Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Social Collapse and Reorganization

这项研究的重点是社会政治崩溃及其对邻近地区现存社区的影响。以前对崩溃事件的研究主要集中在面临各种无法克服的内部和外部压力的社会的组织崩溃。这些研究倾向于将崩溃描述为社会结构中罕见的、灾难性的破裂。最近，学者们通过讨论崩溃作为长期历史中快速、持久的结构变化的例子，淡化了这些世界末日的观点。在后一种崩塌观点的基础上，该项目通过研究人口流动、人口统计学和文化转型之间的关系，专注于崩塌对附近人口的广泛影响。政治崩溃的邻国将不得不应对长途交换网络的重新定位，以及在地区被遗弃的情况下潜在的大量新居民的涌入。公元1350年左右，佐治亚州和南卡罗来纳州萨凡纳河谷的酋长领地之间发生了一次这样的考古发现的崩溃。然而，佐治亚州海岸，萨凡纳河入海口的邻近地区，并没有遭受导致崩塌的相同情况的混合，在此期间仍然有人居住。考古学家在这一时期注意到的几个变化可以合理地与上游发生的变化联系起来，例如定居点做法、政治组织和采用新的维持生计的技术的变化。这项研究将调查佐治亚州海岸的这些变化与萨凡纳河酋长领地的崩溃有何关系。通过对传统“非复杂”社会中这种变化的考察，可能会提取与理解影响当今世界的巨大变化相关的基本原理。具体地说，这项研究将包括对佐治亚州萨佩洛岛凯南田野遗址的考古发掘。这一大片遗址在萨凡纳河酋长王国崩溃之前和之后都被占领过。通过系统的铲子测试调查、有限的测试挖掘、浅层地球物理调查和大规模放射性碳测年计划的组合，研究人员将重建萨凡纳河谷政体崩溃之前、期间和之后的社区组织。人类学家认识到，建筑环境和相关的空间实践反映、强化和改变了社会结构。因此，社区组织的重建为佐治亚州海岸居民的社会和政治实践的产生、谈判和转变提供了一个窗口。

The focus of this study is on sociopolitical collapse and its effects on extant communities in neighboring regions. Previous studies of collapse events have focused on the organizational breakdown of societies faced with various insurmountable internal and external stressors. These studies tend to portray collapse as infrequent, catastrophic ruptures in the social fabric of societies. Recently, scholars have deemphasized these apocalyptical perspectives by discussing collapse as examples of rapid, lasting structural change within long-term histories. Building on this latter view of collapse, this project focuses on the wide-ranging impacts of collapse on nearby populations by examining the relationships between population movements, demography, and cultural transformations. Neighbors of collapsed polities would have had to contend with reorientations of long-distance exchange networks along with potentially massive influxes of new residents in cases of regional abandonment. One such archaeologically identified collapse occurred at around AD 1350 among the chiefdoms in the Savannah River Valley of Georgia and South Carolina. However, the Georgia Coast, a neighboring region at the mouth of the Savannah River, did not suffer the same mix of circumstances that led to that collapse and remained populated during this time. Several changes noted by archaeologists during this period on the coast could reasonably be linked to those occurring upriver, such as changes in settlement practices, political organization, and the adoption of new subsistence technologies. This research will investigate how these changes along the Georgia Coast were related to the collapse of the Savannah River chiefdoms. Through examination of such changes in traditional "non-complex" societies it may be possible to extract basic principles relevant to understanding the massive changes impacting the world today.Specifically, this research will consist of archaeological excavations at the Kenan Field site on Sapelo Island, Georgia. This large site was occupied both before and after the collapse of the Savannah River chiefdoms. Through a combination of systematic shovel test survey, limited test excavation, shallow geophysical survey, and a large-scale radiocarbon dating program, the researchers will produce reconstructions of community organization before, during, and following the collapse of polities in the Savannah River Valley. Anthropologists recognize that the built environment and related spatial practices reflect, reinforce, and transform social structures. Therefore, reconstructions of community organization provide a window into the production, negotiation, and transformation of the social and political practices of the residents of the Georgia Coast.