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造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，最终导致陶工决定在18世纪早期停止生产釉瓷。大釉是一种铅釉装饰的陶器类型，生产于史前晚期和历史早期的地区。釉的主要成分是方铅矿铅矿石。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，比如“快速替代”——或者立即放弃土著工具和技术，转而采用欧洲的工具和技术。然而，这一假设不仅忽视了殖民主义经常依赖本土技术和知识（尤其是宝贵资源）来确保其努力的成功这一事实，而且没有考虑到本土技术和生产材料是如何与传统生态知识（TEK）的更大系统联系在一起的，在传统生态知识（TEK）中，地质、地理、景观和宇宙并不像西方观点所认为的那样是独立的概念。此外，TEK不是一个静态系统，相反，社区可以通过经验的积累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地采矿作业的程度知之甚少，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地矿物获取和开采相交叉。人们普遍认为，殖民主义在某种程度上导致了釉瓷生产的终结，但对釉瓷的研究只触及了表面，无法解释诸如铅漆玻璃化程度增加、油漆颜色可变性增加以及釉装饰流质/粘稠性增加等变化是如何/为什么发生的。在之前研究的基础上，我们将分析来自四个不同遗址的釉瓷，每个遗址都代表了不同的聚落背景和居民职业的转变状态。通过将矿物使用置于更广泛的社会生态背景下，利用铅同位素来源和铅釉漆化学特征、陶瓷岩石学、釉漆外观变化的分析方法，以及对陶器糊、瓷片和装饰的基本属性分析，研究人员旨在揭示对不同历史、多重真相、在一个不断变化的世界里，人们不断地谈判和改变他们与祖先土地的关系，从而获得了不同的土著经验。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 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.