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中研究了这样一个帝国的形成，这个遗址见证了从一个独立的城邦到一个朝贡城市的转变。从历史上看，古代领土帝国的扩张导致了这些定居点的物质文化和日常生活的深刻变化，而不管他们对帝国合并的抵制。现有的研究主要集中在这些地区帝国统治前后的证据上。然而，随着新的意识形态和帝国建设战略的到来，帝国前社会政治组织的痕迹往往被有意地抹去或改变。这使得人们很难理解社会是如何适应或抵制帝国主义的合并的。考古学可以通过观察持续的文化习俗，如礼拜场所、仪式和公共活动的背景来提供洞察力，从而看到文化传统的变化，并了解人们如何应对强加的外部意识形态和过去的统治。这项研究提供了当地民族如何维持、修改或改变其传统以服务于新的政治制度的见解，这对于理解土著社区如何应对当代外国的全球扩张是相关的。该团队为帝国扩张研究创造了新的比较方法，同时通过合作研究过程，包括解释、社区传播、遗址保护努力以及为考古学学生提供培训机会，加强了当前当地和土著社区与他们的考古遗产之间的关系。该团队将进行为期数年的努力，重点挖掘五个公共宗教和殡葬建筑群，如金字塔广场建筑群，可以追溯到帝国形成的关键窗口，使用殡葬分析，使用激光雷达，GPS和摄影测量进行精确测绘，以及几种测年方法，包括C14，考古磁力和骨胶原。将挖掘、绘图和实验室分析结合起来，可以对遗址进行更严格的年代测定，并提供新的证据，以了解帝国如何首先发展一个核心地区，然后向外扩张。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。

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.