Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Mechanisms Of Integration In Early States

博士论文改进奖：早期状态的整合机制

• 批准号: 1551842
• 负责人: Arthur Joyce
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1551842&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Award; Mechanisms

Examining the ways in which large-scale, politically integrated societies develop, operate, and change forms an essential area of research for social scientists today. Archaeology is particularly well suited to make significant contributions to this effort because it can study complex societies over extended periods through the analysis of material remains. However, archaeologists have tended to emphasize coercion over cooperation in reconstructing early states, despite evidence that leaders and their subjects tend to negotiate the terms of institutionalized political authority. With these ideas in mind, this project will examine the processes through which people living in rural communities cooperated with, acted independently of, or contested the mechanisms of social control instituted by leaders at political centers. The research is significant because it moves beyond simply identifying social complexity in the past by addressing why different states followed historical paths, thereby contributing to models that describe how leaders and followers participated in developing, maintaining, reproducing and reworking complex polities. Traditionally, research in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, an area that extends from central Mexico to El Salvador, examines political integration in early states from a "top-down" perspective that focuses on the strategies leaders employed to centralize and sustain their authority. Implicit in these models is the assumption that rural communities were populated by commoners whose sole purpose was to provision urban consumption at the behest of polity rulers. An alternative, "bottom-up" perspective that examines political integration from the view of rural communities is needed to rigorously test what causes centralized polities to form, persist, and collapse. This project addresses the problem by examining the organization of a complex polity that emerged in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico during the Terminal Formative period (150 BCE-CE 250). The lower Verde's first state developed by CE 100, with its primary center located at the site of Rio Viejo. Current evidence suggests that the Rio Viejo state was unstable, as the polity collapsed by CE 250, and the region's population dispersed into small settlements. This study explores the degree to which rulers at Rio Viejo maintained control over outlying areas by conducting field research at Cerro de la Virgen, a rural community located in the valley's hinterland. Cerro de la Virgen is ideal for examining negotiations between outlying communities and Rio Viejo because the site persisted through the social upheaval at the end of the Formative period. The project involves four months of excavation and laboratory analyses aimed at determining whether political, economic, and religious resources were controlled at the local or the regional level. Excavations will target public and domestic architecture to examine resource control within communal and household settings, and archaeometric analyses will provide multiple tests of the hypothesis that the Río Viejo state collapsed because its leaders failed to integrate rural populations into the broader political system.

研究大规模的、政治上一体化的社会发展、运作和变革的方式，构成了当今社会科学家研究的一个重要领域。考古学特别适合为这项工作做出重大贡献，因为它可以通过分析材料遗骸来研究较长时期的复杂社会。然而，在重建早期国家时，考古学家倾向于强调胁迫而不是合作，尽管有证据表明，领导人和他们的臣民倾向于就制度化的政治权威的条款进行谈判。考虑到这些想法，这个项目将审查生活在农村社区的人们如何与政治中心领导人建立的社会控制机制合作、独立行动或竞争的过程。这项研究意义重大，因为它超越了简单地识别过去的社会复杂性，解决了为什么不同的国家遵循历史道路，从而有助于建立描述领导人和追随者如何参与发展、维持、复制和重新制定复杂政治的模型。传统上，在前哥伦布时代的中美洲--从墨西哥中部延伸到萨尔瓦多的一个地区--的研究，从“自上而下”的角度考察早期国家的政治融合，重点是领导人为集中和维持他们的权威而采取的战略。这些模型隐含的假设是，农村社区由平民组成，他们的唯一目的是在尺子政治的要求下提供城市消费。需要另一种“自下而上”的视角，从农村社区的角度审视政治融合，以严格测试是什么导致了中央集权政治的形成、持续和崩溃。该项目通过审查墨西哥瓦哈卡沿海里奥维德河谷下游在终端形成时期(公元前150年-公元前250)出现的复杂政体的组织来解决这一问题。下佛得角的第一个州由公元100年建立，其主要中心位于里约维埃霍。目前的证据表明，里约维约州是不稳定的，因为政体在公元250年崩溃，该地区的人口分散到小定居点。这项研究通过在位于山谷腹地的农村社区Cerro de la Virgen进行实地研究，探索了里约热内卢的尺子在多大程度上保持了对边远地区的控制。Cerro de la Virgen是研究边远社区和里约维埃霍之间谈判的理想场所，因为该遗址在形成期结束时持续了社会动荡。该项目涉及四个月的挖掘和实验室分析，旨在确定政治、经济和宗教资源是在地方一级还是在区域一级受到控制。挖掘将以公共和家庭建筑为目标，以检查社区和家庭环境中的资源控制，考古分析将对里奥维约州崩溃是因为其领导人未能将农村人口融入更广泛的政治体系的假设进行多重检验。