Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Development Of Ritual And Social Solidarity

加州大学洛杉矶分校的查尔斯·斯坦尼什（Charles Stanish）博士和本杰明·尼格拉（Benjamin Nigra）先生将与秘鲁同事一起，研究计划中的政治事件在早期复杂社会出现过程中的作用。先前的研究表明，独立社区之间的互动是早期政治等级和区域经济合作建立的关键。预定的经济活动，通过仪式来调解，不同的社区定期在公认的地点聚集在一起，作为陌生人交流、沟通规范、建立新的经济关系和争夺社会地位的公共论坛。当小社区统一为区域政治时，礼仪活动往往失去其公共性质，而仅限于特定的社会阶层，如精英或专家。这个调查问：在什么样的物质和社会条件下，仪式事件变得排他性？为什么有些活动仍然对公众开放，而另一些活动的参与却受到严格保护？大规模公共集会对区域经济的影响是什么？这些影响如何随着社会不平等的出现而变化？考古学是唯一适合通过获取前现代经济和长期社会进程的长期数据来解决这个问题的。“仪式化”的经济事件并不局限于古代世界，而是一直存在于现代美国。这些事件都是高度仪式化的，涉及独立（通常是竞争）团体的代表，对现代社会各部分如何形成更大的合作社区具有显著的经济和政治影响。斯坦尼什和尼格拉将研究独立社区在秘鲁南海岸帕拉卡斯人（公元前800年-公元200年）建造、维护和参与大型纪念性仪式结构时所进行的经济投资的具体模式。他们将重点关注Chincha山谷的几个地点，在那里，独立的Paracas社区之间的合作劳动被用来建造至少十二个平台结构，其中包含深下沉的庭院。研究人员将对从这些纪念碑之一华卡索托（Huaca Soto）中回收的非本地产品进行放射性碳测年，以确定它的建造时间、用于仪式目的的时间以及最终退役的日期。通过将这些日期与地层发掘相结合，重点是作为仪式祭品的远距离贸易商品的沉积，随着时间的推移限制公众进入的建筑翻新，以及围绕结构基础建立的早期城市社区，他们将重建早期的经济网络和社区间动态，这些网络和动态导致了公元第一个千年开始时建立了强大的政治等级制度和社会不平等。拟议研究的所有方面都将作为美国本科生实地培训的一部分进行，并将使学生接触实地挖掘、调查、专业数据分析以及考古遗址和遗迹的保护。

Dr. Charles Stanish and Mr. Benjamin Nigra of the University of California, Los Angeles, along with Peruvian colleagues, will investigate the role of scheduled political events in the emergence of early complex societies. Prior research suggests that intensified interaction between independent communities is key to the establishment of early political hierarchies and regional economic cooperation. Scheduled economic events, mediated through ritual in which disparate communities gather together at regular intervals at recognized locations, serve as public forums in which strangers exchange, communicate norms, build novel economic relationships, and vie for social status. As small communities become unified into regional polities, ceremonial events often lose their public character and become restricted to specific social classes such as elites or specialists. This investigation asks: under what material and social conditions do ritual events become exclusive? Why do some events remain open to the general public while participation in others becomes strictly guarded? What are the regional economic impacts of massive public gatherings, and how do these impacts change with emerging social inequality? Archaeology is uniquely suited to address this question by accessing long-term data on the pre-modern economics and long-term social processes. "Ritualized' economic events are not restricted to the ancient world, but remain ever present in the modern day United States. These events, all highly ritualized and involving representatives from independent (and often competing) groups, have notable economic and political consequences for how segments of modern society form larger cooperative communities. Stanish and Nigra will examine the specific modes of economic investment that independent communities made in the construction, upkeep and participation in massive, monumental ceremonial structures among the Paracas peoples of the Peruvian south coast (800 BCE - 200 CE). They will focus on several sites in the Chincha Valley, where cooperative labor between independent Paracas communities was used to construct at least a dozen platform structures containing deep sunken courts. The researchers will radiocarbon date non-local offerings recovered from one of these monuments, Huaca Soto, to determine when it was constructed, for how long it was used for ceremonial purposes, and the date of its eventual decommissioning. By combining these dates with stratigraphic excavations focused on the depositions of long-distance trade goods as ritual offerings, architectural renovations over time that restricted public access, and the establishment of early urban communities around the base of the structure, they will reconstruct the early economic networks and intercommunity dynamics that led to the establishment of strong political hierarchies and social inequality by the beginning of first millennium CE. All aspects of the proposed research will be conducted as part of field training for American undergraduates and will expose students to field excavation, survey, specialist data analyses, and conservation of archaeological sites and remains.