Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Awards: Recursive Human - Environmental Interaction In An Estuary Setting

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

James Daniels, a graduate student at the University of California San Diego, will examine human adaptations to environmental pressures and the subsequent environmental responses to those adaptations. This co-evolutionary relationship can be investigated via study of the archaeological record in conjunction with study of natural sediment and soil profiles that record changes in past environments. The combined study of human adaptation and human impacts on the environment can provide insight into how environments respond to human activities and whether those responses are beneficial or detrimental to humans. Studying these processes may also provide insight into current and future human impacts and the kinds of human adaptation that produce the most favorable outcomes for both the environment and future generations of humans. The project focuses on the shift to settled village life on tropical coasts of the New World. Mr. Daniels will investigate the recursive relationship between humans and their environment in this setting by focusing on the archaeological and sedimentary records that accumulated between approximately 5000 and 3000 years ago on the Pacific coast of southern Chiapas, Mexico. This wetland environment lies behind wide barrier beaches and consists of mangrove forests and lagoons within which there is a rich archaeological record of the Archaic and Early Formative periods. The project will unravel how Archaic and Early Formative occupants' manipulation of the environment through land clearance, planting, and other activities affected the stability of the estuary-lagoon system and may have created conditions conducive for the emergence of settled village life. The main hypothesis that will be explored is that increased inland land clearance during the Archaic and initial Early Formative periods contributed to the expansion of the mangrove estuary, thus creating an opportunity for Early Formative people to exploit a new abundance of wetland resources and ultimately to develop more sedentary subsistence strategies. The investigation will combine excavations on small mounds within the mangroves with examination of the history of barrier-beach formation downstream from the mounds. A precise chronology of changes in the two settings will facilitate reconstruction of what the environment was like when it was first colonized by people and how the environment responded to initial and subsequent human impacts.