CNH: Coupled Natural and Human Ecosystems over Long Periods: Pueblo Ecodynamics

该项目扩展了先前研究的时间和空间维度，以研究社会和自然因素的相互作用，这些因素塑造了美国西南部梅萨维德和里约热内卢格兰德地区普韦布洛印第安人的史前农业社会。该项目将对世界史前历史上最引人注目的迁徙事件之一进行社会-自然科学的综合分析；模拟早期市场经济从互惠经济的演变，这是全球利益的重大经济转型；并比较单一文化传统的人们在两种不同的、顺序占用的环境中使用土地的策略和结果。该项目将收集有关已知考古遗址的新资料，并对资源的可用性和使用情况进行研究，以模拟家庭和较大群体之间经济战略的演变。模型模拟将用于探索导致群体形成的过程。这包括在考古记录中识别社区，在模拟模型中进化它们，并允许它们与其他群体竞争和合作。这项工作有助于理解随着新技术的发展而经历人口增长和经济集约化的社会中的几个几乎普遍的过程。同样重要的是，它将增进人们对梅萨维德和巴布格兰德地区丰富的考古记录的了解，每年有近100万人参观这两个地区。该研究团队是高度跨学科的，包括考古学家、地球化学家、计算机科学家、生态学家/地理学家、古代DNA专家和经济学家。来自两个国家公园、圣达菲国家森林和主要博物馆的研究人员是这个团队的组成部分。合作院校将让本科生、研究生和公众参与研究活动。研究结果将通过公园的口译员、克劳峡谷考古中心的教育活动，以及为国家公园管理局和美国林务局的博物馆和单位开发的展览和其他解说材料，传播给学龄儿童和公众。

This project expands the temporal and spatial dimensions of prior research to examine the interaction of social and natural factors that shaped the pre-historic agricultural societies of Pueblo Indians in the Mesa Verde and Rio Grande regions of the southwest United States. This project will conduct a coupled socio-natural science analysis of one of the most dramatic migration episodes in world prehistory; model the evolution of incipient market-based economies from earlier economies of reciprocity, a major economic transformation of global interest; and compare land-use strategies and outcomes for people of a single cultural tradition in two different, sequentially occupied environments. The project will collect new information on known archaeological sites, and conduct a study of resource availability and use to model the evolution of economic strategies among households and larger groups. Model simulations will be used to explore processes leading to group-formation. This includes identifying communities in the archaeological record, evolving them in simulation models, and allowing them to compete and cooperate with other groups. This work contributes to understanding several near-universal processes in societies undergoing population growth and economic intensification following the development of new technologies. Equally important is the enhanced understanding it will provide of the rich archaeological records of Mesa Verde and Rio Grande regions, which together are visited by close to a million people each year. The research team is highly interdisciplinary and includes archaeologists, a geochemist, a computer scientist, an ecologist/geographer, a specialist in ancient DNA, and an economist. Researchers from the two national parks, the Santa Fe National Forest, and major museums are an integral part of the team. Collaborating institutions will involve undergraduate and graduate students and the public in research activities. Results will be disseminated to school-age children and the general public through interpreters at the parks, through the educational activities of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, and through exhibits and other interpretive materials developed for museums and units of the National Park Service and US Forest Service.