Paleoecology and Sedentism of Early Coastal Hunters-Gatherers in North Chile

在Tom D.Dillehay博士的监督下，Teresa C.de B.Franco将分析在她对位于智利北部阿塔卡马沙漠Camarones山谷的Camarones 14和Camarones Sur的Chinclro遗址进行考古挖掘时收集的数据。这种文化可以追溯到7000到3500年前，其经济强烈地以海洋资源为导向。钦克罗文化尤其以其殡葬模式而闻名，其特点是保存完好和最古老的人造人类木乃伊，揭示了早期的葬礼习俗。随葬品，如鱼钩和网，也保存得很好，使人们对文化材料有了深刻的了解。尽管实物保存完好，钦克罗人的生活方式却没有得到很好的了解，我们还不知道他们如何将自己的文化与沙漠海岸和周围地区脆弱环境的管理结合起来，以发展他们复杂而持久的文化。因此，佛朗哥的挖掘集中在恢复数据上，这些数据将有助于确定钦克罗人是否全年都生活在同一地区，或者他们是否季节性地四处移动以寻找食物和水，以及与生活在海岸或山区的其他人的社会互动。她的工作还将有助于理解文化复杂性的增加是否与久坐不动的生活方式有关。因此，为了研究氏族制度，这个项目研究了动物遗骸。这些分析将集中在鸟类和哺乳动物的物种鉴定、季节性发生和年龄确定上。通过贝壳生长线和同位素分析对海洋软体动物贝壳进行研究。这两种技术都将提供一年中收集软体动物的时间段的信息，因此，也就是钦克罗人生活在个别地点的时间。检测人们利用周围环境的季节将有助于我们理解钦克罗的流动性及其与经济战略、流动性/封建主义和早期文化复杂性的关系。在更广泛的方面，这项研究将有助于理解严酷干旱的沿海地区人类与周围环境之间的长期互动。阐明这些问题对于理解早期海上救生艇和封闭主义对安第斯文明最初的社会动力的贡献是很重要的。除了这些问题，该项目还将通过提高对钦克罗文化的了解水平而产生更广泛的影响，钦克罗文化是适应全新世早、中期沙漠环境的最成功的文化之一。这项研究还将加深我们对钦克罗对中央安第斯山脉早期文化场景的贡献的理解，并有助于理解“安第斯世界”的形成，“安第斯世界”指的是非常具体的文化痕迹与长期传统的结合。在当今世界，人们越来越关注气候变化和人类对气候变化的快速适应，更好地了解过去人类对重大气候和环境事件的反应，对于未来人类人口的可持续性非常重要。增进我们理解的一个方法是更好地理解过去的人类和气候关系，比如这里提出的那些关系。最后，这个奖项将有助于论文提案的制定和研究生的培训。

Under the supervision of Dr. Tom D. Dillehay, Teresa C. de B. Franco will analyze data gathered during her archaeological excavations at the Chinchorro sites of Camarones 14 and Camarones Sur located in the Camarones Valley in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. This culture dated between 7000 and 3500 years ago had its economy strongly oriented to maritime resources. The Chinchorro culture particularly is known for its mortuary patterns, characterized by the well-preserved and oldest artificial human mummies, which reveal early funerary practices. The funerary objects, like fishhooks and nets, are also very well preserved, giving deep insight into the cultural material. Despite the excellent preservation of material objects, the way of life of the Chinchorro people is not well understood and we do not know yet how they articulated their culture in association with the management of the fragile environment of the desert coast and surrounding areas in order to developed their complex and long-lasting culture. Thus, Franco's excavations are focused on the recovery of data that will help determine if the Chinchorro people were living in the same area during the whole year or if they were moving seasonally around in search of food and water and of social interactions with other people living along the coast or in the mountains. Her work will also help to understand whether increased cultural complexity was associated with a sedentary lifeway. Thus in order to examine sedentism, this project studies faunal remains. The analyses will focus on species identification and seasonal occurrence and age determination in birds and mammals. Marine mollusks shells will be studied through shell growth-line and isotopic analyzes. Both techniques will give information about the period of the year in which mollusks were collected and, consequently, when the Chinchorro people were living in individual sites. Detecting the season in which people were exploiting the surrounding environment will contribute to our understanding of Chinchorro mobility and its relation to economic strategies, mobility/sedentism, and early cultural complexity. In its broader aspects, this study will contribute to an understanding of the long-term interactions between humans and their surrounding environments in a harsh arid coastal area. Elucidating these issues is important to understanding the contributions that an early maritime lifeway and sedentism made to the initial social impulses toward Andean civilization. Beyond these questions, this project will also have a broader impact by enhancing the level of knowledge about the Chinchorro culture, one of the most successful cultures adapted to desert environments during the Early-Middle Holocene. This research also will improve our understanding of the contributions of the Chinchorro to the early cultural scenario of the Central Andes and of the formation of the "Andean World", which refers to a combination of very specific cultural traces with long-term traditions. In the present-day world of growing concerns about climatic change and rapid human adaptation to them, a greater understanding of past human responses to major climatic and environmental events is very important to the sustainability of future human populations. One way to enhance our understanding is to better understand past human and climatic relations, such as those proposed here. Finally, this award will assist in the development of a dissertation proposal and graduate student training.