Transformation in the Era of the Atlantic World: The Central Region Project, Coastal Ghana

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，克里斯托弗·R. DeCorse和锡拉丘兹大学麦克斯韦公民与公共事务学院的研究生将在未来四年内在加纳沿海地区进行实地考察。 该项目将研究从公元500年到世纪非洲社会的社会文化变革，特别强调大西洋世界时代的贸易、社会组织和技术变革。 该项目以考古记录为重点，采取全面、跨学科的视角，将文献资料和口头传统与从考古遗址获得的数据相结合。研究将审查欧洲大西洋贸易的增长和主导加纳海岸贸易的非洲政治的出现，扩张和衰落。虽然其中一些发展有书面记录，但这些记载大多是欧洲作家提供的，它们对远离沿海贸易转口港的更广阔内陆地区的非洲社会提供了有限的了解。 这个项目的智力价值在于范围和重点不同的几个领域。 具体来说，它将研究的出现，扩张和主导贸易的非洲政治的衰落，虽然在解决模式，网站密度和文物库存的变化。对该地区一些主要欧洲贸易港口的年代久远的贸易材料的研究将有助于对遗址年表和经济转型的性质和后果进行研究。 来自欧洲贸易站的数据也将为深入了解居住在海岸上的欧洲商人的小飞地内的生活方式提供帮助。 虽然目前已有一些个别遗址的考古数据，但该项目将是对该地区的第一次全面调查，实际上也是加纳进行的最全面的区域调查之一。 因此，在遗址分布、当地工业和贸易材料方面获得的信息将为该地区的文化历史提供一个持久的框架，并了解该地区所经历的更广泛的社会文化变化。该研究项目还与考古学方法和理论有更广泛的相关性，特别是在考察世界其他地区的复杂性和文化接触方面。 对西非沿海政体的研究将深入了解复杂性的不同性质及其考古学观点。 这样做将有助于解决更广泛的理论关注的性质复杂的社会和长途贸易的作用，在国家的形成。 利用复杂性的多层次模型，这项工作将说明，社会政治形成不是一个简单的，统一的过程，而是一个根据当地环境而变化很大的过程。 陆地遗址的调查，整合了多条证据线，在其他地区的考古调查受到厚厚的植被的阻碍。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Christopher R. DeCorse and graduate students from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University will conduct fieldwork in coastal Ghana over the next four years. The project will examine sociocultural transformations in African societies from about A.D. 500 though the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on trade, social organization, and technological change during the era of the Atlantic World. Focusing on the archaeological record, the project takes a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective that will integrate documentary sources and oral traditions with data obtained from archaeological sites. Research will examine the growth of the European Atlantic trade and the emergence, expansion, and decline of the African polities that dominated the trade on the Ghanaian coast. While some of these developments are recorded in written records, these accounts were mostly provided by European writers and they provide limited insight into the African societies of the wider hinterland located away from the coastal trading entrepots. The intellectual merit of this project lies in several areas differing in scope and emphasis. Specifically, it will examine the emergence, expansion, and decline of the African polities that dominated the trade though changes in settlement patterning, site densities, and artifact inventories. Site chronologies, and examination of the nature and consequences of economic transformations, will be aided by the study of well-dated trade materials from some of the region's principal European trade ports. Data from European trade posts will also afford insight into lifeways within the small enclaves of European traders that lived on the coast. Although archaeological data on some individual sites are currently available, the project will provide the first comprehensive survey of the region and, indeed, be one of the most comprehensive regional surveys undertaken in Ghana. The information obtained on site distributions, local industries, and trade materials will thus provide a lasting framework for the region's culture history, as well as an understanding of the wider socio-cultural changes of which the region was part.The research project also has broader relevance to archeological method and theory, particularly with regard to the examination of complexity and culture contact in other world areas. Examination of the coastal polities of West Africa will provide insight into the varied nature of complexity and its archaeological perception. In doing so it will help to address broader theoretical concerns regarding the nature of complex societies and the role of long distance trade in state formation. Drawing on more heterarchical models of complexity, the work will illustrate that socio-political formation is not a simple, uniform process, but one that varies greatly depending on local contexts. The survey of terrestrial sites, integrating multiple lines of evidence, has applications in other areas where archaeological survey is hampered by thick vegetation.