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

移动性在人类互动、组织和社会转型中发挥着重要作用。移动的人口与定居人口之间的互动以及由此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。中东和北非地区目前发生的移民危机就是这样一个例子，说明了流动性（无论是气候、政治不稳定还是选择）对现代社会的深刻影响。移动的人如何与社区互动、融入社区并改变社区？人类学长期以来一直致力于阐明流动/移徙与社会变革之间的关系。同样，考古学也很适合为这些重要的国际讨论做出贡献，因为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，而这些相互作用和结果可以为当代人类经验的阵列提供信息。该项目将采用创新和跨学科的方法来阐明人类团结起来发展和维持城市和国家等复杂社会和政治系统的各种手段，特别关注这些背景下移动的人口的代理。研究将在青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期进行。Qizqala墓地位于阿塞拜疆纳希切万自治共和国的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，南高加索提供了一个视角，即新兴的复杂政体主要依赖于移动的牧民人口。 研究人员将调查塞鲁尔山谷的移动的牧民如何在城市化过程中谈判权威。使用牙齿内同位素分析的流动性，该研究将提供新的和详细的见解短期流动性，反映个人层面的经验，在季节性/复发，高地/低地，长/短距离尺度。殡葬分析将补充同位素分析，以检查移动的人对经济，政治和神圣资源的控制程度，以建造殡葬空间，反映在风格，位置和墓葬的精心制作。总的来说，个人在生活中的流动性经验，加上权力，地位和代理的证据，从物质环境中埋葬，将提供敏感的措施，改变政治，经济和社会关系，反映移动的人口在新兴的城市空间的动态角色。了解移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，对于揭示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Naxçaivan考古项目进行研究，这是第一个美国-阿塞拜疆联合研究人员和学生团队，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的培训将促进科学领域代表性不足的群体的参与，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.