Collaborative Research: The Role Of Fortifications In Long Term Political Process

伊恩·林赛博士（普渡大学）和合作者艾伦·格林博士（斯坦福大学）、莫林·马歇尔博士（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳香槟分校）、洛里·哈查多里安博士（康奈尔大学）和亚当·t·史密斯博士（康奈尔大学），以及亚美尼亚的合作者，将调查古代战争、定居模式和政治发展之间的关系。关于前现代战争的传统社会科学研究通常将冲突定义为对物质需求的理性追求，或者是在政治复杂性的演变中，有抱负的精英们寻求政治优势的战略竞争。然而，考古学很好地为古代战争提供了一个更细致入微的视角，它关注更广泛的社会行动领域和历史背景，这些领域塑造了战争的动机、目标和文化实践。这项研究将为当代地区冲突的研究、它们对政治和社会群体身份的影响以及与地方和政体的联系提供必要的时间深度。由于持续不断的种族冲突和国内冲突继续影响着当代生活，了解过去战争的影响可以帮助构建现代冲突的原因和影响，同时制定应对措施。这项研究将有助于了解在防御和军事景观中出现的对人类政治、经济和定居实践和主体性的长期影响。南高加索地区随处可见的石砌山堡和金属武器的流行表明，暴力在区域社会政治发展中起着至关重要的作用。林赛博士和他的合作者将研究在青铜时代晚期和铁器时代（约公元前1500-200年），战争通过这些制度机制构成了权威，建立和解散了政治联盟，并形成了一种特定形式的政治经济。研究人员将通过对亚美尼亚西北部上卡萨克河流域的强化景观进行历时研究，研究暴力和战争在社区形成、社会秩序和社会政治边界中的作用。特别是，他们将解决以下问题：堡垒建设和废弃的历史如何为政治联合模式提供信息；这些地区的哪些类型的暴力行为在陪葬品和人类骨骼遗骸上得到证明；高加索地区的政治和战争模式如何与邻近近东和欧亚草原的区域环境变化和历史变化相关联。研究小组将采用一系列传统和尖端的考古方法来解决这些问题，包括行人和磁力测量；使用无人机对堡垒和相关定居点进行航空摄影测量；试验挖掘墓葬和炮台；沼泽岩心花粉分析重建古环境背景对人类遗骸进行分析，以研究人口统计学、创伤、饮食、流动性和社会身份；便携式x射线荧光（pXRF）和数字射线照相陶器材料，以照亮货物流通的初步模式。综合起来，这些技术将为对南高加索地区战争和社会政治生活的长期参与进行强有力的评估提供基础。此外，这项研究将促进新一代考古学家在一系列先进研究方法方面的培训，这将有助于改善经济落后地区的学术研究基础设施。

Dr. Ian Lindsay (Purdue University) and collaborators Dr. Alan Greene (Stanford University), Dr. Maureen Marshall (University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign), Dr. Lori Khatchadourian (Cornell University) and Dr. Adam T. Smith (Cornell University), along with collaborators in Armenia, will investigate the relationship between warfare, settlement patterns, and political development in the ancient past. Traditional social science scholarship on pre-modern warfare has typically framed conflict as a rational pursuit of material needs, or as a strategic contest among aspiring elites seeking political advantage in the evolution toward political complexity. However, archaeology is well-positioned to offer a more nuanced perspective of ancient warfare that focuses on the broader fields of social action and historical contexts that shape the motivations, goals, and cultural practices of war. This research will contribute essential time depth to the study of contemporary regional conflicts, their impacts on the politics and identities of social groups, and the ties to place and polity. As persistent ethnic and civil clashes continue to impact contemporary life, understanding the impact of war in the past can help frame the causes and implications of modern conflicts while shaping responses to them. This research will contribute to actionable scholarly efforts to understand the long-term impacts on human political, economic, and settlement practices and subjectivities that emerge within fortified and militarized landscapes.The ubiquity of stone hillforts in the South Caucasus and the prevalence of metal weapons indicate that violence played an essential role in regional sociopolitical development. Dr. Lindsay and his co-investigators will study the institutional mechanisms through which warfare constituted authority, created and dissolved political association, and shaped a specific form of political economy during the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age periods (ca. 1500-200 BC). The researchers will examine the role of violence and warfare in community formation, social order, and sociopolitical boundaries through a diachronic study of fortified landscapes in the upper Kasakh River valley of northwestern Armenia. In particular, they will address questions regarding how the history of fortress construction and abandonment inform models of political association, what types of violent practices in these areas are evidenced in burial goods and inscribed on human skeletal remains, and how patterns of politics and warfare in the Caucasus correlate with regional environmental shifts and historical change in the neighboring Near East and Eurasian Steppe. The research team will employ a battery of traditional and cutting-edge archaeological approaches to address these issues, including pedestrian and magnetometry survey; the use of drones for aerial photogrammetry of fortresses and associated settlements; test excavation of burials and forts; pollen analysis of a bog core to reconstruct paleoenvironmental contexts; analysis of human remains to study demography, trauma, diet, mobility, and social identity; and portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) and digital radiography on pottery materials to illuminate preliminary patterns of goods circulation. Combined, these techniques will provide the groundwork for a robust evaluation of the long-term engagement of warfare and sociopolitical life in the South Caucasus. In addition, this research will facilitate the training of a new generation of archaeologists in a range of advanced research methods, which will help improve the research infrastructure of scholarship in a region that remains economically disadvantaged.