Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Social Organization And The Importance Of "Persistent Places"

博士论文改进奖：社会组织与“持久场所”的重要性

• 批准号: 1606498
• 负责人: Christopher Carr
• 金额: $ 2.79万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 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: 2016-05-01 至 2017-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1606498&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Award; Social

Over the past sixty years, a growing body of federal legislation has been explicitly concerned with the preservation of Native American cultural resources. Yet, despite these efforts, the management of traditional cultural properties - places of special significance to indigenous groups - on public lands remains a contentious issue. Contemporary collaborations between anthropologists and Native American communities have demonstrated that the importance of particular locations extends far beyond their economic utility and that, over time, a given place may be important to multiple groups and for many different reasons. Drawing on these insights, this doctoral dissertation research project will explore the implications that such an understanding of place has for the dynamics of landscape use in the past through a case study of 14 Adena (c. 500 BC - AD 250) sites located in northeastern Kentucky. The results of this research will contribute to understanding of a poorly understood period in American prehistory as well as enhance the infrastructure for research and education by updating existing museum collections. Results will also have implications for the repatriation process required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Consequently, this project demonstrates the continuing relevance that archaeological research has for the development of federal policy concerning cultural resources management.To explore the dynamics of landscape use in the past, this project focuses on the relationship between the construction of monuments and territorial behavior on the part of their builders - a long-standing paradigm within archaeological research. Rather than inferring territoriality from the spatial distribution of sites, this research takes a novel approach to investigating territorial behavior by evaluating change over time in both (1) how specific monuments were engaged with and (2) who was engaging with them. The former is assessed by investigating the spatial distribution of shared practices as indicated by similarities in mortuary behavior between discrete burial contexts. The latter is assessed by quantifying the relative amounts of biological variability present at multiple spatial scales. This is accomplished by using phenotypic variance as a proxy measure for biological variability and by collecting and analyzing data pertaining to a variety of cranial and dental metric and morphological traits. If monuments served a territorial function, they can be expected to have been embedded within relatively stable social configurations. In other words, they would have been used by the same social group or groups over time, resulting in spatial clustering of both shared practices and biological variability. Alternatively, as work with contemporary indigenous peoples suggests, monuments may have been engaged with by multiple social groups and in multiple ways. In this case, monuments are unlikely to have served a territorial function and, instead, can be expected to have been embedded within a sequence of changing social configurations. This situation would result in the loss of the spatial clustering of shared practices and biological variability that is expected within a territorial scenario. The results of this research will be compared to the expectations given above to provide a nuanced evaluation of past landscape use.

在过去的六十年里，越来越多的联邦立法明确关注美洲原住民文化资源的保护。然而，尽管做出了这些努力，对公共土地上的传统文化财产（对土著群体具有特殊意义的场所）的管理仍然是一个有争议的问题。人类学家和美洲原住民社区之间的当代合作已经证明，特定地点的重要性远远超出了其经济效用，而且随着时间的推移，某个特定地点可能由于许多不同的原因对多个群体很重要。基于这些见解，本博士论文研究项目将通过对位于肯塔基州东北部的 14 个阿德纳（约公元前 500 年 - 公元 250 年）遗址的案例研究，探讨这种对地点的理解对过去景观利用动态的影响。这项研究的结果将有助于了解美国史前史中一个鲜为人知的时期，并通过更新现有的博物馆藏品来加强研究和教育的基础设施。结果还将对《美洲原住民坟墓保护和遣返法案》要求的遣返程序产生影响。因此，该项目证明了考古研究与制定有关文化资源管理的联邦政策的持续相关性。为了探索过去景观利用的动态，该项目重点关注纪念碑的建造与其建造者的领土行为之间的关系——这是考古研究中长期存在的范例。这项研究并没有从遗址的空间分布中推断领土性，而是采用了一种新颖的方法来调查领土行为，通过评估（1）特定纪念碑如何参与以及（2）谁与它们接触随时间的变化。前者是通过调查共享实践的空间分布来评估的，如离散埋葬环境之间太平间行为的相似性所表明的。后者是通过量化多个空间尺度上存在的生物变异性的相对量来评估的。这是通过使用表型方差作为生物变异性的替代测量并通过收集和分析与各种颅骨和牙齿度量以及形态特征有关的数据来实现的。如果纪念碑具有领土功能，则可以预期它们已嵌入相对稳定的社会结构中。换句话说，随着时间的推移，它们将被同一个或多个社会群体使用，从而导致共享实践和生物变异性的空间聚集。另外，正如对当代土著人民的研究表明的那样，纪念碑可能已被多个社会群体以多种方式参与其中。在这种情况下，纪念碑不太可能发挥领土功能，相反，可以预期它们已嵌入一系列不断变化的社会结构中。这种情况将导致区域情景中预期的共享实践的空间聚集和生物变异性的丧失。这项研究的结果将与上述预期进行比较，以对过去的景观利用进行细致入微的评估。