Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Long Term Adaptation to Climate Change

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This project studies the relationship between climatic degradation, conflict, and emergent complexity in Chumash society on the Northern Channel Islands and adjacent mainland coast. Previous research has identified substantial reorganization of labor, development of new technologies, and punctuated increases in lethal conflict within Chumash society during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA), a period of episodic droughts and fluctuating sea-surface temperatures (SST). Very little is known about Chumash social organization and marital patterns prior to Spanish contact, and archaeology is well-suited to reclaiming this knowledge. This research will identify kinship patterns in Chumash society during the MCA by using an innovative combination of archaeogenomic (ancient DNA) and archaeometric (strontium, carbon, and nitrogen isotopes) analysis of ancient Chumash burials. Minimally invasive small tissue samples were taken from ancestral remains under the supervision of the Barbareño Band of Chumash Indians. Resulting data will be contextualized with climatic records for the region and will enhance our understanding of how environmental change affected human social organization over the past two thousand years. This research will substantially aide archaeologists in understanding nuanced ways in which society changes in the context of climate change. The researcher’s indigenous Chumash heritage provides a unique opportunity for this research to positively impact both the Native American and scientific communities. Goals of the proposed research include introducing a diverse array of Native American perspectives within archaeology and development of pedagogical methods to help integrate archaeological research within tribal communities as a form of historical knowledge. Integrating ancient DNA and isotopic method within indigenous archaeological practice serves as a foundation for transformational change between indigenous and academic communities while stimulating important discourse surrounding the future of minimally destructive analysis of indigenous remains in North America. The project will evaluate and add to models broadly focused on how humans respond to short and long-term environmental change and how these changes affect human social organization. This research takes place on the Northern Channel Islands and the adjacent Santa Barbara coastline, areas that have been continuously occupied by the Chumash people. Significant changes in Chumashan society co-occurred with a series of episodic droughts known collectively as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. This study will couple genome-wide sequencing with stable isotope data from Chumash burials and compare these data to regional climate records to reconstruct changing familial relationships and social structure through time.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.