Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Construction of Monumental Architecture

该项目探讨了社会复杂性的融合和出现的本质如何导致纪念碑和人工景观的创造。多学科学者将社会复杂性的出现，特别是在早期的城市中心，视为一种受过程和代理影响的现象，在这种情况下，纪念碑被明显地建造起来，作为社会秩序的代表。考古学很好地研究了产生早期城市中心的社会条件，并解释了在社会组织、物质资源和剩余劳动力的流动方面，纪念碑建筑是如何进行的。杰出领导人的魅力权威或对传统的长期坚持，在多大程度上塑造了世界上最早的城市日益增多的人工景观，又是如何塑造的？对于美国建筑协会来说，建造土方工程具有宗教和社会政治意义，是在建造纪念碑的地方创造共同身份的一种手段。因此，建筑的能量学和内部建筑的组织为他们的社会环境提供了重要的见解。该项目将重点关注美国最大的前哥伦布仪式中心，通过检查该遗址中心区的纪念性土方施工的性质和速度。现有的对该基地发展为城市中心的解释分为两种模式，强调快速或慢节奏的纪念性建筑。快节奏模型认为，霸权权力是在一个高度分层的社会秩序中行使的，以指导纪念性建筑项目，而慢节奏模型则将这些纪念性建筑描绘为社区核化和聚集的副产品，这种副产品持续了很长一段时间。借助加速质谱测年和贝叶斯统计模型（参考暴露的土方环境），该项目将评估现场广场和土墩建筑所采用的劳动力投资和施工策略。对一个疑似广场建筑群的挖掘工作将进行，以获取数据样本并记录新的建筑形式。这样，建筑的速度和性质作为现有社会秩序的一种表达将得到更有效的解释。因此，这个早期城市中心的物质历史可以在全球范围内对早期城市主义和社会的更大叙述中进行框架。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 investigates how the nature of coalescence and emergence of social complexity results in the creation of monuments and artificial landscapes. Multidisciplinary scholars have approached the emergence of social complexity, particularly in early urban centers, as a phenomenon conditioned by process and agency, whereby monuments are built conspicuously as representations of the social order. Archaeology is well positioned to examine the social conditions that gave rise to early urban centers and explain how monumental construction was undertaken with respect to social organization, material resources, and mobility of surplus labor. To what extent does the charismatic authority of prominent leaders or longstanding adherence to tradition shape the increasingly artificial landscapes of the world’s earliest cities and how? For US moundbuilding societies the creation of earthworks held both religious and socio-political significance, as a means of creating a common identity at the place where monuments were built. As such, the energetics of their construction and organization of their internal architectures provide critical insights into their social environments. This project will focus on the largest US Pre-Columbian ceremonial center, by examining the nature and pace of monumental earthwork construction within the site’s central precinct. Existing interpretations of the site’s development into an urban center are divided between models that emphasize rapid or slow-paced monumental construction. Rapid pace models claim that hegemonic authority was exercised within a highly stratified social order at the site to direct monumental construction projects, while slower pace models portray such monumental architectures as byproducts of community nucleation and aggregation that carried over extended time periods. With the aid of accelerated mass spectrometry dating and Bayesian statistical models that reference exposed earthwork contexts, this project will assess what labor investments and construction strategies were employed for plaza and mound building at the site. Excavations into a suspected plaza compound with previously undocumented earthworks will be undertaken to acquire datable samples and record new forms of architecture. In this way, the pace and nature of moundbuilding as an expression of the existing social order will be more effectively interpreted. Consequently, the material history of this early urban center can be framed within the larger narratives about incipient urbanism and society at a global scale.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.