Collaborative Research: Spatial Analysis of State Agropastoral Economies

Dr. John M.波士顿大学的马斯顿和罗切斯特理工学院的大卫梅格斯博士将与来自美国、荷兰和土耳其的同事合作，进行研究，探讨社会如何在其控制下的各种景观中管理可持续农业生产。人类学家记录了社会精英管理农业经济的不同策略，这些策略反映了维护社会稳定和精英权威的合作、包容或等级、排他性机制。然而，精英的特定做法与农民和牧民的反应之间的关系并没有很好地建立起来，社会科学家试图更好地了解精英的优先事项是如何在社会内部进行谈判的，并与精英确保用于外部交换的货物的需求相平衡。考古学提供了一个独特的、长期的视角，来观察农民和牧民在不断变化的环境条件下对精英的这些政治策略做出的成功和不成功的社会反应，并有助于更清晰地理解人类社会（包括今天的社会）的农业恢复力。以往的研究在试图理解农业的地理规模和季节性组织之间的关系时处于劣势，以及精英管理者和国家官僚机构的反应。该项目将对从土耳其中部的Gordion遗址挖掘出来的植物和动物遗骸进行多重分析，并作为博物馆藏品进行策划，以研究跨越该地区重大政治和经济重组的两个时期的农业经济。由马斯顿博士和梅格斯博士领导的国际研究小组将利用植物和动物遗骸的同位素分析以及地理信息系统（GIS）模型，研究为戈尔迪翁人口提供的动物放牧和农业领域的地理模式。研究结果将揭示该地区数百年来重大社会和环境变化的农业和畜牧业的结构和空间组织。该项目将提供一种“自下而上”的方法，用以评价精英控制与农业做法之间的联系。研究团队将为学生创造多学科培训机会，并通过开源数据库传播项目数据和方法。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Dr. John M. Marston, of Boston University, and Dr. David Meiggs, of the Rochester Institute of Technology, in collaboration with colleagues from the US, the Netherlands, and Turkey, will undertake research to examine how societies manage sustainable agricultural production across the varied landscapes under their control. Anthropologists have documented different strategies used by social elites to manage agricultural economies, which reflect either collaborative, inclusive or hierarchical, exclusive mechanisms for maintaining societal stability and elite authority. Yet, the relationship between particular practices by elites and responses by farmers and herders is not well established, and social scientists seek to better understand how elite priorities were negotiated within a society and balanced against elite needs to secure goods used in external exchange. Archaeology offers a unique, long-term perspective on both successful and unsuccessful social responses by farmers and herders to these political strategies of elites under changing environmental conditions, and contributes to clearer understandings of the agricultural resilience of human societies, including societies today.Previous research has been at a disadvantage when attempting to understand relationships between the geographic scale and seasonal organization of agriculture, and the responses of elite managers and state bureaucracies. This project will employ multiple analyses of plant and animal remains, excavated from the site of Gordion in Central Turkey and curated as museum collections, to study agricultural economies across two time periods that straddle a significant political and economic reorganization in the region. The international research team, led by Drs. Marston and Meiggs, will use isotopic analyses of plant and animal remains, as well as geographic information systems (GIS) models, to examine geographic patterns in both animal grazing and agricultural fields that supplied the population of Gordion. The results will shed light on the configuration and spatial organization of farming and pastoralism across several hundred years of significant social and environmental change in the region. This project will provide a "bottom-up" approach with which to evaluate linkages between elite control and agricultural practices. The research team will create multidisciplinary training opportunities for students and disseminate project data and methods via open source databases.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.