Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Resilience Theory as a Context For Understanding Long Term Social Change

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Dawn Crawford, a PhD Candidate at Southern Methodist University, along with the Holtun Archaeological Project (HAP) team working within the ancient Maya site of Holtun, Guatemala will reconstruct the daily lives of its inhabitants during a period of extreme political and economic stress, often referred to as the Maya collapse during the Terminal Classic period (AD 800-900). Previous research on the Maya collapse has focused on the causes of the abandonment of major cities and centers. Crawford and HAP will examine the inherent resilience of humanity by trying to understand how people actively changed their economic strategies in order to mitigate the impact of political failure. Additionally, this research will investigate the variable responses of different social classes to political collapse, as certain social groups may be more resilient in the face of social change. Archaeology is well suited to examine both large and small-scale changes across a society through deep time and can provide new perspectives on the ability of humans (ancient and modern) to respond to political and economic crises and survive them. The HAP team also works with local communities on the preservation of cultural heritage and provides education and training in archaeology and STEM applications for both US and Guatemalan students. Through applying resilience theory to economic patterns, a focus particularly suited to archaeological research and material culture studies, this study opens up new applications and opportunities to understand how humans of varying backgrounds and socio-economic rankings adjust to drastic political and economic change, relevant today, as in the past.Crawford utilizes resilience theory, a theoretical perspective initially developed within ecological research to look at how environments bounce back from disruptions. Through applying this idea of resilience to humans rather than just environments it is possible look at larger patterns of human behavior in ancient societies. Crawford specifically investigates economic activities and decision making (as opposed to only ecological changes) to examine human resilience. Economic resilience is especially visible archaeologically through what people made, what they imported, and how they used these goods. Specifically, residents at the Maya site of Holtun may have changed where they got their clay to make ceramics, how many of their pots were imported vs. locally made, and what types of pots they made in response to the breakdown of interregional trade and dwindling markets. They may have also responded to shortages of imported obsidian volcanic glass (used for everyday cutting and ritual activities) by reusing and re-sharpening existing blades and/or focusing on locally available material like chert (flint). Excavations of houses of various societal ranks within Holtun combined with Neutron Activation Analysis and Ceramic Petrography laboratory analyses for pottery and portable X-Ray Fluorescence for obsidian will provide clues to changing trade routes and resources utilized by different social groups during the period of collapse.