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

博士论文改进补助金：流动性、政治复杂性和社区组织

• 批准号: 1443490
• 负责人: William Honeychurch
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 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: 2014-08-01 至 2015-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1443490&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Mobility

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.

对于许多人来说，欧亚草原的游牧民族是“坚忍”的人物，是孤立寿命的长寿的产物，总是按照自然环境的规定移动。然而，田园游牧历史和考古记录的独特性使研究人员可以分析政治组织与更广泛的变量有关的一般问题。从比较的角度来看，重要的是要知道政治策略在快速流动性，广泛领土和人口密度低的情况下如何有所不同。该研究项目提出的主要问题是，草原政治如何提供用于发展政治制度的替代轨迹的示例，这说明了人类社会采取或不采用更复杂形式的组织形式的方式？ 因此，对草原社会的研究解决的人类学问题本身不必是“田园”的问题，而是对人类组织的一般问题，这些问题考虑到个人和团体流动性。该项目提出了一个问题，即在东部史普尔游牧民族之间的国家时期，社区规模的政治发展是什么样的？ 为了解决这个问题，该研究将探讨在当地接受，配置和制定政治变革的“自下而上”过程，这导致了蒙古 - Xiongnu国家的第一个区域规模政治。该项目在蒙古北部工作，将使用调查和发掘数据来分析交换关系，如Xiongnu时期之前和期间，对本地和非局部陶瓷的中子激活分析以及定居模式中的趋势所揭示的那样。 牧区游牧生活的独特性为政治体系的转变提供了一个令人着迷的案例研究，并为包括美索不达米亚，东非和中部安第斯山脉的其他地区提供了有希望的教训。因此，当前的研究将揭示游牧民族中普通家庭的政治行动能力，然后询问这种观点如何为人类学的理解提供了对替代轨迹的社会政治复杂性的理解。