Large Database to Explore Rise of Social Complexity

大型数据库探索社会复杂性的上升

• 批准号: 2200926
• 负责人: Victor Thompson
• 金额: $ 8.98万
• 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: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2200926&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Large; Database; Explore; Rise; Social

For over a decade archaeologists have been developing empirically based models and explanations for complex, multiple-cause-and-consequence, real-world processes. This project will advance understanding of the origins of the state and urbanism by testing an innovative model that employs recently developed analytical tools and an unusually rich and large dataset. Instead of focusing exclusively on one state or city, this new approach 1) tracks multiple important institutions—states, cities, districts, local communities, temple organizations, markets, and agricultural institutions—as these varied and developed over a span of millenia; and 2) simultaneously tracks these institutional changes across multiple, neighboring societies that had differing cultures, languages, and natural environments yet are known to have maintained a high level of inter-societal interaction. The investigators will assemble newer and older archaeological data on more than 6000 archaeological sites from over 150 municipalities. The sites are from multiple time periods and include hunter-gatherer rock art, early villages, towns, cities, fortifications, houses, public architecture, and irrigation canals, and agricultural terraces. This information was originally gathered by multiple research groups. The studies had the same basic underlying methodology, permitting a high degree of comparability. This project will build and make publicly available one the most comprehensive archaeological datasets in the world useful for a variety of topics including demography, cultural ecology, craft specialization and economic practices, warfare, the Neolithic Revolution, communities, urbanism, agriculture, resilience, political evolution, collapse, ordinary lives, wealth inequality, and the development of religious institutions. The project will archive and curate the information in useable formats so that it will be available not just to researchers but to teachers, students, local communities, cultural heritage stakeholders, etc., for years to come.The central research hypothesis is that 1) urbanism, the state, and other important social institutions developed concordantly over time because of inter-societal interaction, but 2) differently in each regional society because of variation in the key agricultural variables of soil and water and differences in the way these resources were socially managed. Model construction will use a multiscalar (site, local, regional, multiregional) method, and recent archaeological applications of institutional analysis and collective action theory. Assembling and curating the information archive requires bringing older data (over 100,000 pages of field notes, artifact descriptions, maps, and photographs) up to modern standards, especially in the area of georeferencing, to enhance its availability, accessibility, utility, and value for scientific research, educational, and management purposes. The online archive created by this project will benefit instruction at K-12 and University levels, by providing datasets and modules of real-world situations for use in teaching basic concepts such as number, scientific method, spatial and temporal scales, and continuity and change over time, and more advanced applications in statistics, demography, GIS, and ecology. Finally, this work will engage scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates in training, creation of the archive, and use of these resources, particularly those from underrepresented groups.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.

十多年来，考古学家一直在开发基于经验的模型并解释复杂的、多因果的现实世界过程，该项目将通过测试最近采用的创新模型来增进对国家和城市化起源的理解。这种新方法 1) 开发了分析工具和异常丰富且庞大的数据集，而是跟踪多个重要机构——州、城市、地区、当地社区、寺庙组织、市场和农业机构。这些变化和发展经过一段时间跨越千年；2）同时追踪多个具有不同文化、语言和自然环境但仍保持着高水平社会间互动的邻近社会的制度变化。来自 150 多个城市的 6000 多个考古遗址的数据来自多个时期，包括狩猎采集岩画、早期村庄、城镇、城市、防御工事、房屋、公共建筑和灌溉设施。这些信息最初是由多个研究小组收集的，具有相同的基本方法，因此该项目将建立并公开世界上最全面的考古数据集。涉及各种主题，包括人口学、文化生态、手工艺专业化和经济实践、战争、新石器时代革命、社区、城市化、农业、复原力、政治演变、崩溃、普通生活、财富不平等和宗教机构的发展项目。将存档并以可用的格式整理信息，以便在未来几年内不仅可供研究人员使用，还可供教师、学生、当地社区、文化遗产利益相关者等使用。中心研究假设是：1）城市化、国家、由于社会间的互动，农业和其他重要的社会制度随着时间的推移而协调发展，但2）由于土壤和水等关键农业变量的差异以及这些资源的社会管理方式的差异，每个区域社会的发展也有所不同。使用多标量（地点、地方、区域、多区域）方法以及机构分析和集体行动理论的最新考古应用 收集和整理信息档案需要调动旧数据（超过 100,000 页的现场记录、文物描述、地图和照片）。该项目创建的在线档案将有利于 K-12 和大学的教学。通过提供现实世界情况的数据集和模块，用于教授数字、科学方法、时空尺度、随时间的连续性和变化等基本概念，以及统计、人口学、地理信息系统和生态学中更高级的应用最后，这项工作将让学者、研究生和本科生参与培训、创建档案和使用这些资源，特别是那些来自代表性不足的群体。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值以及更广泛的影响审查标准。