Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role of History in Ethnic Identity Formation

这项研究的目的是了解一个植根于过去并在今天仍然非常重要的种族的创建，即在奥斯曼帝国控制欧洲领土期间建立的巴尔干穆斯林身份。在许多欧洲历史记载中，奥斯曼帝国被描绘成残忍的外国侵略者。近几十年来，这些伊斯兰社区的后裔在某些地区遭受了暴力、不利的政治政策，在以基督教为主的欧洲，他们经常被称为“其他人”。通常的看法是，这些群体并不是起源于他们今天占据的土地。然而，这一概念受到了欧洲基督徒大规模皈依伊斯兰教的历史记载的质疑，表明这些社区实际上可能与奥斯曼帝国欧洲领土上仍然信奉基督教的社区密切相关。总体而言，族裔和身份问题是极其重要的考虑因素，在过去和现在都具有深远的社会和政治后果。虽然通常被认为是由遗传学定义的，但种族和身份实际上是人类群体的动态、流动和变化的方面。现代族群的确立或正当性往往可以追溯到过去的一群人，这使得考古学成为一门能够研究这些现象的学科。了解在东南欧创建巴尔干穆斯林社区的过程和人，对于公众理解和接受今天这些社会中的宗教异质性非常重要。凯瑟琳·格鲁恩·艾伦和他的同事们将调查奥斯曼帝国欧洲领土腹地的奥斯曼帝国军事社区的构成，目的是更好地了解该地区许多现代穆斯林社区的后裔的生物和祖先背景。该项目将利用三个以前由伊斯兰帝国统治领土的国家(罗马尼亚、匈牙利和克罗地亚)的奥斯曼帝国驻军城镇的考古记录，重点放在一个基本上未得到充分利用的考古数据来源--以前在区域博物馆挖掘和储存的人类骨骼。要了解奥斯曼族人的身份以及他们与当地社区的相似或不同之处，将使用两项既定的技术：生物距离分析和锶同位素分析。第一，生物距离，需要收集大量在人类骨骼上发现的公制和非公制特征。众所周知，这些生物学特征受到遗传学的影响，并在群体认同感和亲缘关系方面提供信息。第二种方法是锶同位素分析，考古学家经常使用这种方法来追踪人类的活动，利用在人类牙齿中发现的同位素签名来提供个人出生地的信息。这些方法在区域范围内使用，将提供有关在东南欧创建奥斯曼帝国穆斯林社区和族裔的重要信息。他们将提供数据，说明来自安纳托利亚的个人移民或欧洲基督徒的皈依在多大程度上影响了这些群体的生物构成。

The goal of this research is to understand the creation of an ethnicity rooted in the past and still very important today, the Balkan Muslim identity established during the Ottoman Empire's control of European lands. In many European historical accounts, the Ottomans are depicted as brutal, foreign invaders. In recent decades, the descendants of these Islamic communities in some areas have been subjected to violence, adverse political policies, and a constant designation as "other" in predominately Christian Europe. The perception is often that these groups did not originate in the lands they occupy today. This notion is questioned however, by historical accounts of the mass conversion of European Christians to Islam, indicating that these communities may in actuality be closely related to those that remained Christian in the Ottoman's European territories. In general, questions of ethnicity and identity are extremely important considerations with far-reaching social and political consequences in both the past and the present. While often thought to be defined by genetics, ethnicity and identity are in actuality dynamic, fluid, and shifting aspects of human groups. The establishment or justification of a modern ethnicity is frequently traced to a group of people in the past, making archaeology a discipline capable of studying these phenomena. Understanding the processes and people who created the Balkan Muslim communities in Southeastern Europe is very important for public understanding and acceptance of the religious heterogeneity in these societies today.Ms. Kathryn Grow Allen and colleagues will investigate the makeup of Ottoman military communities in the hinterlands of the Ottoman Empire's European territory with an aim to better understand the biological and ancestral background of the people from which many modern Muslim communities in the region are descended. The project will utilize the archaeological record of Ottoman garrison towns from three countries with territory formerly ruled by the Islamic empire (Romania, Hungary and Croatia) and focus on a largely under-utilized source of archaeological data-human skeletons previously excavated and stored in regional museums. Understanding the Ottoman group identity and how similar or distinct they were from the local communities will be done using two established techniques: a biodistance analysis and strontium isotope analysis. The first, biodistance, requires the collection of a large number of metric and non-metric traits found on human bones. These biological traits are known to be influenced by genetics and informative on group identity and relatedness. The second method, strontium isotope analysis, is frequently employed by archaeologists to trace the movement of people utilizing isotopic signatures found in human teeth informative of an individual's birthplace. These methods, employed on a regional scale, will provide important information regarding the creation of the Ottoman Muslim communities and ethnicity in Southeastern Europe. They will deliver data regarding the extent to which the immigration of individuals from Anatolia or the conversion of European Christians influenced the biological makeup of these groups.