Transformation in the Era of the Atlantic World: The Central Region Project, Coastal Ghana

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，雪城大学麦克斯韦公民与公共事务学院的Christopher R. DeCorse博士和研究生将在未来四年在加纳沿海进行实地考察。该项目将考察从公元500年到19世纪非洲社会的社会文化转型，特别强调大西洋世界时代的贸易、社会组织和技术变革。该项目以考古记录为重点，采用整体、跨学科的视角，将文献来源和口头传统与从考古遗址获得的数据结合起来。研究将考察欧洲大西洋贸易的增长，以及主导加纳海岸贸易的非洲政治的出现、扩张和衰落。虽然这些发展中有一些被记录在书面记录中，但这些记录大多是由欧洲作家提供的，它们对远离沿海贸易转口的更广阔腹地的非洲社会提供了有限的了解。这个项目的智力价值在于范围和重点不同的几个领域。具体来说，它将通过定居模式、遗址密度和人工制品库存的变化来研究主导贸易的非洲政治的兴起、扩张和衰落。对该区域一些主要欧洲贸易港口的年代久远的贸易材料的研究将有助于现场年表以及对经济变革的性质和后果的审查。来自欧洲贸易驿站的数据也将让我们深入了解居住在沿海地区的欧洲商人的小飞地内的生活方式。虽然目前有一些个别地点的考古数据，但该项目将提供对该区域的第一次全面调查，而且确实是在加纳进行的最全面的区域调查之一。因此，获得的关于遗址分布、当地工业和贸易材料的信息将为该地区的文化历史提供一个持久的框架，以及对该地区所处的更广泛的社会文化变化的理解。该研究项目还与考古方法和理论有更广泛的关系，特别是在研究世界其他地区的复杂性和文化联系方面。对西非沿海政治的考察将提供对复杂性及其考古感知的不同性质的见解。在这样做的过程中，它将有助于解决有关复杂社会的性质和长途贸易在国家形成中的作用的更广泛的理论问题。利用更多复杂的层次模型，这项工作将说明社会政治形成不是一个简单、统一的过程，而是一个根据当地环境而有很大差异的过程。陆地遗址的调查，整合了多种证据线，在其他因植被茂密而阻碍考古调查的地区也有应用。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Christopher R. DeCorse and graduate students from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University will conduct fieldwork in coastal Ghana over the next four years. The project will examine sociocultural transformations in African societies from about A.D. 500 though the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on trade, social organization, and technological change during the era of the Atlantic World. Focusing on the archaeological record, the project takes a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective that will integrate documentary sources and oral traditions with data obtained from archaeological sites. Research will examine the growth of the European Atlantic trade and the emergence, expansion, and decline of the African polities that dominated the trade on the Ghanaian coast. While some of these developments are recorded in written records, these accounts were mostly provided by European writers and they provide limited insight into the African societies of the wider hinterland located away from the coastal trading entrepots. The intellectual merit of this project lies in several areas differing in scope and emphasis. Specifically, it will examine the emergence, expansion, and decline of the African polities that dominated the trade though changes in settlement patterning, site densities, and artifact inventories. Site chronologies, and examination of the nature and consequences of economic transformations, will be aided by the study of well-dated trade materials from some of the region's principal European trade ports. Data from European trade posts will also afford insight into lifeways within the small enclaves of European traders that lived on the coast. Although archaeological data on some individual sites are currently available, the project will provide the first comprehensive survey of the region and, indeed, be one of the most comprehensive regional surveys undertaken in Ghana. The information obtained on site distributions, local industries, and trade materials will thus provide a lasting framework for the region's culture history, as well as an understanding of the wider socio-cultural changes of which the region was part.The research project also has broader relevance to archeological method and theory, particularly with regard to the examination of complexity and culture contact in other world areas. Examination of the coastal polities of West Africa will provide insight into the varied nature of complexity and its archaeological perception. In doing so it will help to address broader theoretical concerns regarding the nature of complex societies and the role of long distance trade in state formation. Drawing on more heterarchical models of complexity, the work will illustrate that socio-political formation is not a simple, uniform process, but one that varies greatly depending on local contexts. The survey of terrestrial sites, integrating multiple lines of evidence, has applications in other areas where archaeological survey is hampered by thick vegetation.