Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Emergence Of Social Complexity In Small Scale Societies

社会和经济控制的发展导致了人类社会内部财富分配的不平等，这一直是理解人们如何生活的一个中心主题。由于考古学提供了对过去社会的长期看法，以及它们如何随着时间的推移变得或多或少的社会复杂性，因此它非常适合提供对人类群体中发生的这种现象的洞察力。 利用创新的研究技术，劳拉·斯旺泰克沿着与亚利桑那州立大学的同事们将对这一过程进行研究，特别关注了解一些社会如何随着时间的推移变得更加复杂，另一些社会没有改变，还有一些社会在高复杂性和低复杂性之间循环。今天，在社会和经济变化发生在几代人之间的世界部分地区，可以看到复杂性的变化，如这里所描述的变化。 了解人们在日常生活中所做的事情导致了过去社会复杂性的变化，将有助于我们深入了解这一过程在当今不断变化的世界中是如何发生的。 本研究探讨了人们如何通过时间和空间形成社会经济关系，并通过这些联系能够控制劳动力，保持长距离的贸易联系，并有区别地获得物质和思想资源，从而成为社会的富裕成员，而其他人则不能。 作为这些行为的结果，社交网络，或者说人们组成复杂社会结构的安排，随着时间的推移而发生的变化，可以在考古记录中看到。 这项研究将在地中海岛屿塞浦路斯进行700年的时间里，在此期间，小村庄一级的社会表现出独特的特点，在社会复杂性的变化。 本研究将利用过去对定居点和墓地的挖掘以及考古调查的数据，结合现代经济学、复杂系统和网络科学中发展起来的联合收割机方法，研究人们如何在社会中争取财富和控制权，从而创造出不同的社会安排或网络配置。 这项跨学科研究将促进国际科学合作，并开发和测试新方法，以了解人们如何发挥社会和经济控制，塑造和重塑他们所生活的社会。

The development of social and economic control that leads to inequalities in the distribution of wealth within human societies has been a central theme in understanding how people live. Because archaeology provides a long-term view of past societies, and how they become more or less socially complex through time, it is well suited to provide insight into this phenomenon that occurs within human groups. Using innovative research techniques, Laura Swantek along with colleagues at Arizona State University will undertake research on this process, specifically focusing on understanding how some societies become more complex over time, others do not change, and still others cycle between high and low levels of complexity. Changes in complexity, such as those described here, can be seen today in parts of the world where social and economic changes occur within generations. Understanding what people did in their everyday lives that cause changes in social complexity in the past, will provide insight into how this process occurs today across our changing world. This research examines how people form socio-economic relationships through time and across space and through these connections are able to exert control of labor, maintain long-distance trade contacts, and differentially access material and ideological resources and as a result become wealthy members of society while others cannot. As a result of these kinds of actions, social networks, or the arrangements of people into complex social structures, change over time can be seen in the archaeological record. This research will be conducted on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus during a 700 year period during which small village level societies exhibited unique characteristics of changes in social complexity. Using data from past excavations of settlements and cemeteries and archaeological surveys, this research will combine methods developed in modern economics, and complex systems and network science, to examine how different social arrangements or network configurations are created by people striving for wealth and control within societies. This interdisciplinary research will foster international scientific collaboration, as well as develop and test new methods for understanding how people exert social and economic control, shaping and reshaping the societies in which they live.