Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Human Adaptation to a Variable Environment

This dissertation research project is an anthropological archaeological investigation of the diverse activities that resulted in human-produced earthen mounds, their legacies, and assesses the environmental conditions in which these mounds emerged. The research examines not only mound formation, but also the material impacts of mounds on people and their surroundings.

Understanding the extent to which humans shape and experience lowland landscapes worldwide can influence current political and societal management decisions, as well as help future predictions and applications of historical and ecological knowledge. The research explores the implications of the theoretical premise that people do not just live through changing environmental conditions, but also constantly navigate, understand, and negotiate the material traces of the past.

The project examines how and why societies in the past carried out certain activities that resulted, intentionally or unintentionally, in the creation of earthen mounds in lowland environments. What kinds of effects did changing landscapes and human experiences have on people and their surroundings? The doctoral student is using geoarchaeological methodologies consisting of a broad-coverage auger survey, and test pits, to reconstruct the pre-mound landscape, and the history of mound-building in the site.

The timing and heterogeneity of site formation processes will be examined through geographic information system (GIS)-based spatial analysis. A strategically located excavation of a mound follows, which will provide detailed data about its genesis and history, as well as the nature of the mound’s interaction with its immediate surroundings. The project ultimately generates a geoarchaeological and anthropological approach to the diverse ways humans have shaped themselves and their world, creating meaningful places.

Such an approach, which can be applied in other similar contexts worldwide, also provides archaeology students with fieldwork educational and training opportunities.

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.