Settlement System and Landscape Dynamics: An Integrated Archaeological and Geomorphological Study

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Jeffrey Clark博士和Donald Schwert博士将领导一个多学科团队进行研究，旨在解决中太平洋地区人类迁移、殖民和随后的文化发展等关键问题。这个项目是从人类生态动力学的角度进行的，是对岛屿环境及其史前人类占领的个案研究，涉及人与环境共同进化关系的更大问题。综合考古学、骨学、地貌学和土壤学研究将调查美属萨摩亚马努阿群岛Ofu岛上人类人口与其环境之间复杂、动态的关系。该项目将对太平洋中部史前传统模型的核心要素和波利尼西亚人的起源进行测试。传统模式认为，波利尼西亚中部的殖民者是来自西面岛屿的拉皮塔族。“Lapita”指的是一个或一群拥有共同的“文化情结”的人，这种文化情结可以用一件特别的齿状印花陶器来诊断。拉皮塔殖民者来到该地区，可能是公元前3000年，他们是农民和渔民，严重依赖社区之间宝贵资源的交换。由于拉皮塔人最先到达中太平洋，他们被认为是后来的波利尼西亚人的祖先。一些研究人员越来越多地在一系列问题上对这一模式提出质疑，萨摩亚在地理位置和以前的研究方面都处于战略地位，可以对这些问题进行关键测试。项目调查将在Ofu上被证明拥有或具有潜力的早期文化矿藏的三个地点进行：Va‘oto，Coconut Grove和Ofu Village。由于景观变化影响聚落系统，将结合挖掘进行古景观的地貌建模。该项目有四个目标：1)确定人类殖民的时间；2)构建和测试人类聚落分布模型；3)测试一套景观演变模型；4)构建Ofu海岸地貌动力学模型。每个目标都将通过测试一组假设来实现。该项目的学术价值在于融合了考古学、生物学、地质学和土壤学证据，以评估岛屿殖民和随后适应的多种工作模式。总体目标是在公元前第一个千年期间环境变化的背景下，建立人类殖民和随后的定居系统的新模式。该模型将适用于整个中太平洋其他岛屿的沿海环境。研究结果将对理解萨摩亚和波利尼西亚史前、更广泛地理解人类史前和殖民影响，以及最广泛意义上的人类生态动力学做出重要贡献。通过开展“社区考古”，当地社区成员将与科学团队合作，创造与专业人士和当地利益相关者相关的文化遗产知识。该项目将用于教育来自美国、美属萨摩亚和独立萨摩亚的研究生和本科生，他们中的许多人来自科学界代表性较低的背景。

With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Jeffrey Clark and Donald Schwert will lead a multidisciplinary team in research designed to address critical issues of human migration, colonization, and subsequent cultural development in the central Pacific. Undertaken from the perspective of human ecodynamics, this project is a case study of an island environment and its prehistoric human occupation that bears on larger questions of human-environment co-evolutionary relationships. Integrated archaeological, osteological, geomorphological, and pedological studies will investigate the complex, dynamic relationships between human populations and their environments on the island of Ofu, Manu'a Group, American Samoa. The project will provide tests of core elements of the conventional model of central Pacific prehistory and the origin of Polynesian peoples. The conventional model holds that the colonists of central Polynesia were Lapita peoples from islands to the west. "Lapita" refers to a people or group of peoples that shared a "cultural complex" for which a distinctive dentate-stamped pottery is diagnostic. Lapita colonizers came to the region perhaps 3000 BP and were farmers and fishers who relied heavily on exchange of valued resources between communities. Since Lapita populations were the first to arrive in the Central Pacific, they are regarded as ancestral to later Polynesian populations. Some researchers are increasingly calling this model into question on a set of issues, and Samoa is strategically situated in terms of both geographic location and previous research to allow for critical tests of those issues. Project investigations will be conducted at three locations on Ofu shown to possess, or hold potential for, early cultural deposits: Va'oto, Coconut Grove, and Ofu Village. Because landscape change influenced settlement systems, geomorphological modeling of the paleo-landscapes will be carried out in conjunction with excavations. The project has four objectives: 1) establish the time of human colonization; 2) construct and test models of the human settlement distribution; 3) test a set of models for landscape evolution; and 4) construct a model of the geomorphological dynamics of the Ofu coast. Each objective will be addressed through the testing of a set of hypotheses. The intellectual merit of the project lies in the intersection of archaeological, biological, geological, and pedological evidence to evaluate multiple working models of island colonization and subsequent adaptation. The overarching goal is to construct a new model of the human colonization and subsequent settlement system in the context of a changing environment during the first millennium BC. This model will have applicability to coastal environments on other islands throughout the central Pacific. The results of the research will make an important contribution to the understanding of Samoan and Polynesian prehistory, human prehistory and colonization impacts more generally, and human ecodynamics in the broadest sense. Through the conduct of "community archaeology," local community members will be engaged with the scientific team to create cultural heritage knowledge relevant for professional and local stakeholders, alike. The project will serve to educate graduate and undergraduate students from the US, American Samoa, and Independent Samoa, many of whom are from backgrounds underrepresented in the sciences.