Doctoral Dissertation Research: Utilization of Prior Cultural Features

本博士论文项目旨在了解身份和差异的形成是如何通过与物理环境，特别是与过去的物质遗迹的相互作用而建立的。过去各民族的物质遗迹经常留存在活的文化景观中，并经常以影响现在的方式参与其中，包括参与新身份的构建和合法化。本研究的重点是这些过程中的身份建设的社会机制：人们如何理解的相关性，他们现在的过去？哪些过去对哪些类型的身份项目有用？考古学研究集中在具有多个参与阶段的纪念性景观上，可以揭示这些社会进程是如何展开的，为不同历史条件下对过去的想象提供了历时性的视角。在研究这些考古学背景下的物质参与，这项研究提供了新的见解的作用，过去的群体形成和维护的社会差异。在政治和社会运动大量利用过去的象征来主张合法性和文化价值的今天，这些问题尤其具有现实意义。这项研究还建立了一个框架，与当地遗产的关键参与。它征求当地居民和访问研究地点的游客的意见，并将这些意见纳入数据集。由此产生的复合数据集的一个版本将在网上公开提供，以供公众继续参与和贡献，使当地利益相关者和研究界受益。三个研究区域，每个区域都包括各种纪念碑，定居点和其他考古特征，这些特征显示了重复使用，重新占用，修改或其他类型参与的连续阶段的证据。研究人员假设，这些景观构成了在早期历史时期构建身份的物质舞台，提供了史前居住者的物质遗迹作为这些建筑的资源。博士生试图了解这些景观在时间上被重复使用的方式是否有不同的模式，以及一个时期的某些特征或纪念碑是否更有可能被纳入另一个时期的生活景观。这些模式有助于我们深入了解相关的过去是如何被想象成与与之互动的早期历史人物相关的。基于无人机的航空摄影用于生成高分辨率图像和地形模型，与行人调查一起作为数据收集的主要手段，以了解这些复杂景观中的空间关系。基于GIS的统计分析，这些数据的重点是在这些景观再利用模式的群体之间的对比方式。研究人员还在挖掘一个史前起源的石墩，它可能在早期历史时期被用作一个突出的文化边界标记。这次发掘将使研究人员能够评估这一特征的性质，并获得其多个使用阶段和可能的修改的放射性碳年代。该奖项反映了NSF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 doctoral dissertation projects seeks to understand how formations of identity and difference are established through interaction with the physical environment, and especially with material remains of the past. The physical remains of past peoples frequently persist in living cultural landscapes and are often engaged in ways that bear upon the present, including in the construction and legitimation of novel identities. This study focuses on the social mechanisms of these processes of identity construction: How do people understand the relevance of the past for their present? Which pasts become useful for which kinds of identity projects? An archaeological study concentrating on monumental landscapes with many phases of engagement can reveal how these social processes unfold, offering a diachronic perspective on the imagination of the past under different historical conditions. In studying these archaeological contexts of material engagement, this study provides novel insight on the role of the past in group formation and the maintenance of social difference. These issues are particularly relevant today, when political and social movements make ample use of symbols of pasts to claim legitimacy and cultural value. This research also establishes a framework for critical engagement with local heritage. It solicits input from local residents and visitors to the research sites and incorporates this input into the dataset. A version of the resulting composite dataset will be made openly available online for continued public engagement and contribution, benefiting both local stakeholders and the research community.Three study areas that each encompass a variety of monuments, settlements, and other archaeological features that show evidence of successive phases of reuse, re-occupation, modification, or other kinds of engagement have been identified. The investigators hypothesize that these landscapes constituted the material arenas in which identities were constructed in the early historic period, offering the material remains of prehistoric occupants as a resource in these constructions. The doctoral student seeks to understand whether there are distinct patterns in the ways these landscapes are reused through time, and if certain features or monuments from one period are more likely to be incorporated into the living landscape of another. Such patterns lend insight into the ways the relevant pasts were imagined to related to the early historic people who interacted with them. Drone-based aerial photography, used to produce high-resolution imagery and topographic models, serves alongside pedestrian survey as the primary means of data collection to apprehend spatial relationships within these complex landscapes. GIS-based statistical analysis of these data focuses on the ways contrasts between groups were created in these patterns of landscape reuse. The researchers are additionally excavating a cairn feature of prehistoric origin which may have been taken up as a salient cultural boundary marker in the early historic period. This excavation will allow the researchers to assess the nature of this feature and to attain radiocarbon dates for its multiple phases of use and possible modifications.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.