Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Excavating Community and Identity in the Borderlands of Late Classic (A.D. 650-900) NW Honduras

博士论文改进补助金：挖掘洪都拉斯西北部古典晚期（公元 650-900 年）边境地区的社区和身份

• 批准号: 0207405
• 负责人: Robert Sharer
• 金额: $ 1.15万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-05-01 至 2003-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0207405&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Excavating

Archaeological research around the globe has long been focused on the grand monuments, fine artistic achievements and sweeping political dramas of ancient peoples. This emphasis has often been adopted at the expense of a smaller scale, more intimate understanding of the lives and experiences of the individual peoples comprising those cultures. A consideration of how ancient peoples perceived and identified themselves with respect to those within and without their communities will provide an important step in improving our anthropological understanding of personal and group identity in both the past and present. This research project addresses issues of co mmunity identity and its material expression on range of scales among the Late Classic (650-900 A.D.) peoples of Las Canoas, NW Honduras. Research includes the intensive excavation of both elite and non-elite houses and administrative/ritual buildings at the archaeological site of Las Canoas, as well as analysis of artifacts recovered from those structures. This information will be studied with the aim of finding patterns in the use of built spaces and the production, trade, and use of material goods, such as pottery. The design of human settlements and the changes wrought on them over time lends insight into the ways people feel their environment should be organized and communities experienced. The types of possessions made, gathered, saved, displayed, hidden, and/or discarded by individuals and families reveals much about what they value, what they are able to acquire and to what lengths they will go to access such items. Studies of both ancient architecture and artifact assemblages including pottery, stone tools, domestic refuse, burials, special caches and/or ritual deposits provide a view into how a group of people shaped, lived in, and gave meaning to their world - in essence created their identities. The proposed research will consider the layout, orientation and relationships of buildings to one another, as well as the types and styles of artifacts (especially pottery), as indicators or expressions of individual and community identity. Information recovered from Las Canoas will be analyzed with these ideas in mind and then compared to that known from contemporaneous, similarly sized sites in the surrounding area. Understanding how the peoples living at Las Canoas related to the social, political, and economic hierarchy in Late Classic Mesoamerica are basic goals of this project. The broader aim of the research, however, is to test the hypothesis that much-debated anthropological concepts such as culture and ethnicity do not always play themselves out in the daily reality of human lives. Rather, it is proposed that peoples craft their identities to suit a variety of material and symbolic needs, shifting their alliances and affiliations in response to changing pressures and situations. This research is designed to question our often-untested assumptions about the nature of interaction between different peoples and communities in achieve a better understanding of human behavior.

长期以来，地球仪的考古学研究一直集中在古代民族的宏伟纪念碑、精美的艺术成就和广泛的政治戏剧上。 这种强调往往是以牺牲对构成这些文化的各个民族的生活和经历的较小规模和更深入的了解为代价的。 考虑古代民族如何看待和认同自己与那些内部和外部的社区将提供一个重要的一步，提高我们的人类学理解的个人和群体的身份在过去和现在。 这个研究项目解决了社区身份及其在古典晚期（公元650-900年）尺度范围内的物质表达问题。洪都拉斯西北部的拉斯卡诺阿斯人。 研究工作包括在拉斯卡诺阿斯考古遗址对精英和非精英住宅以及行政/仪式建筑进行密集挖掘，并对从这些建筑中回收的文物进行分析。 这些信息将被研究，目的是找到建筑空间的使用模式以及陶器等物质产品的生产、贸易和使用模式。 人类住区的设计以及随着时间的推移对人类住区造成的变化使人们能够深入了解人们认为其环境应该如何组织以及社区应该如何体验。 个人和家庭制造、收集、保存、展示、隐藏和/或丢弃的财产类型在很大程度上揭示了他们的价值、他们能够获得的东西以及他们为获得这些物品而付出的努力。 研究古代建筑和人工制品组合，包括陶器，石器，生活垃圾，墓葬，特殊的缓存和/或仪式存款提供了一个观点，一群人如何塑造，生活，并赋予他们的世界意义-本质上创造了他们的身份。 拟议的研究将考虑建筑物的布局，方向和相互关系，以及文物（特别是陶器）的类型和风格，作为个人和社区身份的指标或表达。 从Las卡诺阿斯恢复的信息将与这些想法进行分析，然后与周边地区同时期，类似规模的网站进行比较。 了解生活在拉斯卡诺阿斯的人们如何与古典时期晚期中美洲的社会、政治和经济等级关系是本项目的基本目标。 然而，这项研究更广泛的目的是检验一个假设，即备受争议的人类学概念，如文化和种族，并不总是在人类生活的日常现实中发挥作用。 相反，有人建议，人民应根据各种物质和象征性需要来塑造自己的身份，根据不断变化的压力和局势来改变自己的联盟和关系。 这项研究旨在质疑我们对不同民族和社区之间互动性质的未经检验的假设，以更好地理解人类行为。