Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Resilience In Adaptation To Social Change

肯塔基大学的Gavin R.Davies和危地马拉山谷大学的同事将研究危地马拉西南部玛雅高地的农村社区如何应对从古典到后古典过渡(约公元800-1200年)的多重挑战。受最近关于环境和全球化的研究的启发，这项研究以社区复原力和生活质量的概念为基础，这些概念对于比较过去和现在的社会动态以及促进跨学科研究具有重大潜力。长期以来，这一时期一直是玛雅低地研究的重要焦点，在邻近的高地仍然笼罩在神秘之中，严重破坏了对主要社会和政治实体的起源和发展的理解。然而，来自西南高地的初步数据表明，低地的崩塌和邻近太平洋海岸的危机可能促使该地区的政治精英努力实现更大的一体化、城市化和复杂性。然而，由于缺乏农村住区数据，目前无法确定农村家庭和社区如何应对这一转变或受到这一转变的影响。为了弥补这一漏洞，目前的调查将产生阿蒂特兰湖地区西岸所有可居住部分的基线沉降和年表数据。该项目是肯塔基大学和危地马拉山谷大学之间的首次合作，预计将为这两个机构未来的合作铺平道路，并为人类学和相关学科的本科生和研究生创造未来的培训和研究机会。结合密集的侦察调查，结合对国内和非国内地点的测试挖掘，调查人员将识别对广泛水平变化的模式反应，并描绘社区财富、身份和韧性的变化。认识到所有适应都需要付出代价或权衡取舍，本研究的主要假设是，危机过后最繁荣的社区是那些通过屈从于中央权力机构的崛起而牺牲社区自治和身份以换取安全的社区。

Gavin R. Davies of the University of Kentucky together with associates from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala will investigate how rural communities in the southwestern Maya highlands in Guatemala negotiated the multiple challenges of the Classic to Postclassic Transition (c. 800-1200 AD). Inspired by recent research on the environment and globalization, this research is grounded in notions of community resilience and quality of life, concepts that have significant potential for the comparison of past and present social dynamics and for facilitating cross-disciplinary research. Long an important focus of studies in the Maya Lowlands, this period remains shrouded in mystery in the neighboring highlands, critically undermining understanding of the origins and development of the major social and political entities. Preliminary data from the southwestern highlands, however, indicates that collapse in the lowlands and crisis in the adjacent Pacific Coast may have galvanized political elites in this area to strive for greater integration, urbanism and complexity. However, a lack of rural settlement data means that it is currently impossible to determine how rural households and communities responded to, or were affected by, this transformation. Addressing this lacuna, the current investigations will generate baseline settlement and chronological data for all habitable portions of the western shore of Lake Atitlan region. Representing the first collaboration between the University of Kentucky and the Universidad Del Valle de Guatemala, this project is expected to pave the way for future collaborations between these two institutions and to generate future training and research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology and related disciplines. It will also provide data for Mr. Davies doctoral dissertation.Combining intensive reconnaissance survey, with the test excavation of domestic and non-domestic locales, the investigators will identify patterned responses to broad-level changes and delineate changes in community wealth, identity and resilience. Recognizing that all adaptations entail a cost or trade-off, the primary hypothesis of this research is that the communities that were most prosperous in the aftermath of the crisis were those that traded community autonomy and identity for security by submitting to the rising power of a centralized authority.