Collaborative Research: Drivers and proxies of behavioral diversity in Late Pleistocene and Holocene hunter-gatherers

合作研究：晚更新世和全新世狩猎采集者行为多样性的驱动因素和代理因素

• 批准号: 2244673
• 负责人: Jessica Thompson
• 金额: $ 27.95万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-03-01 至 2026-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2244673&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Drivers; proxies; behavioral

The goal of this project is to study the conditions under which people establish and maintain cultural boundaries. Ethnic and linguistic identity are central to human social organization and enable people to identify with other group members without personally knowing each of them. This "ethnolinguistic identity" encourages cooperation at a scale that allows humans to solve problems that could not be tackled with a smaller number of people but may also discourage cooperation between groups. Because cooperation is an ongoing source of human ingenuity and conflict today, it is essential to understand the conditions under which it first emerged and was maintained by our forager ancestors. Did populations become separate because they followed different patterns of resource use across the landscape? Was interaction then discouraged because of the development of cultural barriers? To what extent did ancient human groups share information and/or resources while maintaining biological and cultural boundaries? Archaeologists can now combine advances in ancient DNA, computational simulations, and ancient environmental reconstruction with analysis of cultural remains to understand the formation and consequences of ethnolinguistic identities in early human populations. This study enhances career opportunities and provide training for a postdoctoral researcher, graduate students, and undergraduates. By embedding the work in local communities, scientific training will occur within a multicultural research environment that builds essential skills needed for maximizing the benefits of a diverse STEM workforce. The research team will conduct research in two regions, where ancient DNA analysis has revealed that forager populations began to maintain separate biological groupings near the end of the last Ice Age cycle. The investigators will develop well-dated cultural and environmental records from sites around and including where ancient DNA has been discovered. The team will conduct new, high-resolution excavations and analyze the remains they recover alongside existing materials excavated using lower resolution methods in the 1970s. This increased detail will enable both datasets to be brought into alignment and maximize their information value to show if cultural remains such as stone artifacts, pigments, bone tools, and beads show evidence of emerging cultural differences between groups known from ancient DNA to have had little biological interaction. Using environmental data, the team will build simulation models of forager resource use to understand how often people would have encountered one another. They will use these models to test if interaction rates or cultural barriers better explain the lack of genetic exchange.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.

这个项目的目标是研究人们建立和维持文化界限的条件。种族和语言认同是人类社会组织的核心，使人们能够与其他群体成员认同，而无需亲自了解他们每个人。这种“民族语言认同”鼓励合作，使人类能够解决人数较少无法解决的问题，但也可能阻碍群体之间的合作。由于合作是当今人类智慧和冲突的持续来源，因此了解合作最初出现并由我们的觅食祖先维持的条件至关重要。种群的分离是因为它们在整个景观中遵循不同的资源使用模式吗？是否因为文化障碍的发展而阻碍了互动？在保持生物和文化界限的同时，古代人类群体在多大程度上共享信息和/或资源？考古学家现在可以将古代DNA、计算模拟和古代环境重建方面的进展与文化遗迹分析相结合，以了解早期人类民族语言身份的形成和后果。联合收割机。这项研究增加了就业机会，并为博士后研究人员，研究生和本科生提供培训。通过将工作嵌入当地社区，科学培训将在一个多元文化的研究环境中进行，该环境建立了最大限度地发挥多元化STEM劳动力优势所需的基本技能。研究小组将在两个地区进行研究，在那里，古代DNA分析显示，觅食种群在上一个冰河时代周期结束时开始保持独立的生物群。研究人员将从周围的遗址，包括发现古代DNA的地方，开发出日期明确的文化和环境记录。该团队将进行新的高分辨率挖掘，并分析他们在20世纪70年代使用较低分辨率方法挖掘的现有材料中恢复的遗骸。这一增加的细节将使两个数据集能够对齐，并最大限度地发挥其信息价值，以显示石器、颜料、骨器和珠子等文化遗迹是否显示出从古代DNA中已知的群体之间出现文化差异的证据，这些群体几乎没有生物学相互作用。利用环境数据，该团队将建立觅食者资源使用的模拟模型，以了解人们彼此相遇的频率。他们将使用这些模型来测试相互作用率或文化障碍是否能更好地解释基因交流的缺乏。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。

项目成果

Palaeoenvironmental data indicate late quaternary anthropogenic impacts on vegetation and landscapes in Mzimba, northern Malawi

• DOI: 10.3389/fearc.2023.1250871
• 发表时间: 2024-01
• 期刊: Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology
• 作者: David K. Wright;S. Ivory;J. Birk;Jeong-Heon Choi;Benjamin Davies;Sabine Fiedler;Jacob Davis;Potiphar M. Kaliba;Jessica C. Thompson