Processes Influencing Stabilization in the Formation of States

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One factor critical to stable and enduring formation of states is the recognition and legitimation of their sovereignty by entities outside their formal territorial frontiers. This project considers the social processes that select the subgroup of individuals who perpetuate the state’s authority beyond its political boundaries. In order to understand the origins of states and empires, it is best to examine a metropolitan center with a dynamic and regionally interconnected landscape. Excavations at a civic-administrative complex at the heart of the one of the largest and most influential cities of its time examine key conjunctures where state authority was amassed, materialized, and embodied through ritualized acts. As a project situated in the ceremonial center of a major heritage site , the project builds national and international partnerships between academics, students, and the wider public to support a model of archaeological stewardship. The project contributes to the development of the scientific workforce and broadens the participation of underrepresented groups in science through the inclusion and training of a widely diverse pool of 45 graduate and undergraduate students representing 14 institutions. Additionally, the project enhances public scientific literacy and understanding of the scientific method through the dissemination of project outcomes on a trilingual website. The researchers plan to excavate an elite administrative complex asking whether there is evidence to suggest that it was the center of a complex, regional ritual economy that naturalized and perpetuated state authority, and what role foreign entities played in the development of state authority. This major metropolitan center's sociopolitical, ideological, and economic sustenance reverberated throughout the region, including strong political and military oversight over locations far away. Three field seasons and laboratory analysis will target activity areas of known foreign presence to pinpoint the stewards and practices instrumental to the naturalization and perpetuation of the state authority. Analytical techniques include laboratory analysis of non-local ceramics and mural fragments (to construct their social life based on source locality of raw resources, production technologies, iconographic elements, social identity of the producers, and their manner of exchange, use, and termination), radiocarbon dating, osteological/botanical analysis and isotope analysis of ecofacts (human animal, and other paleobotanical remains); and osteological and chemical analysis to reconstruct the movements of goods and people through the ritual economy. The project's contribution of new primary excavation data provides critical additional information in the long debate of whether the site was primarily a dominant or cooperative force in the creation of a pan-regional network. This research not only shapes scientific understanding of urban central administrative domestic politics and regional influence, but also fundamentally informs theories about the economic, political, and social development of neighboring and distant polities.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.