HSD: Collaborative Proposal: Long-Term Dynamics of Population Growth, Agricultual Intensification, and Sociopolitical Change: Hawai'i as a Model System

复杂的等级社会政治制度在世界历史上的不同时期和不同地点出现，但其形成过程仍未得到很好的理解。承担这一跨学科项目的研究小组将结合考古学、人口学和农业生态学的方法，研究在与欧洲人接触之前，与世隔绝的夏威夷群岛是如何产生复杂的早期州级社会的。夏威夷提供了一个“模式系统”，因为在夏威夷发展和相互作用的文化和生物过程，从人口增长、农业集约化和资源开采，到政治权力日益集中和经济控制，已经在各地发生，而且确实正在全球范围内发生--但它们发生的背景在夏威夷比其他地方更明确。研究小组将把定量建模(生态系统、人口和农业生产模型)与对景观生物地球化学、农艺系统、与农业基础设施和生产力相关的人口统计学、家庭规模考古以及基于旱地和湿地(灌溉)农业集约化模式的社会中社会和文化复杂性的发展进行仔细的实地分析相结合。实地研究和景观规模的生态系统和人口模型将重点放在夏威夷的科哈拉地区，该地区概括了接触前生产系统的多样性。具体地说，该项目将：(1)将旱地农业系统的综合分析扩展到灌溉湿地农业系统，这些农业系统主导着夏威夷群岛迎风景观的经济。(2)结合农业养分循环模型，分析农业种群的动态变化，从而揭示在空间异质性生境中农业种群受气候变化影响的动态。(3)调查国内经济和盈余生产的时间变化，以确定家庭层面的变化如何与区域规模综合政治经济的出现联系在一起。(4)评估不同形式的社会组织对人口增长、稳定和福祉以及对资源过剩、短缺和共享的影响。该项目的成果将有助于从根本上理解土壤、生态系统、农业、人口和社会政治结构在数百年的时间跨度中是如何相互作用的。研究团队代表了社会、生物和物理科学家的组合，研究将综合考古学、人类学、人口学、土壤学、生态学和计算机建模和模拟的途径和方法。该项目将有助于本科生和研究生以及几名博士后学者的教育和培训，增加整合社会科学、生物科学和物理科学的前沿跨学科研究的能力。该项目小组还将通过与州教育委员会合作编写课程材料，为夏威夷的中学教育作出贡献。与夏威夷原住民社区和更广泛的公众的接触将侧重于在接触夏威夷之前农业的强度和多样性以及社会的复杂性，以及该岛作为具有全球意义的示范系统的地位。

Complex, hierarchical sociopolitical systems have emerged at various times and places in world history, but the processes involved in their formation are still not well understood. The research team undertaking this interdisciplinary project will combine the approaches of archaeology, demography, and agricultural ecology to study how a complex early state-level society arose in the isolated Hawaiian Islands prior to contact with Europeans. Hawai'i offers a 'model system' because the cultural and biological processes that developed and interacted in Hawai'i, from population growth and intensification of agriculture and resource extraction, to the increasing centralization of political power and economic control, have happened everywhere and indeed are taking place globally today - but the context in which they take place is better-defined in Hawai'i than elsewhere. The research team will integrate quantitative modeling (ecosystem, demographic, and agricultural production models) with carefully-focused field analyses of landscape biogeochemistry, agronomic systems, human demography in relation to agricultural infrastructure and productivity, household-scale archaeology, and the development of social and cultural complexity in societies based on both dryland and wetland (irrigated) modes of agricultural intensification. The field research and landscape-scale ecosystem and demographic modeling will focus on the Kohala region of Hawai'i Island, which encapsulates the diversity of pre-contact production systems. Specifically, the project will: (1) Extend integrated analyses of dryland agricultural systems to the irrigated wetland agricultural systems that dominated the economies of windward landscapes of the older Hawaiian Islands. (2) Analyze the dynamics of an agricultural population coupled to a nutrient-cycling model of agriculture, thereby illuminating the dynamics of agricultural populations subject to variable climate over a spatially heterogeneous habitat. (3) Investigate temporal changes in the domestic economy and production of surplus, to determine how changes at the household level were linked to the emergence of a regional-scale integrative political economy. (4) Evaluate the consequences of different forms of social organization for population growth, stability, and well-being, and for resource surplus, shortage, and sharing. The project results will contribute to fundamental understanding of how soils, ecosystems, agriculture, population, and sociopolitical structure interact over time spans of hundreds of years.The research team represents a combination of social, biological, and physical scientists, and research will integrate approaches and methods from archaeology, anthropology, demography, soil science, ecology, and computer modeling and simulation. The project will contribute to the education and training of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as several post-doctoral scholars, adding to the capacity for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that integrates the social, biological, and physical sciences. The project team will also contribute to secondary education in Hawai'i by developing curricular material in partnership with the State Board of Education. Outreach to Native Hawaiian communities and to the broader public will focus on the little-appreciated intensity and diversity of agriculture and the complexity of society in pre-contact Hawai'i - and on the Island's status as a globally-significant model system.