Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Relationship Between Agriculture and Settlement Pattern

研究人员试图了解觅食、食品加工和农业如何影响人类群体在移动定居点和定居主义方面组织社区的方式。传统上，研究人员将流动性等同于觅食行为，而将以永久或半永久定居为特征的久坐生活等同于农业。然而，最近的研究表明，这可能是一种错误的二分法，农业和定居主义可能不一定联系在一起，可能存在多种不同的方式，不同的群体可以从事农业。考古研究很适合调查农业、定居和食品加工之间的关系，因为它可以记录和比较生活在不同地方环境中的不同人类群体在长时间内经历文化变化的方式。Krista Dotzel和Kevin McBride博士将通过研究了解美国新英格兰南部过去的土著觅食和玉米种植社区及其与流动性和定居主义的关系来调查这些问题。为这项研究产生的放射性碳年代将帮助其他研究人员更好地了解该地区的文化年代学。通过在公共和学术场所传播这项研究，这项工作将有助于公众和学术界更好地了解接触前北美土著美洲社会农业实践的可变性，以及更广泛地了解社会在其社区内采用和使用作物的多种方式。这项研究将通过确定这些驯化作物的首次出现以及确定玉米烹饪和消费方式的变化，调查玉米、豆类和南瓜的传播以及玉米在单一地区不同社区中的作用变化。当驯化作物被引入一个社会时，这是否必然导致社会发展为定居的定居点？如果是这样，那么久坐症的发展需要多长时间？已经实行定居主义的觅食社会是否比流动社会更快地将驯养动物融入社会？食品加工和烹饪技术如何随着时间的推移而变化，这些与移动或久坐的居住模式有何关系？为了研究这些问题，研究人员将分析从美国新英格兰南部地区大约2000年前的陶器上的古代食物残渣中提取的微观植物遗骸。这一地区的社会实行多样化的农业战略，并在不同程度上生活在流动和定居的社区中。这种文化多样性将使研究人员能够通过比较研究来深入研究这些问题。利用微小的植物遗骸，研究人员将确定玉米、豆类和南瓜的首次出现，并通过将微小的植物遗骸与在这些地点发现的完整的植物种子进行比较，确定该地区不同地区玉米烹饪方式的变化。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 seek to understand how foraging, food processing, and agriculture affect the ways in which human groups organize their communities in terms of mobile settlements and sedentism. Traditionally, researchers have equated mobility with foraging practices while equating sedentary life, which features permanent or semi-permanent settlement, with agriculture. Recent research, however, suggests that this may be a false dichotomy, that agriculture and sedentism may not necessarily be linked, and that there may exist a diversity of ways in which groups can practice agriculture. Archaeological research is well situated to investigate the relationship between agriculture, sedentism, and food processing because it can document and compare the ways in which different human groups living in different local environments undergo cultural change over long periods. Krista Dotzel and Dr. Kevin McBride will investigate these issues by researching to understand past indigenous foraging and maize farming communities and their relationships to mobility and sedentism in Southern New England, USA. Radiocarbon dates produced for this research will help other researchers better understand the cultural chronology of the region. By disseminating this research at public and academic venues, this work will help public and academic communities to better understand both the variability of agricultural practices of indigenous American societies in pre-contact North America and more generally the diverse ways in which societies adopt and use crops within their communities. This research will investigate the spread of maize, bean, and squash and the changing role of maize in different communities within a single region by identifying the first appearances of these domesticated crops and by identifying changes in maize cooking and consumption practices. When domesticated crops are introduced into a society does this necessarily cause the society to develop sedentary settlements? If so, how long does it take for sedentism to develop? Do foraging societies that already practice sedentism incorporate domesticates into their societies faster than mobile societies? How do food processing and cooking techniques change over time and how might these relate to mobile or sedentary residence patterns? To investigate these questions, the researchers will analyze microscopic plant remains extracted from ancient food residues on ceramic pots spanning roughly 2,000 years from sites in Southern New England, USA. Societies in this region practiced diverse agricultural strategies and lived in communities that were mobile and sedentary to varying degrees. This cultural diversity will allow the researchers to examine these questions in depth through a comparative study. Using microscopic plant remains, researchers will identify the first appearance of maize, bean, and squash and, through comparing microscopic plant remains to whole plant seeds found at the sites, identify changes in the way that maize was cooked over time in different parts of the region.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.