Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Pastoral Ecologies and Economies of the Late Bronze Age in the Middle Volga Region, Russia

在凯瑟琳·莫里森博士的监督下，劳拉·波波娃将为她的论文研究俄罗斯中伏尔加地区(萨马拉省)青铜时代晚期(公元前1700-1300年)完成古植物学和考古学数据的收集。在青铜时代晚期(此后的LBA)，居住在萨马拉草原和森林草原上的群体处于战略位置，位于乌拉尔山脉的采矿中心、哈萨克斯坦的沙漠绿洲、顿河的冶金中心和北部茂密的森林之间。在这段前所未有的文化交流和贸易时期，中伏尔加地区是活动的中心。与此同时，定居点战略也从分散的临时社区中的群体转向更长期的定居点。大多数考古学家将聚落模式的变化归因于LBA开始时气候的变化(干旱到潮湿)。这种对环境在社会变化中的作用的解释将环境视为静态的东西，并将群体对环境变化的反应视为给定的。这个项目试图通过研究人类在LBA期间如何与伏尔加-乌拉尔地区的环境互动来重新评估这种定居战略的变化。在我们更好地了解LBA期间该地区人民面临的社会、政治、经济和生态问题之前，我们无法理解人们为什么要建造这些长期的定居点。这项研究将把地方的职业历史嵌入该区域更广泛的景观历史中，因为正是在理解地方内部和地方之间的联系时，我们才开始重建资源是如何分配的。青铜时代的景观历史将通过挖掘、调查和详细的大型植物学、花粉和粪便球晶分析来研究，突出各种空间尺度：壁内、局部和区域。将研究几个LBA地点(Peschani Dol，Kibit，Krasnosamarskoe)的空间和时间动态，它们分别对应于三个环境地带：草原、森林草原和这两个地带之间的交错带，以阐明人们如何通过中伏尔加地区的LBA景观，如何被塑造和改变。波波娃的研究将继续大卫·安东尼博士和伊戈尔·瓦西里耶夫博士发起的俄美合作。这一伙伴关系的一个目的是教育萨马拉国立教育大学的学生了解最新的考古技术。学生们将组成Kibit的挖掘团队，在那里他们将学习研究牧业的新方法(大型植物学、粪球和花粉分析)。该项目的成果将在波波娃的论文、期刊出版物和为俄罗斯科学院准备的实地报告中传播。此外，这些成果将在2005年的国家和国际考古会议上公布。Popova还将使用莫斯科地理研究所的花粉比较收集为Samara创建一个花粉数据库。该数据库将是一个更大的俄英项目网站的一部分，它将是关于俄罗斯草原和森林草原花粉的第一个容易获取的资源，因此对该地区未来的孢粉学研究很重要。

Under Dr. Kathleen Morrison's supervision, Laura Popova will complete the collection of paleobotanical and archaeological data for her dissertation research on the Late Bronze Age (1700-1300BC) of the Middle Volga region, Russia (Samara province). During the Late Bronze Age (hereafter LBA), groups that inhabited the steppe and forest-steppe of Samara were strategically located between mining centers in the Ural Mountains, the desert oases of Kazakhstan, the metallurgical centers of the Don River, and dense forests to the north. In this period of unprecedented cultural interaction and trade, the Middle Volga region was a hub of activity. At the same time, there was a shift in settlement strategies from groups living in dispersed temporary communities to more long-term settlements. Most archaeologists attribute the change in settlement patterns to a change in climate (arid to humid) at the beginning of the LBA. This interpretation of the role of the environment in social change sees the environment as something static, and the group's reaction to environmental change as a given. This project seeks to re-evaluate this alteration in settlement strategies by examining how humans interacted with the environment of the Volga-Ural region during the LBA.We cannot understand why people built these long-term settlements until we have a better sense of the social, political, economic and ecological issues the people of the region faced during the LBA. This research will embed the occupational histories of places within the broader landscape histories of the region, because it is in understanding the linkages within and between places that we begin to reconstruct how resources were appropriated. Bronze Age landscape histories will be examined through excavation, survey and detailed macrobotanical, pollen, and fecal spherulite analyses highlighting a variety of spatial scales: intramural, local, and regional. The spatial and temporal dynamics of several LBA places (Peschani Dol, Kibit, Krasnosamarskoe), which correspond respectively to three environmental zones: steppe, forest-steppe, and the ecotone between these two zones, will be studied so as to illuminate how people moved through, were shaped by, and altered the LBA landscapes in the Middle Volga region. Popova's research will continue the Russian-American collaboration started by Dr. David Anthony and Dr. Igor Vasiliev. An aim of this partnership is to educate students of the Samara State Pedagogical University about the latest archaeological techniques. Students will make up the excavation crew at Kibit, where they will learn about new methods for studying pastoralism (macrobotanical, fecal spherulite, and pollen analyses). Results of this project will be disseminated in Popova's dissertation, journal publications, and in a field report prepared for the Russian Academy of Sciences. In addition, the results will be presented at national and international archaeology meetings in 2005. Popova will also create a pollen database for Samara using the pollen comparative collection at the Institute of Geography in Moscow. This database, which will be part of a larger Russian-English project website, will be the first easily accessible resource on pollen of the Russian steppe and forest-steppe and thus important for future palynological research of the region.