Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Interaction between Violence and Perception of Social Difference

基于身份的暴力-针对被认为是分歧的个人或群体的暴力-往往伴随着社会政治动荡时期。虽然越来越多的人类学和行为学研究表明，对社会差异的感知可以激发今天的大规模暴力事件，但很少有人从考古学角度研究这种基于身份的暴力。这可能是因为不同社会身份的微妙之处在过去很难解释。然而，生物考古方法非常适合以经验重建过去个人的社会身份，因为身份的许多方面，如年龄、性别或生物关系，都是建立在身体上的，而其他方面则通过行为在身体上留下痕迹，如饮食偏好或文化改变。这项研究将支持研究生和本科生的培训，并加强美国和墨西哥之间的国际研究伙伴关系和合作。此外，它将有助于更广泛的人类学理解大规模暴力事件是如何从特定的社会身份与复杂的社会迁移过程、人口变化和生物亲缘关系之间的相互作用中产生的。本项目结合生物地球化学和生物距离分析，重建了在墨西哥中部前西班牙时期的一个小神社遗址中埋葬的人祭受害者的居住历史和生物亲属关系。神社的历史可以追溯到上古时期（公元600-900年）。在墨西哥中部，这一时期的特点是主要区域中心Teotihuacán的衰落，是一个戏剧性的政治、社会和人口重组的时期。在这样一个动荡的社会政治环境中，个人的居住历史或亲属关系可能使他们成为仪式暴力的目标。这项研究将回答这样一个问题：个人社会身份的特定方面是如何使他们容易遭受仪式暴力的？对72个个体样本的牙齿和骨骼元素的生物地球化学分析将使该项目能够重建牺牲受害者的地理起源，而生物距离分析将允许重建牺牲受害者之间的遗传关系模式，以及牺牲受害者与墨西哥中部当代人口之间的关系

Identity-based violence - violence directed at individuals or groups perceived as divergent - often accompanies periods of socio-political upheaval. While a growing body of anthropological and behavioral research demonstrates that the perception of social difference can motivate instances of mass violence today, little work has been done to examine such identity-based violence archaeologically. This may be because the subtleties of distinct social identities can be difficult to interpret in the past. A bioarchaeological approach, however, is well suited to empirically reconstruct past individuals' social identities, as many facets of identity such as age, sex, or biological relatedness, are grounded in the physical body, while others leave traces on the body through behavior, such as dietary preferences or cultural modification. This research will support both graduate and undergraduate student training and enhance international research partnerships and collaborations between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, it will contribute to broader anthropological understandings of how instances of mass violence may arise from the interaction between specific social identities and complex social processes of migration, demographic change, and biological relatedness.Using a combination of biogeochemical and biodistance analyses, this project reconstructs the residential histories and biological kinship affiliations of victims of human sacrifice interred at a small shrine site in pre-Hispanic central Mexico. The shrine site dates to the Epiclassic period (600-900 CE). In central Mexico, this period was characterized by the decline of the major regional center of Teotihuacán and was a time of dramatic political, social, and demographic reorganization. In such a volatile socio-political landscape, individuals' residential histories or kinship affiliations may have singled them out as targets of ritual violence. This research will answer the question: how did specific aspects of individuals' social identities predispose them to suffer ritual violence? The biogeochemical analysis of dental and skeletal elements from a sample of 72 individuals will allow this project to reconstruct the geographic origins of the sacrificial victims, while biodistance analyses will allow for the reconstruction of patterns of genetic relatedness among the sacrificial victims themselves, as well as between the sacrificial victims and contemporary populations in central Mexico