Mineral Pigment Provisioning and Utilization in a Long Term Context

人类的特点是复杂的行为和社会互动。了解是什么推动了这些发展，它们何时发生，以及它们如何使人们能够在新的和不断变化的环境中迁移，适应和繁荣，是考古学的突出主题。为了研究这些主题，考古学家经常转向人工制品来源研究，以测试关于流动性，资源使用和社交网络的假设。这项研究将使用矿物颜料的来源，以研究早期和持续的人类对新的和随后变化的环境在传统的背景下。该地区保存了人类占领的深刻时间记录，以及气候和海平面波动，栖息地变化和巨型动物栖息地的考古记录。居住在这一地区的人们不断使用矿物颜料，与饮食，流动性和石器技术的文化转型并行。在这个项目的过程中产生的数据集将与现有的气候，饮食和流动性数据进行比较，以开发对早期人类生活方式的新见解。该项目将支持两名早期职业科学家的研究计划，并支持STEM研究生的培训和教育。该项目将通过让场地所有者作为研究合作伙伴，为当地社区做出有影响力的贡献，并促进与后代土著社区积极和互惠合作研究的示范模式。研究人员将进行两阶段项目的第一阶段，该项目旨在通过矿物颜料收购的透镜研究流动性和资源使用的长期模式。该研究将结合实地研究和先进的科学技术，以表征矿物颜料的长期收集、偏好和使用历史。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Humans are characterized by complex behaviors and social interactions. Understanding what drove such developments, when they occurred, and how they enabled people to migrate, adapt, and thrive in new and changing environments are prominent themes in archaeology. To examine these themes, archaeologists often turn to artifact provenance studies in order to test hypotheses on mobility, resource use, and social networks. This study will use mineral pigment provenance to examine early and sustained human responses to new and subsequently changing environments in a traditional context. The region preserves a deep temporal record of human occupation, and an archaeological record spanning fluctuations in climate and sea level, habitat change, and megafauna extinctions. The people inhabiting this area used mineral pigments continuously paralleling cultural transitions in diet, mobility, and stone tool technologies. The datasets produced in the course of this project will be compared to existing data on climate, diet, and mobility to develop new insights into the lifeways of early humans. This project will support the research programs of two early career scientists and support the training and education of graduate students in STEM. The project will make impactful contributions to local communities by engaging site owners as research partners and promote an exemplary model for active and reciprocal collaborative research with descendant Indigenous communities.The researchers will conduct the first stage of a two stage project that seeks to examine long-term patterns in mobility and resource use through a lens of mineral pigment acquisition. The study will integrate field-based research with advanced scientific techniques to characterize the long-term history of mineral pigment collection, preferences, and use.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.