The Emergence of Material Wealth-Based Inequality

蒙大拿大学的安娜·玛丽·普伦蒂斯博士将与来自美国、加拿大和英国的同事一起，对村庄规模的狩猎采集社会中社会不平等的发展进行研究。古代社会不平等的起源是人类学考古学关注的中心问题，对当今世界更广泛地理解不平等具有重要意义。先前的研究已经记录了持续制度化的不平等可能发展的条件。这些包括可防御的生存资源的存在和财富代际传递的可能性，获得财富的机会和财富的权利。关于导致物质不平等的历史过程的争论仍在继续，一些研究人员声称，不平等是在资源丰富的条件下，人类追求个人经济和生殖成功的必然结果，而另一些人则认为，不平等是资源短缺时期竞争条件的意外副产品。鉴于考古学有能力在很长的时间跨度内重建社会进化过程，它将为这些讨论提供重要的贡献。这项研究旨在促进有关土著文化和历史的广泛公众宣传，并为大学生提供STEM培训机会。普伦蒂斯博士和她的研究小组将在不列颠哥伦比亚省中部弗雷泽峡谷的布里奇河村研究物质财富不平等的起源。桥河遗址是研究不平等演变的理想场所，因为人类在过去2000年的居住记录非常出色。该考古发掘项目旨在对与不平等起源相关的人口变化、生存集约化、储存变化、社会网络以及大规模烹饪和食物共享（“盛宴”）事件的综合作用变化的替代假设进行细粒度测试。这个跨学科的研究团队为北美西北部史前烹饪特征的挖掘和实验室研究设定了新的标准，他们采用的分析方法包括沉积物微形态学、古代DNA分析、碳化遗骸中的植物组织鉴定、沉积物地球化学，以及对石器和动物骨骼研究的先进方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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，被认为值得支持。

Dr. Anna Marie Prentiss, of the University of Montana, along with colleagues from the United States, Canada, and England will engage in research into the development of social inequality in village scale hunter-gatherer societies. The origins of inequality in ancient societies is a central concern in anthropological archaeology with significant implications for wider understanding of inequality in today's world. Previous research has documented conditions under which persistent institutionalized inequalities are likely to develop. These include the presence of defensible subsistence resources and the possibility for inter-generational transmission of wealth, access to wealth, and rights to wealth. Debate continues regarding the historical processes that give rise to material inequality with some reseachers asserting inequality to be an inevitable outcome of inherent human striving for personal economic and reproductive success under conditions of resource abundance versus others who argue that inequality is an unintended byproduct of competitive conditions during periods of resource shortfall. Archaeology is poised to offer significant contributions to these discussions given the ability to reconstruct social evolutionary process over lengthy time spans. The research is designed to facilitate extensive public outreach regarding indigenous culture and history along with STEM training opportunities for college students. Dr. Prentiss and her research team will examine the origins of material wealth-based inequality at the Bridge River village in the Middle Fraser Canyon of interior British Columbia. The Bridge River site is an ideal place to study the evolution of inequality given the excellent record of human occupation spanning the past 2000 years. This archaeological excavation project is designed to develop fine-grained tests of alternative hypotheses concerning variation in the integrated roles of demographic change, subsistence intensification, storage variability, social networking, and large scale cooking and food-sharing ("feasting") events associated with the origins of inequality. The interdisciplinary research team sets a new standard for excavation and laboratory study of prehistoric cooking features in Northwestern North America with analytical approaches including sediment micromorphology, ancient DNA analysis, plant tissue identification from carbonized remains, sediment geochemistry, and advanced approaches to stone artifact and animal bone studies.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.