Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Ceremonial Organization And Social Structure

6000多年前，在现在的中国东北部，第一次出现了小区域政治。这些红山社团代表了组织形式演变的早期阶段，这些组织形式将不同地方社区的人民整合到社会、政治和经济关系网络中。因此，它们代表着规模更大、高度融合的社会的开端，世界上大多数人口现在生活在这些社会中。这些地区性社会仍然非常小；每个社会只有1000人左右，分布在一个大约10公里宽的领土上。一些家庭显然比其他家庭享有更大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，如果不是数百个这样的小型区域社会，通过共同关注一个非常有声望的人被埋葬的非常有声望的复杂仪式结构而相互联系。牛河梁的这个建筑群似乎主要是作为宗教朝圣中心发挥作用，常住居民社区相对较小，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，博士生魏玉然将在附近的红山时期村庄上潮阳沟进行田野调查，调查这个朝圣中心的供应是如何组织的。上朝阳沟是其中的几个村庄，距离牛河梁的仪式设施几公里处，更适合耕种，可能专门生产食物来维持附近的朝圣中心。如果这是洪山时代出现的那种组织，那么它代表着朝着比以往任何时候都更加发达的经济和家庭与地方社区之间更大的相互依赖迈出了重要的一步。RAN将通过收集上朝阳沟居民数千年前留下的文化遗存的数据，评估对早期红山经济和维持牛河梁朝圣中心的组织的假想重建。这些垃圾被保存了这么长时间，大部分是破碎的陶器和石器碎片。如果上朝阳戈主要关注农业生产，那么冉志强收集的数据将显示，农具的比例很高，而象征社会声望的精致陶器比例较低(与普通红山社区的文物或最重要的仪式建筑附近的居民点相比)。如果这就是研究结果所显示的，很明显，至少在某些情况下，非常早期地将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系统的发展，而更大规模的政治融合最终是以此为基础的。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.