Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Interaction between Violence and Perception of Social Difference

基于身份的暴力--针对被视为不同的个人或群体的暴力--往往伴随着社会政治动荡的时期。虽然越来越多的人类学和行为学研究表明，对社会差异的感知可以激发当今的大规模暴力事件，但对这种基于身份的暴力进行考古研究的工作很少。这可能是因为在过去，不同社会身份的微妙之处可能很难解释。然而，生物考古学方法非常适合于经验性地重建过去个人的社会身份，因为身份的许多方面，如年龄、性别或生物相关性，都植根于身体，而其他方面则通过行为在身体上留下痕迹，如饮食偏好或文化改变。这项研究将支持研究生和本科生的培训，并加强美国和墨西哥之间的国际研究伙伴关系和合作。此外，它将有助于更广泛的人类学理解，了解大规模暴力事件可能是由于特定的社会身份和复杂的社会过程之间的相互作用而产生的，包括移民、人口变化和生物关联。该项目结合生物地球化学和生物距离分析，重建了埋葬在前西班牙裔墨西哥中部一个小神殿遗址的人类祭祀受害者的居住史和生物亲属关系。神社遗址可以追溯到表观时期(公元600-900年)。在墨西哥中部，这一时期的特点是主要的区域中心特奥蒂瓦坎的衰落，是一个戏剧性的政治、社会和人口重组时期。在这样一个动荡的社会政治格局中，个人的居住历史或亲属关系可能会将他们挑出来作为仪式暴力的目标。这项研究将回答这个问题：个人社会身份的特定方面是如何使他们容易遭受仪式暴力的？对72个样本的牙齿和骨骼元素的生物地球化学分析将使该项目能够重建牺牲者的地理起源，而生物距离分析将允许重建牺牲者本身以及牺牲者与墨西哥中部当代人口之间的遗传关系模式。

Identity-based violence - violence directed at individuals or groups perceived as divergent - often accompanies periods of socio-political upheaval. While a growing body of anthropological and behavioral research demonstrates that the perception of social difference can motivate instances of mass violence today, little work has been done to examine such identity-based violence archaeologically. This may be because the subtleties of distinct social identities can be difficult to interpret in the past. A bioarchaeological approach, however, is well suited to empirically reconstruct past individuals' social identities, as many facets of identity such as age, sex, or biological relatedness, are grounded in the physical body, while others leave traces on the body through behavior, such as dietary preferences or cultural modification. This research will support both graduate and undergraduate student training and enhance international research partnerships and collaborations between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, it will contribute to broader anthropological understandings of how instances of mass violence may arise from the interaction between specific social identities and complex social processes of migration, demographic change, and biological relatedness.Using a combination of biogeochemical and biodistance analyses, this project reconstructs the residential histories and biological kinship affiliations of victims of human sacrifice interred at a small shrine site in pre-Hispanic central Mexico. The shrine site dates to the Epiclassic period (600-900 CE). In central Mexico, this period was characterized by the decline of the major regional center of Teotihuacán and was a time of dramatic political, social, and demographic reorganization. In such a volatile socio-political landscape, individuals' residential histories or kinship affiliations may have singled them out as targets of ritual violence. This research will answer the question: how did specific aspects of individuals' social identities predispose them to suffer ritual violence? The biogeochemical analysis of dental and skeletal elements from a sample of 72 individuals will allow this project to reconstruct the geographic origins of the sacrificial victims, while biodistance analyses will allow for the reconstruction of patterns of genetic relatedness among the sacrificial victims themselves, as well as between the sacrificial victims and contemporary populations in central Mexico