Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ychsma Community Construction: Dietary Practices, Rituals and Group Identity

社区是通过不同个体成员的社会实践和互动而创造的动态现象。然而，古代社区往往被描绘成与特定考古遗址联系在一起的内部统一的社会群体。在Kelly Knudson博士的监督下，Sara Marsteller将利用与特定个人相关的社会实践的生物考古证据，调查公元900-1470年期间秘鲁中部海岸Ychsma社会内社区身份形成的复杂性。纵观当今世界，社区既充当决策实体，又影响个体成员的行为。鉴于它们的核心作用，它们构成了科学研究的重要对象。具体地说，该研究将考察社区形成的三个重要方面：(1)地理空间和象征性社区边界之间的关系；(2)社区内不同亚群对社区边界形成的影响；以及(3)外部人士对社区边界的协商。以秘鲁的Ychsma协会为例，马斯特勒的分析将重点放在饮食习俗和殡仪仪式上，这些习俗可能被用来表示Ychsma社区的身份。她将通过对牙病和牙齿磨损模式的骨学分析，以及对考古人类组织样本中稳定的碳和氮同位素的化学分析，重建饮食习惯。马斯特勒女士将通过分析遗体处理和定位、墓葬物品和结构以及埋葬地点来重建与特定个人相关的殡仪仪式。目前对社区的考古研究认为，个人成员对过去社区的创建和改造负有责任。马斯特勒女士的项目将以这项研究为基础，展示如何通过人类骨骼遗骸及其相关埋葬背景的生物考古数据来揭示社区成员的不同行为。在地区一级，该项目力求对中期后期(公元900-1470年)的Ychsma社会关系发展一个更全面的观点。这样的视角将进一步了解印加帝国扩张和西班牙殖民带来的后来社会政治变化对当地土著群体的影响程度。此外，Marsteller女士的研究将考察Ychsma普通人在社会政治互动中的作用，从而补充之前对Ychsma社会组织的调查，这些调查侧重于与Ychsma精英相关的民族历史和考古数据。马斯特勒的项目将产生超出其研究目标的更广泛的影响。这项研究将产生和合成多种类型的生物考古数据，供人类学团体使用。所有结果将通过英文和西班牙文出版物在同行评议的期刊上公布，并在网上供公众使用。此外，一名秘鲁本科生和两名北美本科生将接受生物考古领域或实验室方法的研究经验和动手培训，以用于他们未来的职业生涯。最后，该项目将启动秘鲁两个机构--圣马科斯国立大学市长和秘鲁国家历史博物馆--和亚利桑那州立大学的研究人员之间的国际合作。

Communities are dynamic phenomena created through the social practices and interactions of diverse individual members. Ancient communities, however, often are portrayed as internally uniform social groups linked to specific archaeological sites. Under the supervision of Dr. Kelly Knudson, Sara Marsteller will use bioarchaeological evidence of social practices associated with specific individuals to investigate the complexities of community identity formation within the Ychsma society of the central Peruvian coast during the period between AD 900-1470. Across the world today communities both act as decision making entities and serve to influence individual member's behavior. Given their central role they constitute an important object for scientific study. This proposed research will provide insight how such entities can be understood in a cross cultural perspective and how they developed over time.Specifically, the project will examine three important aspects of community formation: (1) the relationship between geographic space and symbolic community boundaries, (2) the influence of diverse subgroups within the community on community boundary formation, and (3) the negotiation of community boundaries by outsiders. Using the Ychsma society of Peru as a case study, Ms. Marsteller's analyses will focus on dietary practices and mortuary rituals as social practices potentially used to signify Ychsma community identity. She will reconstruct dietary practices through osteological analyses of patterns of dental disease and tooth wear and through chemical analyses of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from archaeological human tissue samples. Ms. Marsteller will reconstruct mortuary rituals associated with specific individuals through the analysis of body treatment and positioning, grave goods and structure, and burial location.Current archaeological research on communities argues that individual members were responsible for the creation and transformation of past communities. Ms. Marsteller's project will build on this research to demonstrate how diverse community members' actions can be revealed with bioarchaeological data from human skeletal remains and their associated burial contexts. At a regional level, the project seeks to develop a more holistic perspective of Ychsma social relationships during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1470). Such a perspective will further understanding of the degree to which later sociopolitical changes brought about by Inka imperial expansion and Spanish colonization impacted local indigenous groups. Additionally, Ms. Marsteller's study will examine the role of Ychsma commoners in sociopolitical interactions, and thus will complement previous investigations of Ychsma social organization that focus on ethnohistoric and archaeological data associated with the Ychsma elite.Ms. Marsteller's project will have broader impacts beyond its research goals. The research will generate and synthesize multiple types of bioarchaeological data for use by the anthropological community. All results will be made available via English and Spanish publications in peer-reviewed journals and online for public use. In addition, one Peruvian and two North American undergraduate students will receive research experience and hands-on training in bioarchaeological field or laboratory methods for use in their future careers. Finally, the project will initiate international collaborations among researchers from two Peruvian institutions--the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Arqueología e Historia del Peru--and Arizona State University.