Collaborative Research: Examination of Sites on the Georgia Bight Coastline

合作研究：乔治亚湾海岸线遗址考察

• 批准号: 1748342
• 负责人: Sharyn Jones
• 金额: $ 4.25万
• 依托单位: Northern Kentucky University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-15 至 2022-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1748342&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Examination; Sites; Georgia

More than fifty shell rings - large circular deposits of shellfish, artifacts, and other food remains surrounding broad, open plazas - can be found along the southeastern U.S. coast. Dating to the Late Archaic (circa 5,000 - 3,500 cal B.P.), these sites appear across roughly 2,500 km of shoreline between South Carolina and Mississippi and contain exceptionally well-preserved evidence of the first large-scale settlements in the region, though they are now gravely threatened by rising sea levels. With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Matt Sanger of Binghamton University, Victor Thompson of the University of Georgia, and Thad Bissett of Northern Kentucky University will investigate these sites by focusing on how previously mobile Late Archaic peoples adapted to a changing landscape (e.g., fluctuating sea levels) and built larger, more complex, and increasingly diverse societies. In seeking to settle long-standing disagreements over the function of shell rings, this project will generate new data and new models that will be of interest a broad range of archaeologists, anthropologists, and other researchers studying the earliest stages of large-scale human settlement, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world. Comparative analysis across the thirteen sites selected for this study will help resolve a decades-long debate over whether shell rings were ritual gathering points, year-round villages, or a mix of the two. Likewise, this work will also look at factors behind the development of such large Late Archaic communities - namely, whether they were driven by incipient sedentism, religious communality, expansive exchange systems, localized adaptations, or shared encounters on a daily or intermittent basis. Few shell rings have been studied systematically using comparable standards and methods, which has made it impossible to create dependable models for how or why the Late Archaic ring builders developed larger and more expansive societies in these places. This project seeks to create a robust, dependable corpus of data on shell rings by establishing shared standards of fieldwork and laboratory analysis that will be applied across all shell ring sites. The collaborative team will conduct geophysical surveys, excavations, and radiometric and isotopic analyses at thirteen key sites along the Georgia Bight. In addition to testing, refining, and disseminating best practices for current and future archaeologists interested in studying shell rings, this work will create a comparative dataset capable of answering critical questions about how the function of these sites may have varied over time and across space.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在美国东南海岸，人们可以找到50多个贝壳环——在开阔的露天广场周围，贝壳、人工制品和其他食物残留物形成的大型圆形沉积物。这些遗址可以追溯到古代晚期（大约公元前5000 - 3500 cal），分布在南卡罗来纳州和密西西比州之间大约2500公里的海岸线上，保存得非常完好，是该地区第一个大规模定居点的证据，尽管它们现在受到海平面上升的严重威胁。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。宾厄姆顿大学的马特·桑格、佐治亚大学的维克多·汤普森和北肯塔基大学的萨德·比塞特将对这些遗址进行调查，重点研究以前流动的晚古代人是如何适应不断变化的景观（例如，波动的海平面），并建立更大、更复杂和日益多样化的社会的。为了解决长期以来对贝壳环功能的分歧，这个项目将产生新的数据和新的模型，这将引起广泛的考古学家、人类学家和其他研究人员的兴趣，这些研究人员正在研究美国和世界其他地区最早的大规模人类定居阶段。本研究选择的13个地点的比较分析将有助于解决长达数十年的争论，即炮弹环是仪式聚集点，还是全年的村庄，还是两者的混合。同样，这项工作还将研究这些大型晚古社区发展背后的因素——即，它们是由早期的定居主义、宗教社区、广泛的交流系统、局部适应，还是每天或断断续续的共同遭遇驱动的。很少有人用类似的标准和方法对贝壳环进行系统的研究，这使得我们无法建立可靠的模型，来解释古代晚期的贝壳环建造者如何或为什么在这些地方发展出更大、更广阔的社会。该项目旨在通过建立将应用于所有壳环站点的现场工作和实验室分析的共享标准，创建一个健壮、可靠的壳环数据语料库。合作小组将在乔治亚湾沿岸的13个关键地点进行地球物理调查、挖掘、辐射测量和同位素分析。除了测试、提炼和传播当前和未来对研究贝壳环感兴趣的考古学家的最佳实践外，这项工作还将创建一个比较数据集，能够回答有关这些遗址的功能如何随时间和空间变化的关键问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。