网站与分层文化序列。该项目解决了文化历史重要性的主要问题，以了解高海拔地区的持续长期占领，并记录了一个全新的，可能是前所未有的文化复合体。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是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的支持。

This doctoral dissertation project examines the dynamic adaptive mechanisms and cultural interactions that have contributed to large-scale sustained human occupations of high-altitude environments. High-elevation environments exceeding 2500 meters above sea level pose severe biological, ecological, and logistical challenges for human adaptation. While it is recognized that humans have used such settings on an ephemeral basis for thousands of years, catalysts of sustained year-round human occupation of such places remain a matter of debate. This project examines this issues in a region with an average elevation of over 4500 meters above sea level and focuses on the introduction of cold-adapted domesticated species which are believed to have contributed significantly to permanent human occupation. However, the prehistoric archaeology of the area is in its infancy. Such high-altitude zones can provide anthropologists with appropriate laboratories to examine the impact of novel technologies and interactions on people living in high-elevation extremes. It is to such regions that scholars must turn to discover the causes and process of human engagements. Using a theoretical framework blending risk-reduction and optimization-based models of high-altitude foragers with culture contact dynamics, the doctoral student and colleagues develop hypotheses that attempt to capture the range of risk-management strategies adopted by local occupants given the region's formidable natural constraints. These hypotheses are evaluated via an integrated program of excavation at a site with a well-stratified cultural sequence. The project addresses major questions of culture-historic importance for understanding the sustained long-term occupation at high elevations and documents an entirely new and potentially unprecedented cultural complex.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.