The Development Of Agriculture In Mesoamerica

玉米(Zea Mays)是美国最大的经济作物，也是全球最重要的营养资源之一。考古学处于有利地位，可以增加我们对导致其在现代全球经济中享有特权地位的因素的理解，更广泛地说，可以提高我们对玉米农业、气候和社会经济变化之间的长期动态关系进行建模的能力。玉米(或玉米)的驯化大约发生在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历了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变为以谷物为主的完全坐着的农业经济的因素仍然存在很大争议。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之间的关系感兴趣的人具有广泛的意义，这是我们这个时代的紧迫问题。萨默维尔和他的研究团队将分析从墨西哥普埃布拉特瓦坎山谷一系列干燥的洞穴和泛滥平原遗址挖掘出的生物收藏品，特瓦坎山谷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仪测年和人体骨骼的稳定同位素分析来确定玉米成为特瓦坎山谷主要食物投入的时间。此外，将对大量古代和现代动物骨和植物样本进行稳定的同位素比值分析，以确定人类古饮食信号的背景，并推断从更新世末期(约公元前10,000)到后经典时期(约公元前1500)当地环境的变化。通过确定墨西哥高原地区出现粮食生产经济的时机和背景，这项研究检验了玉米是一种后备食物的概念，最初玉米不如其他资源可取，但在短缺时期能够得到强化，以及环境变化鼓励人们越来越频繁地开发这种资源。在这个意义上，这项研究验证了农业发展是对环境变化的适应性社会反应的想法。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.