Doctoral Dissertation Research: Archaeological investigation of foodways and social organization in the Americas

这个博士论文项目将使用考古植物和动物的证据来推进关于食物是如何被利用的知识，食物是如何与社会组织相关的，更广泛地说，人类过去的社会政治复杂性是如何发展的。该项目不仅将产生动植物遗迹的详细数据，以推进考古理论，而且还将为理解与食物和不平等有关的现代社会挑战提供时间深度和比较数据。该项目将支持和加强STEM研究领域的国际科学合作和学生培训。还将通过社区和研究人员的合作促进公共和社区科学的推广以及当地历史遗产的保护。该项目建立在学者们最近的呼吁基础上，即发展一种更社会的方法来研究食物实践的考古研究，包括考虑在社会和文化体系中日常和仪式环境中人与食物之间的关系。研究人员将通过对墨西哥瓦哈卡州米克斯特卡阿尔塔的一个早期村庄保存完好的动物和植物遗迹进行彻底分析，来解决食物和社会组织之间的关系。Etlatongois考古遗址暂时位于公元前1000年中美洲瓦哈坎地区社会复杂性的黎明。动物考古学和古民族植物学分析将在该地区发掘的最大的动物和植物样本之一中进行，就单个时期的材料数量而言。样品的良好保存也将允许对玉米的比较形态学的研究，以更好地了解这种驯化的发展。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。

This doctoral dissertation project will use archaeological plant and animal evidence to advance knowledge about how food was utilized, how food related to social organization, and more broadly, how sociopolitical complexity developed in the human past. The project will not only generate detailed data on faunal and botanical remains to advance archaeological theory, but will also provide time depth and comparative data for understanding modern societal challenges related to food and inequality. The project will support and strengthen international scientific collaborations and student training in STEM research. Public and community science outreach and conservation of local historical heritage will also be fostered through community and researcher collaborations. This project builds upon recent calls by scholars to develop a more social approach to the archaeological study of food practices, including consideration of the relationship between people and food in everyday and ritual settings within a social and cultural system. The investigators will address the relationship between food and social organization through a thorough analysis of exceptionally well-preserved faunal and botanical remains of an early village in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico. The archaeological site of Etlatongois is temporally situated at the dawn of social complexity in the Oaxacan region of Mesoamerica, ca. 1000 BC. Zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical analyses will be carried out in one of the largest faunal and floral samples ever excavated for the region, in terms of volume of material pertaining to a single time period. The excellent preservation of the sample will also allow for the study of the comparative morphology of maize to better understand the development of this domesticate.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.