Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Social Collapse and Reorganization

博士论文进步奖：社会崩溃与重组

• 批准号: 1643072
• 负责人: Victor Thompson
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1643072&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Award; Social

The focus of this study is on sociopolitical collapse and its effects on extant communities in neighboring regions. Previous studies of collapse events have focused on the organizational breakdown of societies faced with various insurmountable internal and external stressors. These studies tend to portray collapse as infrequent, catastrophic ruptures in the social fabric of societies. Recently, scholars have deemphasized these apocalyptical perspectives by discussing collapse as examples of rapid, lasting structural change within long-term histories. Building on this latter view of collapse, this project focuses on the wide-ranging impacts of collapse on nearby populations by examining the relationships between population movements, demography, and cultural transformations. Neighbors of collapsed polities would have had to contend with reorientations of long-distance exchange networks along with potentially massive influxes of new residents in cases of regional abandonment. One such archaeologically identified collapse occurred at around AD 1350 among the chiefdoms in the Savannah River Valley of Georgia and South Carolina. However, the Georgia Coast, a neighboring region at the mouth of the Savannah River, did not suffer the same mix of circumstances that led to that collapse and remained populated during this time. Several changes noted by archaeologists during this period on the coast could reasonably be linked to those occurring upriver, such as changes in settlement practices, political organization, and the adoption of new subsistence technologies. This research will investigate how these changes along the Georgia Coast were related to the collapse of the Savannah River chiefdoms. Through examination of such changes in traditional "non-complex" societies it may be possible to extract basic principles relevant to understanding the massive changes impacting the world today.Specifically, this research will consist of archaeological excavations at the Kenan Field site on Sapelo Island, Georgia. This large site was occupied both before and after the collapse of the Savannah River chiefdoms. Through a combination of systematic shovel test survey, limited test excavation, shallow geophysical survey, and a large-scale radiocarbon dating program, the researchers will produce reconstructions of community organization before, during, and following the collapse of polities in the Savannah River Valley. Anthropologists recognize that the built environment and related spatial practices reflect, reinforce, and transform social structures. Therefore, reconstructions of community organization provide a window into the production, negotiation, and transformation of the social and political practices of the residents of the Georgia Coast.

这项研究的重点是社会政治崩溃及其对邻近地区现有社区的影响。先前对崩溃事件的研究主要集中在面临各种难以克服的内部和外部压力的社会的组织崩溃上。这些研究倾向于将崩溃描述为社会结构中罕见的灾难性破裂。最近，学者们通过将崩溃作为长期历史中快速、持久的结构变化的例子来讨论，从而淡化了这些世界末日的观点。基于后一种倒塌观点，该项目通过研究人口流动、人口统计和文化转型之间的关系，重点关注倒塌对附近人口的广泛影响。崩溃政体的邻国将不得不应对长途交换网络的重新定位，以及在地区废弃的情况下可能大量涌入的新居民。公元 1350 年左右，佐治亚州和南卡罗来纳州萨凡纳河谷的酋长领地发生了一场经考古学证实的崩溃。然而，位于萨凡纳河河口的邻近地区乔治亚海岸并没有遭受导致崩溃的同样的环境，并且在此期间仍然有人居住。考古学家注意到这一时期沿海发生的一些变化可能与上游发生的变化有合理的联系，例如定居实践、政治组织的变化以及新生存技术的采用。这项研究将调查乔治亚州海岸的这些变化与萨凡纳河酋长国的崩溃有何关系。通过研究传统“非复杂”社会中的此类变化，也许可以提取与理解影响当今世界的巨大变化相关的基本原理。具体来说，这项研究将包括在萨佩洛岛凯南场遗址进行考古发掘，乔治亚州。这个大遗址在萨凡纳河酋长国崩溃之前和之后都被占据。通过系统的铲土测试调查、有限的测试挖掘、浅层地球物理调查和大规模放射性碳测年计划，研究人员将重建萨凡纳河谷政体崩溃之前、期间和之后的社区组织。人类学家认识到，建筑环境和相关的空间实践反映、加强和改变了社会结构。因此，社区组织的重建为了解乔治亚州海岸居民的社会政治实践的产生、谈判和转变提供了一个窗口。