Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Emergence Of Social Complexity In Small Scale Societies

社会和经济控制的发展导致了人类社会内部财富分配的不平等，这是理解人们如何生活的一个中心主题。由于考古学提供了过去社会的长期观点，以及它们如何随着时间的推移变得或多或少的社会复杂性，它非常适合提供对发生在人类群体中的这种现象的洞察。利用创新的研究技术，劳拉·斯旺泰克和亚利桑那州立大学的同事们将对这一过程进行研究，特别是专注于了解一些社会如何随着时间的推移变得更加复杂，另一些社会如何保持不变，还有一些社会在高复杂性和低复杂性之间循环。复杂性的变化，就像这里所描述的那样，在当今世界的一些地方可以看到，在几代人的时间里，社会和经济发生了变化。了解人们在日常生活中的所作所为导致了过去社会复杂性的变化，这将有助于我们深入了解这一过程是如何在当今不断变化的世界中发生的。这项研究考察了人们如何跨越时间和空间，通过这些联系形成社会经济关系，能够控制劳动力，保持远程贸易联系，并以不同的方式获得物质和思想资源，从而成为社会的富裕成员，而其他人则无法做到这一点。由于这些行为、社会网络或将人安排成复杂的社会结构，随着时间的推移，可以在考古记录中看到变化。这项研究将在地中海的塞浦路斯岛上进行，时间跨度为700年，在此期间，小村级社会表现出独特的社会复杂性变化特征。这项研究利用过去对聚落和墓地的发掘和考古调查的数据，将现代经济学中发展起来的方法与复杂系统和网络科学相结合，研究人们如何在社会中为财富和控制权而奋斗，创造不同的社会安排或网络结构。这种跨学科的研究将促进国际科学合作，并开发和测试新的方法，以了解人们如何施加社会和经济控制，塑造和重塑他们生活的社会。

The development of social and economic control that leads to inequalities in the distribution of wealth within human societies has been a central theme in understanding how people live. Because archaeology provides a long-term view of past societies, and how they become more or less socially complex through time, it is well suited to provide insight into this phenomenon that occurs within human groups. Using innovative research techniques, Laura Swantek along with colleagues at Arizona State University will undertake research on this process, specifically focusing on understanding how some societies become more complex over time, others do not change, and still others cycle between high and low levels of complexity. Changes in complexity, such as those described here, can be seen today in parts of the world where social and economic changes occur within generations. Understanding what people did in their everyday lives that cause changes in social complexity in the past, will provide insight into how this process occurs today across our changing world. This research examines how people form socio-economic relationships through time and across space and through these connections are able to exert control of labor, maintain long-distance trade contacts, and differentially access material and ideological resources and as a result become wealthy members of society while others cannot. As a result of these kinds of actions, social networks, or the arrangements of people into complex social structures, change over time can be seen in the archaeological record. This research will be conducted on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus during a 700 year period during which small village level societies exhibited unique characteristics of changes in social complexity. Using data from past excavations of settlements and cemeteries and archaeological surveys, this research will combine methods developed in modern economics, and complex systems and network science, to examine how different social arrangements or network configurations are created by people striving for wealth and control within societies. This interdisciplinary research will foster international scientific collaboration, as well as develop and test new methods for understanding how people exert social and economic control, shaping and reshaping the societies in which they live.