Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Long Term Human Response to Environmental Change

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The dynamic relationship and consequences of humans and their environment during critical times of change in the past will be investigated by a University of Texas research team (Valdez, Aebersold, and colleagues). People have significantly modified the earth's habitable spaces and have generated pronounced effects on natural processes. Behaviors typically associated with agriculture including adaptations of increased sedentary lifestyles, cultivation, domestication, deforestation, and controlled fire are the beginning of a world-wide trend in reshaping the earth?s environmental systems. The archaeological record is not only useful in understanding humanity through material culture, it doubles as an environmental proxy for the study of human-environmental relationships. Within this framework, this research contributes to a global narrative of how humans begin to engineer and transform their natural and social environments during the emergence of major civilizations. Methods presented in this research project have wide applicability in geoarchaeology and Neotropical research areas. This research also expands on paleobotanical analysis interpretations in pre-ceramic archaeological contexts, which are understudied in the Neotropics. As a strong advocate for higher education for women and the Hispanic community, Luisa Aebersold shares this environmental research in the Austin, TX bilingual community through various outreach programs such as ¡Ciencias!, GirlStart: Girls in STEM, and Con Mi MADRE (Mothers and Daughters Raising Expectations). This research aims to study the magnitude and timing of impacts concerning initial human-environmental interactions during the early stages of the Anthropocene, specifically, geoarchaeological evidence concerning the transition of subsistence strategies from nomadic hunter-gatherer into more intense agricultural subsistence strategies in the Maya Lowlands during the Archaic (8000 to ca. 3500 B.P.) to the Preclassic Period (beginning ca. 3000 B.P.). This research requires archaeologists and paleoenvironmentalists to critically consider the effects of initial human-environment interactions and how people have continued to thrive in built environments despite environmental stress. This research is guided by Human Niche Construction theory, a framework that informs the understanding of early small-scale populations that is heavily influenced by intentional human behaviors. Combined with the term Anthropocene, these frameworks can be used to understand and evaluate the deep influence of ancient Maya cultural activities and environmental engineering on neotropical forests, wetlands, soils, and water systems. Evidence gathered using a multi-proxy approach will address questions related to early anthropogenic change resulting in deliberate and unintentional human niche construction. This research brings together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and sedimentological lines of evidence which contribute to dialogues of sustainability and environmental solutions. Researchers will delineate evidence of transformative behaviors, which have long-term effects on the environment and its subsequent inhabitants.