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

该项目将调查火山活动对过去社会的发展和轨迹的影响。灾害通常被视为外部化危机，对社会的复原力作出判断。然而，这些叙述往往忽略了灾害如何揭示潜在的紧张局势和不平等，以及如何利用灾害促进社会领域的系统性变革。这个项目将研究如何改变社会组织的趋势，权力分配，和一个社会的优先事项是在灾难的背景下放大。灾害可以开辟新的手段和动机，改变或加速社会趋势：社区可以选择通过自下而上的组织计划相互支持，正如机构及其领导人可以通过自上而下的行政管理来巩固其权力和控制。每个人也有一个独特的社会和环境暴露于危害本身，这通知他们作出决定，以保持或改变他们的行为，甚至离开受影响的景观完全和移民。这些挑战和谈判沿着已经建立的社会惯例和权力动态展开--其后果建立了对如何应对未来灾难的预期。通过这一透镜研究受灾社会有助于理解社会复杂性的发展。这项研究还深化了越来越多的关于灾害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自己在世界范围内越来越多的灾害。本项目研究灾害和社会的一个具体方面，即沿海地区火山活动的影响。它多次受到火山爆发的影响，火山爆发始于高地，并广泛但不均匀地沉积火山灰（火山灰）。这为补充和扩大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。调查将在一个保留家庭特征（如房屋地板、储藏坑和壁炉）中分层职业的地点进行。挖掘和现场调查将恢复陶瓷，石器，古生态和生物材料相关，以评估居民是否改变了他们的土地使用和社会安排;还将确定火山灰的来源和喷发时间。这些相互关系将支持严格的，跨学科的解释，讨论灾害的社会生态层面，通过时间。了解这些社区如何协商火山脆弱性拓宽了考古学讨论的替代社会的复杂性，并通过从过去的事件中学习，帮助现代社区暴露于这些火山灾害。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.