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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，克里斯托弗·R·德科尔斯博士和锡拉丘兹大学麦克斯韦尔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。该项目将考察大约从公元500年到19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，将文献来源和口头传统与从考古遗址获得的数据结合起来。研究将考察欧洲大西洋贸易的增长，以及主导加纳海岸贸易的非洲政治的出现、扩张和衰落。虽然其中一些事态发展被记录在书面记录中，但这些叙述大多是由欧洲作家提供的，它们对远离沿海贸易转口港的更广泛腹地的非洲社会的洞察有限。这个项目的学术价值在于几个在范围和重点上不同的领域。具体地说，它将通过聚落模式、遗址密度和文物库存的变化来考察主导贸易的非洲政治的出现、扩张和衰落。地点年表以及对经济转型的性质和后果的审查，将得到对该地区一些主要欧洲贸易港口过时的贸易材料的研究。来自欧洲贸易站的数据还将让我们深入了解居住在沿海地区的欧洲贸易商的小圈子里的生活方式。虽然目前已有一些个别遗址的考古数据，但该项目将对该地区进行第一次全面调查，而且确实是加纳进行的最全面的区域调查之一。因此，关于遗址分布、当地产业和贸易材料的信息将为该地区的文化史提供一个持久的框架，并了解该地区所参与的更广泛的社会文化变化。研究项目还与考古学方法和理论具有更广泛的相关性，特别是在考察世界其他地区的复杂性和文化联系方面。对西非沿海政治的考察将使人们深入了解复杂性的各种性质及其考古认识。这样做将有助于解决有关复杂社会的性质和长途贸易在国家形成中的作用的更广泛的理论关切。这项工作借鉴了更多复杂的杂乱无序的模型，将说明社会政治的形成不是一个简单、统一的过程，而是一个根据当地情况而变化很大的过程。对陆地遗址的调查整合了多条证据线，在考古调查因植被茂密而受阻的其他领域也有应用。

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.