Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Chronologically Related Changes in Material Culture Composition

这个博士论文研究项目将研究长期社会变革的潜在因素。它将使用来自佛罗里达州北方墨西哥湾沿着陶器的地球化学、岩相学和其他技术数据，研究与人们居住的大型定居点的废弃有关的社会变化。 从定居点的多样性和随后的陶器技术来看，社会结果各不相同。这项研究的目的是确定这些变化在多大程度上涉及社会运动。现代社会的社会运动往往是社会变革的动力，包括那些通常被称为“崩溃”的社会运动。然而，最近关于社会崩溃的学术研究阐明了社会群体实际上如何通过深思熟虑的集体行动来实施结构性变革，这是对崩溃必然是社会失败或“下放”问题的偏见的治疗。在强调物质性和人类经验的物质条件方面，对过去的研究具有很好的潜力，可以为民族志，社会学和文学史所无法触及的社会运动的跨文化研究做出贡献。来自研究区域12个地点的陶器将提供粘土来源的数据（中子活化分析），组成（岩相学），制造和使用（技术功能分析）和表面处理（风格分析）作为社会身份和联系的分析代理。从遗址废弃和重新安置时期的陶器在表面处理和容器形式方面变化很大，产地和成分数据可能同样可变，但这还不清楚。成分数据体现了对粘土和再生性添加剂的选择，这些添加剂不明显地承载了传统的重量，因此可能表明了在几代人共同居住在市政仪式中心的陶工中形成的共同做法，然后继续到随后的几个世纪的分散定居。由于该项目的样本来自易受海平面上升负面影响的公共土地上的遗址，因此这项研究将有助于联邦对考古遗址进行清查、评估和保护。此外，这项研究将：（1）有助于正在进行的考古批评流行的“崩溃”的叙述和发展的替代品的基础上的实证研究;（2）增加有关的一段时间，这是在该地区和整个美国东南部了解甚少的信息;以及（3）为越来越多的关于考古学特征和社会运动物质影响的研究提供案例材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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，认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the factors underlying long term social change. It will use geochemical, petrographic, and other technical data derived from pottery along the northern Gulf Coast of Florida to examine social changes associated with the abandonment of large size settlements in which people lived. Judging from the diversity of settlement and pottery technology that followed, social outcomes varied. The objective of this research is to determine the extent to which these changes involved social movements. Social movements in the modern world are often the impetus for transformative social change, including those which are often called "collapse." However recent scholarship on societal collapse has illuminated how social groups in fact can enact structural change through deliberate collective action, a curative to the bias that collapse was necessarily a matter of failure or "devolution" of society. In its emphasis on materiality and the material conditions of human experience, study of the past holds good potential for contributing to the cross-cultural study of social movements well beyond the reach of ethnography, sociology, and literary history.Pottery from 12 sites across the study area will provide data on clay provenance (neutron activation analysis), composition (petrography), manufacture and use (technofunctional analysis), and surface treatment (stylistic analysis) as analytical proxies for social identity and affiliation. Pottery from sites spanning the period of abandonment and resettlement varies wildly with respect to surface treatment and vessel form, Provenance and compositional data may be equally variable, but this is not yet known. Compositional data embody choices for clays and aplastic additives that carry the weight of tradition inconspicuously, and are thus possibly indicative of shared practices that took form over generations of co-residency of potters at civic-ceremonial centers and then continued into the ensuing centuries of dispersed settlement. As the samples for this project are drawn from sites on public lands that are vulnerable to the negative effects of rising seas, this research will contribute to federal mandates for the inventory, assessment, and conservation of archaeological sites. Furthermore, this research will: (1) contribute to ongoing archaeological critique of popular "collapse" narratives and the development of alternatives based on empirical studies; (2) add information concerning a period of time that is poorly understood in the area and throughout the southeastern United States; and (3) provide case material to the growing body of studies on the archaeological signatures and material implications of social movements.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.