Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Social Adaptation In Cross Cultural Contexts

在古代和现代世界的不同背景下，对文化接触的研究对于理解政治轨迹以及种族和阶级认同的出现至关重要。为了重建这些现象是如何发展的，学者们越来越多地将考古学视为一种能够探索早期社会中文化接触对种族群体和社会不平等的长期影响的方法。这里描述的考古项目旨在研究其中一种情况：中美洲早期城市定居点时期的前古典时期（公元前1000年-公元250年）边境中心。该遗址位于新兴的玛雅文明和奥尔梅克文明之间的文化边界。通过展示边疆中心的不同社会阶层如何在结合和发展自己独特的实践的同时，不同程度地适应邻国的一些习俗，研究人员将展示边疆群体如何在努力保持和提高其社会地位的过程中，随着时间的推移灵活地融入外国的实践。这项研究与正在进行的历史和现代身份研究相关，并将有助于提高对当今前沿环境的理解。田野调查将由哈佛大学研究生Jeffrey Dobereiner进行，并将为他的博士论文提供数据。因此，这将促进他作为一名科学家的教育。由于与墨西哥学生的密切合作，该项目将加强美国和墨西哥之间的长期科学联系。作为几个新兴的前古典文化之间的边境社区，这些边境居民所做的决定为探索非本地连接如何以不同方式影响古代中美洲社会的不同部分提供了重要的数据集。在整个遗址中，人们发现了独特的建筑、墓葬和陶瓷，它们代表了几个不同的文化群体，同时还发现了各种进口商品的来源，如海贝壳和黑曜石。虽然这一证据表明，遗址居民在保持自己的独立身份的同时，与前古典时期中美洲的各种文化潮流联系在一起，但这种独立的机制尚不清楚。通过对不同社会阶层的家庭进行实地调查，研究人员将探讨精英还是平民是控制这些外国做法如何以及何时被采用、拒绝和修改的主要行为者。该项目位于墨西哥恰帕斯州Rancho Búfalo，将使用实地工作、实验室分析和化学技术来证明是谁在调节这些变化的适应，以及外国习俗首先到达的社会阶层。通过重构该地区的人们如何以不同的方式整合这些习俗来协商他们脆弱的社会地位，最终的结果将为更广泛的文化接触和边疆人民的研究提供一个案例研究。

In diverse contexts of the ancient and modern worlds, the study of culture contact has proven critical to understanding political trajectories and the emergence of ethnic and class identity. To reconstruct how these phenomena developed, scholars have increasingly looked to archaeology as a methodology capable of exploring the long-term impact of culture contact on ethnic groupings and social inequality in early societies. The archaeological project described here had been designed to study one of these contexts: a Preclassic (1000 BC - AD 250) borderland center from the time of Mesoamerica's early urban settlements. The site was located on the cultural frontier between the emergent Maya and Olmec civilizations. By demonstrating how different social classes in this frontier center variably adapted some customs from their neighbors while combining and developing unique practices of their own, the researchers will demonstrate how borderland groups can flexibly integrate foreign practices through time as they work to maintain and improve their social position. This research is relevant to ongoing studies of both historic and modern-day identity and will help improve understanding of frontier contexts today. The fieldwork will be conducted by Jeffrey Dobereiner, a Harvard University graduate student, and will provide data for his doctoral dissertation. Thus it will further his education as a scientist. Because of close collaboration with Mexican students the project will strengthen long term scientific ties between the US and Mexico.As a frontier community between several emergent Preclassic cultures, the decisions made by these borderland residents provide a critical data set from which to explore how non-local connectivity affected different parts of ancient Mesoamerican society in different ways. Throughout the site, unique architecture, burials and ceramics that draw upon several separate cultural identity groups have been found, alongside a wide range of sources for imported goods such as marine shell and obsidian. While this evidence indicates that site residents articulated with varied cultural currents of Preclassic Mesoamerica while maintaining their own independent identity, the mechanism of this independence is unclear. Through field research in households at diverse social levels, the researchers will explore whether elites or commoners were the primary actors controlling how and when these foreign practices were adopted, rejected, and modified. This project at Rancho Búfalo, Chiapas, Mexico will use field work, laboratory analysis and chemical techniques to demonstrate who was mediating these variable adaptations, and in which social strata foreign customs first arrived. By reconstructing how the people of this region variably integrated these customs to negotiate their tenuous social position, the final results will provide a case-study in research on culture contact and frontier peoples more broadly.