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

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。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事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在犹他大学Brian Codding博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金奖支持一位早期职业科学家调查北美西南部史前冲突的环境和社会驱动因素。这个项目将有助于制定一个考古研究计划，以评估冲突的多元驱动因素。发展正式的定量模型将使考古学家能够在广泛的社会科学前沿从事冲突研究。这项研究将发展和测试可以解释史前冲突变异性的一般假设，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系统研究不足的地区的冲突，并提高西南最大考古数据库的数据质量，为西南考古学做出贡献。气候变化、政治不稳定和人口压力都是导致现代世界冲突的因素。目前尚不清楚这些现象是否在人类史前时期推动了暴力行为，以及这些变量在多大程度上促进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)开发计算工具来测量史前冲突的变化，并将结果数据存储在一个集中的在线平台上；(2)开发通用模型，将个人动机与宏观尺度模式联系起来，以评估冲突的驱动因素；(3)使用考古案例研究测试模型预测。该项目将有助于制定一项考古研究计划，以评估群体间暴力的多元驱动因素。发展正式的定量模型将使考古学家能够在广泛的社会科学前沿从事冲突研究。该项目将训练研究生和本科生如何生成大型定量数据库和检验研究假设的方法。它还将培养一名空间建模博士后，这将有助于他追求科学考古学的终身职位。该项目还将与犹他大学本科生研究机会计划合作，招募在STEM领域代表性不足的学生，并对他们进行考古、骨学和统计方法的培训，并向他们介绍项目区域的史前史。该项目将与美国印第安人资源中心合作，招募美国印第安学生参与该项目。这一点尤其重要，因为项目区域毗邻纳瓦霍族。项目结果将通过项目网站上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讲向公众发布，每年有超过45,000名K-12学生和教育工作者参观该博物馆，其中许多人来自农村、部落和难民社区。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 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.