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

加州大学洛杉矶分校的查尔斯·斯坦尼什博士和本杰明·尼格拉将与秘鲁同事一起，研究预定政治事件在早期复杂社会出现中的作用。先前的研究表明，加强独立社区之间的互动是建立早期政治等级制度和区域经济合作的关键。预定的经济活动通过仪式调解，不同的社区在公认的地点定期聚集在一起，充当陌生人交流、传达规范、建立新的经济关系和争夺社会地位的公共论坛。随着小社区统一为地区性政治，仪式活动往往失去了公共性质，变成了特定的社会阶层，如精英或专家。这项调查的问题是：在什么物质和社会条件下，仪式事件变得排他性？为什么一些活动仍然对公众开放，而其他活动的参与则变得严格保密？大规模公共集会对区域经济有何影响，这些影响如何随着新出现的社会不平等而变化？考古学通过获取关于前现代经济和长期社会过程的长期数据，特别适合于解决这个问题。“仪式化的‘经济事件并不局限于古代世界，而是永远存在于现代美国。这些活动都高度仪式化，涉及来自独立(往往是相互竞争的)团体的代表，对现代社会的各个部分如何形成更大的合作社区具有显著的经济和政治后果。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-公元前200年)建造、维护和参与大型纪念仪式建筑时进行的具体经济投资模式。他们将把重点放在钦查山谷的几个地点，在那里，独立的帕拉卡斯社区之间的合作劳动力被用来建造至少12个包含深沉法院的平台结构。研究人员将对从其中一座古迹华卡索托(Huaca Soto)中发现的非本地物品进行放射性碳年代测定，以确定它是何时建造的，用于仪式目的的时间有多长，以及它最终退役的日期。通过将这些日期与专注于将长途贸易商品作为仪式祭品的沉积、随着时间的推移限制公众进入的建筑翻修以及围绕结构基础建立早期城市社区的地层发掘相结合，他们将重建早期经济网络和社区间的动态，这些网络和社区间的动态导致在公元1世纪初建立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，并将使学生接触到实地挖掘、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.