Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Urban Migration in Long Term Context

研究人员试图确定古代多民族城市中心随着时间的推移和社会经济地位群体之间的移民模式，以更好地理解移民在维持高人口数量方面所起的作用，并量化不同地位群体之间的移民比例。在古代城市研究中，研究人员经常关注在城市最初定居期间大量人口聚集到一个地区的运动以及人口崩溃的最终原因。虽然这些事件对于理解古代城市中心如何首次出现并最终被遗弃至关重要，但我们需要更多地关注大量人口如何在很长一段时间内持续存在，有些甚至长达数百年。本研究将关注城市环境中的移民如何促进这些维护工作。考古学的最新进展使研究人员能够识别个体和群体水平的迁移，而不是将古人的迁移视为一个大型的单一事件。这篇博士论文将是第一个探索移民随时间推移对前现代城市人口维持的影响的研究之一，并提供多层次地位群体（低、中、高地位的生产者和消费者）之间移民的直接比较。在Kenneth G. Hirth的指导下，博士生Gina M. Buckley将在宾夕法尼亚州立大学进行研究。这项研究将促进与墨西哥（INAH）、加拿大（西安大略大学）和欧洲（马克斯普朗克，耶拿，德国）的国际合作，并发展外展交流，以促进对移民社区的接受。此外，通过这项研究获得的所有数据将在一个开放获取平台上提供，以支持未来在前现代城市进行的人口研究。这个博士论文研究项目将探索来自特奥蒂瓦坎（位于今天的墨西哥城附近）中心社区La Ventilla的社会经济地位群体的迁移模式，特奥蒂瓦坎是第一个人口超过10万的多民族新世界城市（公元200-600年）。来自周边地区的移民推动了这座城市最初的发展，这是有据可读的，但多种族在这里发展起来的时间却不清楚，尤其是在中部地区。研究将检验两个假设；(1)向特奥蒂瓦坎中心地区的迁移是一个持续的过程，贯穿了整个城市的占领过程，而不是主要发生在城市建立期间；(2)与地位较高的群体相比，更大比例的地位较低的个体迁移到城市中心，在“生活质量”指标（健康的骨骼标志、死亡年龄估计和饮食）上存在显著差异。以前对城市人口的研究表明，居住在城市边缘地区的人面临着普遍的前现代问题，包括营养不良和婴儿死亡率高。通过广泛的同位素分析（碳、氮、氧、锶和铅），结合对人类骨骼遗骸进行放射性碳定年的绝对时间控制，研究人员将确定移民是否对400多年来的人口维持至关重要。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。

Researchers seek to identify patterns of immigration over time and between socioeconomic status groups in ancient, multi-ethnic urban centers to better understand the role migration played in the maintenance of high population numbers and to quantify the proportion of migrants between status groups. In ancient urban studies, researchers often focus on the movement of large aggregate groups of people to a region during the city's initial settlement and the ultimate cause(s) of demographic collapse. While these events are crucial to understanding how ancient urban centers first arose and were eventually abandoned, more attention needs to be paid to how large populations were sustained for long periods of time, some spanning hundreds of years. This research will focus on how immigration in an urban setting contributed to these maintenance efforts. Recent advances in archaeology allow researchers to identify individual and group-level migration across time rather than observing the movement of ancient people as a large, singular event. This doctoral dissertation study will be one of the first to explore the impact of migration over time on population maintenance in a pre-modern city and provide a direct comparison of migrants between multiple tiers of status groups (lower-, middle-, and higher-status producers and consumers). Doctoral student Gina M. Buckley, under the direction of Kenneth G. Hirth, will conduct research at Penn State University. This research will foster international collaboration with Mexico (INAH), Canada (Western University Ontario) and Europe (Max Planck, Jena, Germany) and the development of outreach communication to promote the acceptance of migrant communities. Furthermore, all data obtained through this research will be made available on an open-access platform to support future population studies in pre-modern cities.This doctoral dissertation research project will explore the migration patterns of socioeconomic status groups from La Ventilla, a central neighborhood of Teotihuacan (located near present-day Mexico City), the first multi-ethnic New World city to reach over 100,000 residents (200-600 AD). While it is well chronicled that immigration from the surrounding region fueled much of the city's initial growth, it remains unclear when multi-ethnicity developed here, particularly in the central sectors. Research will test two hypotheses; (1) migration into the heart of Teotihuacan was a continuous process over the entire occupation of this city sector, rather than occurring primarily during its foundation, and (2) larger proportions of lower-status individuals migrated into the center of the city and have significant differences in "quality of life" indicators (skeletal markers of health, age-at-death estimations, and diet) than those of higher status groups. Previous studies of the city population have shown that individuals towards the fringes of the city suffered from common pre-modern problems including malnutrition and high infant mortality rates. Using a broad spectrum of isotopic analyses (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, strontium, and lead) combined with absolute chronological control through radiocarbon dating of human skeletal remains, researchers will determine if immigration was critical to population maintenance for over 400 years of occupation.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.