Archaeological Investigation of the Climatological, Political, and Demographic Drivers of Conflict

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在犹他大学Brian Codding博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位研究北美西南部史前冲突的环境和社会驱动因素的早期职业科学家。该项目将有助于制定一项考古研究计划，以评估冲突的多变量驱动因素。开发正式的量化模型将使考古学家能够在广阔的社会科学前沿从事冲突研究。这项研究将开发和测试可以解释史前冲突中的变异性的一般假设，并产生一个可供未来研究人员访问的大型高分辨率数据集。此外，该项目将通过调查一个一直未得到系统研究的地区的冲突和改善最大的西南考古数据库的数据质量，为西南考古做出贡献。气候变化、政治不稳定和人口压力都是助长现代世界冲突的因素。不太清楚的是，这些现象是否推动了史前人类的暴力行为，以及这些变量在多大程度上加剧了数百年或数千年的冲突。该项目将通过以下方式解决这些问题：(1)开发计算工具来衡量史前冲突的变化，并将产生的数据存储在一个集中的在线平台上；(2)开发将个人动机与宏观模式联系起来的通用模型，以评估冲突的驱动因素；以及(3)使用考古案例研究来测试模型预测。该项目将有助于开发一项考古研究计划，以评估群体间暴力的多变量驱动因素。开发正式的量化模型将使考古学家能够在广阔的社会科学前沿从事冲突研究。该项目将培训研究生和本科生生成大型量化数据库和用于检验研究假设的方法。它还将培训一名空间建模博士后，这将有助于他在科学考古学方面追求终身教职。该项目还将与犹他大学本科生研究机会计划合作，招收在STEM中代表性不足的学生，并对他们进行考古学、骨学和统计学方法的培训，并向他们介绍项目区的史前知识。该项目将与美国印第安人资源中心合作，招募美国印第安人学生参与该项目。这一点特别重要，因为项目区毗邻纳瓦霍民族。项目成果将通过项目网站上托管的交互式网络应用程序和犹他州自然历史博物馆的公开演示向公众分发，该博物馆每年有超过45,000名K-12学生和教育工作者参观，其中许多人来自农村、部落和难民社区。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Brian Codding at the University of Utah, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the environmental and social drivers of prehistoric conflict in the North American southwest. This project will help to develop an archaeological research program to evaluate the multivariate drivers of conflict. Developing formal quantitative models will allow archaeologists to engage with conflict research on a broad social science frontier. This research will develop and test general hypotheses that can explain variability in prehistoric conflict and produce a large high-resolution dataset that can be accessed by future researchers. Further, the project will contribute to southwestern archaeology by investigating conflict in a region that has been systematically understudied and improving data quality for the largest southwestern archaeological database. Climate change, political instability, and demographic pressure are all factors responsible for promoting conflict in the modern world. It is less clear whether these phenomena drove violent behavior during human prehistory and the degree to which these variables promote conflict over centuries or millennia. This project will address these issues by (1) developing computational tools to measure variation in prehistoric conflict and storing the resulting data on a centralized online platform, (2) developing general models that bridge individual motivations with macro-scale patterns to evaluate the drivers of conflict, and (3) testing model predictions using an archaeological case study. This project will help to develop an archaeological research program to evaluate the multivariate drivers of intergroup violence. Developing formal quantitative models will allow archaeologists to engage with conflict research on a broad social science frontier. This project will train graduate and undergraduate students in the generation of large quantitative databases and the methods used to test research hypotheses. It will also train one postdoctoral fellow in spatial modeling, which will aid in his pursuit of a tenure-track position in scientific archaeology. This project will also work with the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program to recruit students who are underrepresented in STEM and train them in archaeological, osteological, and statistical methods, as well as introducing them to the prehistory of the project area. The project will work with the American Indian Resource Center to recruit American Indian students to work on the project. This is particularly important as the project area is adjacent to the Navajo Nation. Project results will be distributed to the public through interactive web applications hosted on the project web site and public presentations at the Natural History Museum of Utah, which is visited by over 45,000 K-12 students and educators annually, many of whom travel from rural, Tribal, and refugee communities.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.