Collaborative Research: Processes Which Guide Imperial Emergence

这个项目的目标是深入了解过去帝国社会的发展。 在这个合作项目中，研究人员在一个考古遗址上研究了这种帝国形成的出现，该遗址见证了从一个独立的城邦到一个附属城市的转变。从历史上看，古代领土帝国的扩张给这些定居点的物质文化和日常生活带来了深刻的变化，尽管他们对帝国的合并有抵制。现有的研究主要集中在这些地方的帝国控制前后的证据。然而，随着新的意识形态和帝国建设战略的到来，前帝国时代的社会政治组织痕迹往往被故意抹去或改变。这使得人们很难理解社会是如何适应或抵制帝国合并的。考古学可以通过观察持续的文化实践的背景来提供洞察力，例如崇拜场所，仪式和公共活动仍然没有中断，因此，可以看到文化传统的变化，并了解人们如何应对过去强加的外部意识形态和治理。这项研究提供了深入了解当地民族如何保持，修改或改变他们的传统，在新的政治制度的服务是相关的理解土著社区如何应对当代外国全球扩张。该团队为帝国扩张的研究产生了新的比较方法，同时通过包括解释，社区传播，以及为习姓学生提供培训机会。考察队将于为期一年的工作集中在挖掘五个公共宗教和丧葬建筑群，例如使用太平间分析，使用LiDAR，GPS和摄影测量精确绘图，以及包括C14，考古磁学，和骨胶原。结合挖掘、绘图和实验室分析，将为遗址提供更严格的年表，并带来新的证据，以了解帝国如何首先发展核心区域，然后向外扩张。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。

The goal of this project is to gain insight into the development of past imperial society. In this collaborative project researchers examine the emergence of one such imperial formation at an archaeological site that saw the transformation from an independent city-state into a tributary city. The expansion of ancient territorial empires has historically resulted in profound changes to the material culture and daily life of such settlements, regardless of their resistance to imperial incorporation. Existing research has predominantly focused on the evidence from the pre- and post-imperial control periods in such locations. However, pre-imperial traces of socio-political organization were often purposely erased or altered with the arrival of new ideologies and strategies of empire building. This makes it difficult to understand how societies adapted or resisted to imperial incorporation. Archaeology can provide insight by looking at contexts of continuous cultural practices like places of worship, rituals, and public activities that remained undisrupted, and thus, see variations on cultural traditions and learn how people responded to imposing external ideologies and governing in the past. This research provides insights into how local ethnicities maintained, modified, or altered their traditions in the service of new political systems are pertinent for comprehending how indigenous communities respond to contemporary foreign global expansions. The team generates new comparative methods for the study of empire expansion while strengthening the relationship between current local and indigenous communities and their archaeological heritage through a collaborative research process including interpretation, community dissemination, and efforts at site conservation as well as training opportunities for archaeology students.The team will conduct a multi-year effort focused on excavation of five public religious and funerary complexes such as pyramid-plaza compounds dating to the critical window of empire formation using mortuary analyses, precise mapping with LiDAR, GPS, and photogrammetry, and several dating methods including C14, archaeomagnetism, and bone collagen. Combining excavation, mapping and lab analyses will permit tighter chronology for the site and bring new lines of evidence to understand how the empire first developed a core-region and then expanded outwards.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.