Collaborative Research: Vulnerability and Resilience in Island Socioecosystems

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Jennifer Kahn博士和帕特里克·基尔希博士将在一个国际合作者团队的协助下，对法属波利尼西亚的三个岛屿进行考古和古生态实地考察。该团队汇集了美国，澳大利亚、新西兰和法国的考古学、古民族植物学、古生态学和土壤学专家。他们将研究岛屿生态系统和文化对生态系统变化的反应，这些变化导致波利尼西亚的景观发生根本性的变化，并出现社会政治形态（酋长）。该项目将采用比较方法，研究芒阿雷瓦、莫雷阿和毛皮蒂岛的岛屿生态系统。这三个岛屿在岛屿地质和年龄、地貌、大小、气候和海洋资源方面都有很大的差异;它们在社会政治等级和一体化程度上有很大的不同;它们有现有的考古和古生态数据，可以进行研究。该项目采用岛屿作为模型系统的概念，力求了解岛屿生态系统的脆弱性及其对人类与景观长期相互作用的适应能力。该小组还将调查社会政治制度如何对这些进程作出反应以及如何受到这些进程的影响。所有波利尼西亚社会的起源都可以追溯到共同的波利尼西亚祖先文化，但不同的社会制度随着时间的推移而演变，人口密度、生产系统和政治结构存在显着差异。因此，波利尼西亚的比较考古学研究提供了一个特别明确的机会，以了解复杂的社会政治组织，如酋长的出现。这项研究将有助于了解岛屿人口和岛屿环境之间的动态相互作用如何使一些波利尼西亚文化发展出巨大的复原力，并导致其他文化进入高度不稳定和脆弱的状态。该项目将从以前的耕作区、纪念性建筑遗址和沿海居住地获得基本数据，并记录岛屿植物群和动物群的古生态。这些数据将用于了解：1）人类引起的景观变化之间的相互作用; 2）定居模式的变化; 3）农业基础设施和生产的变化;以及4）意识形态控制的水平。该项目将模拟这些变量如何影响新兴的社会复杂性，以及它们如何影响岛屿系统的长期适应周期。这项研究的智力价值包括测试社会复杂性如何随着时间的推移而发展的模型，并研究过去的社会如何适应资源过度开发和高人口密度等挑战，这是当代考古学和许多当前社会面临的两个最有争议的问题。本研究对岛屿社会系统、环境和对生态系统变化的不同文化反应之间的相互作用有了更深入的了解，这将增强目前对可持续性和复原力的看法，其更广泛的影响包括教育、外联、促进国际研究合作以及自然科学和社会科学的融合。该项目涉及来自美国多个机构的学者和学生之间的合作，澳大利亚、新西兰和法属波利尼西亚，以及不同的文化和种族背景。项目小组将为波利尼西亚裔学生提供重要的培训机会。该项目强调考古学，但真正的跨学科，并将更广泛地促进跨自然和社会科学的概念整合。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Jennifer Kahn and Patrick Kirch, assisted by an international team of collaborators, will conduct archaeological and paleoecological fieldwork on three islands of French Polynesia. The team brings together U.S., Australian, New Zealand, and French specialists in archaeology, paleoethnobotany, paleoecology, and soil science. They will examine island ecosystems and cultural responses to ecosystem change which led to radically transformed landscapes and emergent sociopolitical formations (chiefdoms) in Polynesia. Using a comparative approach, the project will study the island ecosystems of Mangareva, Mo'orea, and Maupiti. These three islands exhibit critical contrasts in island geology and age, geomorphology, size, and climate and marine resources; they vary significantly in the degree of socio-political hierarchy and integration; and they have existing archaeological and paleoecological data upon which the research can build. Applying the concept of islands as model systems, the project seeks to understand both the vulnerability of island ecosystems and their resilience to long-term human interactions with the landscape. The team will also investigate how socio-political systems responded to, and were affected by, such processes. All Polynesian societies trace their origins back to a common Ancestral Polynesian culture, yet diverse social systems evolved through time with marked differences in population densities, productive systems, and political structures. Thus, comparative archaeological research in Polynesia offers an especially clear opportunity to understand the emergence of complex socio-political organizations such as chiefdoms. The study will contribute to understanding how dynamic interactions between island populations and island environments allowed some Polynesian cultures to develop substantial resilience, and led others into states of high instability and vulnerability. The project will obtain basic data from former cultivation zones, monumental architecture sites, and coastal habitations with paleoecological records of island flora and fauna. These data will be used to understand: 1) interactions among human-induced landscape change; 2) shifts in settlement patterns; 3) changes in agricultural infrastructure and production; and, 4) levels of ideological control. The project will model how these variables influenced emerging social complexity, and how they affected long term adaptive cycles in island systems. The intellectual merit of the research includes testing models of how social complexity develops over time and examining how past societies adapted to challenges such as over-exploitation of resources and high population densities, two of the most contentious issues confronting contemporary archaeology and indeed, many current societies. The deeper understanding of interactions between island social systems, environments, and differential cultural responses to ecosystem change gained in this research will enhance current perspectives on sustainability and resilience.The broader impacts of the study include education, outreach, fostering international research collaboration and integration of natural and social sciences. The project involves collaboration among scholars and students from multiple institutions in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia and of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The project team will offer critical training opportunities to students of Polynesian descent. The project emphasizes archaeology but is truly interdisciplinary, and will contribute more broadly to conceptual integration across the natural and social sciences.