The Emergence of Material Wealth-Based Inequality

蒙大拿大学的安娜·玛丽·普伦蒂斯博士将与来自美国、加拿大和英国的同事一起，研究村级狩猎采集社会中社会不平等的发展。古代社会不平等的起源是人类学考古学关注的一个中心问题，对于更广泛地理解当今世界的不平等具有重大意义。以前的研究已经记录了持续制度化的不平等可能发展的条件。这些问题包括有正当理由的生存资源的存在，以及财富代际传递的可能性、获取财富的途径和获得财富的权利。关于造成物质不平等的历史进程的争论仍在继续，一些研究人员断言，不平等是人类在资源丰富的条件下为个人经济和生殖成功而努力的必然结果，而另一些人则认为，不平等是资源短缺时期竞争条件的意外副产品。考古学准备为这些讨论做出重大贡献，因为它能够在很长一段时间内重建社会进化过程。这项研究旨在促进关于土著文化和历史的广泛公众宣传，以及为大学生提供STEM培训机会。普伦蒂斯博士和她的研究团队将在不列颠哥伦比亚省中部弗雷泽峡谷的布里奇河村庄研究物质财富不平等的根源。布里奇河遗址是研究不平等演变的理想场所，因为过去2000年来人类占领的记录很好。这一考古挖掘项目旨在对其他假设进行细粒度测试，这些假设涉及与不平等的起源相关的人口变化、生存密集化、储存变异性、社交网络以及大规模烹饪和食物分享(“盛宴”)事件的综合作用的变化。跨学科研究团队为北美西北部史前烹饪特征的挖掘和实验室研究设定了新的标准，分析方法包括沉积物微形态、古代DNA分析、碳化遗迹中的植物组织鉴定、沉积物地球化学以及石头文物和动物骨骼研究的先进方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Dr. Anna Marie Prentiss, of the University of Montana, along with colleagues from the United States, Canada, and England will engage in research into the development of social inequality in village scale hunter-gatherer societies. The origins of inequality in ancient societies is a central concern in anthropological archaeology with significant implications for wider understanding of inequality in today's world. Previous research has documented conditions under which persistent institutionalized inequalities are likely to develop. These include the presence of defensible subsistence resources and the possibility for inter-generational transmission of wealth, access to wealth, and rights to wealth. Debate continues regarding the historical processes that give rise to material inequality with some reseachers asserting inequality to be an inevitable outcome of inherent human striving for personal economic and reproductive success under conditions of resource abundance versus others who argue that inequality is an unintended byproduct of competitive conditions during periods of resource shortfall. Archaeology is poised to offer significant contributions to these discussions given the ability to reconstruct social evolutionary process over lengthy time spans. The research is designed to facilitate extensive public outreach regarding indigenous culture and history along with STEM training opportunities for college students. Dr. Prentiss and her research team will examine the origins of material wealth-based inequality at the Bridge River village in the Middle Fraser Canyon of interior British Columbia. The Bridge River site is an ideal place to study the evolution of inequality given the excellent record of human occupation spanning the past 2000 years. This archaeological excavation project is designed to develop fine-grained tests of alternative hypotheses concerning variation in the integrated roles of demographic change, subsistence intensification, storage variability, social networking, and large scale cooking and food-sharing ("feasting") events associated with the origins of inequality. The interdisciplinary research team sets a new standard for excavation and laboratory study of prehistoric cooking features in Northwestern North America with analytical approaches including sediment micromorphology, ancient DNA analysis, plant tissue identification from carbonized remains, sediment geochemistry, and advanced approaches to stone artifact and animal bone studies.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.