Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Historical Ecology of a Marginal Landscape

考古学信息记录了人类在几个世纪或几千年来与环境互动的方式。人类与环境互动的一种常见方式是通过农业。农业生产力受到土壤质量或降雨等环境因素的影响，这些因素可能会限制某些地区可以种植的作物种类或数量。然而，人们也使用灌溉或覆盖等策略来克服这些限制。在这个更广泛的背景下，本博士论文研究调查了人们如何在不太理想的景观中种植作物，以及不同的自然约束和人类决策如何随着时间的推移影响农业生产力。该项目将产生关于边际（干旱）环境中土壤质量、土壤发育和人类景观改变的数据，为古代和现代农业的其他研究提供有价值的结果。此外，项目数据将与夏威夷的社区成员分享，他们有兴趣制定一个可持续的计划，以促进长期的社区和景观恢复力。研究人员将从历史生态学的角度研究这个话题。历史生态学是一个理论框架，帮助考古学家研究人类与环境的相互作用，考虑到人类决策和自然因素的影响（而不是假设一个倾向于支配另一个）。本项目的研究区域是夏威夷的一个古老的农业农田系统。 它包括一个广泛的网络领域的边界和复杂的系统的水管理功能（灌溉沟渠，检查水坝），这是必要的，以使农业可能在这个干燥的景观。研究人员将通过考古和遥感调查绘制农田系统，收集耕地内外的土壤样本，并确定考古特征的日期。利用这些数据，研究人员将测试几个潜在的模型，其中自然因素，人为因素，或因素的组合对研究区域的农业生产力贡献最大。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Archaeological information provides a record of the ways humans interacted with their environments over centuries or millennia. One common way people interact with the environment is through agriculture. Agricultural productivity is influenced by environmental factors like soil quality or rainfall, which can constrain what kinds or how many crops can be grown in certain locations. However, people also use strategies like irrigation or mulching to overcome these limits. Within this broader context, this doctoral dissertation research investigates how people grow crops in less-than-ideal landscapes and how different natural constraints and human decision-making influence agricultural productivity over time. This project will produce data on soil quality, soil development, and human landscape modifications in a marginal (dry) setting, providing valuable results for other research on ancient and modern agriculture. In addition, project data will be shared with community members in Hawai‘i who are interested in developing a sustainable plan to promote long-term community and landscape resilience.The researchers will examine this topic from the perspective of historical ecology. Historical ecology is a theoretical framework that helps archaeologists study human-environmental interactions complexly, taking into account the influence both of human decision-making and natural factors (rather than assuming that one tends to dominate the other). The study area for this project is an ancient agricultural field system in Hawaii. It consists of an extensive network of field borders and a complex system of water management features (irrigation ditches, check dams) which were necessary in order to make agriculture possible in this dry landscape. The researchers will map the agricultural field system through an archaeological and remote sensing survey, collect soil samples in and outside of cultivated areas, and date archaeological features. Using these data, the researchers will test several potential models for which natural factors, human factors, or combination of factors contributed most to the study area’s agricultural productivity.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.