Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Development of a Complex Production Network

在劳拉·容克博士的指导下，伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校博士生徐文鹏将承担研究前现代全球化背景下大规模生产发展的研究。以出口为导向的大规模生产往往与现代西方经济联系在一起，但类似的生产体系在现代之前就已经发展起来了。到目前为止，很少有人关注如何在地方一级组织大规模生产，以满足前现代时期的全球需求。考古学特别适合提供相关的洞察，因为它可以考察历史文献中很少提到的生产活动，并通过长期的视角追踪其发展。通过关注考古学家不经常调查的大规模非精英生产，这项研究将为理解古代工艺生产系统增加一个新的维度。这项研究还将为研究在古代经济讨论中较少提及的非西方经济体系提供经验证据，从而有助于对前工业化世界的古代经济进行比较研究。该项目将为博士生提供必要的研究培训，并促进美国几个机构与中国之间更紧密的学术合作，包括伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校、菲尔德博物馆、福建博物馆、德化陶瓷博物馆和北京大学。该项目的成果将构成一篇博士论文以及多篇中英文会议论文和学术出版物的基础。徐和他的研究团队将研究生产网络的结构和动态，以此作为理解前现代时期馈入全球贸易网络的大规模非精英生产系统的组织方式。这项研究将在中国东南部的德化进行，在那里，几十个巨大的龙窑形成了一个工业区，在宋元时期(公元960年-1368年)，大量生产专门用于出口的瓷器产品。研究人员将采用基于地理信息系统的社会网络分析方法来研究德化瓷器行业的生产网络。将通过多学科计划收集记录窑间相似性所需的考古信息，包括对窑址的系统调查，对窑具的风格分析，以及陶瓷产品的成分分析(pXRF和LA-ICPMS)。该项目将作为区域范围内大规模瓷器生产研究的开拓性研究。该项目中使用的创新方法将有助于建立一个方法框架，可以用于过去的其他生产中心。此外，该项目将提供一个地球化学数据集，帮助寻找沿古代海上贸易路线发现的广泛存在的瓷器。该奖项反映了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。

Under the direction of Dr. Laura Junker, Wenpeng Xu, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will undertake research to study the development of large-scale production in the context of premodern globalization. Export-oriented mass production is often associated with modern western economies, but similar production systems had already developed prior to the modern era. So far, little attention has been paid to examine how large-scale production was organized at the local level to meet the global demands in the premodern period. Archaeology is uniquely suited to provide relevant insight because it can examine the production activities that were rarely mentioned in historical texts and trace their development through a long-time perspective. By focusing on the large-scale, non-elite production that is not often investigated by archaeologists, this research will add a new dimension to understanding of ancient craft production systems. This research will also provide empirical evidence for studying non-western economic systems that are less frequently addressed in the discussion of ancient economy, thereby contributing to the comparative study of ancient economies across the pre-industrial world. This project will provide essential research training for the doctoral candidate and foster closer academic collaboration between several institutes in the U.S. and China, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Field Museum, the Fujian Museum, the Dehua Ceramic Museum, and Peking University. Results from this project will form the basis of one Ph.D. dissertation as well as multiple conference papers and academic publications in both English and Chinese. Xu and his research team will examine the structure and dynamics of production networks as a means of understanding the organization of the large-scale, nonelite production system that feeds into the global trade networks in the premodern period. The research will take place at Dehua in southeast China, where dozens of huge dragon kilns formed an industrial district and mass-produced porcelain products exclusively for export under the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368 CE). The researchers will adopt a GIS-based social network analysis approach to study the production networks in the porcelain industry at Dehua. Archaeological information needed to document the inter-kiln similarities will be collected through a multidisciplinary program, including systematic surveys of kiln sites, stylistic analysis of kiln furniture, and compositional analysis (pXRF and LA-ICP-MS) of ceramic products. This project will serve as a pioneer study of investigating the large-scale porcelain production on a regional scale. The innovative approaches used in this project will help build a methodological framework that can be used for other production centers in the past. Additionally, this project will provide a geochemical dataset that can help source the widespread porcelains found along the ancient maritime trade routes.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.