Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A Bioarchaeological Investigation of Postclassic Civic-Ceremonial Burials in PetUn, Guatemala

在普鲁登斯·赖斯博士的指导下，威廉·邓肯先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。邓肯先生参与了国家科学基金会长期支持的考古活动，以重建危地马拉北部北冰洋地区的晚期史前人口分布和社会组织。在经典的玛雅文明在这一地区下放后，当地的玛雅群体逐渐形成了较小的社会实体，直到他们最终被西班牙人征服。通过考古学、历史学和人种学的结合工作，该小组追踪了时间的连续性，并将史前晚期和现存的玛雅人口联系在一起。这提供了一个极好的机会来追踪随着时间的推移而发生的变化，并评估例如经典的玛雅人“崩溃”和西班牙征服等事件的影响。邓肯博士将专注于葬礼仪式。由于墓葬--包括骨骼遗骸和相关的墓葬供品--通常在考古记录中保存完好，因此它们是相当大的科学关注的焦点。大多数社会对其形式都有严格的规则，通过对坟墓遗骸的分析，往往可以倒退并重建社会组织的多个方面。在北四腾的工作过程中，多个后经典群体的许多墓葬都被发现了。在NSF的支持下，邓肯先生将扩展和分析这个样本。他指出，埋葬方式沿着多个轴线变化。有些是“家庭住宅”，与个别住宅有关。其他事件的性质是多方面的，可能发生在更广泛的公民背景下。在后一种情况下，明显存在不同的变种。根据美国中世纪和世界范围内的人种学比较，人们推测不同的墓葬变体有不同的目的：在某些情况下，目标是将灵魂转移到来世。在其他国家，情况正好相反。根据民族志衍生的一套标准，邓肯先生将分析埋葬方法，并将它们在不同的背景和不同的社会群体中进行比较。他还将对骨骼本身进行分析，并使用一组具有高度遗传性的离散牙齿特征来检查个体之间的关系程度。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将提供对史前玛雅社会组织的洞察，其结果将引起许多中美主义者的兴趣。通过考古学和生物学方法的独特结合，它将有助于开发一种可能具有广泛适用性的分析技术。最后，它将帮助培养一位有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Prudence Rice, Mr. William Duncan will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. Mr. Duncan has participated in long term NSF supported archaeological to reconstruct late prehistoric population distribution and social organization in the Peten lakes region of northern Guatemala. After devolution of classic Mayan civilization in this region, local Mayan groups nucleated into smaller social entities until their ultimate conquest by the Spanish. Through combined archaeological, historical and ethnographic work the team has traced continuities through time and correlated late prehistoric and extant Mayan populations. This provides an excellent opportunity to trace change over time and evaluate, for example, the impact of such events as the classic Mayan "collapse" and the Spanish conquest. Dr. Duncan will focus on burial ritual. Because burials - both skeletal remains and associated grave offerings - are often well preserved in the archaeological record they are the focus of considerable scientific attention. Most societies have strict rules governing their form and through analysis of grave remains it is often possible to work backwards and reconstruct multiple aspects of social organization. In the course of the Northern Peten work, many burials from multiple Postclassic groups have been recovered. With NSF support, Mr. Duncan will expand and analyze this sample. He has noted that burials vary along multiple axes. Some are "domestic" and associated with individual dwellings. Others are multiple in nature and likely took place in a broader civic context. Within this latter distinct variants are evident. Based on both Middle American and world wide ethnographic comparison it is postulated that different burial variants served different purposes: in some cases the goal was to move the soul onwards to an afterlife. In others, the reverse was the case. Based on an ethnographically derived set of criteria Mr. Duncan will analyze methods of burial and compare them across different contexts and different social groups. He will also conduct an analyses of the skeletons themselves and use a set of discrete dental traits with a high degree of heritability to examine degree of relationship among and between individuals. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide insight into prehistoric Mayan social organization and the results will be of interest to many Middle Americanists. Through a unique combination of archaeological and biological approaches it will help to develop an analytic technique of potentially wide applicability. Finally it will assist in training a promising young scientist.