Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Social Collapse and Reorganization

本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对各种不可克服的内部和外部压力的社会组织崩溃上。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，学者们通过将崩溃作为长期历史中快速、持久的结构变化的例子来讨论，从而淡化了这些末世论的观点。在后一种崩溃观点的基础上，本项目通过考察人口流动、人口统计和文化转型之间的关系，重点关注崩溃对附近人口的广泛影响。政治崩溃的邻国将不得不面对长途交换网络的重新定位，以及在地区被遗弃的情况下可能涌入的大量新居民。考古发现的一次这样的崩溃发生在公元1350年左右，发生在乔治亚州和南卡罗来纳州萨凡纳河谷的酋长管辖地。然而，毗邻萨凡纳河口的乔治亚海岸，并没有遭受导致这种崩溃的混合环境的影响，在这段时间里仍然有人口。考古学家注意到，在这一时期，沿海地区的一些变化可以合理地与上游发生的变化联系起来，比如定居方式、政治组织的变化，以及新的生存技术的采用。这项研究将调查佐治亚海岸的这些变化是如何与萨凡纳河酋邦的崩溃有关的。通过对传统“非复杂”社会的这种变化的考察，也许可以提取出与理解影响当今世界的巨大变化有关的基本原则。具体来说，这项研究将包括在乔治亚州萨佩洛岛的凯南田野遗址进行考古发掘。这个大遗址在萨凡纳河酋邦崩溃前后都被占领过。通过系统的铲式测试调查、有限的测试挖掘、浅层地球物理调查和大规模的放射性碳测年计划的结合，研究人员将在萨凡纳河谷的政治崩溃之前、期间和之后重建社区组织。人类学家认识到，建筑环境和相关的空间实践反映、加强和改变了社会结构。因此，社区组织的重建为乔治亚海岸居民的社会和政治实践的生产、协商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.