| NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | November 9, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 9, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2054054 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
John Yellen
jyellen@nsf.gov (703)292-8759 BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | January 1, 2021 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $20,086.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $20,086.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ALBUQUERQUE NM US 87131-0001 (505)277-4186 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1700 Lomas Blvd. NE, Suite 2200 Albuquerque NM US 87131-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Archaeology DDRI |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
The goal of this project is to examine how coastal human societies actively maintain ecosystem stability within estuarine-lagoon environments. This is a doctoral dissertation project which will permit the co Principal Investigator to obtain data for their dissertation thesis. Sustainable coastal resource exploitation is an important aspect of how human populations influence ecosystems, and is relevant on a global scale today as coastal economies are threatened by overexploitation, pollution, and other human-caused modifications. The transition to agriculture occurred during a time with conditions analogous to those today, with changing environment, increasing population sizes, and substantial human migration. By understanding how past human societies created conditions of resource stability, not just instability, in estuarine-lagoon systems prior to the transition to agriculture, allows the identification of similar mechanisms for recreating or maintaining stability in present-day ecosystems. The magnitude of human niche construction, or the process of human modification of the environment, has never been more extreme as it is at present and by using the archaeological record, niche construction processes and their long-term effects on resource availability can be identified.
This project will investigate human management of coastal resources, or niche construction, as a possible explanation for the delayed adoption of intensive agriculture. The archaeological data comes from ancient shell mound contexts.These shell mound sites are associated with, a group of coastal foragers who lived in the region during the Archaic period. Using zooarchaeological fish remains, the investigators will test for two forms of coastal resource niche construction: increasing stability in the trophic structure of the fish population and changing the season of fish harvest. They will combine measures of fish diet and trophic level along with the season of fish harvest to understand how the society maintained coastal ecosystem stability prior to the transition to agriculture. These data will expand the understanding of the variability in conditions leading up to the transition to agriculture, especially in coastal societies, and directly link archaeological data to that of present-day fish populations. This project will provide data of interest not only to archaeologists, but to the local coastal inhabitants and present-day ecologists, given its relevance to supporting present-day estuarine-lagoon environments within the context of changing environmental conditions and increased human fishing pressures.
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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Asia Alsgaard completed research for her dissertation titled "The Role of Coastal Resource Stability in the Transition to Agriculture, Soconusco, Mexico" at the University of New Mexico (UNM) supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) dissertation improvement grant as well as the UNM Latin American and Iberian Institute Ph.D. fellowship.
Asia's goal was to address why during global periods of the agricultural transition, do coastal societies tend to adopt agriculture later than their inland contemporaries or not at all? To address this question, she focused on the transition to agriculture in the Soconusco region of Mexico.
With permission from Dr. Barbara Voorhies and Dr. Heather Thakar, Asia analyzed previously identified fish skeletal elements from the late Archaic shellmounds Tlacuachero and El Chorro as well as the late early Formative period earthenmound El Grillo using stable isotope analyses of fish bone collagen and otoliths. With assistance from the Center for Stable Isotopes at UNM and especially that of Dr. Viorel Atudorei, she analyzed the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition of fish from El Chorro and El Grillo as well as the carbon and oxygen stable isotope composition of fish otoliths from the queen corvina (Cynoscion albus) from Tlachuachero.
There are three primary take aways from her dissertation work. First, the differences between terrestrial agriculture and coastal resource harvesting are overemphasized; both are forms of subsistence intensification that take different forms and trajectories based on primary productivity is distributed on the landscape and how animals, including humans, map onto it (Boone and Alsgaard 2024). Secondly, her work emphasizes the conclusions of other researchers in the region which have previously pointed out the importance of where coastal foragers are obtaining their resources, and where on the coastal landscape they are harvested from. Finally, there is no indication fish population resiliency changed as agricultural domesticates were increasingly incorporated into the diet. This suggests the incorporation of agricultural domesticated was not done out of need, but rather due to other factors. These results will be included in future publications.
Last Modified: 01/07/2024
Modified by: Asia Alsgaard
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