Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Social Organization And The Importance Of "Persistent Places"

在过去的60年里，越来越多的联邦立法明确涉及保护美洲土著文化资源。然而，尽管作出了这些努力，对公共土地上的传统文化财产- -对土著群体具有特殊意义的地方- -的管理仍然是一个有争议的问题。人类学家和美洲土著社区之间的当代合作表明，特定地点的重要性远远超出了它们的经济效用，随着时间的推移，一个特定的地方可能对多个群体和许多不同的原因都很重要。根据这些见解，本博士论文研究项目将通过对位于肯塔基州东北部的14个Adena（公元前500年至公元250年）遗址的案例研究，探索这种对地点的理解对过去景观使用动态的影响。这项研究的结果将有助于了解美国史前史上一个鲜为人知的时期，并通过更新现有的博物馆藏品来加强研究和教育的基础设施。结果还将对《美洲土著坟墓保护和遣返法》所要求的遣返进程产生影响。因此，该项目证明了考古研究对制定有关文化资源管理的联邦政策的持续相关性。为了探索过去景观使用的动态，该项目侧重于纪念碑的建造与建设者的领土行为之间的关系——这是考古研究中一个长期存在的范例。与从遗址的空间分布推断领土性不同，本研究采用了一种新颖的方法，通过评估以下两方面的变化来调查领土行为：(1)特定纪念碑是如何与之互动的；(2)与之互动的是谁。前者是通过调查共享实践的空间分布来评估的，这是由离散埋葬背景之间的殡葬行为的相似性所表明的。后者是通过量化在多个空间尺度上存在的生物变异的相对量来评估的。这是通过使用表型变异作为生物变异的代理测量，并通过收集和分析与各种颅和牙的度量和形态特征有关的数据来完成的。如果纪念碑具有领土功能，那么它们可以被嵌入相对稳定的社会结构中。换句话说，随着时间的推移，它们可能被同一个或多个社会群体使用，从而导致共享实践和生物多样性的空间聚集。或者，正如对当代土著人民的研究表明的那样，纪念碑可能被多个社会群体以多种方式使用。在这种情况下，纪念碑不太可能具有领土功能，相反，可以预期它们已经嵌入了一系列不断变化的社会结构中。这种情况将导致在地域情景中预期的共同做法和生物变异的空间聚集性丧失。这项研究的结果将与上面给出的期望进行比较，以提供对过去景观使用的细致评估。

Over the past sixty years, a growing body of federal legislation has been explicitly concerned with the preservation of Native American cultural resources. Yet, despite these efforts, the management of traditional cultural properties - places of special significance to indigenous groups - on public lands remains a contentious issue. Contemporary collaborations between anthropologists and Native American communities have demonstrated that the importance of particular locations extends far beyond their economic utility and that, over time, a given place may be important to multiple groups and for many different reasons. Drawing on these insights, this doctoral dissertation research project will explore the implications that such an understanding of place has for the dynamics of landscape use in the past through a case study of 14 Adena (c. 500 BC - AD 250) sites located in northeastern Kentucky. The results of this research will contribute to understanding of a poorly understood period in American prehistory as well as enhance the infrastructure for research and education by updating existing museum collections. Results will also have implications for the repatriation process required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Consequently, this project demonstrates the continuing relevance that archaeological research has for the development of federal policy concerning cultural resources management.To explore the dynamics of landscape use in the past, this project focuses on the relationship between the construction of monuments and territorial behavior on the part of their builders - a long-standing paradigm within archaeological research. Rather than inferring territoriality from the spatial distribution of sites, this research takes a novel approach to investigating territorial behavior by evaluating change over time in both (1) how specific monuments were engaged with and (2) who was engaging with them. The former is assessed by investigating the spatial distribution of shared practices as indicated by similarities in mortuary behavior between discrete burial contexts. The latter is assessed by quantifying the relative amounts of biological variability present at multiple spatial scales. This is accomplished by using phenotypic variance as a proxy measure for biological variability and by collecting and analyzing data pertaining to a variety of cranial and dental metric and morphological traits. If monuments served a territorial function, they can be expected to have been embedded within relatively stable social configurations. In other words, they would have been used by the same social group or groups over time, resulting in spatial clustering of both shared practices and biological variability. Alternatively, as work with contemporary indigenous peoples suggests, monuments may have been engaged with by multiple social groups and in multiple ways. In this case, monuments are unlikely to have served a territorial function and, instead, can be expected to have been embedded within a sequence of changing social configurations. This situation would result in the loss of the spatial clustering of shared practices and biological variability that is expected within a territorial scenario. The results of this research will be compared to the expectations given above to provide a nuanced evaluation of past landscape use.