Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Impacts of War: A Long Term Perspective

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

Warfare has profound influences on human economic activities and health. Characterizing the effects of warfare is a critical step towards understanding the true costs of war and helps to realize how people living in war zones cope with chronic risk. Nevertheless, it remains a substantial challenge to understand the complex relationships between warfare, economics, and health. Difficulties arise from the myriad pathways through which warfare can affect subsistence and well-being, and in-turn, how one's heath can impact their susceptibility to violence. Moreover, studies of this kind require large, longitudinal datasets, which can be difficult to obtain in modern contexts due to the dangers of working in areas with ongoing violence. Archaeology can provide critical insights into warfare by 1) focusing on the long-term impacts of violent conflict, 2) assessing warfare among small-scale societies that are more representative of humans shared evolutionary past, and 3) allowing researchers to study populations experiencing war without putting investigators or participants in harm's way. This research project will help to understand the complex ways in which people cope with conflict, and the socioecological conditions that encourage individuals to adopt risk-prone or risk-averse wartime economic strategies. Specifically, this research seeks to explain how people living in warzones proactively respond to warfare in ways that maximize the likelihood of attaining their economic and health needs while minimizing the probability of violent encounters. Further, it will evaluate why some individuals decide to maintain risky wartime economic activities that others have long abandoned. The research team will also generate novel datasets for evaluating the timing and severity of warfare in the ancient Andes, while creating educational opportunities for students that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields or labs. In this doctoral dissertation award NSF funding will be used to date the archaeological sites under consideration and conduct stable isotope analyses to reconstruct wartime dietary strategies and mobility. Materials used for the project include human skeletal remains excavated from the Nasca highlands of Peru from cemeteries dating to the Late Intermediate period (LIP; AD 1000-1450). Previous research conducted by the dissertation student Weston McCool and his team revealed a pattern of chronic, internecine warfare in this region during the Late Intermediate Period, defined by high rates of lethal trauma among both sexes and all age cohorts that are significantly higher than the preceding Middle Horizon period (AD 500-1000). Rates of disease also significantly increased during the LIP as revealed by high percentages of pathologies indicative of nutritional deficiencies. McCool's team will use small samples of bone from the excavated human skeletal material to evaluate each individual's stable isotope chemistry. Stable carbon isotope analysis will reveal dietary plant composition, while stable nitrogen analysis will assess how hunting and herding "the major sources of dietary meat protein in the region" changed during wartime. Stable oxygen isotope chemistry will be used to elucidate patterns of mobility, by evaluating whether the LIP population constrained their movement throughout the landscape during this period. These combined analyses will reveal how LIP peoples altered economic activities in response to the risk of warfare-related violence. 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.