Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Development of Ceramic Technology in the Eastern Eurasian Steppe Zone

在Michael Frachetti教授的指导下，Paula Doumani将在青铜时代的Tasbas定居点进行考古发掘和陶器分析。塔斯巴斯位于哈萨克斯坦东南部的准噶尔山脉，大约4000年前被流动的牧民占领。该遗址包括居民建筑、岩石艺术和一个小墓地。根据塔斯巴斯的占领时间、文化材料和自给自足的经济，该遗址是欧亚大陆中部专业化流动畜牧业的早期例子之一。研究欧亚大陆中部青铜器时代人群的陶器技术很重要，原因有很多。首先，技术让我们洞察社区纽带和社会。具体来说，非等级制社会中的技术和生产可以说明一个更大的问题，即群体身份和社会如何在中央集权制度之外再生产。其次，对技术的研究提供了对群体互动、社会经济变化和社区学习的见解。Doumani女士的研究是世界上为数不多的将牧民的小规模生产技术与互动、社会经济变化和身份研究结合起来的研究之一。青铜器时代是欧亚大陆广泛交流的时代。在欧亚草原中部地区，这一时期标志着地理上广泛的流动畜牧业的开始，区域互动的加强，以及一系列物质媒介（如陶器）的技术创新。物质技术的传播是这些早期牧民的主要社会经济整合因素。考古学表明，陶器在很大的地理区域具有非凡的风格和技术一致性。但是，该地区的社会是如何分享这些传统的，仍然是一个人们知之甚少的话题。杜玛尼女士将恢复和分析数据，以解释哪些陶器技术显示了长期的社区联系和生产，哪些陶器技术显示了与欧亚大陆其他地区的人口的联系。具体来说，她提出——并将检验证据——技术将显示：社会经济互动、工匠如何转移社区实践，以及地方和地方外规模的生产系统。除了其学术价值外，该项目还将有助于美国和哈萨克斯坦的研究生培训。培训机会将跨越许多考古子领域，包括材料，植物，动物和人类遗骸分析。该项目将为居住在哈萨克斯坦偏远农村地区的哈萨克人提供就业机会，并为社区成员提供了解考古学的机会。此外，这些活动将提高当地对科学考古领域和分析技术的认识。研究结果将通过在专业会议上的介绍和在同行编辑的期刊上发表的论文，向学术界和公众广泛传播。公众也将能够通过华盛顿大学运营的开源数据库访问研究过程中生成的数据、地图和照片。

Under the supervision of Prof. Michael Frachetti, Paula Doumani will conduct archaeological excavations and pottery analyses at the Bronze Age settlement of Tasbas. Tasbas, located in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan, was occupied by mobile pastoral populations around 4000 years ago. The site includes resident structures, rock art, and a small cemetery. Based on Tasbas' time of occupation, cultural material, and its subsistence economy, the site is among the early examples for specialized mobile pastoralism in central Eurasia. Research focusing on pottery technology among Bronze Age populations in central Eurasia is important for a number of reasons. First, technology gives us insight into community bonds and society. Technology and production among non-hierarchical societies, specifically, can speak to the larger issue of how group identity and society is reproduced outside of centralized systems of authority. Second, the study of technology provides insight into group interaction, socio-economic change and community learning. Ms. Doumani's research offers one of the few studies worldwide that unite small-scale production technology among pastoralists with the study of interaction, socio-economic change, and identity.The Bronze Age was a time of vast communication across the Eurasian continent. In the central Eurasian steppe zone, this period marks the beginning of geographically widespread mobile pastoralism, intensified regional interaction, and technological innovations across a range of material media, such as pottery. The diffusion of material technologies was a principal socio-economic integrator among these early pastoralists. The archaeology shows extraordinary stylistic and technological consistencies in the pottery across large geographic territories. But, how the region's societies came to share these traditions is a topic that is still poorly understood. Ms. Doumani will recover and analyze data to interpret which pottery technologies demonstrate long-term community bonds and production, and which pottery technologies demonstrate bonds with populations elsewhere in Eurasia. Specifically, she proposes - and will test for evidence - that technology will show: socio-economic interaction, how artisans transfer community practices, and productive systems at the local and extra-local scale. In addition to its academic merit, this project will assist in both American and Kazakh graduate student training. Training opportunities will span a number of archaeological subfields, including material, plant, animal, and human remain analyses. The project will provide employment to Kazakh individuals living in a remote rural area of Kazakhstan, and opportunities for the community members to learn about archaeology in general. Furthermore, these activities will increase local awareness of scientific archaeological field and analytical techniques. Results of the research will be widely disseminated to the academic and public community through presentation at professional conferences and through published papers in peer-edited journals. The public will also be able to access the data, maps, and photographs generated in the course of the research via open source databases operated through Washington University.