Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Effects of Societal "Collapse" on a Rural Community

科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的研究人员希望了解政治崩溃如何影响农村社区居民的生活。在这个项目的背景下，政治崩溃被理解为一个变革性的事件，在这个事件中，当地人口放弃（有时甚至摧毁）旧的权力表达方式，并转向形成新的政治关系，改变经济可能性，并建立新的社会关系。在考古研究中，对政治崩溃的研究主要集中在其对大城市居民的影响上；很少有人关注生活在农村地区的人们如何参与大规模政治转型后不断变化的政治、经济和社会趋势，以确保他们自己的福祉。Monte El Santo考古项目（MSAP）从农村社区的角度出发，将农村人民纳入后政治崩溃的叙事中，这是一个他们传统上被忽视的舞台。作为博士论文项目，MSAP将为来自美国的博士生提供培训和专业准备，并纳入来自美国和墨西哥的其他研究生，促进国际合作。项目期间收集的数据将通过在学术期刊上发表的方式提供给研究人员。研究结果将通过向当地墨西哥社区和美国公众组织的博物馆讲座和系列讲座的演示和问答环节与公众分享。该项目的结果也将在www.colorado.edu/rioverdearchaeology上提供，这是一个关于里约热内卢佛得角地区考古研究的双语网站。MSAP的研究人员将直接参与政治崩溃、农村机构和区域内和区域间经济一体化的问题。该项目将集中在瓦哈卡州海岸Monte El Santo的农村地区，位于里约热内卢Viejo市中心以北11公里处。里约热内卢Viejo的研究表明，在政治崩溃之后，普通家庭能够生产和管理剩余的棉花，并获得更多的长途货物，包括黑曜石，绿石和雪花石膏。MSAP将对这一研究进行扩展，提出以下问题：崩溃后农村社区的经济状况如何？生活在前政治和人口中心的普通人在崩溃后是否比农村社区的人有经济优势，因为他们能更好地获得以前由地区精英控制的经济资源（如良好的土地，建立的交换伙伴）？如果是这样，农村社区如何应对这些变化？这项研究的价值超越了考古研究，因为它认识到即使在一个地区内，崩塌也会发生变化。在提供农村政治崩溃的视角时，MSAP的研究有助于更细致入微地理解大型区域政治和社会变革

Researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder wish to understand how political collapse affects the lives of those living in rural communities. Within the context of this project, political collapse is understood as a transformative event, in which local populations abandon (and sometimes even destroy) old expressions of power and move to form new political affiliations, change economic possibilities, and build new social ties. In archaeological studies, the research on political collapse has focused largely on its impact on people living in large cities; much less attention has been devoted to examining how people living in rural areas engage with the shifting political, economic, and social tendencies that follow large-scale political transformation in order to ensure their own well-being. By taking the perspective of a rural community, the Monte El Santo Archaeological Project (MSAP) will include rural people in the narrative of post-political collapse, an arena in which they have traditionally been overlooked. As a doctoral dissertation project, the MSAP will provide training and professional preparation for a doctoral student from the United States, and incorporates additional graduate students from both the United States and Mexico, fostering international collaboration. The data collected during the project will be made available to researchers through publication in academic journals. The results of the research will be shared with the public via presentations and question and answer sessions to both the local Mexican community and to the public in the United States through organized museum talks and lecture series. The project results will also be available online at www.colorado.edu/rioverdearchaeology, a bilingual website about archaeological research in the Rio Verde region. The MSAP researchers will directly engage with questions of political collapse, rural agency, and economic integration both intra and inter-regionally. The project will focus on the rural site of Monte El Santo in Coastal Oaxaca, located 11 km north of the urban center of Rio Viejo. Research at Rio Viejo has shown that following the political collapse, commoner households were able to produce and manage surplus cotton and gain greater access to long-distance goods including obsidian, green stone, and alabaster. The MSAP will expand on this research by asking: what were the economic conditions like for rural communities following collapse? Did common people living in former political and demographic centers have economic advantages following collapse relative to those in rural communities because of better access to economic resources (e.g. good land, established exchange partners) that had previously been controlled by regional elites? And if so, how did rural communities respond to these changes? The proposed study has merit beyond archaeological research by recognizing the variability in which collapse is experienced, even within a single region. In providing a rural perspective on political collapse, the MSAP research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of large regional political and social transformations