The Development Of Agriculture In Mesoamerica

中美洲农业的发展

• 批准号: 1822900
• 负责人: Andrew Somerville
• 金额: $ 2.9万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1822900&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Development; Agriculture; Mesoamerica

Corn (Zea mays) is the largest commercial crop in the United States and one of the most important nutritional resources across the globe. Archaeology is well positioned to increase our understanding of the factors that led to its privileged place in the modern global economy and, more generally, to improve our ability to model the long-term dynamic relationships between maize agriculture, climate, and socio-economic change. The domestication of corn (or maize) occurred approximately 9,000 years ago in Mexico, but over 5,000 years passed from domestication to the development of the first fully-sedentary agricultural societies. The factors that motivated early Mexican populations to switch from nomadic lifestyles that incorporated maize seasonally to fully-sedentary agricultural economies focusing heavily on the grain staple remain highly contested. Dr. Andrew Somerville and his research teams in Mexico and the United States will explore the factors that led to the development of incipient agricultural societies in Mexico and interrogate the role that climatic changes may have played in this process. Through close collaborations with Mexican scholars and institutions, the project will strengthen the social infrastructure for international and interdisciplinary research between the United States and Mexico, and the results will have broad significance to those interested in the relationship between agriculture and climatic change, a pressing issue of our time.Dr. Somerville and his research teams will analyze the biological collections excavated from a series of dry cave and floodplain sites in the Tehuacan Valley of Puebla, Mexico, one of the first centers of the world to adopt maize farming. The research will use accelerated mass spectrometry dating and stable isotope analysis of human bones to firmly date the timing of when maize became a dominant dietary input in the Tehuacan Valley. In addition, a large sample of ancient and modern faunal bones and plant samples will be analyzed for stable isotope ratios to contextualize the human paleodiet signal, and to make inferences regarding changes in the local environment from the Terminal Pleistocene (~10,000 BC) to the Postclassic Period (~AD 1500). By establishing the timing and context in which economies of food production emerged in highland Mexico, this study tests the notion that maize was a fallback food, initially less desirable than other resources but capable of being intensified during times of scarcity, and that environmental changes encouraged populations to exploit this resource with increasing frequency. In this sense, the research tests the idea that the development of agriculture was an adaptive social response 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.

玉米（Zea mays）是美国最大的经济作物，也是全球最重要的营养资源之一。考古学能够很好地增强我们对导致其在现代全球经济中享有特权地位的因素的理解，更广泛地说，可以提高我们对玉米农业、气候和社会经济变化之间长期动态关系进行建模的能力。玉米的驯化发生在大约 9,000 年前的墨西哥，但从驯化到第一个完全定居的农业社会的发展经历了 5,000 多年。促使早期墨西哥人口从季节性种植玉米的游牧生活方式转变为高度专注于谷物主食的完全定居的农业经济的因素仍然存在激烈争议。 安德鲁·萨默维尔博士和他在墨西哥和美国的研究团队将探索导致墨西哥早期农业社会发展的因素，并探讨气候变化在这一过程中可能发挥的作用。通过与墨西哥学者和机构的密切合作，该项目将加强美国和墨西哥之间国际和跨学科研究的社会基础设施，其结果将对那些对农业与气候变化之间的关系感兴趣的人产生广泛的意义，这是一个紧迫的问题我们这个时代的。萨默维尔和他的研究团队将分析从墨西哥普埃布拉特瓦坎山谷的一系列干燥洞穴和洪泛区遗址中挖掘出的生物标本，该山谷是世界上最早采用玉米种植的中心之一。该研究将利用加速质谱测年和人体骨骼稳定同位素分析来确定玉米成为特瓦坎山谷主要膳食投入的时间。此外，还将分析大量古代和现代动物骨骼和植物样本的稳定同位素比率，以了解人类古饮食信号，并对从更新世末期（公元前约 10,000 年）到公元前 10,000 年当地环境的变化做出推断。后古典时期（~公元 1500 年）。通过确定墨西哥高地粮食生产经济出现的时间和背景，本研究检验了玉米是一种后备粮食的概念，最初不如其他资源理想，但能够在稀缺时期加强，并且环境变化鼓励人们越来越频繁地利用这一资源。从这个意义上说，该研究检验了农业发展是对环境变化的适应性社会反应的观点。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。