CNH2-L, The Dynamics of Socio-Environmental Systems, Urban Depopulation, and Societal Stability

Dr. Goman is the lead paleoecologist for an interdisciplinary and international research team studying the role of environmental change and human impact on the environment in societal collapse about a millennium ago.  The project involves coordinated archaeological and paleoecological field and laboratory research in the Oaxaca, Mexico.  Dr Goman will direct the sediment coring of lakes on the coast and in the highlands.  The cores will be analyzed for their biological and chemical signatures to determine environmental change and human landscape impacts.  This award will also support SSU undergraduate student researchers to work on the project in Dr. Goman’s lab.  Colleagues will be undertaking excavation at sites the Rio Verde Valley on the Coast and Cerro Jazmín in the Highlands. The coring field campaign will occur in the summer of 2022 and lab analysis in subsequent years.