Doctoral Dissertation Research: Diet Alteration in a High Altitude Environment

This doctoral dissertation project examines the dynamic adaptive mechanisms and cultural interactions that have contributed to large-scale sustained human occupations of high-altitude environments. High-elevation environments exceeding 2500 meters above sea level pose severe biological, ecological, and logistical challenges for human adaptation. While it is recognized that humans have used such settings on an ephemeral basis for thousands of years, catalysts of sustained year-round human occupation of such places remain a matter of debate.

This project examines this issues in a region with an average elevation of over 4500 meters above sea level and focuses on the introduction of cold-adapted domesticated species which are believed to have contributed significantly to permanent human occupation. However, the prehistoric archaeology of the area is in its infancy. Such high-altitude zones can provide anthropologists with appropriate laboratories to examine the impact of novel technologies and interactions on people living in high-elevation extremes.

It is to such regions that scholars must turn to discover the causes and process of human engagements.

Using a theoretical framework blending risk-reduction and optimization-based models of high-altitude foragers with culture contact dynamics, the doctoral student and colleagues develop hypotheses that attempt to capture the range of risk-management strategies adopted by local occupants given the region's formidable natural constraints. These hypotheses are evaluated via an integrated program of excavation at a site with a well-stratified cultural sequence.

The project addresses major questions of culture-historic importance for understanding the sustained long-term occupation at high elevations and documents an entirely new and potentially unprecedented cultural complex.

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.