Long Term Analysis of Relationships between Social Complexity, Labor and Monumentality

这个项目调查了小规模狩猎采集社会的社会变迁过程。研究人员希望了解推动小规模社会变化的过程，以及社会复杂社会如何随着时间的推移而出现。一个核心问题是，这些过程是否有一个普遍的模式，或者它们是否因地而异，在不同的社会类型中有所不同。研究人员已经记录了小规模狩猎采集社会中持续制度化的社会和经济不平等发展的条件。其中包括控制仪式实践，包括纪念碑的建造，作为创造和维持财富和政治权力代际传递的一种方式。因为控制人们制造东西是一种公认的政治权力的衡量标准，所以建造大量的土堆经常被用来衡量社会和政治的复杂性。人们认为，复杂且耗费能源的建筑反映了更大的社会和政治复杂性、等级制度和经济一体化。学者们争论导致这些不平等的历史进程；许多研究人员断言，社会变革和日益加剧的不平等是物质积累和防御的必然结果，物质积累和防御提高了社会声望和繁殖成功率。然而，美国土著哲学将日益增加的复杂性解释为人类和非人类主体在一个无限复杂的关系世界中相互作用的结果。在这个世界上，人类有道德上的责任来维持秩序和平衡，这些秩序和平衡是通过仪式行为来实现的，比如在景观中充满活力的地方建造纪念碑。该项目考虑了一个广泛采用的考古学假设，即等级控制导致大型考古遗址的发展，并将其与印第安人的方法进行了比较，后者不注重等级，而是注重社区合作。该遗址可能是世界上最大的狩猎采集者遗址，拥有异常巨大的土丘和山脊，因此是一个理想的地点，可以研究不断变化的狩猎采集者的社会政治差异，是否如所声称的那样，是数百年来经济和劳动力控制积累的结果。或者建造土方工程是一项迅速进行和自由进行的公共活动，因为当地人有道德义务在某些地方举行仪式，以确保平衡、和谐和秩序。为了回答这些问题，一个多学科的团队将使用考古学、地质学和岩土工程领域先进的定量和定性方法来调查遗址使用的历史、土方工程建设的速度和持续时间，以及土方工程的建造方法。多方法分析可以评估该遗址的狩猎采集者复杂性是否是多代人实践的产物，在这种实践中，财富的不平等控制慢慢积累起来，鼓励了制度化的政治和经济复杂性的出现。该项目为早期职业生涯的美洲原住民学者、美国和国际学生、学童和现场访客提供教育机会和专业培训。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 investigates the processes of social change in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies. Researchers wish to understand the processes that drive change in small-scale societies and how socially complex societies emerge over time. A central question is if these processes have a universal pattern, or if they vary from place to place and across different social types. Researchers have documented conditions under which persistent institutionalized social and economic inequalities develop among small-scale hunter-gatherer societies. These include the control of ritual practices, including monument building, as a way to create and sustain inter-generational transmission of wealth and rights to political power. Because controlling people to make things is a commonly recognized measure of political power, building massive earthen mounds often is used as a measure of social and political complexity. Complicated and energetically costly constructions are assumed to reflect greater social and political complexity, hierarchy, and economic integration. Scholars debate the historical processes that give rise to these inequalities; many researchers assert that social change and increasing inequality is an inevitable outcome of material accumulation and defense that enhances social prestige and reproductive success. Native American philosophy, however, interprets increasing complexity as the outcome of interactions among human and non-human agents in an infinitely complicated relational world. In this world, humans have moral responsibility to maintain order and balance realized through ritual actions such as monument building at charged places on the landscape. The project considers both a widely adopted archaeological assumption that hierarchical control leads to the development of large archaeological sites and compare it to a Native American approach which focuses not on hierarchy but rather community collaboration. The site is perhaps the largest hunter-gatherer site in the world with exceptionally large earthen mounds and ridges, and therefore is an ideal location to investigate if changing hunter-gatherer sociopolitical variation results from the accumulation of economic and labor control over hundreds of years as is claimed, or if building earthworks is a communal activity rapidly undertaken and given freely because Native people have a moral obligation to perform rituals at certain places that ensure balance, harmony, and order. To answer these questions, a multi-disciplinary team will use advanced quantitative and qualitative methods from archaeology, geology, and geotechnical engineering to investigate the history of site use, the pace and duration of earthwork construction, and earthwork building methods. Multi-method analyses allow assessment of whether hunter-gatherer complexity at the site an outgrowth of mutigenerational practices where unequal control of wealth was accumulated slowly encouraging the emergence of institutionalized political and economic complexity. This project provides educational opportunities and professional training to early career Native American scholars, U.S. and international students, school children and site visitors.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.