Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Community Solidarity on Frontier Regions

纵观历史，人类社会经历了融合和分裂的周期，社会认同过程在其长期成功中发挥着重要作用。当人们强烈认同社区中的其他人时，集体行动的潜力很高，整个社区往往会蓬勃发展。然而，考古记录说明了村庄，国家和帝国随着时间和空间的发展和衰落。因此，广泛而持久的集体行动最常发生在个人群体（1）承认属于同一社会类别（例如，国籍或宗教信仰）和（2）参与重复的、面对面的交互（例如，邻居或同事）。当其中一种社会认同模式薄弱或崩溃时，集体行动的潜力就会下降，社区就有失败的风险。虽然这一理论框架是为区域规模的比较研究而开发的，涉及现代民族国家和社会运动的案例，但该项目将其调整为一种方法，可以在边境背景下应用于社区规模。传统的边疆研究将这些边缘地区视为一个整体，关注它们如何参与或反应核心地区发生的过程，而不是考察边疆居民在塑造、维持和改变其社会身份方面的能动性。通过研究人们如何通过物质文化表达他们的身份，这个项目将揭示边疆地区集体身份的形成和变化。此外，委员会认为，这个项目涉及很长时间，在中美洲北方边境工作的美国和墨西哥研究人员之间的长期合作，将导致在北方边境社区和整个地区的社会动态特征方面取得迅速进展。这项研究将研究两种识别模式的相互作用，以建立在中美洲内部通过时间和空间尺度采取集体行动的潜力。墨西哥萨卡特卡斯拉克马达的Epiclassic（600-900 CE）遗址。北方边境地区的物质文化表明，边境社区之间存在着共同的社会类别和直接的互动，但这些社区持续的时间长短不一。例如，La Quemada在公元900年左右被遗弃，而其他遗址仍然存在。据推测，要么是La Quemada居民相互认同的变化削弱了其集体身份，要么是在现场规模上从未存在过持续集体行动的条件。通过年代学、风格学和岩相学分析收集的陶瓷数据将用于评估每种社会认同模式：（1）共同的陶瓷装饰风格被认为代表了相似的社会类别;（2）用于生产陶器的原材料被解释为直接相互作用的证据。La Quemada内社会认同的特征以及认同的变化如何影响集体行动的潜力，将提供一个模型，通过与北方边境和其他边境环境中更持久的社区进行比较，可以在未来继续进行测试。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估来支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Throughout history, human societies have cycled through periods of coalescence and fragmentation and processes of social identification play an important role in their long-term success. When people identify strongly with others in their community, the potential for collective action is high and the community as a whole tends to thrive. However, the archaeological record illustrates the development and decline of villages, states, and empires over time and across space. Widespread and long-lasting collective action, therefore, occurs most frequently when groups of individuals (1) recognize membership in the same social categories (e.g., nationality or religious affiliation) and (2) engage in repeated, face-to-face interactions (e.g., neighbors or colleagues). When one of these modes of social identification is weak or breaks down, the potential for collective action decreases and the community is at risk for failure. While this theoretical framework was developed for regional-scale, comparative research involving cases of modern nation-states and social movements, this project adapts it into a methodology that can be applied at the community scale within a frontier context. Traditional frontier studies treat these peripheral regions as whole entities and focus on how they engage with or in reaction to processes occurring within the core, rather than examining the agency frontier inhabitants have in shaping, maintaining, and altering their social identities. By examining how people expressed their identity through material culture, this project will shed new light on how collective identities form and change in frontier regions. Furthermore, this project involves long-term collaboration among American and Mexican researchers working in the northern frontier of Mesoamerica and will result in rapid advances in the characterization of social dynamics within northern frontier communities and across the region as a whole.This research will examine the interplay of the two modes of identification to establish the potential for collective action through time and across spatial scales within the Epiclassic (600-900 CE) site of La Quemada, Zacatecas, Mexico. The material culture of the northern frontier region suggests both the existence of shared social categories and direct interaction among frontier communities, yet these communities persisted for varying lengths of time. La Quemada, for example, was abandoned around 900 CE, while other sites persisted. It is hypothesized that either a change in how La Quemada residents identified with one another weakened its collective identity, or the conditions for sustained collective action never existed at the site scale. Ceramic data collected via chronological, stylistic, and petrographic analysis will be used to assess each mode of social identification: (1) shared styles of ceramic decoration are assumed to represent similar social categories; and (2) the raw materials used to produce pottery are interpreted as evidence of direct interaction. The characterization of social identification within La Quemada and how changes in identification may have impacted the potential for collective action will provide a model that can continue to be tested in the future through comparison with more persistent communities in the northern frontier and in other frontier settings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.