Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Construction of Monumental Architecture

这个项目调查融合的性质和社会复杂性的出现如何导致纪念碑和人造景观的创建。多学科学者将社会复杂性的出现，特别是在早期城市中心，视为一种受过程和机构制约的现象，即纪念碑被显著地建造为社会秩序的代表。考古学可以很好地研究早期城市中心产生的社会条件，并解释如何在社会组织、物质资源和剩余劳动力的流动方面进行不朽的建设。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越来越多的人工景观，以及如何塑造？对于美国土堆建筑协会来说，土方工程既具有宗教意义，也具有社会政治意义，是在建造纪念碑的地方创造共同身份的一种手段。因此，他们的内部建筑和组织结构的活力提供了对他们的社会环境的重要洞察。该项目将聚焦于美国最大的前哥伦布时代的仪式中心，通过检查遗址中心辖区内不朽的土方工程的性质和速度。现有对该遗址发展为城市中心的解释分为两种模式，强调快速或缓慢的纪念性建筑建设。快节奏模型声称，霸权是在工地高度分层的社会秩序中行使的，以指导不朽的建设项目，而慢节奏模型将这些不朽建筑描绘为社区成核和聚集的副产品，这些副产品持续了很长一段时间。借助加速质谱仪测年和贝叶斯统计模型，参考裸露的土方工程背景，该项目将评估现场广场和土丘建筑采用了哪些劳动力投资和建设策略。将对一个可疑的广场大院进行挖掘，其中包括以前未被记录在案的土方工程，以获取可测定日期的样本，并记录新的建筑形式。这样，土堆建设作为现有社会秩序的一种表达，其速度和性质将得到更有效的解读。因此，这个早期城市中心的物质历史可以被框定在关于早期城市化和全球范围内社会的更大叙事中。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 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.