Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant: Long Term Societal Response to Volcanic Exposure

这个项目将调查火山活动对过去社会的发展和轨迹的影响。灾难通常被定义为外部化的危机，可以对社会的恢复能力做出判断。然而，这些叙述往往忽略了灾难如何揭示潜在的紧张和不平等，以及灾难如何被利用来实现社会领域内的系统性变革。这个项目将研究在灾难的背景下，社会组织、权力分配和社会优先事项的变化趋势是如何被放大的。灾难可以开辟新的手段和动机来转移或加速社会趋势：社区可以选择通过自下而上的组织方案相互支持，正如机构及其领导人可以通过自上而下的管理寻求巩固其权力和控制一样。每个人也都有独特的社会和环境暴露于危险本身，这为他们做出决定提供了信息，以维持或改变他们的行为，甚至完全离开受影响的地区并移民。这些争论和谈判沿着已经确立的社会习俗和权力动态进行，它们的后果建立了对如何应对未来灾难的期望。通过这一视角研究受灾害影响的社会有助于理解社会复杂性的发展。这项研究也加深了越来越多的关于灾难在人类经历中的作用的文献，并有助于说明现代社会如何应对我们在世界范围内日益增多的灾难。本项目研究灾害和社会的一个具体方面，即火山活动对沿海地区的影响。它曾多次受到始于高地的火山爆发的影响，并广泛而不均匀地沉积了火山灰（tephra）。这为补充和扩展对区域火山暴露及其与社会复杂性轨迹的相互作用的解释提供了机会。调查将在一个保留房屋地板、储存坑和壁炉等家庭特征的分层职业的地点进行。挖掘和现场调查将恢复陶瓷、石器、古生态和生物相关材料，以评估居民是否改变了他们的土地利用和社会安排；并将确定与火山爆发的来源和时间有关的热液。这些关联将支持严格的、跨学科的解释，通过时间讨论灾难的社会生态层面。了解这些社区如何应对火山的脆弱性，拓宽了考古学对其他社会复杂性的讨论，并通过从过去的事件中学习，帮助现代社区暴露在这些火山危害中。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。

This project will investigate the impact of volcanism on the development and trajectories of past societies. Disasters are typically framed as externalized crises which pass judgment on a society’s resilience. However, these narratives often ignore how disaster reveals underlying tensions and inequalities, and how disaster is capitalized upon for systemic change within social fields. This project will examine how trends of shifting social organization, power distribution, and a society’s priorities are amplified in the context of disaster. Disasters can open new means and motivations to divert or accelerate social trends: communities can choose to communally support each other through bottom-up organization schemes, just as institutions and their leaders can seek to entrench their power and control through top-down administration. Each person also has a unique social and environmental exposure to the hazard itself, which informs the decisions they make to maintain or alter their behavior, or even leave the affected landscape entirely and emigrate. These contestations and negotiations play out along already-established social conventions and power dynamics – and their consequences establish expectations for how to respond to future disasters. Studying disaster-affected societies through this lens contributes to understanding of the development of social complexity. This research also deepens a growing literature on the role of disaster in the human experience, and helps illustrate how modern society can contend with our own increasing number of disasters worldwide. This project examines one specific aspect of disaster and society, that of the impact of volcanism in a coastal region. It was impacted several times by volcanic eruptions that began in the highlands and deposited volcanic ash (tephra) widely but unevenly. This presents the opportunity to complement and expand on interpretations of regional volcanic exposure and its interaction with trajectories of social complexity. Investigation will take place at a site which preserves stratified occupations in domestic features like house floors, storage pits and hearths. Excavation and site survey will recover ceramic, lithic, paleoecological, and biological material correlates to assess if residents altered their land use and social arrangements; and will also identify tephra related to source and time of eruptions. These correlates will support rigorous, interdisciplinary interpretations which discuss the social-ecological dimensions of disaster through time. Understanding how these communities negotiated volcanic vulnerability broadens archaeological discussions of alternative social complexity, and aids modern communities exposed to these volcanic hazards by learning from past events.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.