Assessing Scales of Power and Inequality in Early States

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The goal of this study to assess how wealth differentials and institutionalized inequality develops and persists in tropical states. This study examines inequality among nested scales of community – neighborhoods, districts, and cities – within different environmental settings. Archaeological assessments of institutionalized inequality in early states are invaluable as they provide insights into the long-term effects of wealth differentials among large populations and smaller sectors within them, illuminating the mechanisms that drive inequality within and between populations in cities and allowing for the consideration of policy changes that may mitigate inequities in modern societies. The researcher will focus on how inequality manifests at different scales, and how differential access to resources among the occupants of neighborhoods, districts, and cities affect the well-being of its residents. The results of this study are directly applicable to other cities where differences in wealth are present. This study provides an in-depth analysis of inequality in tropical states, creating a comprehensive dataset for comparisons to other spatiotemporal contexts in the past and present. The investigator and her team of researchers will evaluate how environmental setting, differential access to resources, and trade networks impacted inequality at nested scales of community. The researcher will explore institutionalized inequality in three discrete topographic regions (coastal plains, foothills, and mountains) in two distinct environmental settings (upland areas and river valleys). Cutting-edge geospatial technologies including light detection and ranging (lidar) and GPS will support the documentation of five sites. Locations, size, and architectural complexity of houses and the presence of controllable resources such as water, chocolate trees, and valued minerals will be documented during survey. Roads, neighborhoods, and districts will be spatially modeled. Finally, inequality will be evaluated based on house size differentials and statistical analyses of the distance from each house to controllable resources and public services such as marketplaces and roads. The researcher will train graduate and undergraduate students in archaeological field techniques and geospatial analyses and conduct research alongside local communities.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.