Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Household Practice And The Emergence Of Social Inequality

博士论文改进奖：家庭实践与社会不平等的出现

• 批准号: 1561377
• 负责人: Elizabeth Arkush
• 金额: $ 1.41万
• 依托单位: University of Pittsburgh
• 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: 2016-02-01 至 2016-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1561377&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Award; Household

The emergence of social inequality, here defined as unequal access to material and social resources within a society, is one of the most intriguing issues for social scientists as it implies the existence of hierarchical power structures and the emergence of complex society. As the basic social unit, household is a particularly apt arena for studying economic difference and for reconstructing the nature and degree of social inequality in early societies. Under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Arkush, doctoral candidate Peiyu Chen, of the University of Pittsburgh, will excavate the site of Huaca Negra on the Peruvian northern coast and undertake analysis of the recovered materials to investigate early social inequality from a household perspective. Through investigating practices of domestic activities, both commoners' and elites' everyday life can be studied, which offer the potential for examining the whole spectrum of social variation within a given society, and helps to reconstruct the nature and degree of social inequality. This project will incorporate US and Peruvian students from various universities and provide training in different archeological techniques and analysis. The information obtained, which will be the foundation for Chen's dissertation, will be digitalized and made available through the Center for Comparative Archaeology of the University of Pittsburgh.Previous scholarship on the emergence of complex society in Andean prehistory has focused on monument construction, under the presumption that it requires leaders to organize large scale construction projects. The proposed research, however, attempts to shift attention away from magnificent public constructions towards understanding daily household practice. Huaca Negra, a Peruvian coastal site that was occupied from 5,000 to 3,000 B.P in the Viru Valley, had been identified by earlier researchers as a domestic midden mound, and its time span witnessed the emergence of large-scale monument construction on the Peruvian northern and central coast. This makes the site an ideal place to examine both household practices and the development of social inequality. The research will involve a program of excavation and analyses of unearthed materials. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses will be applied to discern the spatial distribution of resources, variation in abundance between households, and diversity in the proportion of different resources. This project will distinguish materials related to the subsistence economy (food), craft production (utilitarian goods) and social networks (trade goods), providing a window onto the process by which certain households might be able to gain unequal access to resources and started to accumulate power to support their leadership.

社会不平等的出现，在这里被定义为社会内获得物质和社会资源的不平等，是社会科学家最感兴趣的问题之一，因为它意味着等级权力结构的存在和复杂社会的出现。作为基本的社会单位，家庭是研究经济差异和重建早期社会社会不平等的性质和程度的特别合适的场所。在伊丽莎白·阿库什博士的指导下，匹兹堡大学的博士生陈佩玉将挖掘秘鲁北部海岸的瓦卡内格拉遗址，并对挖掘出的材料进行分析，从家庭的角度调查早期的社会不平等。通过调查家庭活动实践，可以研究平民和精英的日常生活，这为考察特定社会内的整个社会变异提供了潜力，并有助于重建社会不平等的性质和程度。该项目将吸收来自各大学的美国和秘鲁学生，并提供不同考古技术和分析的培训。所获得的信息将成为陈论文的基础，并将被数字化并通过匹兹堡大学比较考古学中心提供。 之前关于安第斯史前复杂社会出现的学术研究都集中在纪念碑建设上，假设它需要领导人组织大规模的建设项目。然而，拟议的研究试图将注意力从宏伟的公共建筑转移到了解日常家庭实践。瓦卡内格拉 (Huaca Negra) 是秘鲁沿海遗址，距今 5,000 至 3,000 年间，位于维鲁山谷，被早期研究人员认定为国内的一座土丘，其时间跨度见证了秘鲁北部和中部海岸大规模纪念碑建筑的出现。这使得该网站成为研究家庭实践和社会不平等发展的理想场所。该研究将涉及挖掘和分析出土材料的计划。将采用定量和定性分析来辨别资源的空间分布、家庭之间丰度的变化以及不同资源比例的多样性。该项目将区分与自给经济（食品）、手工艺生产（实用商品）和社交网络（贸易商品）相关的材料，为了解某些家庭可能能够不平等地获得资源并开始积累权力以支持其领导地位的过程提供一个窗口。