Long Term Urban Change in Response to Social Collapse

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With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Sarah Clayton and colleagues will examine how the collapse of centralized states influences subsequent processes of urban growth and the development of new forms of government. This project employs remote sensing and archaeological methods to investigate the spatial, demographic, and political characteristics of cities that formed in the wake of violent conflict and large-scale migration. Results of this research will advance knowledge of successful strategies of civic planning and polity building among second-generation, or "post-collapse" societies. This project contributes to scholarship concerning the evolution of urban landscapes, modes of governance, and the ways in which the legacies of failed states impact these developments. Such legacies may include concepts of leadership, identity, memories of historical events, and the physical consequences of state-related systems of resource management, transportation, or militarization on surrounding landscapes. This project provides training opportunities for students and enhances international scholarly collaboration through its involvement of researchers from Mexico. The professional advancement of women in STEM fields is supported through the involvement of female students and colleagues in the research. The project makes a positive impact on the local community by working to promote awareness and the preservation of archaeological remains. This research will be carried out at a large pre-Columbian settlement in central Mexico which experienced rapid growth in conjunction with a neighboring polity's decline. As such it provides an important case study for examining strategies of political regeneration and urban planning. Unlike many of its contemporaries, the site prospered following its neighbor's collapse, and within a century had grown from a village of a few hundred people to a city of several thousand, featuring monumental architecture and social stratification. This growth resulted in part from the absorption of migrants, possibly including refugees. This project examines the spatial organization of their new city, the size of its population, and the ways in which the construction of monuments, temples, and public spaces promoted local strategies of leadership. This research employs a program of excavation and remote sensing methods, including aerial photography by drone; radar; and gradient magnetic and electrical resistivity survey to examine the spatial characteristics of the settlement and to estimate the size of the population. The project is methodologically innovative in its application of remote sensing to an extensive area for the purposes of examining urban planning and polity building.