Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Ceramics as a Chronological Indicator

芝加哥大学的博士学者Mannat Johal将调查人们和社会如何通过参与日常生产和消费活动来体验时间。虽然时间通常被理解为可量化的单位，如小时、日、月和年，但最近的学术研究强调，人类对时间的体验是多种多样的，根植于活动而不是客观测量。作为一门追踪长期连续性和变化过程的学科，考古学特别适合追踪一系列活动的节奏和持续时间，包括烹饪和消费等日常行为，以及死亡和纪念等事件。此外，考古研究强调人与物质世界（景观、纪念碑和物体）之间的关系如何影响人们和社会如何形成历史感，并发展他们的集体记忆。这些复杂的时间经历在历史上具有重要意义，在当今世界仍然很重要，如对遗产的争议主张，对博物馆物品归还的争论，以及对记录和保护传统习俗的广泛兴趣。研究人员与印度的学者和政府官员合作，培训学生并生产有关过去的知识，向学术和非学术受众传播。此外，这组研究人员将与当地政府合作，建立一个博物馆，展示在马斯基出土的文物。该研究将重点从有意义的纪念碑转移到日常生活领域，研究陶瓷容器的生产和使用如何影响中世纪南印度家庭活动的节奏。陶瓷容器是一种常见的物品，可供广泛的人群使用，用于各种目的，如烹饪、储存、食用和运输货物。马斯基位于印度德干高原半干旱的南部地区，研究人员将与一组挖掘者合作，研究陶瓷容器的形状如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及陶工创造可能被认为是“传统”或“新颖”的容器的方式。她将结合类型学分析的证据和陶瓷浆料的数据来评估陶工是如何创造出具有不同耐用程度的容器的。这项研究是发展印度次大陆历史考古学的更大努力的一部分。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Mannat Johal, a PhD scholar at the University of Chicago, will investigate how people and societies experience time through their participation in everyday activities of production and consumption. While time is generally understood in terms of quantifiable units such as hours, days, months and years, recent scholarship has highlighted that human experiences of time are diverse, and rooted in activities rather than objective measurements. As a discipline that tracks long-term processes of continuity and change, archaeology is particularly well-suited to tracing the rhythms and durations of a range of activities, everyday acts of cooking and consumption as well as events like death and commemoration. Further, archaeological studies emphasize how relationships between people and the material world - landscapes, monuments and objects - influence how people and societies form a sense of history, and develop their collective memory. These complex experiences of time have been significant historically and remain important in today's world, as seen in disputed claims to heritage, debates over the repatriation of museum objects, and a widespread interest in documenting and preserving traditional practices. Researchers collaborate with scholars and government officials in India to train students and produce knowledge about the past that is disseminated to both academic and non-academic audiences. Additionally, this team of researchers will collaborate with local authorities to create a museum with finds excavated at Maski.Shifting the focus from meaningful monuments to the sphere of everyday life, the research will study how the production and use of ceramic vessels shaped the rhythms of household activities in medieval south India. Ceramic vessels were common objects accessible to a wide range of the population and used for a variety of purposes, such as cooking, storage, eating, and transporting goods. Working with a team of excavators at Maski, located in the semi-arid southern reaches of India's Deccan plateau, the researcher will study how ceramic vessel forms shifted over time, and the ways in which potters created vessels that may have been considered "traditional" or "novel." She will combine evidence from typological analysis with data on ceramic pastes to assess how potters created vessels with varying levels of durability. This research is part of a larger effort to develop a historical archaeology of the Indian Subcontinent.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.