Investigating Spatial Organization of Early Urban Life

对早期城市化发展的主要解释集中在强大的精英创造和操纵城市的动机上，在很大程度上忽视了普通人或可能的中产阶级的代理潜力。这一观点与最近的学术研究形成了鲜明对比，后者认为城市化是自上而下和自下而上过程复杂相互作用的结果。为了解决这种不平衡，本项目调查了非精英个人的行动如何通过私人经济企业等活动聚集起来塑造城市。这些发现与解决城市如何形成、维持和最终失败的公开问题具有广泛的相关性。在所描述的框架内，该团队调查了一个早期的城墙城市。这项研究有可能通过提供一个整体的视角来揭示城市中心地带城市化之间的时间或地理变异。该倡议将来自国内和国际各大学的研究人员与驻地专家和该网站所在地区的学生结合起来。这项合作为早期职业学者提供了博士研究和专业发展所需的数据集。此外，该团队通过提供考古学最新数字和科学方法的培训，增强该地区遗产专业人员和学生的能力，从而改善科学基础设施，提高未来研究的能力。项目数据通过Open Context在线共享，并通过中央佛罗里达大学图书馆存档。为了评估日常生活中的人们在古代城市发展中所扮演的角色，研究人员严格评估了考古记录中的财富，健康和饮食模式。对住宅区的深入调查和挖掘研究了经济模式和社会分层。有针对性的研究澄清了大规模集中储存和生产的存在与否，以了解精英干预劳动和财富生产组织的程度。该倡议以额外的科学研究（生物考古学、稳定同位素和成分分析）补充实地研究，以评估所有社会经济阶层的人如何通过商业和消费活动表达决策。实验室研究将日常生活中的碎屑陶器、骨头、植物残骸和小手工艺品转化为能够回答该项目关于社会差异和经济组织的研究问题的数据集。最后，一个地球物理学团队将使用磁力测量法完成一幅大型城市地图，这是一种非破坏性的技术，可以揭示地下建筑，生成城市的公民区，社区，街道和墙壁的快照。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Dominant interpretations of the development of early examples of urbanism have centered the motivations of powerful elites in the creation and manipulation of cities, largely ignoring the agentive potential of everyday people or a possible middle class. This perspective contrasts with recent scholarship suggesting that urbanism results from a complex interplay of top-down and bottom-up processes. To address this imbalance, this project investigates how the actions of non-elite individuals aggregate to shape cities through activities like private economic enterprise. Such findings are broadly relevant to resolving open questions about how cities are formed, sustained, and eventually fail. Within the described framework, the team investigates an early walled city. The research has the potential to reveal temporal or geographical variability among urbanisms in the heartland of cities by providing a holistic view. The initiative integrates researchers from various national and international universities with resident specialists and students from the site's region. The collaboration affords early career scholars with the datasets needed for doctoral research and professional advancement. Furthermore, the team empowers heritage professionals and students in the region by providing training in the latest digital and scientific methods in archaeology, thereby improving scientific infrastructure and increasing capacity for future research. Project data is shared online through Open Context and archived through the University of Central Florida Library.To evaluate the role that everyday people played in the development of ancient cities, the researchers rigorously evaluate patterns of wealth, health, and diet in the archaeological record. Intensive surveys and excavations of residential districts investigate economic patterning and social stratification. Targeted studies clarify the presence or absence of large-scale, centralized storage and production, towards understanding the extent to which elites intervened in the organization of labor and wealth production. The initiative complements field research with additional scientific studies (bioarchaeological, stable isotope, and compositional analyses) to assess how people of all socio-economic levels expressed decision-making through commercial and consumer activities. Laboratory studies transform the detritus of everyday life—pottery, bone, carbonized plant remains, and small artifacts—into datasets capable of answering the project’s research questions about social differences and economic organization. Finally, a geophysics team will complete a large map of the city using magnetometry, a non-destructive technique that reveals subsurface architecture, generating a snapshot of the city’s civic districts, neighborhoods, streets, and walls.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.