Social Response to Environmental Variation

对环境变化的社会反应

• 批准号: 2017898
• 负责人: Andrew Bauer
• 金额: $ 16.09万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2017898&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Social; Response; Environmental; Variation

This project will conduct interdisciplinary archaeological research to investigate social factors that contributed to community vulnerabilities and resiliencies to climate change in the past. The study will contribute to a growing corpus of scholarship from both the social and natural sciences on human-environmental relationships. The project contributes to this scholarship by moving beyond an assessment of human-climate interactions at the scale of the globe, the human species as a totality, or even entire societies, to foreground instead an evaluation of how human and community responses to environmental changes in the past were differentiated within societies to various degrees of success. For instance, the researchers ask: how were social differences and inequalities related to the persistence and resilience of specific communities of inhabitants during periods of climate change? And how did economic exchange networks and mechanisms contribute to social resiliencies and vulnerabilities to regional climate change? Although there is a tendency to view precarious conditions and vulnerabilities related to contemporary climate change as a wholly unique phenomenon, a significant body of archaeological scholarship has demonstrated comparable vulnerabilities of communities in the past to transformations in climate. Archaeology is thus especially well suited to investigate differentiated responses to climate change because the archaeological record provides multiple case studies of how distinct communities in the past experienced climatic and precipitation stresses.The research team will collect archaeological and paleoenvironmental data to evaluate social and economic factors related to climatic vulnerabilities and resiliencies during two periods of rapid transformation in climate. More specifically, the research will examine differentiated responses to relatively dramatic changes in the behavior of a regional summer monsoon during prehistoric and historic periods; the first context targets community responses and vulnerabilities to decreased precipitation during two periods in which the region experienced extended periods ( 30 years) of monsoon failure. Previous archaeological evidence indicates that some communities persisted through extended periods of climatic stress during both of these periods, while others living in the same area did not. By combining archaeological and environmental data from these different periods and cases it will be possible to evaluate how these different outcomes occurred and potentially to generalize about social factors that contributed to shaping specific vulnerabilities, in terms of material dependencies between environmental and subsistence resources (e.g., correspondences between water needs of cultigens and precipitation variability), the possible advantages of diversified resources, and the significance of social relationships and distribution mechanisms to withstanding environmental stresses.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.

该项目将进行跨学科考古研究，以调查过去导致社区脆弱性和气候变化恢复能力的社会因素。这项研究将为社会科学和自然科学领域关于人类与环境关系的学术研究不断增加做出贡献。该项目超越了对全球范围内、人类作为一个整体、甚至整个社会范围内的人类与气候相互作用的评估，而是对人类和社区如何应对环境变化的评估做出了贡献。过去在社会内部取得了不同程度的成功。例如，研究人员问道：在气候变化期间，社会差异和不平等与特定居民社区的持久性和恢复力有何关系？经济交流网络和机制如何增强社会弹性和应对区域气候变化的脆弱性？尽管人们倾向于将与当代气候变化相关的不稳定条件和脆弱性视为一种完全独特的现象，但大量考古学学术成果已经证明，过去社区对气候变化的脆弱性相当。因此，考古学特别适合研究对气候变化的差异化反应，因为考古记录提供了多个案例研究，说明过去不同的社区如何经历气候和降水压力。研究小组将收集考古和古环境数据，以评估相关的社会和经济因素。两个气候快速转变时期的气候脆弱性和恢复力。更具体地说，该研究将研究史前和历史时期对区域夏季风行为相对剧烈变化的不同反应；第一个背景针对的是该地区经历了长时间（30 年）季风衰退的两个时期内社区对降水量减少的反应和脆弱性。先前的考古证据表明，一些社区在这两个时期都经历了长时间的气候压力，而生活在同一地区的其他社区却没有。通过结合这些不同时期和案例的考古和环境数据，将有可能评估这些不同结果是如何发生的，并可能根据环境和生存资源之间的物质依赖性（例如，作物需水量与降水变化之间的对应关系）、多样化资源的可能优势，以及社会关系和分配机制对承受环境压力的重要性。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。

项目成果

Social distinctions during the south Indian Neolithic: changing mortuary practices in a late prehistoric cemetery at Maski

南印度新石器时代的社会差异：马斯基史前晚期墓地的殡葬方式的变化

• DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2023.81
• 发表时间: 2023-06-27
• 期刊: Antiquity
• 影响因子: 1.8
• 作者: Peter G. Johansen;A. Bauer
• 通讯作者: A. Bauer