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。以前的研究崩溃事件集中在组织崩溃的社会面临着各种难以克服的内部和外部的压力。这些研究倾向于将崩溃描述为社会结构中罕见的灾难性破裂。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性变化的例子来淡化这些启示性的观点。基于后一种崩溃观点，该项目通过研究人口流动，人口统计学和文化变革之间的关系，重点关注崩溃对附近人口的广泛影响。崩溃的政体的邻国将不得不与长途交换网络的重新定位作斗争，沿着，在地区废弃的情况下，可能会有大量新居民涌入。考古学上确认的一次这样的崩溃发生在公元1350年左右，发生在格鲁吉亚和南卡罗来纳州的萨凡纳河谷的酋长身上。然而，格鲁吉亚海岸，一个邻近的地区，在萨凡纳河口，并没有遭受同样的混合情况，导致崩溃，并保持人口在这段时间。考古学家在这一时期注意到的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，例如定居实践的变化，政治组织，以及采用新的生存技术。本研究将探讨这些变化如何沿着格鲁吉亚海岸有关的崩溃的萨凡纳河酋长。通过对传统“非复杂”社会的这种变化的研究，有可能提取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，这项研究将包括在格鲁吉亚萨佩洛岛的凯南场遗址的考古发掘。这个大的网站被占领之前和之后的萨凡纳河酋长崩溃。通过系统的铲测试调查，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相结合，研究人员将产生社区组织的重建之前，期间和之后的萨凡纳河谷的政治崩溃。人类学家认识到，建筑环境和相关的空间实践反映，加强和改变社会结构。因此，社区组织的重建为格鲁吉亚海岸居民的社会和政治实践的生产、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.