Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Agricultural Adaptation and Socioeconomic Change

了解人们如何根据不断变化的经济和贸易关系调整他们的土地利用，对于理解环境和土地管理决策非常重要。当涉及到具有巨大权力差异的群体时，这些决策变得更加复杂。考古记录以其大量的案例和大量的时间深度，对这些问题提供了宝贵的见解。这个博士论文项目由科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的凯特琳·戴维斯和斯科特·奥特曼博士指导，将评估16世纪和17世纪新墨西哥州普韦布洛人的经济和农业实践中西班牙强加与土著机构之间的相互作用。目的是更好地了解普韦布洛人在与西班牙接触之前和之后的农业经济。为该项目收集的数据将解决在理解美洲殖民主义的影响和应对方面的差距，根据土著机构重新评估并使殖民叙事复杂化。这些数据还将有助于填补对美洲土著旱地农业系统如何运作和继续运作的理解空白。该项目产生的多作物农业潜力模型将对今天研究区域的良好农业区域具有指导意义，因此具有环境可持续性价值，对学者和农民都有帮助。最后，与当地土地所有者和普韦布洛社区成员合作，通过这个项目的每一步，将提供教育机会和合作考古的积极例子。西班牙对新墨西哥州北部里约热内卢Grande地区的殖民导致了人口结构的变化，对有限的土地基础的额外需求，以及经济制度的变化，包括贸易网络和税收的变化。最近关于这一时期的文献倾向于将考古记录的变化解释为来自对西班牙殖民的强加或抵抗。虽然这两件事都发生了，但人们忽视了普韦布洛人在多大程度上也利用了引进的西班牙作物、技术和牲畜所带来的机会，对它们进行了改造，以适应普韦布洛人的使用，并将它们融入了普韦布洛人的生活。在以前的学术研究中，对当地农业生产的考虑在很大程度上脱离了它们所适应的经济体系。在本项目中，研究人员将通过以下方式评估西班牙引进在普韦布洛经济和定居中的作用：1)创建土著和引进作物的农业潜力空间模型，并将其与人工制品和定居数据相结合；2)通过收集和分析两个前西班牙裔普韦布洛部落和两个殖民时代普韦布洛部落不同类型的田间微生物样本，确定田间类型和作物类型之间的关系；3)通过对这四个地点的田间特征和可确定年代的人工制品的地表调查，评估不同类型、技术和相关作物的投资变化。随着时间的推移，这些努力将使我们更好地了解农业潜力与农业投资之间的关系，从而揭示在不断变化的经济和社会制度下的土著选择。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。

Knowing how people adapt their land use in light of changing economic and trade relationships is important for understanding environmental and land management decisions. These decisions become even more complicated when they involve groups with substantial power differences. The archaeological record, with its numerous example cases and substantial time depth, holds valuable insights regarding these issues. This doctoral dissertation project, directed by Kaitlyn Davis and Dr. Scott Ortman of the University of Colorado-Boulder, will assess the interplay between Spanish impositions and Native agency with regard to Pueblo economic and agricultural practices in 16th and 17th century New Mexico. The goal is to better understand the Pueblo agricultural economy prior to and following Spanish contact. The data collected for this project will address gaps in the understanding of the implications of and responses to colonialism in the Americas, reassessing and complicating the colonial narrative in light of Native agency. The data will also help fill in gaps in the understanding of how indigenous arid-land agricultural systems operated, and continue to operate, in the Americas. The multi-crop agricultural potential model produced by this project will be instructive as to where good agricultural areas are in the study area today, and thus has environmental sustainability value and will be of use to scholars as well as farmers. Finally, working with local landowners and Pueblo community members through every step of this project will provide educational opportunities and a positive example of collaborative archaeology.Spanish colonization of the Northern Rio Grande region in New Mexico contributed to demographic changes, additional demands on the finite land base, and changes in the economic system, including changes in trade networks and taxation. The recent literature on this period has tended to interpret changes in the archaeological record as deriving from the impositions of or resistance to Spanish colonization. While both did occur, what has been overlooked is the extent to which Pueblo people also took advantage of the opportunities presented by introduced Spanish crops, technologies, and livestock, adapting them for Pueblo use and incorporating them into Pueblo life. In previous scholarship, considerations of local agricultural production have been largely divorced from the economic system they fit into. In this project, the researchers will assess the role of Spanish introductions in Pueblo economics and settlement by: 1) creating spatial models of agricultural potential for indigenous and introduced crops and combining these with artifact and settlement data; 2) determining associations between field types and crop types by collecting and analyzing microbotanical samples from various field types at two pre-Hispanic Pueblos and two colonial-era Pueblos; and 3) assessing changing investment in various field types, technologies, and associated crops through surface survey of field features and dateable artifacts at these four sites. These efforts will yield a better picture of agricultural potential versus agricultural investment through time to reveal Native choices in a changing economic and social system.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.