Long-Term Impacts of Institutionalized Inequality on Household Wealth and Well-Being

杰西卡·曼森博士将带领一个研究小组，调查制度化的不平等对古代社会家庭财富和福祉的长期影响。不平等是大规模人类社会的一个内在因素，但人们对过去财富和权力的差异如何不同地影响人类状况的理解却没有得到很好的研究。考古学以其长远的眼光，准备为研究永久制度化的不平等对过去人们日常生活的影响做出重大贡献。该项目将分析一个古老社区内家庭财富、社会福祉和健康的差异，以更详细地了解政治权力的增加如何影响2000年左右的社会经济差异。了解古代社会如何应对和适应过去的政治不稳定和社会经济差异，可以为今天面临类似挑战提供重要的经验教训。该研究旨在改善现场和项目实验室附近当地社区的生活质量，并为代表性不足的群体的学生提供教育机会。研究古代社会的财富和福祉分布需要一个代表过去社会经济差异范围的大型数据集。结合新的考古调查和对大约两千年历史遗留数据的分析，这个大规模的挖掘项目将对最近定居点调查中确定的40-50户家庭进行抽样调查。多个生活质量指数将使用来自墓葬，国内文物和住宅建筑的数据进行计算，以调查这一时期政治权力增加对家庭财富分配和福祉差距的影响。该项目产生的数据将促进创新的概念框架和方法来分析多种类型的家庭不平等，为未来的比较研究提供重要的数据集。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. Jessica Munson will lead a team of researchers to investigate the long-term impacts of institutionalized inequality on household wealth and well-being in ancient society. Inequality is an intrinsic element of large-scale human societies but understanding how disparities in wealth and power differentially impacted the human condition in the past is not well studied. With its long-term perspective, archaeology is poised to make significant contributions to examining the impacts of permanent institutionalized inequality on the everyday lives of past people. This project will analyze disparities in household wealth, social well-being, and health within an ancient community to develop a more detailed understanding of how increasing political power impacted socioeconomic disparities over the span of about 2000 years. Understanding how ancient societies responded and adapted to political instability and socioeconomic differences in the past can provide important lessons as one confronts similar challenges today. This research is designed to improve quality of life concerns for local communities near the field site and project laboratory as well as provide educational opportunities for students from underrepresented groups.Studying the distribution of wealth and well-being in ancient societies requires a large dataset that is representative of the range of socioeconomic differences that were present in the past. Combining new archaeological investigations with analyses of legacy data that spans an approximately two thousand year period, this large-scale excavation project will sample between 40-50 households identified in recent settlement surveys. Multiple quality of life indices will be calculated using data from burials, domestic artifacts, and residential architecture to investigate the impacts of increasing political power on the distribution of household wealth and well-being disparities over this period. The data generated from this project will facilitate an innovative conceptual framework and methodology to analyze multiple kinds of household inequality, providing an important dataset for future comparative 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.