Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Mobility in Human-Environment Interactions

累积的环境变化正在对沿海社区的可持续性产生负面影响。考古学为气候变化对人类人口的影响提供了一个深入的时间视角，因为我们的物种在我们生存的大部分时间里一直在应对不同程度的环境变化。该项目旨在调查过去4000年来沿海觅食种群的聚居地选择与环境条件之间的关系。该项目将对影响定居点选择的相互关联的社会和环境因素提供重要的见解。通过调查一个以极端环境条件而闻名的地区的社区聚落选择，我们可以更好地了解人类对环境变化反应的变异性。由于环境变化对生计的影响正在加剧，澄清人类行为和环境变化之间的联系至关重要。除了为人类学研究生提供经验、科学的数据收集和分析方法方面的培训外，这里提出的方法还将通过系统地记录人类在景观上的活动来帮助社区保护他们的文化遗产。这个项目提出了三个主要问题：1)自然资源在人类住区选择中有多重要？2)重大气候事件是否伴随着聚落分布和密度的变化？3)社会因素，如社区关系或网络，是否影响定居模式，如果是，影响程度如何？使用自动遥感程序，该项目将系统地记录这个沿海觅食社区的考古沉积物，研究人员将调查和挖掘确定的地点，以建立遗址年表。接下来，将用珊瑚化石重建过去几千年的环境状况。最后，这些数据将被纳入空间统计模型，以分析环境条件和定居点随时间分布之间的关系。该项目将促进关于人与环境相互作用的考古知识，以及流动性在人类适应环境变化中的作用。该奖项反映了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。

Cumulative environmental change is negatively impacting the sustainability of coastal communities. Archaeology provides a deep-time perspective into the impacts of climate change on human populations, as our species has coped with varying degrees of environmental change for most of our existence. This project seeks to investigate the relationship between settlement choice and environmental conditions in coastal foraging populations over the last 4000 years. This project will provide important insight into the interlinked social and environmental factors that affect settlement choices. By investigating community settlement choice in an area known for its extreme environmental conditions, we can better understand variability in human responses to environmental change. Clarifying the connection between human behavior and environmental change is vital, as environmental change impacts on livelihoods are intensifying. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the methods proposed here will also assist communities in conserving their cultural heritage by systematically recording human activities on the landscape through time.Three main questions are posed by this project: 1) How important are natural resources in human settlement choice? 2) Are major climate events accompanied by shifts in the distribution and density of settlements? and 3) Do social factors, such as community ties or networks, influence settlement patterns, and if so, to what degree? Using an automated remote sensing procedure, this project will systematically record archaeological deposits in this coastal foraging community and researchers will survey and excavate identified locations to establish site chronologies. Next, environmental conditions over the past several thousand years will be reconstructed using fossilized corals. Finally, these data will be incorporated into spatial statistical models to analyze the relationship between environmental conditions and settlement distributions over time. The project would advance archaeological knowledge about human-environment interactions, and the role of mobility in human adaptations to environmental change.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.