Collaborative Research: Horses and Human Societies in the American West

寻求了解当今环境和文化变化之间复杂相互作用的研究人员越来越多地求助于历史数据集，这使得能够长期检查这种相互作用。该项目使用历史和考古数据来模拟人类对人类历史上最重要的社会环境变化之一的反应：15世纪和16世纪家马迁徙到美洲。该项目促进与土著群体的合作研究和公共宣传，支持科罗拉多大学的一名早期研究人员以及科学设施和公共教育的发展，并资助三所西部大学的学生教育(包括一所为西班牙裔服务的机构)。该项目的成果将通过科学文献、大众媒体和博物馆展览以及一系列将学者和土著领导人聚集在一起的研讨会来传播。通过这样做，这个项目建立了一个分析框架，用于了解物种传播、环境变化、生态因素和文化变革之间的复杂互动，这些因素构建了我们的现代世界。家马在被引入美洲后，给北美平原和沙漠的生活带来了革命性的变化，催生了平原和沙漠中伟大的马文化，并形成了17世纪和18世纪在经济和军事上占主导地位的土著帝国的支柱。然而，尽管马在后来的历史上显然很重要，但历史记录中的空白意味着，人们对第一批马何时、为什么或如何首次融入美国西部大部分地区的土著社会知之甚少。将放射性碳测年、古代DNA测序、动物考古学和稳定同位素分析等技术应用于古马遗骸，该项目产生了一个关于家马何时以及如何传播到大陆的科学模型，并通过这样做解释了马对历史早期美洲生活的影响。这个奖项反映了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。

Researchers seeking to understand the complex interactions between present-day environmental and cultural change increasingly turn to historical datasets, which enable examination of such interactions over the long term. This project uses historical and archaeological data to model human responses to one of the most important socio-environmental changes in human history: the dispersal of the domestic horse into the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The project promotes collaborative research with and public outreach to indigenous groups, supports an early-career researcher and the development of scientific facilities and public education at the University of Colorado, and funds the education of students at three western universities (including a Hispanic-serving institution). Results of the project are to be disseminated through both the scientific literature, popular media, and a museum exhibit, as well as a series of seminars bringing together scholars and indigenous leaders. In doing so, this project establishes an analytical framework for understanding the complex interaction between species dispersals, environmental changes, ecological factors, and cultural transformations that built our modern world.After their introduction to the Americas domestic horses revolutionized life across the plains and deserts of North America, giving rise to the great horse cultures of the plains and deserts and forming the backbone of economically and militarily dominant Native empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite the obvious importance of horses in later history, however, gaps in the historic record mean that little is known about when, why, or how the first horses were first integrated into Native societies across most of the American West. Applying techniques including radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA sequencing, zooarchaeology, and stable isotopes analysis to ancient horse remains, this project produces a scientific model for when and how domestic horses dispersed into the continent, and in so doing explains the ways horses impacted life in early historic America.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.