Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Power Relations in the Context of Agricultural Production

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Doctoral candidate Kacey Grauer of Northwestern University, along with colleagues from the United States and Belize, will undertake research to study how power, status, and ecology intersect to foster community survival during times of water scarcity and political instability. Successful resource management is essential for societies to prosper, particularly during turbulent times. With a long-term perspective, archaeology is well-suited to assess resource management strategies because what is successful in the short-term may not be successful over hundreds or thousands of years. Turbulent times do not affect all people equally, and this project will address how degrees of access to resources change as political and ecological environments change. Throughout the course of this research project, both Belizean citizens and Northwestern University undergraduates will be trained in archaeological methods. The results of this research will be shared through community events, public talks, academic articles, and an online platform so that a range of individuals including scientists, government officials, and the general public will have access to its findings.Grauer and her research team will investigate how degrees of commoner access to resources changed in a city that thrived through times of water scarcity and political instability. The research will take place at Aventura, a medium-sized ancient Maya city in northernmost Belize. The city flourished from 750-1100 CE, a time when many large Maya cities were abandoned due to a combination of drought and political upheaval. Important resources within the city of Aventura were pocket bajos, small non-draining depressions in the land that were either used for water management or agriculture in the past. This research will determine how pocket bajos were used and who had access to the resources they provided. The project will assess how commoner access to pocket bajo resources changed as drought and political instability increased regionally. The research team will conduct systematic excavations of a commoner household and take soil cores from a pocket bajos in Aventura. They will analyze artifacts and botanical remains to determine chronology and assess who had access to these important resources through time, as well as what configurations of power allowed for successful resource management during ecological and political instability.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.