Collaborative Research: HNDS-R: Human Networks, Sustainable Development, and Lived Experience in a Nonindustrial Society

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This project investigates how patterns of connection between people affect their quality of life over the long term. The goal is to map out patterns of interaction between people in different locations and assess how these patterns impacted the development of their communities in a changing environment. Learning about these patterns can be accomplished with archaeological data, which show how ancient people worked together to meet basic human needs. Understanding how social networks grew and changed in the past can lead to a better understanding of how people today can work together for increased prosperity, inclusiveness, environmental sustainability, and peace. This project brings together a team of researchers from multiple universities, not-for-profit organizations, and tribal communities. These scientists use archaeological evidence to investigate relationships between spatial patterns of social interaction and the quality of life over 800 years in the southwestern United States. They combine demographic, socioeconomic, health, and environmental reconstructions of the past built using data from previous NSF-funded projects into a single research platform. They also use this platform, together with ideas from complex systems and network analysis, to examine how spatial properties of human networks influenced other aspects of human development, using archaeological indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as the basis for assessment. The results will advance understandings of how socio-spatial networks influence sustainability and the quality of life.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.