Doctoral Dissertation Research: Biocultural Responses to Forced Resettlement

纵观历史，各个帝国都采取了重新安置政策，迫使臣民离开家园，在遥远的土地上开始新的生活。今天，对许多人来说，强迫或强迫移徙仍然是现实。重新安置人民的边缘地位可能使人们难以研究他们现在和过去的经历。在古代帝国中，大多数关于重新安置的书面记录都来自有钱有势的精英阶层，他们希望以积极的方式展示自己的行为，而强制搬迁很少留下清晰的材料签名供考古学家研究。研究人员常常忽略了这样一些基本问题：重新安置的人是如何适应新的现实的？他们面临什么挑战？重新安置的暴力程度如何？生物考古学是对考古遗址中人类遗骸的研究，为深入了解被国家和帝国重新安置的人们的日常生活经验提供了方法和工具。由于这是一个博士论文研究项目，这项资助将进一步促进学生的学术和智力发展。该项目包括向当地社区推广。这个项目使用生物考古学来研究一个被重新安置的社区的生活经历，这是一个更大的过程的一部分，其中多达400万人被迁移。调查人员与考古学家合作挖掘相关墓地的一部分。他们利用骨骼地球化学来确定埋葬在墓地里的人中谁最有可能是移民，以便将他们与来自同一地点的非移民个体进行比较。他们研究挖掘出来的人的骨头上的指标，看看移民是否经历了暴力或高发病率，以及他们是否改变了饮食或身体装饰的形式，以适应他们的新地区。将移民与当地人进行比较，可以揭示出他们用了什么手段来控制被安置的对象，以及被安置如何塑造了他们的整体生活经历。该项目的设计使其能够通过促进妇女在科学考古方面的国际合作，促进对因卡案例研究内外国家指导的重新安置的科学理解，从而为科学知识和实践服务。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。

Throughout history, empires have adopted resettlement policies that forced their subjects to leave home and begin new lives in faraway lands. Forced or coerced migration remains a reality for many people today. The marginalized status of resettled peoples can make it difficult to study their experiences in both the present and the past. In ancient empires, most written accounts of resettlement come from the wealthy and powerful elites who wished to present their actions in a positive light, and forced relocation rarely leaves a clear material signature for archaeologists to study. Often, researchers have overlooked such basic questions as: how did people who were resettled adjust to their new reality? What challenges did they face? To what extent was resettlement violent? Bioarchaeology, the study of human remains from archaeological sites, provides methods and tools to gain insight into the daily life experiences of people relocated by states and empires. Since this is a doctoral dissertation research project this grant furthers the student’s academic and intellectual development. The project includes outreach to the local community.This project uses bioarchaeology to study the life experiences of one resettled community which was part of a larger process in which as many as 4,000,000 people were moved. The investigators collaborate with archaeologists to excavate parts of an associated cemetery. They employ bone geochemistry to identify who, among those buried in the cemetery, were most likely migrants in order to compare them to non-migrant individuals from the same site. They study indicators on the bones of excavated individuals to see if migrants experienced violence or high rates of disease, and if they changed their diets or forms of body adornment to conform to their new region. Comparing migrants to locals reveal what tactics were used to control resettled subjects and how resettlement shaped overall life experiences. The design of this project allows it to serve both scientific knowledge and practice by facilitating an international collaboration between women in scientific archaeology and promoting scientific understanding of state-directed resettlement within and beyond the Inka case study.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.