Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Agriculture in the Development of Social Complexity.

博士论文研究：农业在社会复杂性发展中的作用。

• 批准号: 2334025
• 负责人: Alexia Smith
• 金额: $ 2.43万
• 依托单位: University of Connecticut
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-11-01 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2334025&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Role; Agriculture

This doctoral dissertation project uses archaeobotany, the study of plant remains from archaeological sites, to examine the relationship between agricultural practices, the environment, and human/social factors during the Iron Age. Societies during that time period frequently relied on agricultural crops and associated plants to produce food, fodder, and fuel for day-to-day living. Plant remains recovered from archaeological sites are well suited to investigating social-environmental interactions because plants simultaneously rely on social and environmental input to survive and propagate. Plant remains can be used to understand the impact of different factors on agricultural production, including environmental variables like rainfall and soil fertility, and social practices like crop harvesting, labor coordination, and taxation. Previous scholarship on social-environmental interactions during this time has often inferred localized agricultural practices from indirect evidence like ceramics, architecture, and settlement patterns. This research uses direct observations of plant remains to examine both local and regional patterns, integrating data with existing information to create a broad, regional understanding of plant-based agriculture throughout the period of study. This research will educate undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds in the scientific process through archaeological lab methods. The results of this project will be available through open access and contribute to two projects that foster global collaboration to study ancient state-level societies from a new perspective.The researchers use plant remains to determine the agricultural practices of two contrasting Iron Age sites which are located in different environments. It works to answer the central question of how agricultural practices in state-level societies were influenced by a complex interplay of environmental and social factors. This study combines quantitative analysis, stable isotope analysis, and radiocarbon dating of plant remains, alongside observation of dung spherulites, to evaluate the dynamic relative input of environmental and social factors on which agriculture was based and how this varied by location and through time.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.

该博士学位论文项目使用考古植物学，研究植物遗体从考古遗址研究，以研究铁器时代的农业实践，环境和人类/社会因素之间的关系。在此期间，社会经常依靠农作物和相关的植物来生产日常生活的食物，饲料和燃料。从考古遗址回收的植物遗体非常适合调查社会环境相互作用，因为植物同时依靠社会和环境投入来生存和传播。植物残留物可用于了解不同因素对农业生产的影响，包括雨水和土壤肥力等环境变量，以及农作物收获，劳动协调和税收的社会实践。在此期间，关于社会环境互动的先前奖学金经常从陶瓷，建筑和定居方式等间接证据中推断出局部农业实践。这项研究使用对植物的直接观察依据来检查局部和区域模式，将数据与现有信息整合在一起，以在整个研究期间对基于植物的农业产生广泛的区域理解。这项研究将通过考古实验室方法在科学过程中教育来自代表性不足的本科生。该项目的结果将通过公开访问获得，并为两个项目做出贡献，这些项目促进了全球合作，从新的角度来研究古老的州级社会。研究人员使用工厂使用植物来确定两个位于不同环境中的两个对比铁器时代的农业实践。它致力于回答一个核心问题，即国家级社会中的农业实践如何受到环境和社会因素的复杂相互作用的影响。这项研究结合了定量分析，稳定的同位素分析以及植物的放射性碳预期以及对粪便球形的观察，以评估农业所基于的环境和社会因素的动态相对输入，以及这些奖项的依据是通过评估范围的依据，这反映了NSF的法定委员会的范围，这是通过位置和时间而变化的。