Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Nature of Hinterland Communities

这一奖项允许Nicholas Belluzzo先生调查Hawai‘i岛上接触前的内陆社区。波利尼西亚的研究人员长期以来主要研究社会和社会政治形成过程。以前的学术研究通常关注核心的考古记录，主要是中心，模型强调精英的权力战略和权威。然而，最近的学术研究越来越多地关注于理解社会中常见的、非精英的角色和机构。由于他们在皇家中心边缘之外的位置，人们对腹地社区是如何构思地方和地区规模的权威，或者这种概念与皇家中心有何不同的了解就更少了。鉴于腹地社区在历史文献和民族志文献中的代表性较低，考古学方法处于有利地位，可以更全面地记录夏威夷的社会政治形成。通过部署和重新定义腹地的概念，该项目特别关注夏威夷社区在多个尺度上的机构、权力来源和社会等级。这项研究重新描绘了腹地社区，从资源开采区到有意识的社区，代理地谈判当地和区域的互动。作为一项多学科的努力，贝卢佐先生将与土壤科学家、古植物学家、夏威夷传统知识体系的权威机构和州土地管理者合作，开发一项全面的研究，同时建立跨学科的研究关系。这项研究将内陆地区界定为既不是边境也不是边界，而是位于多种权力和权威来源之间的位置。通过超越单一的核心-外围相互作用，这项研究将使用“自下而上”的方法调查夏威夷南部考区的非精英夏威夷腹地社区。这将突出机构和地方当局如何创建互动社区，而不是完全从属于精英中心或政治核心。这项研究将采用基于景观的方法来评估马努伊卡的传统夏威夷土地划分，马努卡位于一个环境不确定地区的两个较大政治区的交汇处。将使用人种学、环境、生态和考古数据对该地区进行评估，以确定社区、机构和权威的差异。Nick Belluzzo和他的研究团队将通过考古调查、档案研究和测试挖掘相结合的方式收集数据，以生成考古和环境数据集。地统计分析将引出古老的夏威夷州的权威模式和区域关系。具体地说，这项研究将比较聚落和农业实践的变化记录和区域多样性，以及在直接、集中的主要统治下更具农业生产力的核心区的预期。多种新方法的结果和综合将广泛适用于在世界范围内对复杂社会的社会复杂性进行建模。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。

This award permits Mr. Nicholas Belluzzo to investigate a pre-contact hinterland community on the island of Hawai'i. Researchers in Polynesia have long studied chiefly society and processes of sociopolitical formation. Previous scholarship has often focused on archaeological records of core, chiefly centers, with models highlighting elite power strategies and authority. However, more recent scholarship increasingly focuses on understanding the common, non-elite role and agency in society. By virtue of their position beyond the margins of the royal centers, even less is known about how hinterland communities conceived of authority at both the local- and regional-scales or how this conception differed from the royal centers. Given that hinterland communities are less well represented in historical literature and ethnographic documentation, archaeological approaches are well situated to augment a more spatially comprehensive record of sociopolitical formation in Hawai'i. By deploying and re-defining the concept of hinterland, this project focuses specific attention on the agency, sources of authority, and social hierarchy of Hawaiian communities at multiple scales. The study re-frames depictions of hinterland communities from zones of resource extraction to intentional communities agentively negotiating local and regional interactions. As a multi-disciplinary effort, Mr. Belluzzo will collaborate with soil scientists, paleobotanists, authorities in traditional Hawaiian knowledge systems, and State land managers to develop a holistic research study while establishing cross-disciplinary research relationships.This research frames hinterlands as neither frontiers nor borderlands, but locations situated between multiple sources of power and authority. By moving beyond monolithic core-periphery interactions, the research will investigate non-elite Hawaiian hinterland communities in the southern Kau District of Hawai'i Island using a "bottom-up" approach. This will highlight how agency and local authority created interactive communities not wholly subordinate to elite centers or political cores. The research will employ a landscape-based approach to assess the traditional Hawaiian land division of Manuka, situated at the intersection of two larger political districts in an environmentally uncertain region. This region will be evaluated to identify variation in community, agency, and authority using ethnographic, environmental, ecological, and archaeological data. Nick Belluzzo and his research team will collect data through a combination of archaeological survey, archival research, and test excavations to generate archaeological and environmental datasets. Geostatistical analysis will elicit patterns of authority and regional relationships in the archaic Hawaiian State. Specifically, this research will compare records of change and regional diversity in settlement and agricultural practices against expectations from more agriculturally productive core regions under direct, centralized chiefly rule. Both the results and syntheses of multiple novel methods will be broadly applicable to modeling social complexity in complex societies world-wide.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.