Collaborative Research: Human Long Term Adaptation To Variable Marine Environments

该项目的目标是了解人类适应加州海峡群岛生态变化的时机和性质。这是一个独特的土著社会长期被占领的区域，尽管发生了深刻的环境变化。所采用的战略包括改变生存和定居模式、增加物质运输、技术创新以及发展仪式和社会政治组织。考古学是追踪这些文化和环境变化的理想之选，因为它能够收集和评估深层数据。文化变化与环境压力的关系有多密切？在环境不稳定的情况下，人们如何应对并在某些情况下促进增长？这些问题与现代社会有关，在现代社会，迅速变化的生态系统和环境条件给确定可持续做法和培养复原力以支持持续的社会和文化增长带来了挑战。这个项目还将为南加州的各种学院和大学提供重要的学生培训机会，并包括与后代美洲原住民社区成员的合作。这项研究与以前的工作不同，因为它包括多个岛屿、文化群体和不止一个环境背景。它提出的问题是，重大的环境和文化变化如何反映在他们的物质文化中。研究小组将考虑跨越千年的文化数据序列中的历时变化可能如何与显示环境波动的时间和程度的数据相关。这些转变将在拥有多个文化群体的区域内进行考虑，以突出每个群体或生态区域的特定适应。这一地区有很长的人类占领历史，群岛现在的八个陆地之间的环境差异很大。因此，适应战略可能针对个别生态区域或特定的文化偏好而量身定做。研究团队将评估来自未分析或分析不足的现有人工制品和生态制品组合的多行数据，进行工具生产和维护分析、岩屑来源、大型植物和动物分析、氧同位素分析，以及使用贝叶斯建模的加速器质谱分析。这些数据将阐明该区域不断变化的文化和生态历史，并对不同人类社会的适应反应进行比较分析。通过使用自材料收集时代以来可用的更先进的方法来分析主要现有集合的材料，研究人员避免了不必要的挖掘，并有助于丰富博物馆收藏品的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to understand the timing and nature of human adaptations to ecological changes in California’s Channel Islands. This is a region where unique indigenous societies sustained long-term occupation despite profound environmental shifts that occurred. The strategies adapted include changes in subsistence and settlement patterns, increased material conveyance, technological innovation, and developments in ritual and sociopolitical organization. Archaeology is ideal for tracking these changes in culture and environment by being able to collect and evaluate deep-time data. How closely do cultural changes relate to environmental stress and how are people able to respond to, and in some cases foster growth, in contexts of environmental instability? These questions are relevant to modern society where rapidly changing ecosystems and environmental conditions create challenges in identifying sustainable practices and fostering resilience to support continued societal and cultural growth. This project will also provide opportunities for significant student training from a wide variety of colleges and universities across southern California and includes collaborations with members of descendant Native American communities.This research differs from previous work by including multiple islands, cultural groups and more than one environmental context. It asks the question of how major environmental and cultural shifts are reflected in their material culture. The research team will consider how diachronic shifts within cultural data sequences that span the millenia may correlate with data showing timing and extent of environmental fluctuations. These shifts will be considered within a region with multiple cultural groups to highlight particular adaptations tailored to each group or ecological region. This region has a very long history of human occupation, with significant environmental variation between the now eight landmasses of the archipelago. As such, adaptation strategies were likely tailored to individual ecological regions or specific cultural preferences. The research team will evaluate multiple lines of data from existing artifact and ecofact assemblages that are un- or under-analyzed, conducting tool production and maintenance analysis, lithic sourcing, macrobotanical and faunal analysis, oxygen isotope analysis, and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry analysis with Bayesian modelling. These data will elucidate the region’s changing cultural and ecological histories and allow for a comparative analysis of the adaptive responses of different human societies. By analyzing material from primarily existing assemblages using more advanced methods available since the times in which the materials were collected, the researchers avoid unnecessary excavation and help to enrich knowledge of museum collections.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.