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

流动性在人际交往、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相互作用以及由这些相互作用产生的社会紧张关系正在成为当代人类社会日益重要的一个方面。目前发生在中东和北非人口中的移民危机就是这样一个例子，表明流动性（无论是由于气候、政治不稳定还是个人选择）对现代社会产生了深远的影响。移动人群如何与社区互动、融入社区并改变社区？长期以来，人类学一直在努力阐明流动/迁移与社会转型之间的关系。同样，考古学也适合为这些重要的国际讨论做出贡献，它提供了这些相互作用在人类历史上发挥作用的长期背景，并代表了相互作用和结果的多样性，而不是为当代人类经验提供信息。该项目将采用创新和跨学科的方法来阐明人类联合起来发展和维持复杂的社会和政治系统（如城市和国家）的各种手段，特别关注这些背景下流动人口的代理。研究将在青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期（公元前1500-800年）的Qizqala墓地遗址进行，该墓地位于Naxçývan自治共和国的Serur山谷。城市发展传统上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观点，即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河谷的流动牧民在城市化过程中如何协商权力。利用牙内同位素分析的流动性，研究将为反映季节性/周期性、高原/低地和长/短距离尺度的个人水平经验的短期流动性提供新颖和详细的见解。太平间分析将补充同位素分析，以检查流动人口对经济，政治和神圣资源的控制程度，这些资源用于建造太平间空间，反映在葬礼的风格，位置和精心设计上。总的来说，生活中流动的个人经历，与埋葬中物质背景的权力、地位和代理证据相结合，将提供反映新兴城市空间中流动人口动态角色的政治、经济和社会关系变化的敏感措施。了解流动的牧民如何与行政系统相互作用，在这些新兴的城市空间中协商空间和权力，对于揭示复杂的社会政治结构如何发展和维持至关重要。此外，将与Naxçývan考古项目一起进行研究，这是第一个美国-阿塞拜疆研究人员和学生联合小组，促进该地区的合作国际和跨学科研究。与阿塞拜疆学生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代表性不足的群体参与科学，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.