Collaborative Research: Vulnerability and Resilience in Island Socioecosystems

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，在一个国际合作小组的协助下，詹妮弗·卡恩和帕特里克·基尔奇将在法属波利尼西亚的三个岛屿上进行考古和古生态实地考察。这个小组汇集了美国、澳大利亚、新西兰和法国考古学、古民族植物学、古生态学和土壤科学方面的专家。他们将研究岛屿生态系统和对生态系统变化的文化反应，这些变化导致了波利尼西亚的景观和新兴的社会政治形态（酋长管辖地）的根本转变。该项目将采用比较方法研究Mangareva、Mo’orea和Maupiti的岛屿生态系统。这三个岛屿在岛屿的地质和年龄、地貌、大小、气候和海洋资源方面表现出明显的差异；它们在社会政治等级和一体化程度上差别很大；他们有现有的考古和古生态数据，可以作为研究的基础。该项目采用岛屿作为模型系统的概念，旨在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恢复能力。该小组还将调查社会政治制度如何对这些进程作出反应并受其影响。所有波利尼西亚社会的起源都可以追溯到一个共同的祖先波利尼西亚文化，然而随着时间的推移，不同的社会制度在人口密度、生产制度和政治结构方面存在显著差异。因此，波利尼西亚的比较考古研究为理解复杂的社会政治组织（如酋长领地）的出现提供了一个特别清晰的机会。这项研究将有助于理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实质性的弹性，并使其他文化陷入高度不稳定和脆弱的状态。该项目将从以前的耕地、纪念性建筑遗址和沿海栖息地获取基础数据，并记录岛屿动植物的古生态记录。这些数据将用于理解：1)人为引起的景观变化之间的相互作用；2)聚落格局的转变；3)农业基础设施和生产的变化；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出现的社会复杂性，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时间发展的模型，以及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具争议的问题。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。这项研究的更广泛影响包括教育、推广、促进国际研究合作以及自然科学和社会科学的整合。该项目涉及来自美国、澳大利亚、新西兰和法属波利尼西亚的多个机构以及不同文化和种族背景的学者和学生之间的合作。项目组将为波利尼西亚后裔的学生提供重要的培训机会。该项目强调考古学，但确实是跨学科的，并将更广泛地促进自然科学和社会科学之间的概念整合。

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.