The Development of Social Complexity in a Mobile Society

通常居住着移动的人口的地区往往具有鲜明的对比和频繁的环境变化，这些变化可能会出乎意料。 移动的社会的家园普遍存在着环境的多变性，这往往使人们产生一种浪漫化的看法，认为游牧民族是“坚忍”的人，他们是长寿的产物，过着与世隔绝的生活，总是按照自然环境的要求移动。 随后，研究大规模社会复杂社会出现的过程以及将成员联系在一起成为一个功能单位的机制的研究人员往往会忽略移动的社会，而倾向于“稳定的”定居人口。该项目认为，游牧游牧社会的独特性允许分析政治组织的一般问题与更广泛的变量，从而提供了洞察政治战略如何发挥不同的一系列不同的条件。最终，这项研究将有助于说明“移动的”政体如何为替代性政治制度的发展提供替代性轨迹的例子，因此应该更好地洞察人类社会采用或不采用更复杂的组织形式的方式。为了解决这一研究课题，耶鲁大学的威廉·加德纳博士与蒙古的同事一起，将探讨“自下而上”的过程在发挥当地的接受，配置，并在青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期（约100年）颁布的政治变革。公元前10至4世纪）这最终导致了在蒙古草原上建立的第一个区域规模的政体，匈奴（约1000年）。公元前世纪）。 在蒙古中北部的大Burgastai/Tarvagatai地区工作，青铜时代晚期和铁器时代早期的数据将包括：1）陶瓷中子活化分析揭示的交换关系趋势; 2）畜群动物同位素分析了解的长距离相互作用和运动趋势; 3）纪念碑在社会政治发展中的作用。 这些数据将根据邻近的Egiin Gol地区以前的考古研究进行背景分析，以确定个人成员和家庭在多大程度上参与了社区在更大的政治组织中建立自己的努力。 总的来说，草原社会研究所涉及的问题不仅仅是“畜牧业”问题本身，而是通过流动性和农牧化的透镜观察的家庭和社区规模的人类组织的一般问题。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标准进行评估而被认为值得支持。

Regions that are commonly home to mobile peoples are often typified by sharp contrasts and frequent environmental change that can take place unexpectedly. Environmental variability that generally epitomizes the homelands of mobile societies has often fostered a romanticized perception of nomadic people as "stoic" figures that are the product of a long life, lived in isolation, always moving as the natural environment dictates. Subsequently, researchers studying the processes through which large scale socially complex societies emerge and the mechanisms which bind members together into a functioning unit will often ignore mobile societies in favor of "stable" sedentary populations. This project argues that the distinctiveness of pastoral nomadic society allows analysis of general questions of political organization in relation to a wider range of variables and thereby provides insight into how political strategies play out differently over a range of varying conditions. Ultimately, the research will do much to illustrate how "mobile" polities provide examples of alternative trajectories for the development of alternative political systems and as such should provide better insight into the ways in which human societies do or do not adopt more complex forms of organization.To address this research topic, Dr. William Gardner of Yale University, along with colleagues in Mongolia, will explore the "bottom-up" processes at play in the local acceptance, configuration, and enactment of political changes during the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (ca. 10th to 4th century B.C.) that eventually led to the first regional-scale polity founded on the steppe of Mongolia, The Xiongnu (ca. 3th century B.C.). Working in the greater Burgastai/Tarvagatai region of north central Mongolia, data from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age periods will consist of 1) trends in exchange relationships as revealed by neutron activation analysis of ceramics; 2) trends in long distance interactions and movements as understood by isotopic analysis of herd animals; and 3) the role of monumentality in sociopolitical development. This data will be contextualized by previous archaeological research in the neighboring Egiin Gol region in an effort to determine the extent to which individual members and households were involved in a community's effort to establish itself within larger political organization. In total, the question addressed by studies of steppe societies are not just "pastoral" question per se but instead, a general question on human organization at the household and community scale viewed through the lens of mobility and agro-pastoralism.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.