Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Material Reflections of Social Change

该项目是一项多地点、方法多样的考古调查，旨在了解殖民对土著陶工创建和维持实践社区的能力、对地方的文化认知以及将社会技术知识代代相传的能力的影响，最终导致陶工在18世纪初决定停止生产釉器。里奥格兰德釉器是一种地区生产的史前晚期和史前早期的铅釉装饰陶器。釉的主要成分是方铅矿铅矿。在人类学和考古学中，研究人员试图通过对文化接触的有问题的叙述来回答有关接触后技术变化的问题，例如“快速替代”--或立即放弃土著工具和技术，转而使用欧洲的工具和技术。然而，这一假设不仅忽视了这样一个事实，即殖民主义往往依赖土著技术和知识(特别是宝贵资源)来确保其努力的成功，而且它没有考虑到土著技术和生产资料如何与更大的传统生态知识(TEK)系统捆绑在一起，在TEK中，地质、地理、景观和宇宙并不是从西方角度来看的独立概念。此外，TEK不是一个静态的系统，相反，社区可以通过积累经验和对内部和外部经济、政治、社会和生态变化的适应性反应来改变他们的TEK。虽然由于缺乏档案和文献证据，人们对美国西南部殖民采矿活动的范围知之甚少，但考古学非常适合回答这些问题，因为土著知识和实践与殖民矿产获取和开采交叉。人们普遍认为，殖民主义在某种程度上导致了釉器生产的终结，但对釉器的研究只是触及了表面，不清楚如何/为什么会发生变化，如铅涂料的玻璃化程度增加，油漆颜色变化性增加，以及流畅/粘稠的釉面装饰增加。在之前研究的基础上，将分析来自四个不同遗址的釉器陶器，每个遗址代表不同的聚落背景和居民居住状态的变化。通过将矿物使用置于更广泛的社会生态环境中，并利用铅同位素来源和铅釉涂料的化学表征、陶瓷岩相学、釉彩外观变化(S)的分析方法，以及对陶浆、瓷砖和装饰的基本属性分析，研究人员旨在揭示人们对不同历史、多重真理和不同土著经历的更全面和细致入微的理解，这些人在一个不断变化的世界中不断谈判和转换他们与祖传土地的关系。这一裁决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。

This project is a multi-sited and methodologically diverse archaeological investigation into understanding colonial impact on the ability of indigenous potters to create and maintain communities of practice, cultural perceptions of place, and the ability to pass down sociotechnical knowledge from one generation to the next, ultimately leading to the decision by potters to stop producing Glaze Ware in the early eighteenth-century. Rio Grande Glaze Ware was a lead glaze decorated pottery type regionally produced in late prehistoric and early historic periods. The main component of the glaze is galena lead ore. Within anthropology and archaeology, researchers have sought to answer questions about post-contact technological change through problematic narratives of culture contact, such as that of “quick replacement”— or the immediate abandonment of Indigenous tools and technology in favor of European ones. However, not only does this assumption ignore the fact that Colonialism often relied on Indigenous technologies and knowledge (especially of valuable resources) to ensure the success of its endeavors, it fails to consider how Indigenous technologies and production materials are tied into larger systems of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in which geology, geography, landscape, and the cosmos are not separate concepts as they are viewed from a western perspective. Additionally, TEK is not a static system, rather, communities can change their TEK through the accumulation of experiences and adaptive responses to internal and external economic, political, social, and ecological change. While little is known about the extent of colonial mining operations in the US Southwest due to the lack of archival and documentary evidence, archaeology is well suited to answer such questions because indigenous knowledge and practice intersected with colonial mineral acquisition and extraction. It is generally accepted that colonialism contributed to the end of Glaze Ware production in some manner but research on Glaze Ware has only scratched the surface on how/why changes such as increased vitrification of lead paint, increase in paint color variability, and an increase in runny/goopy glaze decoration, occurred. To build upon previous research, Glaze Ware pottery from four different sites will be analyzed, each representing a different settlement context and shifting status of resident occupation. By placing mineral use within a broader socio-ecological context and utilizing the analytical methods of lead isotope sourcing and chemical characterization of lead glaze paints, ceramic petrography, variation(s) in glaze paint appearance, along with basic attribute analysis of pottery pastes, slips, and decoration, the researchers aim to reveal a more encompassing and nuanced understanding of the varied histories, multiple truths, and diverse indigenous experiences by people who continuously negotiated and transformed their relationships to their ancestral lands in a world that was constantly in flux.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.