Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Fundamental Processes of Social Change

在菲尔德自然历史博物馆威廉·A·帕金森博士的指导下，伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的博士生威廉·P·里奇将进行考古田野调查，研究小规模社会对大规模人口迁移和经济变化的社会反应和适应。现代世界的特点是密集的城市景观和严重程度的政治和经济不平等，但这些都是人类经历中最近的事态发展。自更新世结束以来，大多数人类一直生活在自治的小村庄社会中。通过考古学研究，考古学家可以研究延长的时间段--数百年或数千年--并追踪定义当代世界的特征的新形式，如社会分化、经济不平等、文化身份的谈判，以及人口稠密的生理影响。为什么人们聚集在一起生活在越来越大的人口中？人口流动如何重塑社会关系和文化认同？这种聚合是如何以及在什么情况下失败的？随着全球和国内人口流动比以往任何时候都更加频繁，这样的问题变得越来越有针对性。博士生和同事们将研究史前村落社会的社会结构和人口变化。这项研究将主要包括对史前聚落遗址进行有针对性的挖掘。挖掘将在史前村庄进行，这些村庄属于一个时期，一方面是大定居点的消失，另一方面是丰富墓地的建立。该项目将家庭挖掘数据与高精度的放射性碳年代数据结合起来，将阐明区域一级发生的人口和经济进程如何影响当地社会的性质，以及这些变化发生的速度如何。研究小组将建立模型来解释人类对人口和经济波动的反应。该项目将专注于培训和数据生成，并将为学生和学者提供教育和研究机会。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。

Under the direction of Dr. William A. Parkinson at the Field Museum of Natural History, William P. Ridge, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago will conduct archaeological fieldwork to examine the social responses and adaptations in small-scale societies to large-scale population shifts and economic changes. The modern world is characterized by dense urban landscapes and massive degrees of political and economic inequality, but these are recent developments within the human experience. Since the end of the Pleistocene, most humans have lived in small, autonomous, village societies. Through archaeological research, archaeologists can examine extended periods of time – centuries or millennia – and trace the emergent forms of characteristics that have come to define the contemporary world, such as social differentiation, economic inequality, the negotiation of cultural identities, and the physiological effects of dense populations. Why do people come together to live in ever larger populations? How are social relationships and cultural identities reshaped by shifting populations? How and under what circumstances do such aggregations fail? With global and domestic population movements more frequent than ever before, such questions are increasingly pertinent.The doctoral student and colleagues will examine how social structure and population changed in prehistoric village societies. The research will consist primarily of targeted excavations at prehistoric settlement sites. Excavations will take place at prehistoric villages that belong to a period when there was a juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the disappearance of large settlements, and, on the other hand, the establishment of rich burial grounds. Combining excavation data from households with the high-precision chronological data of radiocarbon dates the project will elucidate how demographic and economic processes occurring at the regional level effected the nature of local society and at what pace these changes took place. The research team will generate models to explain human responses to population and economic fluctuations. The project will focus on training and data generation and will provide educational and research opportunities for both students and scholars.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.