Understanding Formative Period Vertebrate Subsistence Strategies In Southern Pacific Mesoamerica

在国家科学基金会的支持下，维克博士和一个本科生研究实习生团队将对从西南太平洋中美洲索科努斯科地区的四个形成时期考古遗址发现的脊椎动物动物遗骸进行为期两年的详细分析。该项目将研究脊椎动物资源在太平洋恰帕斯索科努斯科沿海平原、墨西哥和邻近的太平洋危地马拉约2000年的形成时期内在中美洲西南部社会发展中所起的作用。该地区的形成时期包括从流动的狩猎采集适应到早期定居的农业社会，再到简单和复杂的酋长领地，最终在早期国家达到顶峰。该项目将提供急需的新信息和脊椎动物动物群的合成，这些脊椎动物动物群自最初挖掘以来一直在理论和实质性层面上萎靡不振。人们对形成期饮食、随时间变化的饮食以及人类对该地区可用脊椎动物资源的影响知之甚少。该项目将研究几个研究问题，包括人类开采是否影响了当地可用的资源，如果是的话，人类人口如何应对资源压力。日益依赖狗作为食物和捕捞高产量、低营养层鱼类的渔网，是对该区域形成期间资源紧张和种群增加的一种可能的反应。该项目将使用最近发掘的至少四个考古遗址的新数据来检验这一假设和其他假设：Paso de la Amada、La Blanca、Canon Coralito和Cuauhtemoc。这些分析的结果将与加州大学洛杉矶分校以前检查过的其他8个地区性站点的收集进行比较，以调查当地的变异性和广泛的区域趋势。这项研究的更广泛影响包括说明，对一个缺乏集约化动物驯化和畜牧业的地区的动物骨骼的仔细检查可以提供与社会政治复杂性发展相关的经济和政治变化的重要信息。该项目将分析和合成正在衰退的、信息丰富的脊椎动物古生物，以便在该地区社会复杂性的发展过程中，更全面地综合脊椎动物的开发、人类影响和饮食作用。该项目的一个重要部分是支持和培训动物考古学和动物群分析方法论方面的本科生研究助理。该项目将扩大加州大学洛杉矶分校的脊椎动物比较收藏。最终，该项目希望通过提供高质量的数据和解释、训练有素的未来动物考古学研究生以及加快脊椎动物考古动物群研究驱动分析的收藏和设施，来鼓励对新热带地区的动物考古研究进行更大的投资。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Wake and a team of undergraduate research trainees will conduct two years of detailed analysis of vertebrate faunal remains recovered from four Formative Period archaeological sites in the Soconusco Region of Southwest Pacific Mesoamerica. This project will examine the role vertebrate resources had in the development of SW Mesoamerican societies across the roughly 2000 year Formative Period on the Soconusco coastal plain of Pacific Chiapas, Mexico and adjacent Pacific Guatemala. The Formative Period in this region includes the transition from mobile hunter-gatherer adaptations to early sedentary agricultural societies, into simple and complex chiefdoms, culminating in early states. This project will provide much needed new information and synthesis of vertebrate faunal collections that have been languishing since their initial excavation at both theoretical and substantive levels. Little is known about Formative Period diets, dietary change through time and human effects on available vertebrate resources through time in the region. The project will examine several research questions including whether human exploitation impacted locally available resources and, if so, how human populations responded to resource stress. Increasing reliance on dogs as food and net fishing for high yield low-trophic level fishes is one possible response to resource stress and increasing populations in the region during the Formative Period. This project will test this and other hypotheses with new data from at least four recently excavated archaeological sites: Paso de la Amada, La Blanca, Canton Corralito and Cuauhtemoc. The results of these analyses will be compared to collections from 8 other regional sites previously examined at UCLA to investigate local variability and broad regional trends. The broader impacts of this study include the illustration that the close examination of animal bones from a region absent of intensive animal domestication and husbandry can provide important information concerning economic and political changes related to the development of socio-political complexity. This project will analyze and synthesize languishing, information-rich vertebrate archaeofaunas in order to provide a more complete synthesis of vertebrate exploitation, human impacts, and dietary roles during the development of social complexity in the region. An important part of this project is the support and training of undergraduate research assistants in the methodology of zooarchaeology and faunal analysis. The project will augment the vertebrate comparative collections held at UCLA. Ultimately this project hopes to encourage greater investment in zooarchaeological study in the neotropics by supplying high-quality data and interpretations, well-trained future zooarchaeology graduate students, and the collections and facilities to expedite research-driven analysis of vertebrate archaeofaunas.