The Development of Social Complexity in a Mobile Society

通常是流动人口家园的区域往往具有鲜明的对比和可能意外发生的频繁环境变化。环境的变化通常是流动社会家园的缩影，这往往助长了一种浪漫化的看法，即游牧民族是“坚忍”的人物，是长期生活的产物，他们与世隔绝，总是随着自然环境的要求而移动。随后，研究大规模社会复杂社会形成过程和将成员结合成一个功能单位的机制的研究人员往往会忽略流动社会，而倾向于“稳定”的久坐人群。该项目认为，游牧社会的独特性允许分析与更广泛的变量相关的政治组织的一般问题，从而提供了对政治策略如何在一系列不同条件下发挥不同作用的见解。最终，这项研究将有助于说明“流动的”政治如何为另类政治制度的发展提供另类轨迹的例子，因此应该更好地洞察人类社会采用或不采用更复杂的组织形式的方式。为了解决这一研究课题，耶鲁大学的威廉·加德纳博士将与蒙古的同事们一起，探索在青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期（公元前10世纪至公元前4世纪），当地对政治变革的接受、配置和制定过程中的“自下而上”过程，这些过程最终导致了蒙古草原上第一个地区规模的政体——匈奴（公元前3世纪左右）的建立。在蒙古中北部的Burgastai/Tarvagatai地区工作，来自青铜时代晚期和铁器时代早期的数据将包括：1)陶瓷中子活化分析揭示的交换关系趋势；2)通过同位素分析了解群居动物的长距离相互作用和运动趋势；3)纪念性在社会政治发展中的作用。这些数据将与之前在邻近的Egiin Gol地区进行的考古研究相结合，以确定个人成员和家庭在多大程度上参与了社区在更大的政治组织中建立自己的努力。总的来说，草原社会研究解决的问题不仅仅是“牧区”问题本身，而是通过流动性和农牧业的视角看待家庭和社区尺度上的人类组织的一般问题。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。

Regions that are commonly home to mobile peoples are often typified by sharp contrasts and frequent environmental change that can take place unexpectedly. Environmental variability that generally epitomizes the homelands of mobile societies has often fostered a romanticized perception of nomadic people as "stoic" figures that are the product of a long life, lived in isolation, always moving as the natural environment dictates. Subsequently, researchers studying the processes through which large scale socially complex societies emerge and the mechanisms which bind members together into a functioning unit will often ignore mobile societies in favor of "stable" sedentary populations. This project argues that the distinctiveness of pastoral nomadic society allows analysis of general questions of political organization in relation to a wider range of variables and thereby provides insight into how political strategies play out differently over a range of varying conditions. Ultimately, the research will do much to illustrate how "mobile" polities provide examples of alternative trajectories for the development of alternative political systems and as such should provide better insight into the ways in which human societies do or do not adopt more complex forms of organization.To address this research topic, Dr. William Gardner of Yale University, along with colleagues in Mongolia, will explore the "bottom-up" processes at play in the local acceptance, configuration, and enactment of political changes during the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (ca. 10th to 4th century B.C.) that eventually led to the first regional-scale polity founded on the steppe of Mongolia, The Xiongnu (ca. 3th century B.C.). Working in the greater Burgastai/Tarvagatai region of north central Mongolia, data from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age periods will consist of 1) trends in exchange relationships as revealed by neutron activation analysis of ceramics; 2) trends in long distance interactions and movements as understood by isotopic analysis of herd animals; and 3) the role of monumentality in sociopolitical development. This data will be contextualized by previous archaeological research in the neighboring Egiin Gol region in an effort to determine the extent to which individual members and households were involved in a community's effort to establish itself within larger political organization. In total, the question addressed by studies of steppe societies are not just "pastoral" question per se but instead, a general question on human organization at the household and community scale viewed through the lens of mobility and agro-pastoralism.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.