Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Modeling Somerset Monongahela Village Organization Within a Chronological Framework Developed Through AMS Dating of Curated Organic Remains

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，伯纳德·K。手段将确定位于宾夕法尼亚州西南部崎岖的阿勒格尼山脉地区的十几个美洲印第安村庄遗址的年龄。早在第一批欧洲人定居这一地区之前，建造并居住在这些村庄的美洲印第安农民就消失了。 这些人是如何在这片曾经充满敌意的土地上维持着生机勃勃的农业社区的，以及维持了多少个世纪，仍然是个谜。 他们的环形村庄社区由一圈房子围绕着一个中心的露天广场组成，对他们的直接了解仅限于通过考古研究确定的。 这些村庄大多是在大萧条期间由联邦政府资助的工作救济项目挖掘出来的。 Means先生检查了博物馆收藏的这些20世纪30年代挖掘的记录和文物。 他发现，这些大萧条时期的考古学家使用的技术相对现代，比今天使用的技术更先进。 卡尔博士和米恩斯先生将利用他们在现代考古技术和科学工具方面的综合专业知识，在这些早期村庄挖掘的遗产基础上再接再厉。 这些环形村庄的遗址地图将使用新的人类学模型和计算机辅助空间分析进行研究，以解决一些问题：1。村民们是否通过安排房屋来加强合作，减少冲突？2.家庭在耕作时是独立工作还是定期联合收割机？3.家庭是否聚集成氏族团体，每个团体拥有一个村庄的一部分？4.每个村庄是否被分成两个较大的社会部门，也许在游戏中竞争，举行集体仪式，并埋葬彼此的死者？5.后来的村庄是否更有效地规划，反映了前几代村民的经验教训？如果不知道这些村落遗址的年代，就无法回答这些问题。 在美国国家科学基金会的资助下，每个村庄的遗址都将使用加速器质谱法（AMS）来测定年代，这些质谱法应用于米恩斯先生在博物馆收藏中发现的陶器碎片上发现的过去食物的燃烧残留物。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。 它将帮助在美国东北部工作的考古学家了解村庄生活方式和农业之间不断变化的关系。整个地区对农业村庄首次出现的时间以及由此产生的物质和社会变化的理解都很模糊。这项研究还将证明，新的概念和方法可以应用于存储的博物馆藏品，以回答原始挖掘机无法想象的问题。 这将使人们更好地了解过去，并强调维护收藏品以供未来研究的重要性。

With National Science Foundation support, Mr. Bernard K. Means will determine the ages of a dozen American Indian village sites located in the rugged Allegheny Mountains region of southwestern Pennsylvania. The American Indian farmers who built and lived in these villages vanished long before the first Europeans settled this area. How these people maintained vital and vibrant farming communities in this sometime hostile terrain, and for how many centuries, remain mysteries. Direct knowledge of their ring-shaped village communities-which consisted of a ring of houses built around a central open plaza-is limited to what can be determined through archeological research. Most of these villages were excavated by federally-funded work relief projects during the Great Depression. Mr. Means has examined records and artifacts from these 1930s excavations in museum collections. He found that these Depression-era archeologists used relatively modern techniques that compare favorably to those used today. Dr. Carr and Mr. Means will use their combined expertise in modern archeological techniques and scientific tools to build on the legacy of these earlier village excavations. Site maps for these ring-shaped villages will be examined using new anthropological models and computer-assisted spatial analysis to address a number of questions: 1. Did villagers arrange their houses to enhance cooperation and minimize conflicts? 2. Did families work independently while farming or did some families regularly combine their efforts? 3. Did families gather into clan-like groups that each owned part of a village? 4. Was each village separated into two larger social divisions that perhaps competed in games, performed group ceremonies, and buried each other's dead? 5. Were later villages more efficiently planned, reflecting lessons learned by earlier generations of villagers? These questions cannot be answered without knowing the ages of the village sites. With National Science Foundation funding, each village site will be dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) applied to the burned remains of past meals discovered still clinging to pottery-vessel fragments found by Mr. Means in museum collections. This research is important for several reasons. It will help archaeologists working in the Northeastern U.S. to understand the changing relationships between village lifeways and farming. There is a tenuous understanding throughout the region regarding the timing of the first appearance of farming villages and what material and social changes resulted. This research will also demonstrate that new concepts and methods can be applied to stored museum collections to answer questions undreamt of by their original excavators. This will generate a greater understanding of the past and highlight the importance of maintaining collections for future study.