NSF-EAGER: Eastern Mediterranean Paleoclimate and Ecosystems during the Rise of Early Civilizations (EMPIRE)

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1821140
	NSF-EAGER: Eastern Mediterranean Paleoclimate and Ecosystems during the Rise of Early Civilizations (EMPIRE)
	Richard Norris
主持机构	University of California-San Diego Scripps Inst of Oceanography
项目开始年	2018
	2018-03-15
项目结束日期	2019-02-28
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Standard Grant
项目经费	40615(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Archaeological evidence shows that Neolithic people in the eastern Mediterranean made extensive use of marine fish until about 6000 years ago, after which domesticated sheep and goats and agricultural products became primary staples in the early Bronze Age. This switch in human food supply has similar timing to the end of the African Humid Period when a drop in rainfall in Northern Africa and southern Europe decreased oceanic productivity and dried-up wetlands and savanna in North Africa. Hence, it is possible that the end of the African Humid Period played a role in reducing the yields of marine fisheries exploited by Neolithic people and 'nudging' them to find other resources. This project will reconstruct marine fish abundances through the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition by counting and identifying fish teeth in deep sea sediments. The research will support US involvement in the international "EMPIRE" Expedition to the Aegean and Adriatic seas. Sediment cores collected during the cruise will provide a first quantitative assessment of how those civilizations were affected by available fish stocks. The use of fish teeth is a novel new proxy system for directly studying fish communities and will provide a 'proof-of-concept' test for the method. The results will be significant because fish teeth make it possible to quantify fish stocks in the past, show the relationship between fish communities and environmental change, and assess our impact on fish populations through fishing. Prior to this new work on fish teeth, almost all studies of ocean productivity have focused on unicellular plankton and have been blind to changes in the fisheries resources that societies rely on. The project will obtain samples that can be used to test the links between human resource use and the natural abundance of fish. While archaeologists can tell us how many fish people have been consuming, there has been no other direct way to assess what fisheries resources have been like, or how fishing pressure may have changed those resources over time. This project will examine whether the intensity and pattern of human exploitation of fish is linked to the availability of marine resources by supporting participation in an international research cruise (EMPIRE Expedition) designed to quantify changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems during the rise of human civilization around the Aegean and Adriatic. The expedition will collect "Kasten" cores that recover the large volumes of sediment needed for fish tooth research. These cores will be sampled using custom-built plastic core boxes (purchased through this project) so that the cores can be delivered intact to the US to allow for evaluation of core stratigraphy using XRF and x-ray imaging. The project will return large amounts of new core material from the Mediterranean to the Scripps Geological Collections where it will be available to the US community through normal sample requests. The project will enable proof-of-concept research on fish communities to be integrated with the larger international effort to understand human impacts on vegetation, soil erosion, ocean production, and paleoclimate in the region. In turn, this environmental work will be linked with human cultural development seen through archaeological and historical data sets. 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.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/72372
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Richard Norris.NSF-EAGER: Eastern Mediterranean Paleoclimate and Ecosystems during the Rise of Early Civilizations (EMPIRE).2018.