Collaborative Research: Reconstructing Classic Genetic and Social Kinship Networks

在世界各地的所有人类社会中，家庭和家庭关系构成社会互动的基本基础。对当代亲属关系系统的人类学重建揭示了对家庭的研究对于理解更广泛的社会政治关系是多么有洞察力。然而，到目前为止，人们对过去的亲属关系习俗知之甚少。古代历史文本以精英社会成员为重点。虽然这些消息来源清楚地表明，皇室婚姻是至关重要的政治结合，但有必要走到冰山一角以下，开始在社会层面上理解亲属关系，才能在更广泛的层面上真正理解政治关系和互动。考古遗传学的最新进展为理解古代世界的这种关系提供了巨大的潜力。这个项目的重点是在广泛的社会范围内重建整个社会亲属关系实践。该项目将提供对亲属关系制度如何在社会和政治等级的不同层面上运作的细微差别的理解，并将为在社会范围内重建过去的亲属关系惯例打开大门。该项目为博士后研究人员提供分析技术方面的培训，将社会科学和自然科学联系起来，并为早期职业研究人员提供合作培训机会。该项目具有主要的外联和参与部分，将在学生和研究人员之间建立国际桥梁，并直接让利益攸关方和后代社区参与。结果的传播将通过多种科学和大众出版物以及互动活动来实现。这项研究调查了：(1)等级社会等级的不同成员如何利用婚姻联盟；(2)不同政体之间的婚姻模式是如何变化的；(3)婚姻模式是如何随着时间的推移而变化的，通过一个社会的衰落和政治崩溃。这些问题将通过系统分析过去30年收集的大量考古数据，结合新的放射性碳测年和考古发生学分析来解决。全基因组古代DNA分析将用于重建21个精英和普通家庭的遗传史，以提供社会尺度上对三个不同地点在中央集权和政治权力和权威衰落时期的亲属关系和婚姻联盟的了解。这项研究中开发的框架将作为一个模型，可以在世界多个地区使用，以更好地理解权力和不平等制度的出现和永久存在。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Family and familial relations form the underlying basis of social interaction in all human societies around the world. Anthropological reconstructions of contemporary kinship systems have revealed how insightful the study of families are to understanding broader socio-political relationships. Yet to date, there is very little understanding of past kinship practices. Ancient historical texts to focus on elite social members. While these sources clearly show that royal marriages were vitally important political unions, it is necessary to move below the tip of the iceberg and begin to understand kinship at a societal scale to truly understand political relationships and interaction at a broader level. Recent advances in archaeological genetics offer enormous potential to understand such relationships in the ancient world. This project focuses on reconstructing the entirety of social kinship practices at a broad social scale. The project will provide a nuanced understanding of how a kinship system operated at different levels of social and political hierarchy, and it will open the door to societal-scale reconstructions of kinship practices in the past. This project provides training for a postdoctoral researcher in analytical techniques that bridge the social and natural sciences, as well as collaborative training opportunities for early career researchers. The project has flagship outreach and engagement components that will build international bridges between students and researchers, and directly involve stakeholders and descendant communities. Dissemination of results will be achieved through a multiplicity of scientific and popular publications, as well as interactive activities.The research examines: (1) how marriage alliances were employed by different members of a hierarchical social hierarchy; (2) how marriage patterns varied between polities; and (3) how marriage patterns changed over time, through a society’s rise to its decline and political collapse. These questions will be approached by systematically analyzing extensive archaeological data collected over the past 30 years, in combination with new radiocarbon dating and archaeogenetics analysis. Genome-wide ancient DNA analysis will be used to reconstruct the genetic history of 21 elite and commoner households in order to provide a societal scale understanding of kinship practices and marriage alliances at three different sites during periods of centralization and decline in political power and authority. The framework developed in this study will serve as a model that can be employed in multiple regions of the world to better understand the emergence and perpetuation of systems of power and inequality.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.