Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Effect Of Pastoral Adaptation On Urbanization Processes

流动性在人类互动、组织和社会转型中发挥着重要作用。流动人口和定居人口之间的互动以及由这些互动引起的社会紧张正日益成为当代人类社会的一个重要方面。目前在中东和北非人口中发生的移民危机就是这样一个例子，说明了流动性(无论是由于气候、政治不稳定还是选择)对现代社会产生的深远影响。移动人员如何与社区互动、融入社区并对其进行改造？长期以来，人类学一直致力于阐明流动/迁徙与社会转型之间的关系。同样，考古学通过提供这些相互作用在人类历史上发生的长期背景，并通过展示可以提供当代人类经验的多样性的相互作用和结果，恰如其分地为这些关键的国际讨论做出贡献。这个项目将应用创新和跨学科的方法来阐明人类如何团结起来发展和维持城市和州等复杂的社会和政治系统的不同手段，特别是在这些背景下关注流动人口的机构。研究将在位于阿塞拜疆纳克萨勒万自治共和国塞鲁尔山谷的青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期(公元前1500-800年)齐兹卡拉墓地进行。传统上，城市发展是以定居农业为基础的。与传统模式不同，南高加索提供了一种视角，在这种视角下，新兴的复杂政治主要依赖于流动的牧民人口。研究人员将调查塞鲁尔山谷流动的牧民在城市化期间是如何谈判权力的。利用牙齿内的活动性同位素分析，这项研究将提供对短期流动性的新颖和详细的见解，反映季节性/经常性、高原/低地和长/短距离尺度上的个人水平经验。殡仪馆分析将补充同位素分析，以检查流动人口对建造殡仪馆空间的经济、政治和神圣资源的控制程度，这反映在墓葬的风格、位置和精心设计上。总体而言，生活中流动的个人经历，再加上埋葬中权力、地位和机构的证据，将提供反映流动人口在新兴城市空间中动态角色的政治、经济和社会关系变化的敏感指标。了解流动的牧民如何与行政系统互动，在这些新兴的城市空间中谈判空间和权力，对于解开复杂的社会政治结构如何发展和维持至关重要。此外，还将与纳克萨·凡考古项目一起开展研究，这是美国-阿塞拜疆第一个由研究人员和学生组成的联合小组，推动该地区的国际和跨学科合作研究。与阿塞拜疆学生的合作将在该项目中发挥关键作用，对学生进行生物考古方法培训将促进未被充分代表的群体参与科学，并促进未来与该地区的合作研究和出版工作。

Mobility plays a significant role in human interaction, organization, and social transformation. The interaction between mobile and settled populations as well as the social tensions arising from these interactions is becoming an increasingly critical aspect of contemporary human society. The migration crisis currently taking place among populations in the Middle East and North Africa is one such example of the profound effects that mobility (whether by climate, political instability, or choice) has on modern society. How do mobile people interactive with, integrate into, and transform communities? Anthropology has long strived to illuminate the relationship between mobility/migration and social transformation. Similarly, archaeology is aptly positioned to contribute to these critical international discussions by providing long-term contexts in which these interactions have played out in human history and by representing the diversity of interactions and outcomes than can inform on the array of contemporary human experiences. This project will apply innovative and interdisciplinary methods to illuminate the diverse means by which humans unite to develop and sustain complex social and political systems such as cities and states, particularly focusing on the agency of mobile populations in these contexts. Research will be conducted at the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (c. 1500-800BC) Qizqala cemetery site, located in the Serur Valley of the Naxçývan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan. Urban development is traditionally predicated on sedentary agriculture. Unlike traditional models, the South Caucasus offers a perspective in which emerging complex polities depended primarily on mobile pastoralist populations. Researchers will investigate how mobile pastoralists in the Serur Valley negotiated authority during urbanization. Using intra-tooth isotopic analyses for mobility, the research will offer novel and detailed insights into short-term mobility that reflects individual-level experiences in seasonal/recurrent, highland/lowland, and long/short distance scales. Mortuary analysis will complement isotopic analyses to examine the degree of control mobile people had over economic, political, and sacred resources for construction of mortuary space as reflected in style, location, and elaboration of burials. Collectively, individual experiences with mobility in life, paired with evidence of power, status, and agency from material contexts in burials, will provide sensitive measures of shifting political, economic, and social relations that reflect the dynamic roles of mobile populations in emerging urban spaces. Understanding how mobile pastoralists interacted with administrative systems to negotiate space and power in these emergent urban spaces will be essential to unraveling how complex sociopolitical structures develop and are sustained. Furthermore, research will be conducted with the Naxçývan Archaeological Project, the first joint American-Azerbaijani team of researchers and students advancing collaborative international and interdisciplinary research in this region. Collaborating with Azerbaijani students will play a critical role in the project and training students in bioarchaeological methods will both advance the engagement of underrepresented groups in the sciences and promote future collaborative research and publication endeavors with this region.