Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Food Security Under Colonial Rule

该项目调查粮食安全的深刻历史，特别是试图了解殖民强加如何影响当地的粮食系统和社区制定的策略，以减轻这些影响。这些问题是在一个土著社区经历了两次独立但相互关联的殖民主义浪潮的地区进行调查的，这些殖民主义浪潮通过强迫流离失所的人，强加宗教，对劳动力和货物征税来扩大控制。这种强制措施可能会减少社区内的食物供应，引入新的食物，或改变获得食物的人。该项目将研究考古植物遗骸，以记录在帝国占领之前和期间人们生产和食用的食物。植物遗迹构成了古代食物的一个不成文的档案，因此为过去人们的日常生活、选择和工作提供了宝贵的见解。粮食安全考古学很重要，因为它有助于理解导致当前粮食不安全的长期过程，以及过去社区为应对粮食系统中断而制定的战略。通过采用粮食安全框架，该项目不仅旨在促进对过去的理解，而且还为当前的粮食系统工作提供信息。该项目将为本科生提供有偿培训机会，帮助他们获得考古科学方面的专业技能，并协助收集、处理和分析植物样本。该项目将研究从考古发掘中收集到的古代家庭、公共聚会和饮食场所以及农业领域的植物遗骸。这些数据将有助于评估粮食安全的两个关键支柱：可得性和可及性。将通过在社区尺度上追踪成分随时间的稳定性或变化来记录可得性，同时将通过比较社区内不同家庭中恢复的植物残留物来研究可得性。关于可得性和可获得性的调查结果还将通过展示农业、粮食储存或贸易关系的稳定性或变化，为社区成员采用的粮食战略提供信息。因此，这个项目将讲述粮食安全是如何通过帝国的强制和地方的行动来创造的。总的来说，这项研究将促进对殖民主义的理解，并提供一个关于当地粮食战略、殖民强加和粮食安全之间相互作用的案例研究。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。

This project investigate the deep histories of food (in)security, specifically seeking to understand how colonial impositions affect local food systems and the strategies that communities develop to mitigate these impacts. These issues are investigated in a region where Indigenous communities experienced two separate but linked waves of colonialism which extended control by forcibly displacing people, imposing religion, and implementing taxes on both labor and goods. Such impositions could decrease food availability within communities, introduce new foods, or alter who has access to food. The project will study archaeological plant remains to document the foods that people produced and ate in the period immediately preceding and during imperial occupations. Plant remains form an unwritten archive of ancient food and therefore offer valuable insight to past peoples’ day-to-day lives, choices, and work. An archaeology of food security is important because it helps to understand the long-term processes that cause food insecurity in the present and the strategies past communities developed in response to food system disruptions. By employing a food security framework, this project seeks not only to contribute to understandings about the past, but also to inform current work on food systems. The project will create paid training opportunities for undergraduate students to gain specialized skills in archaeological science and by assisting in the collection, processing, and analysis of botanical samplesThe project will study plant remains collected from archaeological excavations in ancient households, communal gathering and eating spaces, and agriculture fields. These data will allow the assessment of two key pillars of food security: availability and access. Availability will be documented by tracing stability or change in ingredients over time at the community scale, while access will be studied by comparing plant remains recovered in different households within the community. Findings on availability and access will also inform about the food strategies community members employed by demonstrating stability or change in agriculture, food storage, or trade relations. As such, this project will speak to how food (in)security was created by both imperial impositions and local actions. Overall, this research will advance understandings of colonialism and offer a case study about the interplay between local food strategies, colonial impositions, and food security.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.