Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role of Writing in Tracing Social Interaction

写作不仅仅是一种交流信息的视觉媒介，它还是一种必须在上下文中理解的文化实践。研究古代文化习俗的传播或传播的研究人员在很大程度上依赖于物质和物理遗迹。考古学特别适合解决这些问题，因为它结合了对物质文化的批判性参与，以及对时间和空间变化和相互作用的关注。在这种情况下，写作为探索文化传播提供了一个理想的案例，因为它留下了物质痕迹，而且它的物理方面往往被忽视，而牺牲了它更抽象的信息。马洛里松本（布朗大学）将进行论文研究，以了解写作的生产和传输。除了促进考古学，金石学和人类学之间的跨学科合作外，这项工作还将展示一种文化背景下的互动如何影响另一种文化背景，这是一个与理解过去和现在有关的问题。除了有助于当前的前哥伦布玛雅文明的理解，其结果将是特别相关的当代玛雅社区，因为他们目前的努力恢复象形文字作为身份和文化遗产的象征。本论文的研究将探讨是否以及如何通过网络的书面传播重叠与其他文化交流的背景。它的案例研究将是古代玛雅象形文字书写系统，这是使用了1500多年的地区，现在的墨西哥，危地马拉，伯利兹，洪都拉斯。重要的是，前哥伦布时期的玛雅社区共享这种书写系统，这些社区不仅在空间和时间上分开，而且在政治上也从未统一过。尽管近几十年来玛雅象形文字的破译取得了显着进展，但学者们仍然不了解这种书写系统是如何发展和传播的。研究人员将分析玛雅铭文的形式及其所包含的象形文字，以重建哪些定居点共享哪些书写技术，这些模式如何随时间变化，以及它们如何与其他背景下的相互作用相关，如政治，战争，该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

Writing is more than a visual medium for communicating information - it is also a cultural practice that must be understood in context. Researchers studying the transmission or spread of cultural practices in the ancient past rely largely on material and physical remains. Archaeology is especially well-suited to address these questions because it combines a critical engagement with material culture with a concern with change and interaction over time and space. In this context, writing presents an ideal case for exploring cultural transmission because of the material traces that it leaves and because its physical aspects are often ignored at the expense of its more abstract message. Mallory Matsumoto (Brown University) will undertake dissertation research to understand the production and transmission of writing. In addition to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology, epigraphy, and anthropology, this work will demonstrate how interaction in one cultural context may affect another, an issue relevant to understanding both the past and the present. In addition to contributing to current understanding of pre-Columbian Maya civilization, the results will be especially relevant to contemporary Maya communities given their current efforts revive the hieroglyphic script as a symbol of identity and cultural heritage.This dissertation research will examine if and how the networks through which writing is transmitted overlap with other contexts of cultural exchange. Its case study will be the ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing system, which was used for over 1500 years in areas of what are now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Critically, the writing system was shared among pre-Columbian Maya communities who were not only separated by space and time, but also were never politically unified. Although the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs has advanced significantly in recent decades, scholars still do not understand how the writing system developed and spread. The investigator will analyze the form of Maya inscriptions and the hieroglyphs they contain to reconstruct which settlements were sharing which writing techniques, how these patterns changed over time, and how they related to interactions in other contexts like politics, warfare, or trade.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.