Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Excavating Community and Identity in the Borderlands of Late Classic (A.D. 650-900) NW Honduras

长期以来，世界各地的考古研究都集中在古代民族的宏伟纪念碑、精美的艺术成就和宏大的政治戏剧上。这种强调往往是以对构成这些文化的各个民族的生活和经验的较小规模和更密切的了解为代价的。考虑古代人民如何看待和认同他们自己，以及他们社区内外的人，将为提高我们对过去和现在的个人和群体认同的人类学理解提供重要的一步。本研究项目探讨了洪都拉斯西北部拉斯卡诺斯古典晚期（公元650-900年）人民的社区身份及其在尺度上的物质表达问题。研究包括在Las Canoas考古遗址密集挖掘精英和非精英住宅以及行政/仪式建筑，并分析从这些建筑中回收的文物。这些信息将被研究，目的是寻找建筑空间的使用模式，以及生产、贸易和使用物质商品，如陶器。人类住区的设计和随着时间的推移对其造成的变化，使人们能够深入了解他们认为应该如何组织环境和体验社区。个人和家庭制造、收集、保存、展示、隐藏和/或丢弃的财产类型揭示了他们的价值、他们能够获得的东西以及他们为了获得这些东西会走多远。对古代建筑和人工制品组合的研究，包括陶器、石器、家庭垃圾、墓葬、特殊贮藏物和/或仪式沉积物，提供了一个视角，让人们了解一群人如何塑造、生活在他们的世界中，并赋予他们的世界意义——本质上是创造了他们的身份。拟议的研究将考虑建筑的布局、朝向和彼此之间的关系，以及人工制品（尤其是陶器）的类型和风格，作为个人和社区身份的指标或表达。从Las Canoas恢复的信息将根据这些想法进行分析，然后与周围地区同时期类似规模的遗址的信息进行比较。了解生活在Las Canoas的人们与晚期古典中美洲的社会、政治和经济等级制度的关系是这个项目的基本目标。然而，这项研究更广泛的目的是验证一个假设，即文化和种族等备受争议的人类学概念并不总是在人类生活的日常现实中发挥作用。相反，有人建议人们精心设计自己的身份以适应各种物质和象征需求，改变他们的联盟和从属关系以应对不断变化的压力和情况。这项研究旨在质疑我们关于不同民族和社区之间互动本质的未经检验的假设，以更好地理解人类行为。

Archaeological research around the globe has long been focused on the grand monuments, fine artistic achievements and sweeping political dramas of ancient peoples. This emphasis has often been adopted at the expense of a smaller scale, more intimate understanding of the lives and experiences of the individual peoples comprising those cultures. A consideration of how ancient peoples perceived and identified themselves with respect to those within and without their communities will provide an important step in improving our anthropological understanding of personal and group identity in both the past and present. This research project addresses issues of co mmunity identity and its material expression on range of scales among the Late Classic (650-900 A.D.) peoples of Las Canoas, NW Honduras. Research includes the intensive excavation of both elite and non-elite houses and administrative/ritual buildings at the archaeological site of Las Canoas, as well as analysis of artifacts recovered from those structures. This information will be studied with the aim of finding patterns in the use of built spaces and the production, trade, and use of material goods, such as pottery. The design of human settlements and the changes wrought on them over time lends insight into the ways people feel their environment should be organized and communities experienced. The types of possessions made, gathered, saved, displayed, hidden, and/or discarded by individuals and families reveals much about what they value, what they are able to acquire and to what lengths they will go to access such items. Studies of both ancient architecture and artifact assemblages including pottery, stone tools, domestic refuse, burials, special caches and/or ritual deposits provide a view into how a group of people shaped, lived in, and gave meaning to their world - in essence created their identities. The proposed research will consider the layout, orientation and relationships of buildings to one another, as well as the types and styles of artifacts (especially pottery), as indicators or expressions of individual and community identity. Information recovered from Las Canoas will be analyzed with these ideas in mind and then compared to that known from contemporaneous, similarly sized sites in the surrounding area. Understanding how the peoples living at Las Canoas related to the social, political, and economic hierarchy in Late Classic Mesoamerica are basic goals of this project. The broader aim of the research, however, is to test the hypothesis that much-debated anthropological concepts such as culture and ethnicity do not always play themselves out in the daily reality of human lives. Rather, it is proposed that peoples craft their identities to suit a variety of material and symbolic needs, shifting their alliances and affiliations in response to changing pressures and situations. This research is designed to question our often-untested assumptions about the nature of interaction between different peoples and communities in achieve a better understanding of human behavior.