Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Exchange, Ritual, and Emergent Social Complexity in the Late Archaic Western Great Lakes

社交网络和贸易如何将遥远的人口组合成有意义的社会实体？这些网络如何影响社会和经济不平等和复杂性问题？社交网络将遥远社会中的个人联系在一起，提供对专门的物质产品、仪式知识、资源、劳动力和/或婚姻伴侣的访问。网络通常是通过贸易发展和表达的，物质商品被交换为“礼物”、宗教或精神上重要的物品或商品，这取决于个人之间关系的性质。交换关系产生了义务、债务和责任。网络将遥远的群体整合成更大的社会实体，允许有关系的个人改善自己的社会地位--这是“富人变得更富有”现象的早期表现。这些问题影响着当今世界，因为人们正在努力应对全球化的挑战，但它们既不是新问题，也不是现代世界独有的问题。在我们的过去，人们一直在与这些问题作斗争；最明显的是在小规模社会放弃他们的平等主义社会契约，形成更大、更复杂的社会和政治制度的时期。在社会科学中，考古学具有研究长期社会变化的优势。虽然社会网络在我们全球化的世界中很重要，但从更长远的时间角度来看，彻底了解它们在社会复杂性和不平等的初始发展中的作用是有益的。这项研究考察了三千多年前北美西部五大湖地区社交网络的发展，以及它们在社会复杂性和不平等的早期基础上所扮演的角色。在安德鲁·达夫博士的指导下，马克·希尔将通过分析制作石器和铜制品的原材料来确定它们的地质来源，并绘制它们随后的分布图，从而记录这些古老网络的范围。来自殡仪馆的文物将被用来评估这些材料的社会价值，并记录获得社会价值的物品、网络和社会地位之间的关系。这些方法结合在一起，将提供对社会网络在日益扩大的社会差别和更大、更复杂的社会实体发展中的作用的详细审查。石屑和化学成分分析以前曾被用于追踪货物的交换。然而，将这种公认的分析方法与用于确定交换商品的社会价值的停尸房分析结合起来，提高了我们观察史前社会网络的能力，并提供了观察过去仪式和政治经济运行所必需的细节。作为完成论文的结果，这项工作还将提供对社会复杂性的起源的洞察，并将帮助社会科学家和公众更好地理解贸易、交换和不平等的本质。今天，贸易在国际范围内运作，然而，获得社会网络和社会权力的原则的作用与过去大体相同。通过在小范围内审查这一问题，人们可以研究特定的因素，以深入了解这些制度如何导致或加剧社会经济不平等。

How do social networks and trade function to combine distant populations into meaningful social entities? How do these networks affect issues of social and economic inequality and complexity? Social networks connect individuals in distant societies, providing access to specialized material goods, ritual knowledge, resources, labor, and/or marriage partners. Networks are often developed and expressed through trade, where material goods are exchanged as "gifts," items of religious or spiritual importance, or commodities depending on the nature of the relationship between individuals. Exchange relationships create obligations, debt, and responsibilities. Networks integrate distant groups into larger social entities, permitting individuals with connections to improve their social position an early expression of the "rich get richer" phenomenon. These issues affect the world today as people struggle with the challenges of globalization, yet they are neither new nor exclusive to the modern world. People have struggled with these issues throughout our past; most notably during periods when small-scale societies abandoned their egalitarian social contracts and formed larger, more complex social and political institutions.Among the social sciences, archaeology has the advantage of examination of social change over long periods of time. While social networks are important in our globalizing world, a thorough understanding of their role in the initial development of social complexity and inequality benefits from a longer temporal perspective. This research examines the development of social networks over three thousand years ago in the western Great Lakes of North America, and their role in the early foundations of social complexity and inequality. Under the direction of Dr. Andrew Duff, Mark Hill will document the extent of these ancient networks by analyzing raw materials used for stone tools and copper artifacts to locate their geological sources, and to map their subsequent distribution. Artifacts from mortuary contexts will be used to assess the social value of these materials, and to document the relationship between access to socially valued goods, networks, and social position. Combined, these approaches will provide a detailed examination of the role of social networks in growing social distinctions and the development of larger and more complex social entities. Lithic and chemical compositional analysis has previously been applied to tracing the exchange of goods. However, coupling this accepted analytical method with mortuary analysis used to determine the social value of exchange goods improves our ability to observe prehistoric social networks with the detail necessary to observe the functioning of past ritual and political economies. Resulting in the completion of a dissertation, this work will also provide insight into the origins of social complexity and will help social scientists and the public to better understand the nature of trade, exchange, and inequality. Today, trade operates on an international scale, yet the principles of access to social networks and social power function in much the same way as they did in the past By examining this issue at small scales, one can study specific elements to develop insight into the ways in which these systems lead to, or enhance socioeconomic inequalities