Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Mobility, Political Complexity And Community Organization

对许多人来说，欧亚大草原的游牧民族是“坚忍”的人物，他们是长期生活在孤立中的产物，总是按照自然环境的要求移动。然而，游牧民族历史和考古记录的独特性使研究人员能够分析与更广泛的变量有关的政治组织的一般问题。从比较的角度来看，了解政治战略在快速流动、广阔领土和低人口密度的条件下如何发挥不同的作用是很重要的。这个研究项目所解决的主要问题是，草原政体如何为政治制度的发展提供替代轨迹的例子，以及这对人类社会采取或不采取更复杂的组织形式的方式有什么启示？ 因此，草原社会研究所涉及的人类学问题不一定是“牧民”问题本身，而是考虑到个人和群体流动性的人类组织的一般问题。这个项目提出了一个问题，即在东部草原游牧民族国家的最早阶段，社区规模的政治发展是什么样的？ 为了解决这一问题，本研究将探讨“自下而上”的过程中发挥的地方接受，配置和制定的政治变革，导致了蒙古的第一个区域规模的政体-匈奴国家。该项目在蒙古中北部开展工作，将利用调查和挖掘数据分析交换关系，如当地和非当地陶瓷的中子活化分析所揭示的，以及匈奴时期之前和期间的定居模式趋势。 游牧生活方式的独特性为政治制度的转型提供了一个迷人的案例研究，并为世界其他地区提供了有希望的经验教训，包括美索不达米亚、东非和中部安第斯山脉。因此，目前的研究将揭示游牧社区内的普通家庭的政治行动能力，然后问这种观点如何告知人类学的理解替代轨迹的社会政治复杂性。

For many, nomads of the Eurasian steppe are "stoic" figures that are the product of a long life lived in isolation, always moving as the natural environment dictates. The distinctiveness of the pastoral nomadic historical and archaeological records, however, allows researchers to analyze general questions of political organization in relation to a wider range of variables. It is important from a comparative perspective to know how political strategies play out differently over conditions of rapid mobility, extensive territories, and low population density. The main questions addressed by this research project are how do steppe polities provide examples of alternative trajectories for development of political systems and what does this tell about the ways in which human societies do or do not adopt more complex forms of organization? Accordingly, the anthropological questions addressed by studies of steppe society need not be "pastoral" questions per se, but general questions on human organization that take into consideration individual and group mobility.This project raises the question of what does community scale political development look like during the earliest stages of statehood among eastern steppe nomads? To address this question, the research will explore the "bottom-up" processes at play in the local acceptance, configuration, and enactment of political change that led up to the first regional scale polity of Mongolia - the Xiongnu state. Working in north central Mongolia, the project will use survey and excavation data to analyze exchange relationships as revealed by neutron activation analysis of local and nonlocal ceramics and trends in settlement patterns prior to and during the Xiongnu Period. The distinctiveness of the pastoral nomadic lifeway presents a fascinating case study for the transformation of political systems and holds promising lessons for other parts of the world including Mesopotamia, East Africa, and the Central Andes. As such, the current study will shed light on the capacity for political action by common households within a nomadic community and then ask how this perspective informs anthropological understanding of alternative trajectories for socio-political complexity.