Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Urban Longevity and Social Inequality

博士候选人扎卡里·尼森将进行研究，研究家庭劳动和社会经济条件，使城市社区在政治和环境压力时期的持久性。城市是人类密集互动的多样化场所，为普通人提供了通过家务劳动谋生的重要可能性，但它们也是集中不平等的地方。今天，超过一半的全球人口生活在城市中，考古学提供了重要的机会来研究是什么导致一些城市长期繁荣，而另一些城市在几代人之后失败。由于压力时期对所有人的影响并不相同，本项目将调查城市社区的长期持续性是否建立在社会经济剥削或最弱势群体的融合基础上。通过这项研究，西北大学的本科生将接受考古方法的培训。研究结果将通过公开和学术报告、期刊文章、在线数据库和社区活动进行分享，以确保广大受众（包括学者、政府代表和公众）能够获得项目的研究结果。尼森和他的研究小组将调查史前城市中心城市平民家庭的劳动实践和社会经济机会。长期干旱和冲突，以及加剧的不平等导致许多人离开城市中心，在较小的农村社区定居。为了调查是什么让一个城市能够持续下去，而其他城市却不能，尼森的团队将评估平民家庭的劳动实践，以及这些实践使他们能够获得城市经济和社会资源的程度，例如精美的贸易商品和社区仪式习俗。他们将进行系统的挖掘，旨在收集一系列住宅文物和样品进行化学和微文物分析，以重建四个城市平民家庭的活动。Nissen和同事们的研究将为我们提供深入的见解，了解在地区紧张时期维持不同城市中心的劳动实践，以及塑造城市居民生活的社会经济力量。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。

Doctoral Candidate Zachary Nissen will conduct research that examines the household labor and socioeconomic conditions which enabled the persistence of an urban community during a period of political and environmental stress. Cities are diverse places of dense human interaction that provide ordinary people important possibilities to make a living through household labor practices, yet they are also places of concentrated inequality. Today, over half of the global population lives in cities, and archaeology provides important opportunities to examine what leads some cities to thrive over the long term while others fail after a few generations. As periods of stress do not affect all people equally, this project will investigate whether an urban community's long-term persistence was built on the socioeconomic exploitation or integration of its most vulnerable population segment. Through this research undergraduates from Northwestern university will be trained in archaeological methods. Results will be shared through public and academic presentations, journal articles, an online database, and community events to ensure a broad audience (including academics, government representatives, and the general public) has access to the project's findings. Nissen and his research team will investigate the labor practices and socioeconomic access of urban commoner households in a prehistoric urban center. A period of prolonged drought and conflict, and heightened inequality which lead many people to leave urban centers and settle in smaller rural communities. To investigate what enabled one city to persist while other cities could not, Nissen's team will assess the labor practices of commoner households and the degree to which these practices enabled them access to the city's economic and social resources, such as fine trade goods and community ritual practices. They will conduct systematic excavations designed to collect a range of residential artifacts and samples for chemical and microartifact analysis to reconstruct the activities of four urban commoner households. Together, the research conducted by Nissen and colleagues will provide insights into the labor practices that sustain diverse urban centers, as well as the socioeconomic forces that shaped the lives of city residents during a period of regional stress.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.