Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Humans and the Marine Environment: Fishing through Time in Monterey Bay, CA

在Diane Gifford-Gonzalez博士的指导下，Cristie Boone将分析人类和海洋环境在加州中部海岸8,000多年来的相互作用，强调捕鱼在生计决策中的作用。鱼类是该地区考古遗址中发现的一种重要资源，但往往被视为一个同质的类别，而不是生物和行为多样性的资源。捕捉它们所需的不同技术和技能很少得到考虑。该项目研究鱼类与其他人类食物的比较，以及鱼类在饮食中的作用如何随时间和空间而变化。布恩女士的分析将侧重于从考古骨骼中识别鱼类物种。此外，亦会对常见物种进行营养分析，以建立猎物等级，并对标本进行直接放射性碳年代测定，以控制地鼠和其他啮齿动物对考古遗址地层的影响。研究结果将与过去海洋和陆地环境的数据相结合，以评估人类对重大气候事件的反应。考古学和人类学已经使用人类行为生态学和最佳觅食理论（OFT）来研究人类生存了一段时间。这个项目介绍了一种建模技术，长期用于生态学，但只最低限度地应用于人类学，允许更细致入微的探索OFT模型比目前进行。动态状态变量建模扩展了分析中可以包含的因素数量，并可以提供更真实的觅食预测。该模型可以扩展并应用于许多考古环境中，人们必须考虑决策之间的权衡。该项目将解决蒙特雷湾人类史前史的多个，有时是不同的场景。从更广泛的角度来看，它探讨了在沿海狩猎采集环境中捕鱼与其他生存行为的相互作用及其与社会复杂性的关系。目前，渔业管理正试图防止世界鱼类种群数量下降到完全崩溃的地步。考古研究被认为是描述工业化前捕鱼环境中鱼类种群特征的长期数据的宝贵来源。从分析组合的初步结果已经表明，一些物种可能比他们在过去的今天更小。这个项目的教育影响，包括为本科生提供重要的实验室机会。几名大学生接受了鱼类考古分析和鱼类比较骨骼制作方面的培训。一名学生创建了她自己的研究项目使用的组合，并在布恩女士的指导下，分析了两个网站的鱼类遗骸，在2008年圣克拉拉大学生研究会议上展示了她的论文。研究将在区域和国家考古会议上展示，发表在同行评议的期刊上，并提供数字数据库和建模代码供公众使用。

Under the supervision of Dr. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Cristie Boone will analyze how humans and the marine environment interacted over 8,000 years on the central coast of California, emphasizing the role fishing played in subsistence decisions. Fish are a key resource found in the region's archaeological sites, yet are often treated as a homogeneous category, rather than the biologically and behaviorally diverse resource they are. The different technologies and skill-sets necessary to catch them are rarely considered. This project examines how fish compare to other human foods, and how the role of fish in the diet changes over time and space. Ms. Boone's analysis will focus on identification of fish species from archaeological bones. It will also obtain nutritional analyses of commonly encountered species to construct prey rankings, and conduct direct radiocarbon dating of specimens to control for the effects of gophers and other rodents on archaeological site stratigraphy. Results will be combined with data on past marine and terrestrial environments to assess human responses to major climatic events.Archaeology and anthropology have used human behavioral ecology and optimal foraging theory (OFT) to investigate human subsistence for some time. This project introduces a modeling technique, long used in ecology but only minimally applied to anthropology, that permits more nuanced explorations of OFT models than currently performed. Dynamic state variable modeling expands the number of factors that can be included within an analysis, and can provide more realistic foraging predictions. This model can be expanded and applied to numerous archaeological contexts where people had to consider trade-offs between decisions.This project will address the multiple and sometimes divergent scenarios for the Monterey Bay's human prehistory. In a broader perspective, it explores how fishing interacts with other subsistence behaviors in a coastal hunter-gatherer setting and its relation to the emergence of social complexity.Currently fisheries management is attempting to prevent the world's fish populations from declining to the point of complete collapse. Archaeological research is recognized as a valuable source of long-term data to describe fish population characteristics from pre-industrial fishing contexts. Preliminary findings from analyzed assemblages already indicate that some species may be smaller today than they were in the past.This project's educational impacts include providing important laboratory opportunities for undergraduates. Several undergraduates have been trained in archaeological fish analysis and preparation of fish comparative skeletons. One student created her own research project using the assemblages and, under Ms. Boone's instruction, analyzed fish remains from two sites, presenting her paper at the Santa Clara Undergraduate Research Conference in 2008.Research will be presented at regional and national archaeological conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals, and a digital database and the modeling code provided for public use.