Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Status Differentiation in Mobile Traditional Societies

这个考古项目旨在研究游牧民族中不平等、特权和精英地位的早期兴起。 这项研究与人类学调查有关，即个人和群体之间的社会分化是如何在我们物种的历史上出现的，以及这些最早的社会结构是如何为现代社会中出现的极端不平等树立先例的。 此外，这项研究的重点是那些随牲畜季节性迁移的人的社区，根据人类学理论，这些人不会在当地表现出不平等和社会等级。 相反，游牧民一般生活在边缘环境中，其生存系统容易受到风险的影响，因此，人们期望他们形成广泛分享资源和信息的企业社区。 这些期望引发了人们对青铜时代蒙古大草原上被称为“可汗”的巨大石碑的质疑，许多研究人员将其归因于游牧“精英”酋长和战士的个人扩张。 这项研究旨在调查不平等和社会分化的程度可能是负责这些令人印象深刻的劳动密集型纪念碑的建设，或者，另一方面，这些结构是否是建立作为一种方式，以创造社区团结和凝聚力。 这些问题关系到对当今社会不平等现象的理解，以及这种差异应被视为社会的“自然”表现，还是人类根据几千年前的社会先例构建的制度。 该项目还将为美国和蒙古学生提供考古人类学的实地方法和研究策略培训。为了验证对蒙古青铜时代游牧民族建造纪念碑的不同解释，Tarvagatai项目对纪念碑和居住地进行了系统的行人调查和挖掘。 对动物骨骼、遗址规模、青铜冶金、同位素特征和高分辨率放射性碳年代学的分析将有助于考古学家区分“基里苏尔”遗迹建造的不同假设。 此外，Tarvagatai研究将开发和采用新的激光扫描方法来分析古代马头骨的骨骼变形，以确定骑马和牵引是否可能有助于游牧民族之间的早期社会分化。 这些新颖的方法不仅有助于考古学家解释马葬在纪念性建筑中的存在，还有助于解开人类何时开始在蒙古草原骑马的谜团。

This archaeological project is designed to study the early rise of inequality, privilege, and elite standing among nomadic pastoral populations. This research is pertinent to the anthropological investigation of how social differentiation between individuals and groups came about in the history of our species and how these earliest social structures may have set precedents for the kinds of extreme inequalities seen in modern day societies. Moreover, the research focuses on communities of people who moved seasonally with their herd animals and, according to anthropological theories, are not expected to indigenously manifest inequality and social hierarchy. Rather, pastoral nomads generally live in marginal environments with risk-prone subsistence systems and therefore are expected to form corporate communities that share resources and information broadly. These expectations raise questions about the massive stone monuments, known as "khirigsuurs," that mark the Mongolian steppe during the Bronze Age and which many researchers have attributed to the personal aggrandizement of nomadic "elite" chiefs and warriors. This study seeks to investigate the degree to which inequality and social differentiation may have been responsible for the building of these impressive labor intensive monuments or, on the other hand, whether these structures were built as a way to create community solidarity and cohesion. These issues are pertinent to the understanding of social inequality today and whether such differentiation should be seen as a "natural" expression of society or as systems constructed by human beings based on social precedents from many millennia ago. This project will also train US and Mongolian students in field methods and research strategies for archaeological anthropology.In order to test the different explanations for monument building among Bronze Age nomads in Mongolia, the Tarvagatai Project employs systematic pedestrian survey and excavation of monument and habitation sites. Analysis of animal bones, site sizes, bronze metallurgy, isotopic signatures, and high resolution radiocarbon chronology will help archaeologists to differentiate between different hypotheses for the construction of "khirigsuur" monuments. In addition, the Tarvagatai research will develop and employ new laser scanning methods for the analysis of skeletal deformations in ancient horse skulls in order to determine whether horse riding and traction may have contributed to early social differentiation among nomads. These novel methods will not only help archaeologists to explain the presence of horse burials in monumental construction but will also help to solve the mystery of when human beings first began riding horses on the Mongolian steppe.