The Development Of Agriculture In Mesoamerica

玉米（Zea mays）是美国最大的商业作物，也是全球最重要的营养资源之一。考古学可以帮助我们更好地理解导致其在现代全球经济中占据特殊地位的因素，更广泛地说，可以提高我们建立玉米农业、气候和社会经济变化之间长期动态关系模型的能力。玉米（或玉米）的驯化发生在大约9000年前的墨西哥，但从驯化到第一个完全定居的农业社会的发展经过了5000多年。促使早期墨西哥人从季节性种植玉米的游牧生活方式转向完全定居的以谷物为主的农业经济的因素仍然备受争议。安德鲁·萨默维尔博士和他在墨西哥和美国的研究团队将探索导致墨西哥早期农业社会发展的因素，并询问气候变化在这一过程中可能发挥的作用。通过与墨西哥学者和机构的密切合作，该项目将加强美国和墨西哥之间国际和跨学科研究的社会基础设施，其结果将对那些对农业与气候变化关系感兴趣的人具有广泛的意义，这是我们这个时代的一个紧迫问题。萨默维尔和他的研究小组将分析从墨西哥普埃布拉的特瓦坎山谷的一系列干燥洞穴和洪漫平原遗址中挖掘出来的生物收藏品，墨西哥普埃布拉是世界上最早采用玉米种植的中心之一。这项研究将使用加速质谱测定年代和对人类骨骼进行稳定同位素分析，以确定玉米在特华坎山谷成为主要饮食来源的时间。此外，将分析大量古代和现代动物骨骼和植物样本的稳定同位素比率，以确定人类古饮食信号的背景，并推断从更新世末期（~公元前10000年）到后古典时期（~公元1500年）当地环境的变化。通过确定墨西哥高地粮食生产经济出现的时间和背景，本研究验证了这样一种观点，即玉米是一种后备食物，最初不如其他资源那么受欢迎，但在稀缺时期能够得到加强，环境变化鼓励人们越来越频繁地利用这种资源。从这个意义上说，该研究检验了农业发展是对环境变化的适应性社会反应的观点。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Corn (Zea mays) is the largest commercial crop in the United States and one of the most important nutritional resources across the globe. Archaeology is well positioned to increase our understanding of the factors that led to its privileged place in the modern global economy and, more generally, to improve our ability to model the long-term dynamic relationships between maize agriculture, climate, and socio-economic change. The domestication of corn (or maize) occurred approximately 9,000 years ago in Mexico, but over 5,000 years passed from domestication to the development of the first fully-sedentary agricultural societies. The factors that motivated early Mexican populations to switch from nomadic lifestyles that incorporated maize seasonally to fully-sedentary agricultural economies focusing heavily on the grain staple remain highly contested. Dr. Andrew Somerville and his research teams in Mexico and the United States will explore the factors that led to the development of incipient agricultural societies in Mexico and interrogate the role that climatic changes may have played in this process. Through close collaborations with Mexican scholars and institutions, the project will strengthen the social infrastructure for international and interdisciplinary research between the United States and Mexico, and the results will have broad significance to those interested in the relationship between agriculture and climatic change, a pressing issue of our time.Dr. Somerville and his research teams will analyze the biological collections excavated from a series of dry cave and floodplain sites in the Tehuacan Valley of Puebla, Mexico, one of the first centers of the world to adopt maize farming. The research will use accelerated mass spectrometry dating and stable isotope analysis of human bones to firmly date the timing of when maize became a dominant dietary input in the Tehuacan Valley. In addition, a large sample of ancient and modern faunal bones and plant samples will be analyzed for stable isotope ratios to contextualize the human paleodiet signal, and to make inferences regarding changes in the local environment from the Terminal Pleistocene (~10,000 BC) to the Postclassic Period (~AD 1500). By establishing the timing and context in which economies of food production emerged in highland Mexico, this study tests the notion that maize was a fallback food, initially less desirable than other resources but capable of being intensified during times of scarcity, and that environmental changes encouraged populations to exploit this resource with increasing frequency. In this sense, the research tests the idea that the development of agriculture was an adaptive social response to environmental change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.