Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Formal Modeling Of Raw Material Procurement

人们对技术原材料的选择和流动所做的决定是社会科学中的一个关键问题，对从小到大的所有社会都有重要影响。 研究人员将通过计算机和数学建模与考古数据相结合，研究早期现代人类如何在景观中移动，组织他们的技术，并在进化的形成时期面临重大气候和环境变化时选择石器制造的原材料。过去对这些关系的研究依赖于非正式（定性）模型。在这项研究中，原材料被认为是专门和直接选择的某种质量，或原材料是机会主义地选择时，遇到的景观，使用正式的逻辑接地建模，允许精确定位为什么模型是错误的或没有。在社会科学中，人类行为和社会文化系统的正式建模的发展有所增长。所有的模型必须开始简单，这项研究，通过使用两个简单的模型，将说明如何正式的模型可以应用到技术变革和采购的材料，从而有助于社会科学建模的持续发展的问题。研究人员将寻找并与亚利桑那州立大学（ASU）的本科生合作，以帮助扩展模型，从而为社会科学中基于STEM的教育做出贡献。完成后，这些模型将用于纳尔逊曼德拉城市大学，南非和亚利桑那州立大学的本科生的教学经验。此外，本发明的目的是，研究人员将提出的模型框架可应用于世界各地考古序列中工具资源选择的其他例子，无论原材料类型如何。研究人员将研究石器原材料在早期现代人类面临中更新世至晚更新世重大气候和环境变化时的技术组织和移动战略中的作用和重要性。南非南海岸的莫塞尔湾地区。利用该地区出色的高分辨率气候/环境和考古数据，研究人员将对比两种正式模型，测试从这些模型中得出的不同假设以及自变量对石器原材料选择的影响。这一奋进将突出哪些原材料在不断变化的环境和行为背景下更有时间效率地使用，并将提供有关早期人类对原材料所作选择的宝贵数据，这些数据将被整合到包括食物资源在内的狩猎采集资源的综合计算模型中。最终，研究人员将提供必要的清晰度，以确定在我们现代人类进化的形成时期，对气候和环境变化的文化适应性反应是否是由一种流动性战略驱动的，这种战略排除了对石材技术的任何具体投资，只优先考虑将人们转移到食物资源，或者，应对措施是否是越来越依赖于技术创新，而技术创新是通过对原材料的战略选择来促进的，这需要对原材料特性的技术洞察力。

The decisions that people make in regards to the choice and movement of raw materials for technology is a crucial question in the social sciences that has important impacts on all societies, from small to large scale. Researchers will study through computer and mathematical modeling integrated with archaeological data how early modern humans moved around the landscape, organized their technology, and made choices of raw materials for stone tool manufacture when they faced major climatic and environmental change during formative periods of evolution. Past scholarship on these relationships has relied on informal (qualitative) models. In this research raw materials are considered either to be specifically and directly selected for a certain quality, or raw materials are opportunistically selected when encountered on the landscape, using formal logic-grounded modelling that allows for pin-pointing why a model is wrong or not. In the social sciences, there is growth in the development of formal modeling of human behavior and social and cultural systems. All models must begin simply, and this research, through its use of two simple models, will illustrate how formal models can be applied to questions of technological change and the procurement of materials and thus contribute to that ongoing development of social science modeling. The researchers will seek out and work with undergraduates at Arizona State University (ASU) to assist in expanding the models thus contributing to STEM-based education in the social science. On completion, the models will be used a teaching experience for undergraduate students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa and ASU. Additionally, the model framework that will be produced by the researchers can be applied to other examples of tool resource choice regardless of raw material type in archaeological sequences throughout the world.The researchers will examine the role and importance of stone tool raw materials in the technological organization and mobility strategy of early modern humans when facing major climatic and environmental change during the Middle to Late Pleistocene in the Mossel Bay region on the south coast of South Africa. Using excellent high-resolution climate/environmental and archaeological data from this region, the researchers will contrast two formal models, test different hypotheses drawn from those models and the effects independent variables have on the selection of stone tool raw materials. This endeavor will highlight which raw materials were more time-efficient to use during changing environmental and behavioral contexts, and will provide valuable data on the choices early humans made regarding raw materials that will be integrated into a comprehensive computational model of hunter-gatherer resources that include food resources. Ultimately the researchers will provide needed clarity as to whether the cultural adaptive response to climatic and environmental change during the formative periods of our modern human evolution was driven by a mobility strategy that precluded any specific investment in stone technology and only prioritized moving people to the food resources, or if the response was an increased reliance on technological innovation facilitated by strategic selection of raw materials that demanded technical insight in raw material characteristics.