Collaborative Research: Speleothem Proxies for Mayan Culture-Climate Interactions

该奖项将允许博士尤金佩里和布鲁斯达林开始收集洞穴（石笋）记录从墨西哥洞穴。这些过去环境变化的代理记录将使玛雅考古学家能够以足够的特异性来解决文化-环境相互作用，以建立因果关系。该项目将使时间，强度和持续时间的气候事件记录在石笋更高的精度使用U/Th测年比现有的古气候重建技术，这将提供更深入的了解气候与纯粹的文化驱动因素的相对重要性的文化变化中观察到的考古记录。 特别是，这项工作将为更好地了解玛雅文明世纪的崩溃奠定基础，特别是活跃因素是否是这种气候变化的不稳定性，特大干旱的严重程度和空间范围，与全球变暖相关的飓风的频率和破坏潜力以及尤卡坦半岛的特大干旱条件的开始，或其他完全原因。 代理校准将是有益的，在未来的研究空间和时间模式的过去的区域环境变化的玛雅低地，进一步探索前哥伦布时期的气候文化相互作用的洞穴记录，拟议的项目将提供新的见解的基础上，环境变化和人类社会的反应之间的关系，从而对未来的影响，观测和预测的全球气候变化。该项目将测试气候导致文明崩溃的图标的真实性，这是今天如此流行：经典玛雅文明的世纪崩溃。拟议项目的多学科性质将汇集具有各种专业知识的科学家，并将为研究生和本科生提供实验室和实地经验。这项合作将汇集来自各种学科的科学家，包括美国和墨西哥的几个机构，并将进一步加强这些学科和国家之间的科学合作和学术交流。 该项目将为两到三名研究生提供论文研究项目，并将支持一名年轻女终身教授的职业生涯。

This award will permit Drs. Eugene Perry and Bruce Dahlin to initiate collection of speleothem (stalagmite) records from Mexican caves. These proxy records of past environmental changes will enable Maya archaeologists to address culture-environment interactions with sufficient specificity to establish causal relationships. The project will enable the timing, intensities and durations of the climatic events recorded in stalagmites with much higher precision using U/Th dating than is available with existing paleoclimate reconstruction techniques, and this will provide deeper insights into the relative importance of climatic versus purely cultural drivers of the culture changes observable in the archaeological record. In particular, this work will set the stage for a better understanding of the 9th century collapse of Maya civilization, specifically whether the active agent(s) was the abruptness of this climate change, the severity and spatial extent of the megadroughts, the increasing frequency and damage potential of hurricanes associated with global warming and the onset of megadrought conditions on the Yucatan peninsula, or something else entirely. The proxy calibrations will be useful in further exploring cave records of pre-Columbian climate-culture interactions across the Maya lowlands in future studies of spatial and temporal patterns of past regional environmental change.The proposed project will provide the basis for new insights into the relationships between environmental change and the response of human societies, and thus bear on future impacts of observed and projected global climate changes. The project will test the veracity of the icon of climate induced civilizational collapse that is so popular today: the 9th century collapse of Classic Maya civilization. The multidisciplinary nature of the proposed project will bring together scientists with a wide variety of expertise and will give graduate and undergraduate students laboratory and field experience. This collaboration will bring together scientists from a wide variety of disciplines, include several institutions in the U.S. and Mexico and will further scientific cooperation and enhance scholarly exchange between these disciplines and countries. This project will provide thesis research projects for two to three graduate students, and also will support the career of a young female tenure-track professor.