Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Human Adaptation to a Variable Environment

本论文的研究项目是人类学考古调查的各种活动，导致人类生产的土丘，他们的遗产，并评估这些土丘出现的环境条件。这项研究不仅考察了土丘的形成，而且还考察了土丘对人们及其周围环境的物质影响。了解人类在多大程度上塑造和体验世界各地的低地景观，可以影响当前的政治和社会管理决策，以及帮助未来的预测和历史和生态知识的应用。该研究探讨了理论前提的含义，即人们不仅生活在不断变化的环境条件下，而且还不断导航，理解和谈判过去的物质痕迹。该项目研究了过去的社会如何以及为什么进行某些活动，这些活动有意或无意地导致在低地环境中形成土丘。景观和人类经历的变化对人类及其周围环境产生了什么样的影响？这位博士生正在使用地质考古学方法，包括广泛的螺旋钻调查和测试坑，以重建前土堆景观和遗址中土堆建筑的历史。将通过地理信息系统（GIS）为基础的空间分析来检查现场形成过程的时间和异质性。随后对一个位于战略位置的土丘进行了挖掘，这将提供有关其起源和历史的详细数据，以及土丘与周围环境相互作用的性质。该项目最终产生了一种地质考古学和人类学的方法，以人类塑造自己和世界的不同方式，创造有意义的地方。这种方法可以在世界各地的其他类似环境中应用，也为考古学学生提供了实地考察的教育和培训机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为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来支持。

This dissertation research project is an anthropological archaeological investigation of the diverse activities that resulted in human-produced earthen mounds, their legacies, and assesses the environmental conditions in which these mounds emerged. The research examines not only mound formation, but also the material impacts of mounds on people and their surroundings. Understanding the extent to which humans shape and experience lowland landscapes worldwide can influence current political and societal management decisions, as well as help future predictions and applications of historical and ecological knowledge. The research explores the implications of the theoretical premise that people do not just live through changing environmental conditions, but also constantly navigate, understand, and negotiate the material traces of the past.The project examines how and why societies in the past carried out certain activities that resulted, intentionally or unintentionally, in the creation of earthen mounds in lowland environments. What kinds of effects did changing landscapes and human experiences have on people and their surroundings? The doctoral student is using geoarchaeological methodologies consisting of a broad-coverage auger survey, and test pits, to reconstruct the pre-mound landscape, and the history of mound-building in the site. The timing and heterogeneity of site formation processes will be examined through geographic information system (GIS)-based spatial analysis. A strategically located excavation of a mound follows, which will provide detailed data about its genesis and history, as well as the nature of the mound’s interaction with its immediate surroundings. The project ultimately generates a geoarchaeological and anthropological approach to the diverse ways humans have shaped themselves and their world, creating meaningful places. Such an approach, which can be applied in other similar contexts worldwide, also provides archaeology students with fieldwork educational and training opportunities.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.