Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Chronologically Related Changes in Material Culture Composition

这一博士论文研究项目将考察长期社会变化背后的因素。它将使用来自佛罗里达州墨西哥湾北部海岸陶器的地球化学、岩相学和其他技术数据，来研究与放弃人们生活的大型定居点相关的社会变化。从聚落和随之而来的陶器技术的多样性来看，社会结果各不相同。这项研究的目的是确定这些变化在多大程度上涉及社会运动。现代世界的社会运动往往是变革性社会变革的动力，包括那些经常被称为“崩溃”的社会变革。然而，最近关于社会崩溃的学术研究阐明了社会团体实际上是如何通过刻意的集体行动来实施结构性变化的，这是对一种偏见的治疗，即崩溃必然是社会的失败或“权力下放”问题。在强调物质和人类经验的物质条件方面，对过去的研究具有很好的潜力，有助于社会运动的跨文化研究，远远超出人种学、社会学和文学史的范围。来自研究地区12个地点的陶器将提供粘土来源(中子活化分析)、成分(岩石学)、制造和使用(技术功能分析)和表面处理(风格分析)的数据，作为社会身份和联系的分析代理。来自废弃和重新安置期间遗址的陶器在表面处理和器皿形式、来源和成分数据方面差异很大，但这一点尚不清楚。成分数据体现了对粘土和再生塑料添加剂的选择，这些材料不显眼地承载着传统的分量，因此可能表明，经过几代陶工在公民仪式中心的共同居住，这些共同的做法形成了，然后延续到了随后的几个世纪的分散定居。由于该项目的样本来自容易受到海平面上升负面影响的公共土地上的遗址，因此这项研究将有助于联邦政府对考古遗址进行清查、评估和保护。此外，这项研究将：(1)有助于正在进行的对流行的“崩溃”叙事的考古批评和基于经验研究的替代方案的开发；(2)增加关于该地区和整个美国东南部鲜为人知的一段时间的信息；以及(3)为越来越多的关于考古签名和社会运动的物质影响的研究提供案例材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the factors underlying long term social change. It will use geochemical, petrographic, and other technical data derived from pottery along the northern Gulf Coast of Florida to examine social changes associated with the abandonment of large size settlements in which people lived. Judging from the diversity of settlement and pottery technology that followed, social outcomes varied. The objective of this research is to determine the extent to which these changes involved social movements. Social movements in the modern world are often the impetus for transformative social change, including those which are often called "collapse." However recent scholarship on societal collapse has illuminated how social groups in fact can enact structural change through deliberate collective action, a curative to the bias that collapse was necessarily a matter of failure or "devolution" of society. In its emphasis on materiality and the material conditions of human experience, study of the past holds good potential for contributing to the cross-cultural study of social movements well beyond the reach of ethnography, sociology, and literary history.Pottery from 12 sites across the study area will provide data on clay provenance (neutron activation analysis), composition (petrography), manufacture and use (technofunctional analysis), and surface treatment (stylistic analysis) as analytical proxies for social identity and affiliation. Pottery from sites spanning the period of abandonment and resettlement varies wildly with respect to surface treatment and vessel form, Provenance and compositional data may be equally variable, but this is not yet known. Compositional data embody choices for clays and aplastic additives that carry the weight of tradition inconspicuously, and are thus possibly indicative of shared practices that took form over generations of co-residency of potters at civic-ceremonial centers and then continued into the ensuing centuries of dispersed settlement. As the samples for this project are drawn from sites on public lands that are vulnerable to the negative effects of rising seas, this research will contribute to federal mandates for the inventory, assessment, and conservation of archaeological sites. Furthermore, this research will: (1) contribute to ongoing archaeological critique of popular "collapse" narratives and the development of alternatives based on empirical studies; (2) add information concerning a period of time that is poorly understood in the area and throughout the southeastern United States; and (3) provide case material to the growing body of studies on the archaeological signatures and material implications of social movements.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.