The Development Of Extensive Geographic Networks And Social Complexity

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Researchers have long sought to understand how and why interaction among widely dispersed and mobile communities coalesced into larger and more complex and stationary sociopolitical entities. Previous scholarship on this topic has focused on the ecological and demographic factors that necessitated a more sedentary lifestyle. Population growth and the adoption of agriculture, in particular, have been frequently cited as key factors in this evolutionary process. Archaeology is now well positioned to achieve a more nuanced understanding of this critical transition by focusing on the actual movements and convergences of people and artifacts across ancient landscapes. In this project, Dr. Kenneth Sassaman and Dr. Zackary Gilmore, of the University of Florida, examine the shift from broadly distributed social and economic networks to relatively circumscribed place-based communities by tracing the circulation and accumulation of vessels representing North America's oldest pottery technology. Key questions guiding this research are: Was the shift to place-based communities anticipated by the spatial organization of existing regional networks? Or, alternatively, were existing regional networks contradicted or superseded by the organization and structure of place-based communities? Although geared explicitly toward past societies, this research bears relevance to the understanding of communities affected today by large-scale processes, such as globalization, neoliberalism, and global climate change, that challenge local autonomy and the persistence of tradition. Arising out of modern networks of communication, for instance, are virtual communities of practice that enable local access to knowledge hitherto restricted to those with the political and economic capacity to channel and control access to nonlocal information.Sassaman and Gilmore use chemical and mineralogical sourcing techniques to investigate how the organization of preexisting interaction networks enabled and constrained the emergence of durable place-based communities (i.e., villages). Neutron activation analysis (NAA) and petrography will be conducted on large samples of pottery sherds from Early (5150-4100 B.P.) and Classic (4100-3800 B.P.) Stallings period sites in the Savannah River valley of Georgia and South Carolina in order to test alternative hypotheses on pottery and clay variation as a function of changes in community scale and organization. To the extent that variations in Early Stallings pottery was differentially distributed in space, the place-based communities of Classic Stallings times likely emerged out of existing social distinctions. Conversely, inasmuch as Early Stallings pottery lacks detectable subregional variations, place-based communities emerged as novel social arrangements. In addition to helping to address a fundamental anthropological question, this research will create an educational and training opportunity by supporting a post-doctoral research position. It will also have an immediate positive impact on the research value of collections housed at six different repositories in the southeastern U.S., perhaps bolstering public and government commitment to the long-term curation of archaeological collections. In addition, the NAA and petrographic data collected will be made available to other researchers and thus enhance the capacity for comparative and synthetic research in the future.