Collaborative Research: The Role Of Climate In Agricultural Intensification And Settlement Trends

调查人员将调查农民和政府机构之间的合作关系，这种合作关系使史前农业耕地的开发达到了150平方公里。这发生在人口密度和复杂性达到顶峰的时期，人们在巨大的土建筑周围建立了定居点，包括寺庙和球场，这些建筑将人们聚集在一起举行宗教仪式。为了养活这群人，当地的团体聚集了他们的劳动力，通过挖掘排水渠网络，把肥沃的土壤堆在凸起的种植平台上，把天然湿地变成了高产的高地。整个系统最终失败了。纪念性的建筑停止了，隆起的田地不再保留，人们要么迁移到其他地方，要么解散，住在更小的、自给自足的农场里。这些类型的集体安排在今天仍然是必要的，因为政府的农业补贴和支持计划，以及农民合作社，有各种各样的成功和失败。由于气候变率、侵蚀、土壤肥力损失以及农民个体相互合作和政府机构合作的意愿，农业的社会和环境条件不断变化。这些不确定性，从最早的驯化开始就一直困扰着所有的农业社会，不能轻易地预测到未来，所以我们转向考古学的长期方法。研究区域呈现了从农业基础设施集约化到其最终失败的完整周期。该项目侧重于一个案例研究，其中详细的卫星和航空遥感已经确定了古代农业系统的遗迹。在凸起的田地中取心和挖沟将揭示施工技术和使用时间，并用地球化学分析来评估土壤肥力。从田间采集的样本将用于确定其建设和废弃的年代，并通过宏观和微观植物学分析确定在这些田间种植了什么作物。这些数据将与从调查和挖掘中收集的数据进行比较，作为重建与抬高场施工相关的沉降历史的一种手段。挖掘将针对不同地位的家庭，以了解财富和权力关系如何随着时间的推移而变化。基于泻湖岩心的古环境重建将模拟气候从农业集约化时期开始到结束时的变化。总之，这些数据将呈现一幅社会、政治、宗教和环境因素的图景，这些因素促成了一个合作时代，导致了集约化农业系统的发展和该地区前所未有的纪念性水平。也许更重要的是，该项目将揭示这种集体行动停止的原因。撇开规模和技术上的差异不谈，这个案例与我们的现代农业系统有许多相同的社会、政治和环境问题。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。

The investigators will examine the cooperative relationships among farmers and government institutions that enabled the development of about 150 sq km of prehistoric agricultural raised fields. This occurred during a period of peak population density and complexity with settlements established around monumental earthen constructions, including temples and ballcourts that drew people together for religious ceremony. To feed this population, local groups pooled their labor to convert natural wetlands into highly productive raised fields by digging a network of drainage canals and piling the fertile soils onto raised planting platforms. The whole system eventually failed. Monumental constructions ceased, raised fields were no longer maintained, and people either migrated elsewhere or disbanded to live in smaller, self-sustained farmsteads. These types of collective arrangements remain imperative today as government agricultural subsidies and support programs, as well as farmer co-ops, have had varied successes and failures. The social and environmental conditions of agriculture continuously change due to climatic variability, erosion, soil fertility losses, and the willingness of individual farmers to cooperate both with each other and government institutions. These uncertainties, which have plagued all agricultural societies since the earliest domesticates, cannot be easily projected into the future, so we turn to the long-term approach of archaeology. The region of study presents the complete cycle from intensification of agricultural infrastructure to its ultimate failure.The project focuses on a case study where detailed satellite and aerial remote sensing has identified remains of ancient agricultural field systems. Coring and trenching in the raised fields will reveal construction techniques and duration of use with geochemical analysis to assess soil fertility. Samples from fields will be used to date their construction and abandonment, and to determine what crops were grown in these fields through macro- and micro-botanical analysis. These data will be compared with that collected from survey and excavations as a means to reconstruct settlement history relative to raised field construction. Excavations will target households of different statuses to understand how wealth and power relationships changed over time. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions based on lagoon cores will model how the climate changed from the beginning to the end of this period of agricultural intensification. Together, these data will present a picture of the social, political, religious, and environmental factors that fostered an era of cooperation that led to the development of an intensive agricultural system and levels of monumentality not seen before in this region. Perhaps more importantly, the project will uncover the reasons why such collective action ceased. Regardless of the differences in scale and technology, this case shares many of the same social, political, and environmental concerns with our modern farming systems.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.