Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Social Dynamics Of Coalescence

这个项目考察了个人之间的关系如何有助于或削弱整个群体的集体行动能力。如何以及为什么一群人走到一起，实现共同的目标，这是当代社会科学中的一个关键问题。在这项研究中，学者们经常关注人们相互联系的两种方式：1)通过直接的、面对面的互动(例如，对话、贸易)；2)通过分享与相同抽象概念的联系(例如，认同为“美国人”)。当一个群体的成员彼此分享这两种类型的关系时，他们更有可能动员起来实现共同的目标。到目前为止，关于这一主题的学术主要集中在当代背景下，在一些已经具有社会凝聚力的较大人口部分(即，一个国家内的社会运动)中，集体行动是如何产生的。然而，社会凝聚力在许多人类社会中发展，并在小群体或大群体中发展。考古学特别适合对这一文献做出贡献，因为它可以提供长期的案例研究，包括当代或历史例子中没有代表的各种人类社会。该项目关注较小规模史前社会中人与人之间关系的长期变化，为社会凝聚力的发展提供了一个新的视角。这些工作对于理解社会凝聚力如何发展(或为什么)发展(或不发展)，它有时如何和为什么持续，以及经历这种戏剧性社会变化的人的经历是至关重要的。这项研究考察了融合时期个人和群体关系的变化，融合是指以前分开的人或团体聚集在一起，形成一个具有社会凝聚力和持久的社区的过程。来自四个祖传的温达特(易洛魁)村庄的考古数据，这些村庄在150年的时间里(公元前1400-1550年)先后被同一社区占领。在今天的加拿大安大略省，就社会凝聚力如何发展和维持提供了一个长期的、社区内的视角。该地区以前的学术研究记录了村庄规划的变化，从容纳数百人的较小、分散的社区到空间上整合的大型地幔遗址，这是合并的顶峰。这个项目开发了一种研究社会凝聚力发展的新方法，利用一个独特的理论框架，从现有的成熟方法中获得新的见解。制作陶器和管子的技术指标为直接的人际互动提供了证据，而陶器、管子和装饰品的设计和装饰则揭示了抽象的、共享的联系。通过考虑这些特征的空间模式，将在每个社区内确定人与人之间不断变化的个人和群体关系。在每个连续的群落中，这些模式的不同将揭示在融合期间人与人之间关系的变化。

This project examines how relationships among individuals can contribute to or undermine the ability of entire groups to act collectively. How and why groups of people come together and achieve common goals is a key question in contemporary social science. In this research, scholars often focus on two ways that people relate with one another: 1) through direct, face-to-face interactions (e.g. conversation, trade); and 2) by sharing an association with the same abstract concept (e.g. identifying as an "American"). When members of a group share both of these types of relations with one another, they are more likely to mobilize to achieve shared goals. To date, scholarship on this topic has focused mostly on how collective action arises in contemporary settings among segments of a larger population that is already socially cohesive in some respects (i.e., social movement within a nation). However, social cohesion develops in many kinds of human societies, and among small or large groups of people. Archaeology is particularly well-suited to make a contribution to this literature because it can offer long term case studies including a variety of human societies that are not represented in contemporary or historical examples. This project focuses on long-term changes in relationships among people in a smaller-scale prehistoric society to provide a new perspective on the development of social cohesion. Such work is essential to understanding how and why social cohesion does (or does not) develop, how and why it is sometimes sustained, and the experiences of people who live through this type of dramatic social change.This research examines changing individual and group relations during a period of coalescence, a process by which previously separate people or groups come together to form a socially cohesive and long-lasting community. Archaeological data from four Ancestral Wendat (Iroquoian) villages that were successively occupied by the same community over a period of 150 years (1400-1550 C.E.) in what is today Ontario, Canada, provide a long term, intra-community perspective on how social cohesion develops and is sustained. Previous scholarship in this region documents the process of coalescence through changes in village plans from smaller, dispersed communities housing several hundred people to the large, and spatially integrated Mantle site, the culmination of coalescence. This project develops a new approach for studying the development of social cohesion, utilizing a unique theoretical framework to draw new insights from existing, well-established methods. Indicators of the techniques used to produce pottery and pipes provide evidence for direct, interpersonal interactions, while the design and decoration of pottery, pipes, and ornaments reveal abstract, shared connections. Changing individual and group relations among people will be identified within each community by considering the spatial patterns of these characteristics. Differences in these patterns in each sequential community will reveal changing relations among people over the period of coalescence.