Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A Geochemical Perspective On Productive Differentiation

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Researchers seek understanding of the processes that led to the very complex, large-scale societies in which most of the world's population now lives, and of the factors that bound their members together and fostered continued development. Such societies began to emerge separately in many parts of the world, providing an opportunity to investigate what underlying factors these early complex societies share, as well as how different contexts shaped them in varying ways. Archaeology is uniquely able to study the origins of complex societies because their beginnings occurred far back in time - well beyond the reach of written history. Since all human societies must provide their members with at least the basic necessities of life, economic organization is one of the keys to understanding why development flourished in some early complex societies and just how their trajectories took the courses that they did. Research focuses how some human groups initially built enough trust among different local groups that they could rely upon each other to produce goods that all families needed for their survival. This project will contribute to this effort by reconstructing the economics of one set of villages as they underwent such a transformation some 6,000 years ago. In the process it will further researchers' ability to put advanced analytical techniques in geochemistry to work in the effort to reconstruct ancient human relations better. It will provide training in these techniques to archaeology students, and it will foster deeper appreciation of anthropological research questions on the part of specialists in applying physical and chemical techniques to archaeological materials. This project will serve to further the scientific education of Mr. Tao Li, a doctoral candidate and provide the data necessary for his to produce a dissertation thesis. It will also serve to strengthen institutional ties between the University of Pittsburgh and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.Ancient pottery has always been a particularly important material to archaeologists because it was widely used, it breaks easily, and its fragments, once discarded, are preserved almost indefinitely. It is usually the most abundant material archaeologists recover from ancient complex societies. This project will use pottery as a window into ancient economic organization. By identifying the chemical fingerprints of different sources of clay for pottery making, the researchers will trace out the networks of distribution that brought pottery made at different places to the families of three Hongshan villages in northeastern China between about 4500 and 3000 BC. It will determine how complex these networks were, how extensive was the economic interdependence involved, and whether pottery production and distribution had important connections to emerging leadership roles and the first regional political integration.