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

风险感知和自然灾害缓解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。最近的一个发展是逆转这一方向性，将灾害规划和减灾纳入当地社区。就连美国规划协会在2014年也认识到了向当地社区授予规划和缓解权力的重要性。其他文化的经历以及在其他时候面临灾难的经历有助于当代社会的灾害规划。在中美洲，古代玛雅人的学术优势是精英控制一切，这是一幅完全自上而下的精英统治权力等级、经济、社会和宗教的图景。因为精英建筑通常是用坚硬的石头建造的，所以宫殿、金字塔、寺庙和陵墓比普通建筑保存得更好。考古学家青睐精英的建筑和文物，导致精英被认为是万能的。考古学家几乎没有花多少精力来研究普通人的生活，部分原因是他们的遗骸保存得很差。很少有人发现平民生活的“透明窗口”，幸运的是，萨尔瓦多的Ceren遗址就是其中之一。这是一个完全由玛雅普通人组成的村庄，在公元66年被一次突然的火山喷发掩埋。该项目一直在调查当局的级别，并发现了一条从村庄到南部的令人惊讶的大马路。挖掘将揭示村里道路的起点，从而揭示它的功能。它的建造和维护显然是在社区内决定的。地球物理仪器将在掩埋它的15英尺火山灰下搜索巷道。将采用的仪器有探地雷达和电阻率层析成像。试车场将确认并沿着道路行驶。一条明显的道路支路始于10号结构，这是喷发开始时举行丰收仪式的社区仪式结构。从最初的警报到炽热的火山灰到来的时间很短，但令人震惊的是，尽管是在夜间，紧急疏散仍然成功。从字面上看，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。这是地方当局成功地对紧急情况做出快速反应的一个例子，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有分支，通向一个可能位于社会或政治末端的结构，该建筑将在项目的第二年被挖掘。一支由土建筑保护方面最优秀的专家组成的团队已经被召集起来，以加强对这一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.