Collaborative Research: The Emergence Of Social Inequality

社会不平等如何以及为什么在人类社会中出现并制度化，是社会科学面临的一些最基本的问题。这些选择和变化的后果影响了整个现代人类社会，并对现代人的生活产生了切实的影响。考古学特别适合于研究这些问题，并梳理出平等主义的人类团体朝着在特定社会的成员之间不平等地分配权力和资源获取迈出的第一步。正是在这一大背景下，本工作将研究圣佩德罗德阿塔卡马绿洲(智利北部)的安第斯中地平线(公元500-1000年)社会，在这个时代和地点，制度化的社会不平等刚刚开始从长期的平等主义基础上出现。为了重建社会不平等的复杂方面，研究人员将专注于对大量人类埋葬和骨骼遗骸样本的详细分析，揭示新出现的不平等如何影响这些社会中不同个人的生活，并提出为什么会发生这些剧烈的社会变化。在这一过程中，将鼓励研究机构的本科生和研究生，特别是拉丁美洲和西班牙裔学生参与，从而在考古学和生物人类学研究方法方面获得宝贵的培训。虽然考古学家研究了推动社会不平等出现的过程，但大多数研究都是在整个社会的层面上看待社会不平等现象的出现，而不是评估其对个人和社区生活经验的影响。正是在这种背景下，目前的工作将提供宝贵的数据：该项目将侧重于各种个人的骨骼遗骸及其埋葬方式，以证明他们每个人的生活中如何以及为什么表现出不平等。为此，这个项目将探索社会地位差异的出现的影响，因为它是通过一种综合的研究方法在个人经验中具体化的，其中包括：1)研究骨骼遗骸，以寻找饮食、身体压力、疾病、活动模式和暴力的证据；2)通过如何以及每个人被埋葬的方式来表达社会不平等的证据；3)一个扩展的碳测年计划，将允许详细重建墓地的使用；以及4)通过生化分析(稳定同位素)对饮食进行重点分析。这种方法与阿塔卡马绿洲独特的考古记录相结合，将使研究人员能够解决鸡和蛋之间的争论，即不平等待遇的具体物理表现(饮食差异、更大的身体损伤率)是否先于或之后于迅速增长的不平等的其他表现(例如，异国商品的出现、精英住宅的建造等)。这些发现将有助于更广泛地讨论当代社会严重不平等的财富分配及其对个人生活的影响，为我们对这些过程的理解增加历史深度。

How and why social inequality emerges and becomes institutionalized within human societies represent some of the most fundamental issues facing the social sciences. The ramifications of these choices and changes reverberate through modern human societies and have tangible impacts on the lives of modern people. Archaeology is uniquely well suited to examine these issues and to tease out the process(es) by which egalitarian human groups made their first steps towards distributing power and resource access unequally among the members of a given society. It is in this broad vein that the present work will examine the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000) societies of the San Pedro de Atacama oases (northern Chile), a time and a place in which institutionalized social inequality was just beginning to emerge from a long-standing foundation of egalitarianism. To reconstruct the complex aspects of social inequality, the researchers will focus on detailed analyses of a vast sample of human burials and skeletal remains, revealing both how emerging inequality affected the lives of different individuals in these societies and proposing why these drastic social changes were being made. In the process, undergraduate and graduate students from the investigators' institutions, and in particular Latin American and Hispanic students, will be encouraged to participate and thereby gain invaluable training in archaeological and bio-anthropological research methods.While archaeologists have examined the processes driving the emergence of social inequality, most studies have viewed the phenomenon of its emergence on the level of whole societies rather than evaluating its effects on the lived experience of individuals and communities. It is in this context that the present work will provide invaluable data: this project will focus on the skeletal remains of various individuals and the manner of their burial for evidence of how and why inequality manifested in each of their lives. To do so, this project will explore the effects of the emergence of differences in social status as it is crystallized in individual experience through a combined research methodology that includes: 1) the study of skeletal remains for evidence of diet, bodily stress, disease, activity patterns, and violence; 2) the evidence of social inequality as expressed by how, and with what each individual was buried; 3) an expansive program of carbon dating that will allow for detailed reconstruction of cemetery use; and 4) a focused analysis of diet through biochemical analysis (stable isotopes). This methodology in combination with the unique archaeological record of the Atacama oases will permit the researchers to address chicken-and-egg debates about whether specific physical manifestations of unequal treatment (dietary difference, greater rates of bodily injury) preceded or postdated other manifestations of burgeoning inequality (e.g. the appearance of exotic goods, the building of elite houses, etc.). Such findings will contribute to a much broader discussion about the profoundly unequal distribution of wealth in contemporary societies and its impact on individual lives, by adding historical depth to our understanding of these processes.