Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role of Heritage in Community Organization

西北大学的博士候选人Ryan Lash将与美国和爱尔兰的同事一起进行研究，研究仪式遗产的适应如何有助于边缘社区的可持续性。通过维护传统仪式和物质文化来纪念共同的遗产，往往是社区的重要手段。过去和现在——保持融合和身份。然而，过去大多数可持续性的办法都集中于环境和人口因素，而很少强调社区纪念和合作的考虑。通过关注长期以来社区生活的物质现实，考古学特别准备建立可持续性的全面描述，考虑社会融合和环境适应的挑战是如何纠缠在一起的。当社区在生存实践和政治经济方面经历重大变革时，如何调整其传统并保持团结？人们如何利用旧的实践来使新的社会组织形式成为可能？通过调查过去是什么促成了社区的可持续性，社会科学家可以更好地解决当前的类似挑战。特别是，这项研究可以为正在经历经济转型的土著或其他边缘化社区的遗产保护战略提供信息，这些转型威胁到他们的生活方式和持续存在。拉什先生和他的研究小组将调查一个小岛屿社区的成员如何适应纪念碑和仪式传统的做法，因为该社区在18至20世纪经历了农业、政治经济和人口统计学的重大变革。以前的学术研究表明，通过维护过去的纪念碑作为集体访问和纪念的场所，仪式实践可以促进共同的遗产和身份。大约从1750年到1960年，爱尔兰西部伊尼沙克岛的岛民参观了一系列纪念碑，作为献给圣里奥的年度仪式游行的一部分。散布在岛民周围？房屋和田地，这些遗迹是几个世纪前被遗弃的修道院的遗迹。为了评估这一仪式传统对社区可持续性的影响，研究将追踪仪式纪念碑的使用、废弃、翻新和破坏如何随着村庄农业、土地持有和人口结构的变化而变化。结合口述历史、档案文件和四个纪念碑的挖掘，将重建仪式传统的变化实践和空间动态。研究结果将检验关于遗产维护通过构建社区成员来支持政治经济形成的能力的普遍假设。运动和纪念活动。一个由美国、爱尔兰和当地合作者组成的研究小组将生成一个数据集，该数据集将加强对可持续性的考古分析，并为当地将考古遗产作为关键文化和经济资源的举措提供信息。

Doctoral candidate Ryan Lash, of Northwestern University, along with colleagues in the US and Ireland, will undertake research to study how the adaptation of ritual heritage contributes to the sustainability of marginal communities. The commemoration of shared heritage through the maintenance of traditional rituals and material culture is often an important means for communities ? both past and present - to maintain integration and identity. Nevertheless, most approaches to sustainability in the past focus on environmental and demographic factors while placing little emphasis on considerations of community commemoration and cooperation. By focusing on the material realities of community life over long time frames, archaeology is especially poised to build comprehensive accounts of sustainability that consider how the challenges of social integration and environmental adaptation are entangled. How do communities adapt their traditions and maintain solidarity as they undergo major transformations in subsistence practices and political economy? How can people deploy old practices to make new forms of social organization possible? By investigating what contributed to community sustainability in the past, social scientists can better address parallel challenges in the present. In particular, this research can inform strategies of heritage maintenance among indigenous or other marginalized communities undergoing economic transformations that threaten their ways of life and continued existence. Mr. Lash and his research team will investigate how members of a small island community adapted the monuments and practices of a ritual tradition as the community underwent major transformations in agriculture, political economy, and demographics in the 18th to 20th centuries. Previous scholarship suggests that ritual practices can foster shared heritage and identity by maintaining monuments from the past as places of collective access and commemoration. From c. 1750-1960, islanders on Inishark in western Ireland visited a series of monuments as part of annual ritual processions dedicated to St Leo. Scattered around islanders? houses and field plots, these monuments were remnants of a monastery abandoned centuries earlier. To assess the impact of this ritual tradition on community sustainability, research will trace how the use, abandonment, renovation, and destruction of ritual monuments corresponds across time with transitions in village agriculture, landholding, and demographics. Combining oral history, archival documents, and excavation of four monuments will reconstruct the changing practices and spatial dynamics of the ritual tradition. Results will test common assumptions about the capacity of heritage maintenance to support political economic formations by structuring community members? movements and commemorations. A research team of American, Irish, and local collaborators will generate a dataset that will enhance archaeological analyses of sustainability and inform local initiatives that incorporate archaeological heritage as a key cultural and economic resource.