Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Prehispanic Settlement Systems and Landscapes in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, Michoacan, Mexico

在海伦·波拉德博士的指导下，克里斯托弗·斯塔夫斯基将研究塔拉斯坎帝国从前古典晚期（公元前100年）开始对帕茨夸罗湖盆地（LPB）的定居。西班牙征服（约公元1525年）。 LPB位于墨西哥米却肯州的高地，是塔拉斯坎帝国的核心，阿兹特克人的主要竞争对手。这个湖盆不仅是考古学和人类学研究的焦点，也是地质学、地理学、民族历史学和古生态学研究的焦点。 Stawski先生的研究将联合收割机将所有这些类型的数据结合成一个多学科，多标量分析，将探讨解决的过程和方式，塔拉斯坎人和他们的祖先修改，适应和培养的景观。 这项研究很重要，因为该地区在这段时间内经历了重大的环境变化，这项工作将展示生活在传统社会中的人类如何应对这种变化，以维持一个正常运作和不断扩大的社会系统。这部作品的重要性直接体现在它将增进对当今世界多个地区的社会的了解。由于西班牙人的第一手资料，以及丰富的民族历史和考古资料，人们对后古典时代晚期（公元1350年至1525年）的塔拉斯坎国家有了更多的了解。 然而，相对未知的是湖泊盆地如何成为一个主要的中美洲帝国的核心。 这项研究的目的是提供一个纵向研究的湖泊流域的人口，包括分析，将回答如何以及为什么某些社区定居，移动，或在某些时间段增长的问题。这一点的关键是湖泊流域人类与环境关系的性质，以及它们如何改变了该地区社会政治环境的基础。 通过使用地理信息系统（GIS）、高分辨率卫星图像和一个考古数据库，该数据库收集和积累了LPB过去40年工作的数据，斯塔夫斯基先生将能够绘制和分析1,600年来的社区和景观。 这将提供一种手段，以确定影响文化变革，环境波动和国家出现在不同规模和多线证据的变量。这项研究将产生更广泛的影响，无论是通过其知识价值，以及对社会科学界。 它将继续多学科工作的悠久传统，并有助于美国，墨西哥和法国研究人员在考古学，人类学，历史和物理科学之间的持续合作。 该项目将对人类与环境的关系和次级国家的出现的文献作出直接贡献。 此外，这项研究将成为Pátzcuaro湖流域40年研究积累数据的一个出口，并将能够为该地区提供尚未发表和提交的新的和更新的数据。 这项拟议的研究将提供一种手段，将这些数据传播到其他学术和专业论坛，希望这种对西墨西哥人类学，考古学和生态学的新兴趣将引发一场国际和跨学科的智力合作运动。

Under the guidance of Dr. Helen Pollard, Christopher Stawski will examine the settlement of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) by the Tarascan Empire from the Late Preclassic (100 B.C.) to the time of Spanish Conquest (circa A.D. 1525). Located in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán, the LPB was the core of the Tarascan Empire, a major rival of the Aztecs. This lake basin has been the focus of not only archaeological and anthropological research, but also geological, geographical, ethnohistoric, and paleoecological research. Mr. Stawski's research will combine all these types of data into a multi-disciplinary, multi-scalar analysis that will explore the process of settlement and the ways in which the Tarascans and their ancestors modified, adapted and cultivated the landscape. The research is important because the region underwent significant environmental change over this time period and the work will show how humans living in a traditional society responded to this change to maintain a functioning and expanding social system. The work is directly important because it will increase understanding of many societies in multiple parts of today's world.Due to firsthand accounts from the Spanish, and the rich ethnohistoric and archaeological data, much is known about the Tarascan State during the Late Postclassic time period that led into the Spanish conquest (A.D. 1350 to 1525). However, what is still relatively unknown is the manner in which the lake basin became the core of a major Mesoamerican empire. The goal of this research is to provide a longitudinal study of the peopling of the lake basin, including analysis that will answer questions of how and why certain communities were settled, moved, or grew during certain time periods. Key to this is the nature of the human-environmental relationships in the lake basin, and how they changed the foundations of the socio-political setting of the area. Through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), high resolution satellite imagery, and an archaeological database that has collected and accumulated data from the past 40 years of work in the LPB, Mr.Stawski will be able to map and analyze the communities and landscape over a period of 1,600 years. This will provide a means to determine the variables that affected cultural transformations, environmental fluctuations, and state emergence at varying scales and with multiple lines of evidence. This research will have a broader impact, both through its intellectual merit as well as on the social science community. It will continue a long tradition of multi-disciplinary work, and contribute to on-going collaborative efforts between American, Mexican and French researchers in archaeology, anthropology, history and the physical sciences. The project should make a direct contribution to the literature on human-environmental relationships and the emergence of secondary states. Furthermore, this research will be an outlet for the accumulated data of 40 years of research in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, and will be able to provide new and updated data for the region that has yet to be published and presented. This proposed research would provide a means for this data to be disseminated to other academic and professional forums, in hopes that this renewed interest in West Mexican anthropology, archaeology, and ecology will spark an international and inter-disciplinary movement towards intellectual collaboration.