Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Botanical Insights into Social Complexity

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Questions regarding the role of food in urban sustainability are relevant to modern problems of overcrowding and differential access to resources. Archaeological study of the earliest urban centers is particularly well-suited to revealing subsistence strategies that contribute to the persistence or decline of populous settlements because ancient sites provide case studies for examining the timing of changes in food-related activities in relation to major political and social transformations. Within this broader context, this project will use plant remains to investigate temporal changes in social relationships at the household level. Mallory Melton and Amber VanDerwarker of the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) will study ancient plant remains from two Pacific coast sites dated 900-500 BCE and 500-BCE-100CE, providing a rare opportunity to use food to diachronically evaluate inter-household social differences amid state formation and increasing population aggregation. Regional research will benefit from and work to foster cultural heritage knowledge with results being featured in an exhibit at a local museum. Project members will also work with local residents to create a pamphlet designed to communicate project results to school children and teachers. Excavation maps produced by this project are essential to raising local awareness and fostering site stewardship as both sites are covered by plantains. They will be distributed to local officials and institutions, and a time-lapse video of the maps will be hosted on the UCSB Integrative Subsistence Laboratory (ISL) website. Dr. VanDerwarker and Mallory Melton will undertake research on the identification of plant remains in household and public deposits to reveal the nature of social diversity and political economy in two of the earliest urban centers in the Americas. Research will begin with the use of a collection in a regional museum, where the co-PI will collect artifact residue and dental calculus samples for starch grain and phytolith identification. Undergraduate students will be involved in the identification of charred plant remains and microscopic starch grains and phytoliths, and the production of large-scale maps that will bring the layout of each urban settlement to life. Radiocarbon dates on charred remains of annual plants will provide the chronological precision necessary to organize subsistence strategies according to settlement occupation phase (e.g., formation, maintenance, decline). Integrating multiple methods, this study will illuminate daily subsistence activities during the occupation of two urban centers of different scale, providing insights into strategies that contributed to their centuries-long persistence. The team will investigate the use of food in evaluating differences among households at each study site, potentially producing a powerful methodology for detecting social diversity that would contribute to the identification of neighborhoods in cases where residences are not apparent in their groupings. The project will productively enhance understanding of the relationship between food activities and urban sustainability while also creating innovative opportunities for student training and international collaboration.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.