Investigating Spatial Organization of Early Urban Life

对早期城市主义发展的主流解释集中在有权势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存在的中产阶级的代理潜力。这一观点与最近的研究结果形成了对比，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，该项目研究了非精英个体的行为是如何通过私人经济企业等活动共同塑造城市的。这些发现对于解决关于城市如何形成、维持和最终失败的开放性问题具有广泛的相关性。在描述的框架内，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观点来揭示城市中心地带城市化的时间或地理差异。该计划将来自不同国家和国际大学的研究人员与该地区的常驻专家和学生结合起来。该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，该团队还为该地区的文物专家和学生提供最新数字和科学考古方法的培训，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，并通过中佛罗里达大学图书馆存档。为了评估普通人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。密集的调查和挖掘居民区调查经济格局和社会分层。有针对性的研究阐明了大规模集中储存和生产的存在与否，从而了解精英在多大程度上干预了劳动和财富生产的组织。该倡议以额外的科学研究（生物考古、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的碎片——陶器、骨头、碳化的植物残骸和小型人工制品——转化为能够回答该项目有关社会差异和经济组织的研究问题的数据集。最后，地球物理团队将使用磁强计完成城市的大型地图，磁强计是一种非破坏性的技术，可以揭示地下建筑，生成城市城区、社区、街道和墙壁的快照。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。

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.