Collaborative Research: Human and material mobilities among fisher-hunter-gatherers and pastoralists

长期以来，流动性一直被认为是人类社会组织的一个重要方面。在放牧社会中，流动性允许对干旱、社会和政治不稳定以及自然灾害作出灵活和动态的反应。该项目使用新的考古工具来记录流动性，以揭示过去人们如何应对气候变化和其他挑战。调查和挖掘用于研究弹性放牧系统和流动模式如何以及为什么在不断变化的生物群落背景下发展。通过考察主要区域干旱化之前、期间和之后的经济、技术和文化变化，对人类流动模式和相互作用领域潜在变化的新数据进行了背景分析。研究人员强调对初级科学家的高级培训和研究支持。实地考察允许学生在调查、挖掘和人工制品分析方面进行训练，并提供参与国际实地考察的机会。该团队还与现场附近服务不足的社区和学校合作，分享科学知识并建立智力包容性的研究框架。在旱地环境中工作的考古学家已经证明，在数千年经常剧烈的气候波动中，游牧系统具有长期的恢复能力。在一些地区，这些系统可能基于居民流动、牲畜流动和复杂的社会网络，这使得今天的人们能够对干旱以及不断变化的社会、经济和政治局势做出灵活的反应。即使有高分辨率的古气候记录，考古研究也需要收集详细的数据来测试过去群体可能移动的频率、地点和原因，以及这些移动是如何导致其他变化的后果或催化剂的。在这个项目中，新的考古实地工作包括在三个地点进行挖掘。对这些遗址的人类和牲畜牙齿进行同位素分析，以重建个体一生中的活动和饮食，并使用石器和陶器的地球化学来源来重建物体的运动或交换。这些方法可以批判性地评估人类、牲畜和物质的流动如何塑造了一个地区的社会和生态景观，以及如何被这些景观所塑造。这些社会和生态景观对更广泛的牧民复原力、迁徙和气候变化的叙述至关重要。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。

Mobility has long been recognized as a crucial aspect of human social organization. Among herding societies, mobility allows flexible and dynamic responses to aridification, social and political instability, and natural disasters. This project uses new archaeological tools for documenting mobility, to shed light on how people coped with climatic changes and other challenges in the past. Survey and excavation are used to examine how and why resilient herding systems and mobility patterns developed in the context of changing biomes. New data on potential changes in human mobility patterns and interaction spheres are contextualized by examining economic, technological, and cultural changes before, during, and after major regional aridification. The researchers emphasize advanced training and research support for junior scientists. Fieldwork allows for student training in survey, excavation, and artifact analysis and provides opportunities to participate in international fieldwork. The team also works with underserved communities and schools near the field sites, sharing scientific knowledge and building intellectually inclusive research frameworks.Archaeologists working in dryland environments have demonstrated the long-term resilience of pastoralist systems across millennia of often dramatic climatic fluctuations. In some regions, those systems were likely based upon residential mobility, livestock mobility, and complex social networks, which allow peoples today to make flexible responses to aridification as well as shifting social, economic, and political situations. Even with high-resolution paleoclimatic records, archaeological studies need to gather detailed data to test how frequently, where, and why groups in the past may have moved – and how those mobilities may have been consequences of, or catalysts for, other changes. In this project, new archaeological fieldwork includes excavations at three sites. Isotopic analyses of human and livestock teeth from these sites are analyzed to reconstruct mobility and diet during the lifetimes of individuals, and geochemical sourcing of stone tools and pottery are used to reconstruct movement or exchange of objects. These methods allow critical assessment of how human, livestock, and material mobilities shaped – and were shaped by – the social and ecological landscapes of a region central to broader-scale narratives of pastoralist resilience, migration, and climatic 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.