Households and the Emergence of the Moundville Polity

在国家科学的支持下，玛格丽特博士和约翰·斯卡利博士以及他们的合作者将在亚拉巴马中西部的黑武士山谷的一系列遗址进行两个考古研究季节。他们的工作将集中在出现，CA。公元1000年，密西西比社会建造了蒙德维尔的国家历史注册网站。大约在这个时候，美国南部、中西部和西南部的一些地区的群体经历了重大的文化转型。在此之前，人们以农业为生，生活在很小的、基本上平等的村庄群体中。很少有证据表明社会分层或继承的权利或特权，同样，也缺乏以纪念性建筑形式进行大规模合作活动的证据。然而，在蒙德维尔和其他许多地方，情况迅速发生了变化，社会变得等级分明，政治上集中化。这些变化涉及物质文化、经济结构、个人、家庭和更大的社会单位之间的关系以及人们看待自己、社会和整个世界的方式的重大转变。由于巨大的令人印象深刻的土丘，使该网站的名称，广泛的研究工作在过去的世纪产生了详细的图片政体和最高中心的增长在蒙德维尔。然而，对导致这种转变的过程了解得很少，这个问题构成了Scarrys博士研究的核心。考古队将在蒙德维尔附近的一个遗址进行考古挖掘，该遗址可追溯到前一时期。他们还将在蒙德维尔的早期（蒙德维尔I）社区以及分散的农村遗址进行挖掘，这些遗址也是后一时期的特征。由于家庭是适应的一个关键单位，该项目旨在收集关于家庭生计经济和手工艺生产、家庭之间财富和地位的变化、家庭之间的关系以及超家庭社会群体性质的信息。虽然北美史前社会没有达到正式的“文明”水平，但导致世界其他地区复杂性发展的相同过程也发生在这里，对蒙德维尔等遗址的研究可以为科学家提供社会发展如何随时间推移而发生的基本知识。这项研究将为美国史前史提供重要的新线索。它还将发挥重要的培训功能，并将为许多学生提供结构化的研究经验。

With National Science support, Drs Margaret and John Scarry and their collaborators will conduct two field seasons of archaeological research at a series of sites in the Black Warrior Valley in west central Alabama. Their work will focus on the emergence, ca. 1000 A,D, of Mississippian societies which constructed the National Historic Register site of Moundville. At approximately this time in a number of regions in the US South, Midwest and Southwest groups underwent a significant cultural transformation. Prior to that time, people subsisted by agriculture and lived in small, largely egalitarian village groups. There is very little evidence for social stratification or inherited rights or privileges and likewise evidence for large scale cooperative activities in the form of monumental structures is lacking. At Moundville and many other sites however the picture rapidly changed and societies became hierarchically organized and politically centralized. These changes involved significant shifts in material culture, in economic structures , in relationships among individuals, households and larger social units and in the ways people viewed themselves, their societies and the world at large. Because of the large imposing mounds which give the site its name, extensive research efforts over the past century have produced detailed pictures of the polity and of the growth of the paramount center at Moundville. However much less is understood about the process which led to this transformation and this issue forms the core of Drs. Scarrys' research. The team will conduct archaeological excavation at a site adjacent to Moundville which dates from the immediate preceding period. They will also excavated at an early phase (Moundville I) community in Moundville itself as well as dispersed rural sites which also characterized this latter time interval. Because families form a crucial unit of adaptation, the project is designed to collect information on household subsistence economies and craft production, on variation in wealth and status among households, on relationships among households and on the nature of supra-household social groupings. The team will also examine and synthesize relevant data collected in numerous past excavations.Although no North American prehistoric society reached the formal level of "civilization", the same processes which led to the development of complexity in other parts of the world occurred here as well and study of sites such as Moundville can provide scientists with fundamental knowledge of how social development occurs over time. This research will shed important new light on the prehistory of the United States. It will also play an important training function and will provide a structured research experience for many students.