Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Archaeological Investigation of Erosion and its Effect on Social Processes in the Arctic

该奖项支持一个博士论文改进项目，该项目旨在调查挪威人在冰岛Hegranes （Skagafjörður）定居的前500年环境和社会动态中侵蚀与经济不平等之间的关系。大约公元870年，冰岛第一批定居者的农业实践造成了大面积的森林砍伐和土壤侵蚀。侵蚀将沉积物从一个地方移动到另一个地方，并可能导致景观退化或增强。在Hegranes，废弃的小型农场坐落在今天仍在经营的大型农场附近，被侵蚀的地区点缀着肥沃的草地。这种拼凑的景观允许调查与农田废弃和社会不平等发展相关的侵蚀。这项研究对理解当今人类和环境耦合系统如何影响社会变革进程具有重要意义。研究人员将使用土壤年代学将小农场的定居序列与土壤侵蚀和景观变化的相关环境序列进行比较。目的是探索小型家庭农场数量和分布的变化，记录侵蚀过程，并调查景观的社会重组是否与侵蚀的增加相对应。更大、更有实力的家庭可能从放弃小农场中受益，本项目将揭示放弃是如何为他们的利益而管理的。这项工作将有助于讨论人类引发的环境变化的社会和政治后果，重点是促进环境退化和社会不平等的家庭之间不平等的权力关系。

This award supports a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement project to investigate the relationship between erosion and economic inequality over the environmentally and socially dynamic first 500 years of Norse settlement in Hegranes, Skagafjörður, Iceland. The agricultural practices of the first settlers of Iceland, ca. 870 CE, caused widespread deforestation and soil erosion. Erosion moves sediments from one place to another, and can lead to either landscape degradation or augmentation. On Hegranes small abandoned farms lie near large successful farms that still operate today, and eroded areas are interspersed with productive grassland. This patchwork landscape allows investigation of erosion as related to farmstead abandonment and the development of social inequality. This research has implication for understanding how coupled human and environmental systems today might affect processes of social change. The researcher will use tephrochronology to compare the settlement sequence of small farms with associated environmental sequences of soil erosion and landscape change. The goal is to explore changes in number and distribution of small household farms, document processes of erosion, and investigate whether social reorganization of the landscape corresponds to increases in erosion. Larger, more powerful households likely benefited from abandonment of small farms, and this project will suggest how abandonment was managed to their advantage. This work will contribute to discussions about social and political consequences of human-initiated environmental change, focusing on unequal power relations between households that facilitate environmental degradation and social inequality.