Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Fuel Use in Traditional Societies

康涅狄格大学的Alexia Smith博士和Lucas Proctor博士将使用考古植物学来研究社会和政治变革时期如何影响人们的能源使用和燃料消耗。收集和燃烧木材、植物或粪便燃料是生活在非工业社会的人们日常生活中的一项基本任务，与获取食物和住所同等重要。考古学家经常注意到，由于燃料需求的增加，社会经济复杂的社会和早期国家出现后，森林砍伐很快就出现了。随着人口的增长和经济活动的加强，保持足够的燃料资源供应将变得越来越重要。本研究考察了燃料经济如何随着社会经济和政治复杂性的增加而变化。虽然发达国家不再依赖木材或粪便燃料，但发展中国家的许多地区仍然依赖森林和牧场来满足其日常能源需求。通过探索早期复杂社会的人们如何应对燃料需求和燃料短缺，这项研究将有助于国家和全球关于能源资源在可持续经济发展中的作用的讨论。了解社会经济因素如何影响人们长期收集和使用燃料资源的方式，对于制定能够平衡能源需求与自然资源保护的森林保护和环境政策至关重要。研究人员利用考古植物学（研究植物与人类如何相互作用）和地质考古技术，对位于美索不达米亚北部的三个考古遗址的燃料遗骸进行了识别和解释，这些遗址可追溯到晚铜石器时代（公元前5300-3100年）和亚述时代（公元前1300-611年）。该地区的晚期铜石器时代出现了第一批社会经济复杂的村庄和城市，而亚述时期则见证了扩张的亚述帝国的发展，从根本上改变了整个地区的土地利用模式和地方对资源的行政控制。结合来自碳化种子和木材遗骸、微观钙化灰烬残留物和民族考古数据的多种证据，将提供对每个遗址使用的燃料类型的严格评估，不同的燃料或不同的木材种类是否适合某些任务或不同地位的人，以及燃料如何影响土地使用实践。该项目的成果将为三个更大的合作研究项目做出贡献，这些项目将汇集来自伊拉克库尔德斯坦、叙利亚和土耳其的国际研究人员和当地考古学家，以研究濒危文化遗产地区社会复杂性的早期发展。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。

Dr. Alexia Smith and Lucas Proctor, of the University of Connecticut, will use archaeobotany to study how periods of social and political change affect peoples' energy use and fuel consumption. The collection and burning of wood, plant, or dung-based fuels is an essential daily task in the lives of people living in non-industrial societies, on par with the acquisition of food and shelter. Archaeologists have often noted that deforestation quickly follows the emergence of socio-economically complex societies and early states as a result of increased fuel needs. As populations grew and economic activities intensified, maintaining an adequate supply of fuel resources would have been increasingly important. This study examines how fuel economies change in response to a shift towards increasing socioeconomic and political complexity. While the developed world no longer relies on wood or dung fuels, many areas of the developing world still depend on access to forests and pasturelands to supply their daily energy needs. By exploring how people in early complex societies coped with fuel needs and fuel scarcity, this research will contribute to national and global discussions about the role of energy resources in sustainable economic development. An understanding of how socioeconomic factors affect how people collect and use fuel resources over long periods of time is essential to the development of forest conservation and environmental policies that can balance energy needs with the preservation of natural resources.The researchers use archaeobotany, the study of how plants and people interact, and geoarchaeological techniques, to identify and interpret fuel remains from three archaeological sites located in Northern Mesopotamia that date to the Late Chalcolithic (ca. 5300-3100 BC) and Assyrian (1300-611 BC) periods. The Late Chalcolithic in this region saw the emergence of the first socio-economically complex villages and cites, while the Assyrian period witnessed the development of the expansive Assyrian Empire, which fundamentally transformed land use patterns across the region and local administrative control of resources. Combining multiple lines of evidence from carbonized seed and wood remains, microscopic calcitic ash residues, and ethnoarchaeological data, will provide a rigorous evaluation of what fuel types were used at each site, whether different fuels or different wood species were preferred for certain tasks or by people of different statuses, and how fuel affected land use practices. The results of this project will contribute to three larger collaborative research projects that bring together international researchers and local archaeologists from Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, and Turkey in order to study the early development of social complexity in an area of endangered cultural heritage.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.