Anthropogenic Environmental Change, Agricultural Intensification, and Socio-Political Evolution in Polynesia

在国家科学基金会的支持下，基尔奇博士和他的同事们将在库克群岛链中的曼盖亚岛进行考古、生态和古生态研究。他们将提取几个土芯来获取花粉，以重建过去数千年来不断变化的植被。对动物遗骸的分析将补充这些数据，这些遗骸记录了第一次人类占领之前和之后的时期。地貌学研究将展示地形如何随着海平面的变化和人类密集的开采而变化。最后，考古调查和发掘将有助于阐明自人类首次占领该岛以来估计的2000年跨度。基尔奇博士希望追踪人口密度、土地使用和政治组织的变化。然后，这些数据将为研究当代后代的社会组织和经济提供一个背景。存在着丰富的人种学数据。波利尼西亚群岛提供了一个独特的人类学实验室，因为它们都是在过去数千年里基本上被一个单一的文化群体殖民的。这些岛屿的大小、环境和与世隔绝的程度各不相同。居民还表现出许多不同形式的社会组织。人类学家试图将社会行为的变化与岛屿类型的变化联系起来，并通过这项工作了解控制人类对环境变化的反应的机制。Mangaia展示了一种不同寻常的组织形式，其中主要是继承的权利与个人实现的地位相平衡。Kirch认为，这只能从随着时间的推移改变人与环境的关系的角度来理解，这个项目旨在研究这种相互作用。这个项目之所以重要，有几个原因。它将增进我们对部落社会的组织原则的理解(这些原则仍然存在于世界许多地区)。它还将展示群体如何面对日益有限的资源采取行动，以及他们制定的适应战略。这项工作将为一大批考古学家提供感兴趣的数据，并有助于培训年轻科学家。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Kirch and his colleagues will conduct archaeological, ecological and paleoecological research on the island of Mangaia which is part of the Cook Islands chain. They will extract several soil cores to obtain pollen to reconstruct changing vegetation over the last several thousand years. These data will be supplemented by the analysis of faunal remains which document the periods both before and after first human occupation. Geomorphological studies will show how landforms changed in response to both changing sea level and intensive human exploitation. Finally, archaeological survey and excavation will serve to elucidate the estimated 2000 year span since the first occupation of the island by humans. Dr. Kirch wishes to trace changes in population density, land use and political organization. These data will then provide a context within which to study the social organization and economy of the present day descendants. A wealth of ethnographic data exists. The islands of Polynesia provide a unique anthropological laboratory because they were all colonized in the last several thousand years by basically a single cultural group. The islands vary in size and environment and degree of isolation. The inhabitants also exhibit a number of different forms of social organization. Anthropologists have attempted to relate variation in social behavior to variation in island type and through this exercise understand the mechanisms which govern human response to environmental variation. Mangaia exhibits an unusual form of organization in which chiefly inherited rights are balanced by individually achieved status. Kirch believes that this can only be understood in terms of changing human - environment relations over time and this project is designed to investigate that interaction. This project is important for several reasons. It will increase our understanding of the organizational principles of tribal- based societies (which continue to exist in many parts of the world.). It will also show how groups act in the face of increasingly limited resources and the strategies of adaptation they develop. The work will provide data of interest to a large group of archaeologists and help to train young scientists.