Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia: Reconstructing Human Economic Choices and Landscape Management in Changing Mid-Holocene Paleonvironments

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Joy McCorriston博士和她的同事将进行为期两个月的考古实地考察，以重建阿拉伯南部高地流域Wadi Shumylya的文化和古环境序列。在国家科学基金会资助的探索性研究的基础上，1998年确定了必要的数据，这项工作将审查该地区从狩猎和采集到食物预测的过渡。考古调查、试掘和地球物理勘探将辅之以古环境方法，如蹄兔中窝研究和沉积剖面描述，以恢复一个小型排水系统中人类活动和环境动态的完整古记录。通过记录所有的考古特征，恢复经济指标，如动物群和植物遗迹，建立一个古环境记录和重建人类活动的时间序列，研究人员将开发一个模型，人类与环境的相互作用在全新世早期至中期。McCorriston博士和他的同事们希望确定为什么史前人类在几千年后作为狩猎者和采集者采用农业。一些科学家认为，环境和气候变化对群体决策有重大影响，在这种背景下可以最好地理解重大的生存转变。另一些人则认为历史和文化接触起着更重要的作用。阿拉伯南部为研究这一问题提供了一个极好的场所。该地区位于印度洋的中心，是整个史前时期交通和贸易的十字路口。阿拉伯采集者可以利用来自三个不同地理区域的驯化和技术。考古学家知道，阿拉伯人可以从黎凡特、非洲和印度次大陆获得商品和思想，但他们仍然需要确定阿拉伯最早的农耕和放牧日期。目前还不清楚最早的驯化动物是从哪个复合体中选出的。这项研究不仅将回答这个问题，还将把采用时间与潜在的气候变化联系起来。将有可能确定栽培的物种是否最适合气候状况。由于来自黎凡特、非洲和印度的驯化动物和技术在气候环境适应方面差异很大，这种多样性为了解人们为适应农业和畜牧业所做的选择以及作物、动物和现有技术的混合和匹配提供了难得的潜力。这项研究将为人类环境相互作用提供新的视角，并为一个鲜为人知的地区提供有价值的数据。它将引起广泛的考古学家的兴趣。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Joy McCorriston and her colleagues will conduct two months of archaeological fieldwork to reconstruct cultural and paleoenvironmental sequences in Wadi Shumylya, a highland drainage in Southern Arabia. Building upon NSF funded exploratory research which in 1998 established that necessary data are present, the work will examine the transition in the region from hunting and gathering to food projection. Archaeological survey, test excavations and geophysical prospecting will be complemented with paleoenvironmental approaches such as hyrax midden studies and sedimentological profile description to recover a complete paleo-record of human activities and environmental dynamics in a small drainage system. By recording all archaeological features, recovering economic indicators such as faunal and floral remains, building a paleoenvironmental record and reconstructing a sequence of human activities through time, the investigators will develop a model for human-environment interaction during the early to mid Holocene. Dr. McCorriston and colleagues wish to determine why prehistoric peoples adopted agriculture after millennia as hunters and gatherers. Some scientists believe that environment and climate change have a major effect on group decisions and major subsistence transformations can best be understood in this context. Others argue that history and culture contact play a more important role. Southern Arabia offers an excellent venue for examination of this question. The region lies at the crux of the Indian Ocean, a crossroads for traffic and trade throughout prehistory. Domesticates and technologies from three distinct geographic regions were available to Arabian foragers. Archaeologists know that Arabian peoples had access to goods and ideas from the Levant, Africa and the Indian subcontinent yet they have still to establish the earliest dates for farming and herding in Arabia. It is not known from which complex the earliest domesticates were chosen. The research will not only answer this question but also link the time of adoption with potential climatic change. It will be possible to determine whether the cultivated species were the most appropriate to the climatic regime. Because the domesticates and technologies from the Levant, Africa and India vary widely in climatic-environmental adaptations, this diversity offers a rare potential for understanding the choices people made to adapt farming and herding and the mixes and matches of crops, animals and technologies available.This research will shed new light on human environmental interactions and provide valuable data for a poorly known region. It will be of interest to a wide range of archaeologists.