Collaborative Research: The Role of Marketplaces in the Development of Complex Society

合作研究：市场在复杂社会发展中的作用

• 批准号: 2051377
• 负责人: Rissa Trachman
• 金额: $ 1.86万
• 依托单位: Elon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2051377&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Role; Marketplaces; Development

This multidisciplinary pilot project identifies prehispanic marketplaces and establishes a set of marketplace indicators that can be applied elsewhere in the world. In the process, the project works with students to train a new generation of archaeologists currently underrepresented in the field. The objectives address a research gap that impedes archaeology’s contributions to economic theory. Pre-modern markets offer particular promise for adding diversity to economic ideas. Isolated from global capitalist forces, these markets allow researchers to re-examine foundational concepts – such as money, credit, debt, and investment – in non-Western contexts, expanding understanding of how culture influences economic behavior. For both theoretical and methodological reasons, however, archaeologists have only recently begun to establish the undisputed existence of pre-modern markets. Previously prevailing Western theories created a false dichotomy between past and present economies and suggested that market exchange – the transfer of alienable goods and services between strangers – could not exist outside of capitalism. While recent research has challenged these theories, archaeologists still lack sound methods for investigating the physical manifestations of markets, market systems and marketplaces, which are often ephemeral, barely leaving a material imprint. Few archaeological projects worldwide have even tried to identify marketplaces, and their locations remain an important missing component in pre-modern market research.To help fill this gap, eight independent research programs are cooperatively investigating a possible prehispanic regional market system by identifying marketplace locations. Economic investigations in the region have lagged due to several factors, including a historical mischaracterization of the past society which had been conceived as less complex than those of other neighboring groups. Researchers now however have begun to search for marketplaces as a sign of economic complexity. While marketplace investigations across archaeological sites have already had some success, varying metrics have hindered the research. Additionally, the dense vegetation covering sites makes it difficult to employ conventional approaches such as examining item distributions, which rely on surface collections. To ensure comparable results, collaborators on this project are examining marketplace indicators by using a cross-cultural set of marketplace indicators that depend on a combination of approaches from archaeology, botany, soil science, and physics. Researchers are analyzing both old and new data according to common protocols to produce joint results that address the central research hypothesis: an integrated system of large and small markets existed in the region, allowing access to similar goods for households within it. These results will further establish precedents for future research in terms of both methodology and cross-program cooperation.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.

这个多学科的试点项目确定了前跨市场的市场，并建立了一套可以在世界其他地方应用的市场指标。在此过程中，该项目与学生合作，培训一名新一代的考古学家目前在该领域的人数不足。这些目标解决了阻碍考古学对经济理论的贡献的研究差距。前现代市场为增加经济思想的多样性提供了特别的希望。这些市场与全球资本主义部队隔离，使研究人员能够在非西方环境中重新检查基础概念，例如金钱，信贷，债务和投资，从而扩展了对文化如何影响经济行为的理解。然而，出于理论和方法论原因，考古学家直到最近才开始建立前现代市场的无可争议的存在。以前盛行的西方理论在过去和现在的经济之间创造了错误的二分法，并建议在资本主义之外不存在市场交流（陌生人之间可易管理的商品和服务的转移）。尽管最近的研究对这些理论提出了挑战，但考古学家仍然缺乏调查市场，市场系统和市场的物理表现的合理方法，这些方法通常是短暂的，几乎没有留下物质烙印。全球很少有存档的项目甚至试图识别市场，它们的位置仍然是现代市场研究中的重要缺失组成部分。为了帮助填补这一差距，八个独立的研究计划正在合作调查可能的前卫生前区域市场系统，通过识别市场位置。由于几个因素，该地区的经济投资已经落后，包括对过去社会的历史错误示范化，而过去的社会比其他邻近群体的复杂程度不那么复杂。但是，研究人员现在已经开始寻找市场，以此作为经济复杂性的标志。尽管整个档案网站的市场投资已经取得了一些成功，但不同的指标阻碍了这项研究。此外，密集的植被覆盖地点很难采用常规方法，例如检查依赖于表面收集的物品分布。为了确保可比的结果，该项目的合作者通过使用跨文化的市场指标来检查市场指标，这些市场指标取决于考古，植物学，土壤科学和物理学的方法组合。研究人员正在根据共同的方案分析旧数据和新数据，以产生共同的结果，以解决中心研究假设：该地区存在大型和小市场的综合系统，从而使其中的家庭可以使用类似的商品。这些结果将进一步为未来的研究和跨编程合作建立先例。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被视为通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。