Collaborative Research: Horses and Human Societies in the American West

寻求理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转向历史数据集，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世纪家马在美洲的传播。该项目促进与土著群体的合作研究和向公众宣传，支持一名早期职业研究人员和科罗拉多大学科学设施和公共教育的发展，并资助三所西方大学（包括一所为西班牙裔服务的大学）的学生教育。该项目的成果将通过科学文献、大众传播媒介、博物馆展览以及由学者和土著领导人参加的一系列研讨会来传播。在此过程中，该项目建立了一个分析框架，用于理解物种扩散、环境变化、生态因素和文化转型之间复杂的相互作用，这些相互作用构建了我们的现代世界。在它们被引入美洲之后，驯养的马彻底改变了北美平原和沙漠的生活，在平原和沙漠中产生了伟大的马文化，并在17世纪和18世纪形成了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中具有明显的重要性，但历史记录的空白意味着人们对第一批马何时、为何以及如何首次融入美国西部大部分地区的土著社会知之甚少。该项目采用放射性碳定年法、古代DNA测序、动物考古学和稳定同位素分析等技术对古马遗骸进行分析，为驯养的马何时以及如何分散到美洲大陆建立了一个科学模型，并由此解释了马对早期历史上的美洲生活的影响。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。

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.