Excavations and Geophysical Survey at the Early Historic City of Sisupalgarh, India

在国家科学基金会的支持下，莫妮卡·L·史密斯博士和一个来自美国和印度的同事团队将在印度古城西苏帕尔加尔进行三个考古季节的实地考察。这一保存完好的考古遗址可以追溯到公元前/公元早期的几个世纪，由一座面积超过一平方公里的城市核心区内的纪念性建筑组成，周围环绕着一堵至今仍高达9米的城墙。该小组此前在现场进行的测绘和侦察工作表明，除了领导层的证据外，这座城市还包括数千户普通家庭的遗骸。目前的项目将包括对遗址的选定区域进行挖掘，以了解这些家庭的组成以及人们为什么选择在城市地区定居。与许多关注城市起源的考古研究项目不同，我们的项目试图确定维持城市长期占领的经济和社会因素，以及普通家庭如何融入城市生活。挖掘还将产生一系列全面的放射性碳年代，以确定该遗址随着时间的推移的发展情况。这些测年方法将使我们能够测试Sisupalgarh是作为恒河流域城市化的顺序反应而发展的，还是城市化主要是局部发展的。该遗址迄今发现的文物具有压倒性的地方性特征，这表明当地发展的证据将支持新的城市化理论，这些理论表明，古代城市的繁荣是建立在强劲的当地经济而不是远程交换的基础上的。在挖掘的同时，该团队还将利用地下非破坏性测绘来追踪西苏帕尔加尔社区大小区域的建筑特征。社区是城市中的一个重要群体，但代表的区域太大，无法用传统的挖掘方法进行挖掘。我们将利用地球物理梯度测量和电阻率技术来追踪被挖掘住户周围地区的结构轮廓，目标是制作几公顷面积的建筑地图。这个项目代表着这些地下测绘技术在印度的开创性使用，也是对印度古城内整个社区的第一次大规模研究。这项研究的学术价值将是评估一座古城作为一种社会结构，所有社会阶层都参与其中，并提供一个有充分记录的南亚前现代都市主义案例，可以与其他考古已知地区进行比较。该研究项目的更广泛影响包括印度和美国研究人员和学生之间的重大国际合作；为印度和美国学生的论文和学位论文提供数据；对学生进行考古实地技术和分析方面的培训；以及为大学课堂和公开演讲提供资源。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Monica L. Smith and a team of colleagues from the United States and India will conduct three field seasons of archaeological research at the ancient city of Sisupalgarh, India. This well-preserved archaeological site, dating to the early centuries BC/AD, consists of monumental architecture within an urban core zone over one square kilometer in size surrounded by a rampart wall that still stands up to 9 meters tall. Previous mapping and reconnaissance work at the site carried out by this team shows that beyond evidence for leadership, the city also contains the remains of many thousands of ordinary households. The current project will consist of excavations of selected areas of the site to understand the composition of those households and why people chose to settle in an urban zone. In contrast to many archaeological research projects focused on urban origins, our project seeks to identify the economic and social factors that sustained long-term urban occupation, and how ordinary households integrated themselves into the life of the city. The excavations also will generate a comprehensive series of radiocarbon dates to identify the site's development over time. These dating methods will enable us to test whether Sisupalgarh developed as a sequential reaction to urbanism in the Ganges Valley, or whether urbanism was a predominantly local development. Evidence for local development, as is already suggested by the overwhelmingly local character of the artifacts thus far found at the site, would support new theories of urbanization that show ancient cities thriving on the basis of robust local economies rather than long-distance exchange.In conjunction with the excavations, the team also will utilize subsurface non-destructive mapping to trace architectural features in neighborhood-sized areas at Sisupalgarh. Neighborhoods are an important grouping in cities, but represent areas that are too large for conventional excavation methods. We will utilize the geophysical techniques of gradiometry and electrical resistivity to trace the outlines of structures in areas surrounding the excavated households, with the goal of producing architectural maps for areas several hectares in size. This project represents a pioneering use of these subsurface mapping techniques in India, and the first large-scale study of whole neighborhoods within an ancient Indian city. The intellectual merit of the research will be to evaluate an ancient city as a social construct in which all classes of society participate, and to provide a well-documented South Asian case of premodern urbanism that can be compared with other archaeologically known regions. The broader impacts of the research project include significant international collaboration between Indian and US researchers and students; provision of data for theses and dissertations for both Indian and US students; training of students in archaeological field techniques and analysis; and provision of resources for university classes and public presentations.