Doctoral Dissertation Research: Material Reflections of the Emergence of Social Inequality

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。本项目探讨非西方背景下专业知识在构成社会政治权力中的作用。理解社会政治组织是社会科学的基石，但这方面的学术研究往往是基于源自西方背景的分类类型。这些范畴是否普遍适用于理解其他社会和历史背景下的社会政治发展？一些研究人员主张建立更多文化定位的社会政治发展模型，以理解政治战略的全球多样性。虽然物质财富的积累通常被视为社会不平等的代表，但土著学者认为，这掩盖了权力和社会不平等的一个更为突出的基础：知识。本研究从原住民哲学的核心概念出发，提出以下问题：在新兴的权力结构中，专业知识是如何循环的？对知识的控制是否被用来制造新的社会不平等并使之合法化？考古学的深度时间视角提供了重要的方法，可以从头开始检查社会政治组织的变化，而不必优先考虑预先确定的类型图式。本研究将考古学和人种学数据的多种来源置于背景中，以产生新的文化定位模型来解释社会学变化。通过对现有博物馆藏品的非破坏性再分析来收集原始数据，本研究将增加现有藏品的价值，同时最大限度地减少对原位考古记录的影响。这项研究促进了考古学家、保护科学家、博物馆专业人员和后代社区之间的合作，以产生对社会政治变化的创新解释。该项目利用考古实例来考察绘画技术，以了解传统大型社会综合体的发展和最终解体。在这种情况下，绘画是一种严格遵守仪式社会规范的专业技术，使其成为研究知识与权力关系的理想材料。该项目采用社会网络分析来评估基于油漆和绘画材料文化中共享配方的知识网络的同质性或异质性。涂料配方是基于通过偏振光显微镜、x射线荧光、拉曼和傅立叶变换红外光谱识别的技术相似性来定义的。研究人员利用这些数据来研究政治权力的转变如何与知识的集中和分散的变化相对应。这项研究代表了第一个标准化的油漆处理技术，并为未来的研究提供了一个强大的数据库。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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This project investigates the role of specialized knowledge in constituting sociopolitical power in non-Western contexts. Understanding sociopolitical organization is a cornerstone of the social sciences, but this scholarship is often based upon categorical types derived from Western contexts. Are such categories universally applicable in understanding sociopolitical development in other social and historical contexts? Some researchers advocate for more culturally-situated models of sociopolitical development to understand the global diversity of political strategies. While the accumulation of material wealth is often treated as a proxy for social inequality, Indigenous scholars argue that this overshadows a far more salient foundation of power and social inequality: knowledge. Drawing from core concepts of Indigenous philosophy, this study asks: In what ways does specialized knowledge circulate in emergent power structures? Is the control of knowledge employed to create and legitimize new social inequalities? The deep-time perspective of archaeology offers important ways of examining changes in sociopolitical organization from the ground up, without prioritizing pre-determined typological schemas. This study contextualizes multiple sources of archaeological and ethnographic data to produce new culturally-situated models for interpreting sociological change. By relying on the non-destructive reanalysis of existing museum collections for primary data collection, this study will add value to existing collections while minimizing the impact on the in situ archaeological record. This research promotes collaboration between archaeologists, conservation scientists, museum professionals, and descendant communities to produce innovative interpretations of sociopolitical change.This project utilizes an archaeological example to examine paint technology to understand the development and eventual dissolution of a traditional large scale social complex. In this instance, paint is a specialized technology produced following strict adherence to protocol governed by ritual sodalities, making it an ideal material to study relationships between knowledge and power. The project employs social network analysis to evaluate the homogeneity or heterogeneity of knowledge networks based on shared recipes in paint and painted material culture. Paint recipes are defined based on both technological similarities identified through polarized light microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and Raman and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. The researchers employ these data to examine how the transformation of political power corresponded with changes in the centralization and dispersal of knowledge through time. This study represents the first standardized treatment of paint as such a technology and works to produce a robust database for future research.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.