Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Subsistence Organization In A Traditional Society

博士候选人Caroline Antonelli （University at Albany-SUNY）将评估农民在前现代城市环境中使用的各种农业系统的可持续性，重点是史前晚期的中美洲玛雅遗址。在以长期不稳定为特征的脆弱环境背景下，古代城市居民面临的粮食供应挑战尤其严重。本研究调查了过去农学家所采用的各种复杂方法，这些方法有助于减轻风险，并有助于在相对极端的环境环境中实现稳定、持久的城市政治经济。农业实践的多样性体现在从园艺到耕作的连续统一体上，包括从小型的城市花园到大型的、超出城市蔓延的遥远的耕种区。这项研究将确定特定作物种植的持续时间和强度、当地土壤的生产潜力、人类以土壤退化或工程改良的形式对环境的影响，以及由土壤、海拔和湿度差异形成的对比自然微环境的开发。考古科学具有独特的定位，可以重建和分析长期人类与环境关系的影响，并将这些发现应用于当今世界边缘贫困地区的传统农民，包括研究区域，包括墨西哥尤卡坦半岛西北部的农村地区。该地区是墨西哥南部最干旱的地区之一，历史记录证明了干旱和飓风的规律性。长期以来，人们一直认为该研究区域的农业潜力黯淡，尽管这一区域在过去（包括今天）是众多大城市和大量农村人口的家园，这似乎是自相矛盾的。这项研究将首次从地质考古学的角度系统地重建墨西哥南部这一地区城乡农业战略和景观影响的时空序列。一个重要的更广泛的影响体现在对当地农民社区的教育推广，他们将受益于关于集约化浓缩、多变的当地农业潜力和过去的生态位种植方法的知识。该项目的数据将来自考古学和地质学的跨学科方法，包括地球化学土壤成分、美国农业部地球物理土壤分类系统、稳定同位素分析、遥感辅助环境测绘（陆地卫星和激光雷达图像）以及空间和统计软件的使用。玛雅是当时（公元1200-1450年）玛雅世界最大的城市，有2万居民居住在一个人口密集的城区。这座城市是一个巨大的地区国家和贸易领域的首都，从海湾延伸到加勒比海海岸，但人们对它的主食供应知之甚少。农业的可持续性问题，特别是在面对城市增长和环境限制的情况下，是社会科学和现代世界研究人员非常感兴趣的问题。该项目将为人类-环境系统恢复力的长期战略提供重要的新考古数据。

Doctoral candidate Caroline Antonelli (University at Albany-SUNY) will evaluate the sustainability of diverse agricultural systems employed by farmers in pre-modern urban settings focusing on the late prehistoric Mesoamerican site of Mayapan. Food supply challenges faced by residents of ancient cities were especially acute in fragile environmental contexts characterized by chronic instability. This study investigates the diverse and complex methods employed by past agriculturalists that helped to mitigate risks and contribute toward stable, enduring urban political economies in relatively extreme environmental settings. Diversity in agricultural practices was manifested by a gardening-to-farming continuum involving plots that graded from small, urban gardens to larger, distant cultivation zones just beyond the urban sprawl. This study will determine the duration and intensity of cultivation of specific types of crops, the productive potential of local soils, human impacts to the environment in the form of degradation or engineered improvements to soil, and the exploitation of contrastive natural microenvironments formed by differences in soil, elevation, and moisture. Archaeological science is uniquely positioned to reconstruct and analyze the impacts of long-term human-environmental relationships and to present useful applications of these findings to traditional farmers in marginal, impoverished zones of the world today, including the study area including this rural locality of the northwest Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. This region is one of the driest zones in southern Mexico and historical records attest to the regularity of droughts and hurricanes. The study area was long thought to be of dismal agrarian potential, despite the seeming contradiction that this zone was home to numerous large cities and extensive rural populations through time, including the present day. This investigation will be the first to systematically reconstruct the array of urban-to-rural agrarian strategies and landscape impacts across time and space from a geoarchaeological perspective in this part of southern Mexico. A key broader impact is represented by educational outreach to local farmer communities who will benefit from knowledge concerning intensive enrichment, variable local agrarian potential, and niche cultivation practices of the past. Data for this project will derive from interdisciplinary methods in archaeology and geology, including geochemical soil composition, the USDA system of geophysical soil classification, stable isotopic analysis, remote sensing-assisted environmental mapping (Landsat satellite and LiDAR imagery), and the use of spatial and statistical software. Mayapan was the largest city of the Maya world of its time (A.D. 1200-1450) and home to a population of 20,000 residents who dwelled in a densely-packed urban zone. This city was the capital of a vast regional state and trading domain that extended from the Gulf to the Caribbean coasts, but little is known regarding its staple food supply. The issue of agricultural sustainability, especially in the face of urban growth and environmental constraints, is a problem of great interest to researchers in the social sciences and to the modern world. This project will provide important new archaeological data on long-term strategies for resiliency in human-environmental systems.