Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Ceremonial Organization And Social Structure

6000多年前，在今天的中国东北地区，第一次出现了小的区域政治。这些红山社会代表了组织形式演变的早期阶段，这种组织形式将不同地方社区的人们整合到社会、政治和经济关系网络中。因此，它们代表着世界大多数人口目前生活的规模更大、高度一体化的社会的开端。这些区域社会仍然很小;每个社会在大约10公里宽的领土上只有大约1，000人。一些家庭显然比其他家庭享有更多的社会声望和影响力，这主要归因于他们特殊的宗教和仪式角色。几十个，如果不是几百个这样的小区域社会通过共同关注一个复杂的非凡的仪式结构，其中埋葬了非常有声望的个人，彼此联系在一起。牛河梁的这个建筑群似乎主要是作为一个宗教朝圣中心，有一个相对较小的永久居民社区，他们生活在一个农业潜力很小的丘陵地区。在Robert Drennan博士的指导下，博士生Weiyu Ran将在附近的上朝阳沟红山时期村庄进行实地考察，以调查这个朝圣中心的供应是如何组织的。包括上朝阳沟在内的几个村庄距离牛河梁的祭祀场所只有几公里，那里的农业条件更好，可能专门生产食物来维持附近的朝圣中心。如果这是红山时期出现的组织，这是一个重要的步骤，向更高度发达的经济和更大的相互依存之间的家庭和当地社区比以往任何时候都。冉先生将评估这个假设的重建早期红山经济和组织，维持在牛河梁朝圣中心通过收集数据，对文化遗迹留下的数千年前，上朝阳沟的居民。这些垃圾中保存时间较长的部分，大多是破碎的陶器和石器的碎片。如果说上朝阳沟主要集中于农业生产，那么冉先生收集的数据将显示农业工具的比例很高，而象征社会声望的精致陶器的比例很低（与普通红山社区的文物或最重要的仪式建筑附近的住宅区相比）。如果这是研究结果所显示的，很明显，至少在某些情况下，很早就把宗教和仪式作为社会融合的主要手段，可以导致更先进的经济制度的发展，在这种制度的基础上，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。

More than 6000 years ago, small regional polities emerged for the first time in what is now northeastern China. These Hongshan societies represented the early stages in the evolution of forms of organization that integrated the people of different local communities into networks of social, political, and economic relationships. They thus represent the very beginnings of the much larger-scale, highly integrated societies in which most of the world's population now lives. These regional societies were still very small; each including only 1,000 people or so in a territory about 10 km across. Some families clearly enjoyed more social prestige and influence than others, attributable primarily to their special religious and ritual roles. Dozens if not hundreds of such small regional societies were connected with each other through a common focus on a complex of extraordinary ceremonial structures in which very highly prestigious individuals were buried. This complex at Niuheliang seems to have functioned primarily as a religious pilgrimage center, with a relatively small community of permanent residents, who lived in a hilly region with very little agricultural potential. Under the direction of Dr. Robert Drennan, doctoral candidate Weiyu Ran will carry out fieldwork at the nearby Hongshan-period village of Shangchaoyanggou to investigate how the provisioning of this pilgrimage center was organized. Several villages, of which Shangchaoyanggou was one, were located a few kilometers from the ritual facilities of Niuheliang in much more favorable locations for farming and may have specialized in producing food to sustain the nearby pilgrimage center. If this is the kind of organization that had emerged in Hongshan times, it represented a major step toward more highly developed economies and greater interdependence between households and local communities than ever before.Mr. Ran will evaluate this hypothetical reconstruction of early Hongshan economies and the organization that sustained the pilgrimage center at Niuheliang by collecting data on the cultural remains left behind thousands of years ago by the inhabitants of Shangchaoyanggou. The parts of this refuse that have been preserved for so long are mostly fragments of broken pottery vessels and stone tools. If Shangchaoyanggo focused heavily on agricultural production then the data Mr. Ran collects will show high proportions of agricultural tools and low proportions of the elaborate pottery vessels that signaled social prestige (when compared to the artifacts of ordinary Hongshan communities or to those remaining at residential locations near the most important ritual structures). If this is what the research results show, it will be clear that in at least some instances a very early focus on religion and ritual as a principal means of social integration can lead to the development of the more advanced economic systems upon which even larger-scale political integration eventually was based.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.