Excavations and Geophysical Survey at the Early Historic City of Sisupalgarh, India

印度西苏帕尔加尔早期历史名城的发掘和地球物理调查

• 批准号: 0550035
• 负责人: Monica Smith
• 金额: $ 15.09万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-01-15 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0550035&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Excavations; Geophysical; Survey; Early; Historic

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Monica L. Smith and a team of colleagues from the United States and India will conduct three field seasons of archaeological research at the ancient city of Sisupalgarh, India. This well-preserved archaeological site, dating to the early centuries BC/AD, consists of monumental architecture within an urban core zone over one square kilometer in size surrounded by a rampart wall that still stands up to 9 meters tall. Previous mapping and reconnaissance work at the site carried out by this team shows that beyond evidence for leadership, the city also contains the remains of many thousands of ordinary households. The current project will consist of excavations of selected areas of the site to understand the composition of those households and why people chose to settle in an urban zone. In contrast to many archaeological research projects focused on urban origins, our project seeks to identify the economic and social factors that sustained long-term urban occupation, and how ordinary households integrated themselves into the life of the city. The excavations also will generate a comprehensive series of radiocarbon dates to identify the site's development over time. These dating methods will enable us to test whether Sisupalgarh developed as a sequential reaction to urbanism in the Ganges Valley, or whether urbanism was a predominantly local development. Evidence for local development, as is already suggested by the overwhelmingly local character of the artifacts thus far found at the site, would support new theories of urbanization that show ancient cities thriving on the basis of robust local economies rather than long-distance exchange.In conjunction with the excavations, the team also will utilize subsurface non-destructive mapping to trace architectural features in neighborhood-sized areas at Sisupalgarh. Neighborhoods are an important grouping in cities, but represent areas that are too large for conventional excavation methods. We will utilize the geophysical techniques of gradiometry and electrical resistivity to trace the outlines of structures in areas surrounding the excavated households, with the goal of producing architectural maps for areas several hectares in size. This project represents a pioneering use of these subsurface mapping techniques in India, and the first large-scale study of whole neighborhoods within an ancient Indian city. The intellectual merit of the research will be to evaluate an ancient city as a social construct in which all classes of society participate, and to provide a well-documented South Asian case of premodern urbanism that can be compared with other archaeologically known regions. The broader impacts of the research project include significant international collaboration between Indian and US researchers and students; provision of data for theses and dissertations for both Indian and US students; training of students in archaeological field techniques and analysis; and provision of resources for university classes and public presentations.

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，莫妮卡·L.史密斯和一个来自美国和印度的同事团队将在印度古城Sisupalgarh进行三个考古研究季节。 这个保存完好的考古遗址可以追溯到公元前/公元前几个世纪初，由一个面积超过一平方公里的城市核心区内的纪念性建筑组成，周围环绕着一个高达9米的城墙。 该小组先前在现场进行的测绘和勘察工作表明，除了领导层的证据外，该市还包含数千个普通家庭的遗骸。 目前的项目将包括对遗址的选定区域进行挖掘，以了解这些家庭的组成以及人们为什么选择在市区定居。 与许多专注于城市起源的考古研究项目不同，我们的项目旨在确定维持长期城市占领的经济和社会因素，以及普通家庭如何融入城市生活。 挖掘还将产生一系列全面的放射性碳年代测定，以确定该遗址随时间的发展。 这些测年方法将使我们能够测试西苏帕尔加尔是否发展为恒河流域城市化的连续反应，或者城市化是否是一个主要的地方发展。 当地发展的证据，正如迄今为止在该遗址发现的文物的压倒性地方特征所表明的那样，将支持城市化的新理论，即古代城市的繁荣是基于强大的地方经济而不是长距离的交流。与挖掘相结合，该团队还将利用地下非破坏性测绘来追踪Sisupalgarh社区大小区域的建筑特征。 街区是城市中的一个重要群体，但代表的区域对于传统的挖掘方法来说太大了。 我们将利用梯度测量和电阻率等地球物理技术，追踪挖掘出的住户周围地区的建筑轮廓，目标是绘制几公顷面积的建筑图。 该项目代表了这些地下测绘技术在印度的开创性应用，也是第一次对印度古城内的整个街区进行大规模研究。 这项研究的学术价值将是评估一个古代城市作为一个社会结构，社会各阶层都参与其中，并提供一个有据可查的南亚前现代城市化案例，可以与其他考古学已知的地区进行比较。 该研究项目的更广泛影响包括印度和美国研究人员和学生之间的重大国际合作;为印度和美国学生的论文和学位论文提供数据;对学生进行考古现场技术和分析的培训;以及为大学课程和公开演讲提供资源。