Investigating Late Prehistory in the Landscapes of Douglas Lake, Michigan

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，梅根·豪伊博士和一个由专家、学生和公民科学家组成的团队将对密歇根州北部道格拉斯湖附近的史前晚期（公元1200-1600年）印第安人的职业进行两次实地研究。道格拉斯湖文化景观考古研究项目代表了道格拉斯湖的第一个专业考古项目，是新罕布什尔大学和密歇根大学生物站（UMBS）的共同努力。几千年来，密歇根州北部的社区很容易在资源区之间移动。公元1200年后，五大湖沿岸采用玉米园艺改变了这一点——新的农民定居在更永久的村庄，并建立了专属的沿海领土。觅食者现在被限制在内陆，必须形成与沿海邻居互动的新策略。对道格拉斯湖的初步研究表明，当地史前晚期的狩猎采集者在这片内陆地区形成了密集的占领。他们从当地资源中产生盈余，加强储存，发展具有实质性结构的多季节职业，并强调当地社区，而不参与与海岸的广泛互动。这一策略与道格拉斯以南内陆湖泊周围的觅食群体截然不同。在这里，采集者与沿海社区进行正式的互动，为社会间的仪式和贸易建造大型仪式纪念碑，从而确保获得沿海主要商品。这项研究结合了调查、挖掘、遥感、辐射测年和材料分析，以明确评估道格拉斯湖的内陆觅食者是否确实与沿海园艺师有一种独特的互动模式。该项目将大大有助于我们了解采集者和农民之间的关系，这是人类学家长期感兴趣的话题。通过评估史前晚期密歇根州北部觅食者在与园艺邻居的互动中是否做出了截然不同的选择，本研究将为觅食者/农民互动的不同轨迹提供一个独特的视角。生活在相似环境中的狩猎采集者可以选择非常不同的策略来应对不断变化的社会政治条件，这将挑战人们普遍持有的观点，即环境是塑造“小规模”社会的唯一因素。事实上，史前晚期的内陆觅食者做出不同选择的原因可能有很多——政治、社会、宗教、经济和生态。这个研究项目为探究在动态的地区环境中，狩猎采集者如何、何时以及为什么使用这些多种原因打开了大门。该项目真正致力于在世界范围内产生更广泛的影响。从实地学校成长起来，本科教育是至关重要的-学生参与研究的各个方面的第一手资料。公众的参与对这个项目也至关重要。与早期的研究一样，研究结果将通过博客与公众分享，UMBS营地管理员（志愿者公民科学家）将继续成为主要的研究参与者。与利益攸关方合作，特别是与当地/区域美洲原住民社区合作，是工作取得成功的关键。合作的途径包括与当地部落长老进行例行磋商，让部落学生参与实地工作，并计划在UMBS举办研讨会，为感兴趣的部落成员介绍非破坏性考古方法。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Meghan Howey and a team of specialists, students, and citizen scientists will conduct two field seasons of research on Late Prehistoric (AD 1200-1600) Native American occupation around Douglas Lake in Northern Michigan. The Cultural Landscapes of Douglas Lake Archaeological Research Program represents the first professional archaeology at Douglas Lake and is a joint effort between the University of New Hampshire and the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS). For millennia, communities in Northern Michigan moved easily between resource zones. The adoption of maize horticulture after AD 1200 along the coasts of the Great Lakes changed this - the new farmers settled into more permanent villages and established exclusive coastal territories. Foragers, now limited to the interior, had to form new strategies for interacting with their coastal neighbors. Pilot research on Douglas Lake suggests that local Late Prehistoric hunter-gatherers developed an intensive occupation of this inland area. They generated surplus from local resources, intensified storage, developed multi-season occupations with substantial structures, and emphasized local community without engaging in extensive interaction with the coasts. This was a very different strategy than the one chosen by forager communities around other inland lakes south of Douglas. Here, foragers engaged in formal interactions with coastal communities, constructing large ceremonial monuments for inter-societal ritual and trade, thereby securing access to coastal staple goods. The research combines survey, excavation, remote sensing, radiometric dating, and material analyses to assess definitively whether the inland foragers of Douglas Lake did indeed have a distinctive interaction pattern with coastal horticulturalists. The project will contribute substantially to our knowledge of the ways foragers and farmers relate, a topic of longstanding interest to anthropologists. By evaluating whether during Late Prehistory in Northern Michigan foragers made radically different choices about their interactions with horticultural neighbors, this research will provide a unique perspective on the diverse trajectories forager/farmer interaction can follow. Illuminating the ways hunter-gatherers living in similar environmental settings can chose very different strategies for negotiating changing sociopolitical conditions will challenge the generally held view that the environment was the only factor that shaped "small-scale" societies. There may, in fact, have been many reasons Late Prehistoric inland foragers made different choices -- political, social, religious, economic, and ecological. This research program opens the door for teasing apart how, when and why these multiple reasons are put to use by hunter-gatherers in dynamic regional settings. The project has a real commitment to its broader impact in the world. Having grown from field schools, undergraduate education is paramount - students are involved first-hand in all aspects of the research. Public involvement also is vital to the program. As with the earlier research, findings will be shared with the public through a blog and UMBS Camp Stewards (volunteer citizen scientists) will continue to be key research participants. Collaboration with stakeholders, notably local/regional Native American communities, is key to the work's success. Avenues of collaboration include routine consultation with local tribal elders, inclusion of tribal students in field work, and plans for a seminar at UMBS about non-destructive archaeological methods for interested tribal members.