Doctoral Dissertation Research: Assessing Multiple Lines of Evidence for Gene Flow in Archaeological Contexts

重建过去人类的运动和相互作用，可以让我们更广泛地理解随着时间的推移，生物和文化过程塑造了人类。在这个博士论文项目中，研究者将比较过去基于骨骼数据重建人口动态的两种方法。了解这些生物学方法的相对优点将支持依赖于过去种群的生物学和文化数据的更复杂的分析。这个跨学科的项目借鉴了进化人类学、遗传学、统计学和生物考古学的理论和方法。通过免费和低成本的课程和外展讲座，包括后代社区成员，感兴趣的公众成员和STEM领域服务不足的学生在内的广大受众将参与讨论人口动态的复杂性以及这些过程在现代世界中的相关性。该项目将研究从骨学数据中识别基因流动特征的两种方法，以解决有关过去人口相互作用的社会、文化和生物方面的更大问题。本研究中比较的两种方法通过观察基因流动的两种潜在影响来确定基因流动的存在：群体之间形态上的更大程度的相似性（生物距离模型）和群体形态变异的增加（定量遗传模型）。这项研究将解决三个主要的研究问题：使用两种不同的模型来研究相同的骨骼遗骸，对基因流的推断是否不同？是否使用一种生物学方法捕获了群体相互作用的重要细微差别，而无法从另一种方法推断出来，或者两种方法是否需要一起使用才能更好地解决基因流动问题？最后，每种方法如何与从物质文化中建立的迁移假设进行比较？这些问题将通过比较在两个不同的考古背景下的两个分析结果来解决，在一个地区有充分研究的考古记录。第一种情况有来自物质文化的证据，表明群体之间过去的迁移（以及可能的基因流动），第二种情况有物质文化证据，表明文化分离，可能没有基因流动。通过这些测试，研究人员将评估单个模型在没有书面记录的情况下估计基因流动的能力。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。

Reconstructing the movements and interactions of humans in the past informs our broader understanding of the biological and cultural processes that have shaped human populations through time. In this doctoral dissertation project, the investigator will compare two methods used to reconstruct human population dynamics in the past based on skeletal data. Understanding the relative merits of these biological methods will support more complex analyses that rely on both biological and cultural data from past populations. The interdisciplinary project draws upon theory and methods from evolutionary anthropology, genetics, statistics, and bioarchaeology. Through free and low-cost courses and outreach talks, a broad audience, including members of descendant communities, interested members of the public, and underserved students in STEM fields, will engage in discussions about the complexities of human population dynamics and the relevance of these processes in the modern world. The project will investigate two methods for identifying signatures of gene flow from osteological data, in order to address larger questions about the social, cultural and biological aspects of population interactions in the past. The two methods compared in this study determine the presence of gene flow by looking at two of its potential effects: a greater degree of similarity in morphology between groups (the biological distance model), and an increase in group morphological variation (the quantitative genetic model). The study will address three primary research questions: Does the inference of gene flow differ between studies using two different models to investigate the same skeletal remains? Are important nuances about group interactions captured using one biological method that are not inferable from the other, or do both methods need to be used together to achieve better resolution about gene flow? And finally, how does each method compare to hypotheses of migration established from material culture? These questions will be addressed by comparing the results of two analyses in two different archaeological contexts within a region with a well-researched archaeological record. The first context has evidence from material culture that is indicative of past migration (and possible gene flow) between groups, and the second has material culture evidence indicating cultural separation and likely no gene flow. Through these tests, the investigators will evaluate the ability of individual models to estimate gene flow in contexts with no written records.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.