Doctoral Dissertation Research: Pastoralism's Legacy: Zooarchaeological Investigations in the Southwest Cape, South Africa

对南部非洲土著牧民的最早书面印象证明了他们的牧群的巨大规模。当1652年在好望角建立定居点时，据报道，牧民将2万头牛羊赶到该地区。一个世纪后，农场覆盖了开普敦，土著牧民的生活方式几乎结束了。虽然欧洲人的定居点迅速改变了这一格局，但欧洲人自己也登上了一片人类改造的土地，见证了长达2000年的狩猎-采集占领和牧民及其畜群的到来。在唐纳德·K·格雷森的指导下，卡罗尔·J·弗雷将研究牧民在构建该地区史前生物群落中的作用。生态学家和自然资源保护者越来越认识到，现代生态系统的形状和进程是由先前的人类土地利用和长期的社区动态所决定的。此外，他们认识到，即使是小规模的人类社会也是这些历史的重要组成部分。要了解小规模社会的人为影响，需要对生态变化和人类对这种变化的反应进行长期分析。这项研究首先预测了引入放牧经济可能影响的群落动态，包括物种丰富度和多样性、竞争相互作用和捕食者-猎物相互作用。跟踪生物群落的变化包括评估这些群落中动物的生活条件、相对丰度和种群动态。利用南非西南部开普省两个考古遗址(Die Kelders和Kasteelberg)的脊椎动物动物群组合，将使用一系列动物考古技术测量生物变化和人类对这种变化的反应，包括骨骼形态测量、人口概况、猎物类型丰度和骨骼元素丰度。虽然这些结果将会引起关注南部非洲人类历史和史前的考古学家的兴趣，但对于那些更普遍地对牧民经济的发展感兴趣的人，以及那些对了解牧民对当今地形的影响感兴趣的人来说，这些结果将同样重要。该项目旨在通过对考古动物种群的分析，建立检查长期生态变化的方法。如果成功，这些方法将适用于现代、历史或古代背景，并将使人们能够在生态变化发生后很长一段时间内研究它。经过一些调整，这些方法将适用于几乎任何陆地动物物种。这里使用的理论和方法不是基于对人类造成的生态变化的价值判断；积极的或增强生物多样性的影响与消极的影响一样可能。有了这个工具包的人类学家将能够帮助理解在这种小规模社区居住的国家保护工作的人的层面。考虑到当今的国际保护和土地管理问题，将我们的注意力转向历史和生态相结合的地方，以及那些小规模的人类社会是变革的关键推动者的地方，变得越来越重要。

The earliest written impressions of indigenous herdsmen in southern Africa attest to the vast size of their herds. When a settlement was founded at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, herders reportedly drove 20,000 cattle and sheep into the area. A century later, farms covered the Cape and the indigenous herders' way of life was nearly over. While European settlement rapidly transformed this landscape, the Europeans themselves had landed on a human-modified landscape that had witnessed a long period of hunter-gatherer occupation and the arrival of pastoralists and their herds 2000 years ago. Supervised by Donald K. Grayson, Carol J. Frey will examine the role of pastoralists in structuring prehistoric biotic communities in this region. Ecologists and conservationists increasingly recognize that the shapes and courses of modern ecosystems are plotted by the legacy of prior human land-use and long-term community dynamics. Further, they recognize that even small-scale human societies are vital components of these histories. Understanding the anthropogenic impacts of small-scale societies requires long-term analysis of ecological change and human responses to that change. This research begins by predicting community dynamics which can be impacted by the introduction of herding economies, including species richness and diversity, competitive interactions and predator-prey interactions. Tracking change in biotic communities involves assessing the live condition, relative abundances and population dynamics of the animals in those communities. Using vertebrate faunal assemblages from two archaeological sites in the southwestern Cape, South Africa (Die Kelders and Kasteelberg), biotic change, and human responses to that change, will be measured using a range of zooarchaeological techniques, including skeletal morphometry, demographic profiling, prey type abundances and skeletal element abundances. While the results will be of interest to archaeologists concerned with human history and prehistory in southern Africa, they will be equally relevant to those more generally interested in the development of pastoralist economies, as well as to those interested in understanding the impacts of herders on today's landscapes.This project aims to establish ways of examining long-term ecological change through analysis of archaeological animal populations. If successful, these methods will be applicable to modern, historic, or ancient contexts, and will allow ecological change to be studied long after it has occurred. With some adjustment, the methods will be applicable to virtually any terrestrial animal species. The theory and methodology used here are not based in value judgments about human-caused ecological changes; positive, or biodiversity-enhancing, impacts are just as probable as negative ones. Anthropologists armed with this toolkit will be able to contribute to understanding the human dimension of conservation efforts in countries where such small-scale communities reside. Given today's international conservation and land-management issues, it is increasingly important turn our attention to the places where history and ecology merge, and where small-scale human societies are crucial agents of change.