Changing Agrarian Foundations Of Urban Life: A Long-Term Perspective

改变城市生活的农业基础：长期视角

• 批准号: 1418989
• 负责人: Marilyn Masson
• 金额: $ 10.24万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Albany
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-06-15 至 2016-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1418989&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Changing; Agrarian; Foundations; Urban; Life

The central goal of this research is to understand how within traditional societies (such as those which characterize many parts of the developing world today) urban and rural dwellers are linked together through social and economic ties and how these linkages are affected by environmental change. Archaeology provides an excellent context for analyses of this type because it can trace and correlate changes in social organization and environmental context sometimes over millennial time scales.This NSF-supported investigation will reconstruct the economic foundations of agrarian life through time in the northern Maya area in Yucatan, Mexico. The power and complexity of the economic foundations of pre-modern states is acutely reflected in the impacts that governmental institutions had on the humblest, most peripheral residents of society. Such effects can be positive, neutral, or negative. For example, thriving market networks can connect rural houselots to larger spheres of interaction with the outside world that bring opportunities for affluence and occupational specialization. Alternatively, commoners situated within a matrix of competitive city states may suffer suppressed opportunities for prosperity, due to higher levels of taxation or instability associated with warfare. Of equal importance are bottom-up processes by which ordinary citizens innovate or reproduce economic strategies that foster household maintenance and survival. Understanding the economic organization of rural populations is essential for evaluating the prospects for a sustainable agrarian food base needed to support urban towns and cities of this arid region.The primary research objective is to document the degree of diversity in farming, craft production, and service industries that characterized the work lives of rural residential groups through time. Related factors will also be evaluated, including the degree of wealth, stability, and longevity of the hinterland commoner house groups, as well as their level of dependency on local and regional exchange for the essentials of daily life. An extensive program of household archaeology will provide the data needed to address these research objectives, building on a previous NSF-supported investigation that located thousands of dwellings across a continuously-occupied area of 40 square kilometers, using LiDAR remote sensing. Rural life in two contrastive political geographic settings will be compared. Initially, Late and Terminal Classic era houselots were located in an extremely marginal position, far from towns or cities of significant size. Later, Postclassic homesteads were within four kilometers of a major political capital, the site of Mayapán, a large urban center that emerged in this area. This study will document the resulting transformations to regional political economy. The study will examine long term viable strategies for farming in a drought-prone environment in an area that suffered repeated catastrophic demographic collapses, followed by remarkable resilience and demographic recovery. Although prior surface surveys revealed that the Yucatecan countryside was surprisingly populous in ancient times, with rural densities of at least 6 persons per hectare across vast tracts of the outback, no prior study has targeted the household economies of the non-urban Maya countryside.

这项研究的中心目标是了解在传统社会（例如今天发展中世界许多地区的传统社会）中，城市和农村居民如何通过社会和经济纽带联系在一起，以及这些联系如何受到环境变化的影响。考古学为这种类型的分析提供了一个很好的背景，因为它可以跟踪和关联的社会组织和环境背景的变化，有时在千年的时间scales.This NSF支持的调查将重建农业生活的经济基础，通过时间在墨西哥尤卡坦半岛的北方玛雅地区。 前现代国家经济基础的力量和复杂性，在政府机构对社会最底层、最边缘居民的影响中得到了尖锐的反映。这些影响可以是积极的、中性的或消极的。例如，繁荣的市场网络可以将农村的小佃户与外部世界的更大互动领域联系起来，从而带来致富和职业专业化的机会。另一方面，处于竞争激烈的城邦矩阵中的平民可能会因为更高的税收或与战争相关的不稳定而遭受繁荣机会的压制。同样重要的是自下而上的进程，普通公民通过这些进程创新或复制促进家庭维持和生存的经济战略。了解农村人口的经济组织是至关重要的评估前景的可持续农业粮食基地需要支持城市城镇和城市的干旱region.The主要研究目标是记录的多样性程度，在农业，手工艺生产，服务行业的特点，农村居民群体的工作生活随着时间的推移。还将评估相关因素，包括内地平民住宅群体的财富、稳定和长寿程度，以及他们对当地和区域交换日常生活必需品的依赖程度。一项广泛的家庭考古计划将提供解决这些研究目标所需的数据，该计划建立在之前NSF支持的调查基础上，该调查使用LiDAR遥感技术在40平方公里的持续占用区域内定位了数千个住宅。在两个对比的政治地理环境的农村生活将进行比较。最初，古典时代晚期和晚期的房屋位于一个非常边缘的位置，远离城镇或大城市。后来，后古典时代的宅地距离一个主要的政治首都马亚潘（Mayapán）不到4公里，马亚潘是该地区出现的一个大型城市中心。本研究将记录由此产生的区域政治经济转型。该研究将审查在一个反复遭受灾难性人口崩溃的地区的干旱易发环境中进行农业的长期可行战略，然后是显着的复原力和人口恢复。虽然先前的地面调查显示，尤卡坦半岛农村在古代人口惊人，在内陆的大片土地上，农村密度至少为每公顷6人，但以前没有针对非城市玛雅农村家庭经济的研究。