Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Relationship between Foraging Strategy and Social Complexity

博士论文改进补助金：觅食策略与社会复杂性之间的关系

基本信息

批准号：
1953636
负责人：
Tristram Kidder
金额：
$ 2.84万
依托单位：
Washington University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-12-15 至 2022-11-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1953636&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant Relationship

项目摘要

When people harvest wild plants, they intervene in the life cycles of those plants. With time, the resulting dependencies alter the people, the plants, and the social and ecological systems in which both operate. As most research into human-plant relationships in the past focuses on the histories of domesticated crops, less is known about the dynamics of change through time in systems based on wild plants and the ecological legacy of these systems. Grace Ward, doctoral candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, will study long-term wild plant management by investigating the interactions between people and plants living in the Lower Mississippi Valley roughly 4,000 years ago. This research will provide context for subsequent land use in the region, and insight into past strategies employed to live sustainably in the Mississippi floodplain. Through planned data-sharing and in-field education programs, the project is designed to extend archaeological training to local and indigenous descendant communities in a resource-impoverished area of the American South. In collaboration with geoarchaeologists, Ward and student assistants will excavate and analyze plant remains from archaeological contexts associated with the Poverty Point culture. This cultural complex lasted from approximately 4,500 to 3,000 years ago in the Lower Mississippi Valley and is defined by the fluorescence of a shared material culture and significant innovations in earthen monumental architecture. Prior work indicates that during this period and for centuries after, people in the Lower Mississippi Valley hunted and gathered wild foods and materials without reliance on domesticated plants or animals. While anthropologists have historically classed hunter-gatherer societies as inherently simple and static, monumental earthen architecture constructed during this period indicates social processes involving massive group aggregation and labor mobilization. Did plant foraging strategies shift in accordance with these markers of social change? Ward and colleagues will study the entwined histories of wild plant management and monumental construction to approach this question, informed by observed patterns in the density, diversity, and morphology of plant remains identified in samples taken from Poverty Point contexts. While the monuments of the Poverty Point culture have been included in global surveys of hunter-gatherer cultural expression, the economy underlying their construction has not been adequately explained in a manner that facilitates cross-cultural comparison. Analysis of the relationship between people and plants during this period will allow for empirical comparison with other regions in which wild plant management supported complex social structures, deepening discipline-wide understanding of the many permutations of human-environment relationships.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.

当人们收获野生植物时，他们会干预这些植物的生命周期。随着时间的流逝，由此产生的依赖性改变了人们，植物和社会和生态系统的运作。由于过去对人类植物关系的大多数研究都集中在驯养作物的历史上，因此对基于野生植物的系统的变化动态和这些系统的生态遗产的了解鲜为人知。圣路易斯华盛顿大学的博士候选人格蕾丝·沃德（Grace Ward）将通过调查大约4000年前居住在密西西比州山谷的人们与植物之间的相互作用，研究长期的野生植物管理。这项研究将为该地区后来的土地使用提供背景，并深入了解过去在密西西比州洪泛区可持续生活的策略。通过计划的数据共享和现场教育计划，该项目旨在将考古培训扩展到美国南方资源不足的地区的地方和土著后代社区。与地理考察学家合作，沃德和学生助理将挖掘并分析与贫困点文化相关的考古环境中的植物遗体。这种文化综合体从密西西比州下部持续了大约4,500至3，000年前，它是由共享物质文化和泥土纪念性建筑中大量创新的荧光所定义的。先前的工作表明，在此期间和几个世纪之后，密西西比州下部的人们狩猎并收集了野生食品和材料，而无需依赖驯养的动植物。尽管人类学家历史上将猎人 - 采集者社会归类为固有的简单和静态的，但在此期间建造的巨大的泥土建筑表明，社会过程涉及大规模的团体聚集和劳动动员。植物觅食策略是否按照这些社会变革的标记转移？沃德及其同事将研究野生植物管理和巨大结构的纠缠史，以解决这个问题，这是由观察到的植物的密度，多样性和形态的模式所启示的，从贫困点环境中鉴定出来的样本中都鉴定出来。尽管贫困点文化的纪念碑已包括在猎人 - 采集者文化表达的全球调查中，但其建设的基础经济并未以促进跨文化比较的方式充分解释。在此期间对人与植物之间的关系的分析将允许与其他地区进行实证比较，野生植物管理支持复杂的社会结构，加深对人类环境关系的许多排列的理解。这项奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识优点和广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过评估的支持。