Public Project Works And Social Integration And Control In A Traditional Society

风险感知和减轻自然灾害传统上是由美国和其他发达国家的联邦机构完成的。几十年来，研究、规划和缓解一直是自上而下的。最近的一项进展是扭转这种方向性，将灾害规划和减灾纳入当地社区。就连美国规划协会（American Planning Association）也在2014年承认了向当地社区授予规划和减灾权力的重要性。其他文化的经验和他们在其他时期面临灾害的经验可以帮助当代社会进行灾害规划。中美洲古玛雅的学术优势是精英控制一切，这是一幅自上而下的精英统治权力等级、经济、社会和宗教的画面。因为精英建筑通常是用坚固的石头建造的，所以宫殿、金字塔、寺庙和坟墓比普通建筑保存得更好。考古学家青睐精英建筑和文物，导致精英被认为是无所不能的。考古学家在研究平民生活方面投入的精力相对较少，部分原因是他们的遗体保存得很差。人们很少能看到普通人生活的“清晰窗口”，幸运的是，其中一个是萨尔瓦多的Ceren遗址。这是一个玛雅平民的村庄，在公元660年突然的火山爆发中被埋葬了。该项目一直在调查当局的级别，并发现了一条从村庄向南延伸的惊人的大公路。挖掘工作将揭示村子里道路的起源，以及它的功能。它的建设和维护显然是由社区内部决定的。地球物理仪器将在掩埋它的15英尺火山灰下寻找道路。探地雷达和电阻率层析成像是将要使用的仪器。测试坑将确认并跟踪巷道。道路的一个明显的分支始于10号结构，这是社区仪式结构，火山爆发时正在举行收获仪式。从最初的警告到炽热的火山灰到来，时间非常短，但令人震惊的是，尽管是在晚上，紧急疏散还是成功的。人们在公路上“向南走”，我们在他们逃跑时发现了他们的脚印。这是地方当局成功迅速应对紧急情况的一个例子，而不必等待精英当局自上而下的决定。这条道路可能在村子里分叉，通向一个可能位于社会或政治尽头的建筑，该建筑将在项目的第二年被挖掘出来。一个由最优秀的土建筑保护专家组成的团队已经被召集起来，以改善对这个世界遗产考古遗址的保护。

Risk perception and natural hazard mitigation traditionally are done by federal agencies in the US and other developed nations. Research, planning, and mitigation have been top-down for many decades. A recent development is to reverse that directionality, embedding hazards planning and mitigation in local communities. Even the American Planning Association in 2014 recognized the importance of granting planning and mitigation authority to local communities. Experiences of other cultures and at other times when they faced disasters can assist hazard planning in contemporary societies. The predominance of scholarship of the ancient Maya in Central America is that the elite controlled everything, a thoroughly top-down picture of the elites running the power hierarchy, economy, society, and religion. Because elite architecture is regularly built out of solid stone, the palaces, pyramids, temples, and tombs preserve better than commoner architecture. And archaeologists have favored the elite architecture and artifacts, leading to the perception of elites as being all-powerful. Archaeologists have spent proportionally little effort in examining the lives of commoners, in part because of poor preservation of their remains. Only rarely is a "clear window" into commoner life discovered, and fortunately one of them is the Ceren site in El Salvador. It is a village exclusively of Maya commoners buried by a sudden volcanic eruption in AD 660.The project has been investigating levels of authority, and has discovered a surprisingly large roadway from the village leading south. Excavations will reveal the beginnings of the roadway in the village, and therefore its functions. Its construction and maintenance evidently were decided within the community. Geophysical instruments will search for the roadway under the 15 feet of volcanic ash that bury it. Ground-penetrating radar and resistivity tomography are the instruments that will be employed. Test pits will confirm and follow the roadway. One apparent branch of the roadway began at Structure 10, the community ritual structure where the harvest ceremony was being held when the eruption began. There was very little time between the initial warning and the arrival of the hot volcanic ash, but what is striking is the emergency evacuation was successful even though it was at night. People literally "headed south" on the roadway, and we have discovered their footprints while they were fleeing. This is an example of local authority successfully reacting quickly to an emergency, without having to wait for a top-down decision from elite authority. The roadway may branch in the village, and lead to a structure that may be at the social or political end, and that building will be excavated in the second year of the project. A team of the finest experts in earthen architecture preservation have been assembled to improve conservation of this World Heritage archaeological site.