Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Networking Identity Research

在芭芭拉·米尔斯博士的指导下，莱斯利·阿拉贡将进行研究，研究群体身份是如何在多个尺度上构建的，以及它如何随着时间的推移而变化。考古学提供了一个独特的机会，可以发展一个框架，用于研究古代历史上具有深厚时间深度的群体身份和社会互动的不同概念。该项目采用多学科方法，结合社会网络分析（SNA）、岩石学分析和跨多种媒体的风格分析，以了解内部和外部多样性，这是深入了解社会组织的重要一步。本研究以美国西南部南部的Hohokam Ballcourt世界为例，揭示了群体形成社会边界的动态方式，而不管空间距离如何。从更广泛的意义上讲，该项目解决了有关不同规模的人类社区组织，人们如何形成身份以及这些过程的长期影响的问题。作为博士论文研究的一部分，阿拉贡将利用亚利桑那州南部的考古数据，研究前西班牙西南部的人们是如何在社会群体中形成关系和分类身份的，以及这些身份是如何随着8世纪至12世纪（公元700年至1100年）霍霍坎·巴考特世界的兴衰而变化或持续的。研究人员将使用多标量网络方法，以100年为间隔，以物质文化为基础，重建霍霍坎球场世界中的群体身份，创造穿越时间的“快照”。通过这种方式，该项目解决了文化和意识形态变化和重组时期群体适应的问题。研究人员将使用未充分研究的策划材料和已发表的报告来整合和综合整个研究区域50多年的实地工作。利用现有馆藏进行的研究将增加管理机构可获得的资料，并将提供可用于向公众解释遗址的新资料。最后，本研究将为跨越时间和空间的身份研究提供新的方法，这将有助于研究过去和现在类似过程的研究人员。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。

Under the direction of Dr. Barbara Mills, Leslie Aragon will conduct research to study how group identity is constructed at multiple scales and how it might change over time. Archaeology provides a unique opportunity to develop a framework for investigating different concepts of group identity and social interactions among communities with deep time depth in the ancient past. This project takes a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating social network analyses (SNA), petrographic analyses, and stylistic analyses across multiple media to understand internal and external diversity, an important step in gaining insight into social organization. Using the Hohokam Ballcourt World in the southern U.S. Southwest as a case study, this research informs upon the dynamic ways that groups form social boundaries regardless of spatial proximity. In a broader sense, the project addresses questions regarding the organization of human communities at varying scales, how people form identities, and the long-term effects of these processes. As part of her Ph.D. dissertation research, Ms. Aragon will use archaeological data from across southern Arizona to examine how people in the prehispanic Southwest formed both relational and categorical identities among social groups and how those identities changed or persisted with the rise and decline of the Hohokam Ballcourt World during the eighth through twelfth centuries (A.D. 700-1100). The researchers will use a multiscalar network approach to reconstruct group identities in the Hohokam Ballcourt World based on material culture at 100-year intervals to create "snapshots" through time. In this way, the project addresses issues of group adaptation during times of cultural and ideological change and reorganization. The investigators will use understudied curated material and published reports to integrate and synthesize more than 50 years of fieldwork across the study region. Research with existing collections will add to the stock of information available to managing agencies and will contribute new information that can be used in the interpretation of sites for the public. Finally, this research will contribute new methods for studying identity across time and space, which will be useful to researchers investigating similar processes, both in the past and present.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.