Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Village Organization in Non-complex Societies

博士论文改进奖：非复杂社会中的村庄组织

• 批准号: 2214065
• 负责人: Robin Beck
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-15 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2214065&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Award; Village

This project investigates the transition from seasonal to permanent settlement among hunter-gatherers by studying how foraging populations organized their settlement and social relations at large ceremonial centers. Ceremonial centers with impressive monuments and extensive domestic zones have often been interpreted as early villages, making them among the first permanent settlements in their respective regions. Characteristics of early villages such as year-round occupation, integrative social institutions, and incipient forms of complex social organization usually developed in contexts of regional population pressure and circumscription, which limited the ability of people to move freely across the landscape. Limitations on mobility are thought to be a necessary part of this process to counteract the pressure to disperse due to social conflict that accompanies daily life in densely populated, permanent settlements. However, Eastern North America seems to be an exception, as hunter-gatherer populations in this region came together to form large, monumental centers resembling villages in the absence of strong external constraints on mobility. Does the emergence of hunter-gatherer ceremonial centers in Eastern North America represent an alternative trajectory for the development of sedentism and social complexity? Contemporary American society is subject to some of the same tensions that characterized the beginnings of sedentary village life, such as that between autonomy and communalism, making the topic of how and why people in the past voluntarily aggregated into large, dense, and permanent social groups an important area of inquiry. Research conducted as part of this study will provide archaeological education and training opportunities for local volunteers and students.The project will investigate hunter-gatherer ceremonial centers in Eastern North America to outline how the process of settlement aggregation occurred and how it may have differed from other world regions. The researchers will focus on one large ceremonial center. This site witnessed the development of several large mound centers that have been characterized as early villages. Despite its exceptional size, the site has received comparatively little attention from archaeologists and the nature of its settlement is still largely unknown. Integrating data from excavation, radiocarbon dating, botanical analysis, and ceramic provenance will permit the evaluation of differing models of settlement, mobility, and social organization. These data will then be compared with other ceremonial centers and early villages from North America and other parts of the world to better understand the various trajectories that led hunter-gatherer populations to develop large, permanent settlements and complex societies.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.

该项目通过研究如何在大型礼仪中心组织他们的定居点和社会关系来调查狩猎采集者之间从季节性到永久定居点的过渡。拥有令人印象深刻的纪念碑和广泛的国内区域的礼仪中心经常被解释为早期村庄，使其成为其各自地区的第一个永久定居点之一。早期村庄的特征，例如全年职业，综合社会机构以及通常在区域人口压力和限制环境中发展的复杂社会组织的初期形式，这限制了人们在整个景观中自由移动的能力。人们认为，流动性的局限性被认为是应对人口稠密，永久性定居点日常生活伴随的社会冲突而散布压力的必要部分。但是，北美东部似乎是一个例外，因为该地区的狩猎采集人群聚集在一起，形成了类似于村庄的大型，巨大的中心，而没有强烈的外部限制。北美东部的狩猎采集仪式中心的出现是否代表了发展久坐和社会复杂性的替代轨迹？当代的美国社会受到久坐村庄生活开始的某些紧张局势，例如自主权和共产主义之间，这是过去人们在过去的方式和为什么自愿汇集到大型，密集和永久社会群体的主题。作为这项研究的一部分进行的研究将为当地志愿者和学生提供考古教育和培训机会。该项目将调查北美东部东部的猎人 - 采集仪式中心，以概述定居点聚集过程是如何发生的以及它与其他世界其他地区的不同之处。研究人员将专注于一个大型礼仪中心。该网站见证了几个大丘中心的发展，这些中心被描述为早期村庄。尽管大小出色，但该地点的注意力很少，考古学家的关注很少，其定居点的性质仍然很大。整合来自开挖，放射性碳日期，植物分析和陶瓷出处的数据将允许评估不同的定居，流动性和社会组织的不同模型。然后，将将这些数据与北美和世界其他地区的其他仪式中心和早期村庄进行比较，以更好地理解导致狩猎者 - 采集人群发展大型，永久性和解的各种轨迹。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用该基金会的知识优点和广泛的criperia来评估NSF的法定任务，并通过评估值得进行评估。