Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Variable Household Use of Space

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Researchers have long been interested in understanding how culture changes over time. Understanding one particular type of cultural shift, the creation and perpetuation of social inequality, is particularly pertinent to modern-day social realities. This project builds on previous ethnographic and archaeological research into how complex fisher-hunter-gatherer groups shift from an egalitarian to a non-egalitarian society. Understanding the expression and experience of such social change by members of households is the primary focus of this research. How might a society go from a cultural ethos of sharing access to resources to one promoting restricted access? How is access to resources and power defined and who is included (or not included)? This research investigates these questions by analyzing changes in household-based interactions to unravel the roles gender, kinship, and agency play in defining access to power and resources within an emerging social hierarchy. This doctoral dissertation project examines previously collected material from a site which contains a sequence of 15 anthropogenic floors. The researchers will conduct new macrobotanical analyses and examine lithic artifacts from four occupations using a wide array of cutting-edge analytical techniques (geo-chemical sourcing, residue studies, and ancient DNA analysis) to understand what types of activities constituted social identities during different times within the housepit. Spatial and statistical analysis of these data will be used to understand, reconstruct, and interpret changes in past household interactions over time. This research will thus create new frameworks for understanding the interplay between social identity and the emergence of institutionalized inequality at the household level. The research will actively include First Nation perspectives and cultural knowledge to interpret and contribute to ongoing public memory projects in the region.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.