The Development of Social Complexity in a Mobile Society

通常是流动人口家园的地区往往具有鲜明的对比和频繁的环境变化，这些变化可能会意外发生。环境的多变性通常是流动社会的家园的缩影，这往往会助长一种浪漫化的看法，认为游牧民族是长寿的产物，与世隔绝，总是按照自然环境的要求迁徙。随后，研究人员在研究大规模社会复杂社会出现的过程以及将成员联系在一起形成一个功能单位的机制时，往往会忽略流动社会，转而支持“稳定的”久坐人口。该项目认为，田园游牧社会的独特性使得能够分析与更广泛的变量有关的政治组织的一般问题，从而洞察政治战略如何在一系列不同的条件下以不同的方式发挥作用。最终，这项研究将在很大程度上阐明“流动的”政治如何为替代政治制度的发展提供替代轨迹的范例，因此应该为人类社会采用或不采用更复杂的组织形式的方式提供更好的洞察力。为了解决这一研究课题，耶鲁大学的威廉·加德纳博士将与蒙古的同事一起，探索在青铜时代晚期/铁器时代早期(约公元前10世纪至4世纪)当地对政治变革的接受、配置和颁布中发挥作用的“自下而上”过程。这最终导致了在蒙古大草原匈奴(公元前3世纪左右)建立的第一个地区性政体。在蒙古中北部的大布尔斯特泰/塔尔瓦塔泰地区工作，来自青铜器晚期和铁器时代早期的数据将包括：1)通过陶瓷的中子活化分析揭示的交换关系的趋势；2)通过对畜群动物的同位素分析了解的远距离互动和运动的趋势；以及3)纪念碑在社会政治发展中的作用。这些数据将被邻近的埃吉恩戈尔地区以前的考古研究联系起来，以努力确定个别成员和家庭在多大程度上参与了社区在更大的政治组织中建立自己的努力。总而言之，草原社会研究所解决的问题本身并不仅仅是“田园”问题，而是从流动性和农牧主义的角度来看，关于家庭和社区规模的人类组织的一般性问题。这一奖项反映了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。

Regions that are commonly home to mobile peoples are often typified by sharp contrasts and frequent environmental change that can take place unexpectedly. Environmental variability that generally epitomizes the homelands of mobile societies has often fostered a romanticized perception of nomadic people as "stoic" figures that are the product of a long life, lived in isolation, always moving as the natural environment dictates. Subsequently, researchers studying the processes through which large scale socially complex societies emerge and the mechanisms which bind members together into a functioning unit will often ignore mobile societies in favor of "stable" sedentary populations. This project argues that the distinctiveness of pastoral nomadic society allows analysis of general questions of political organization in relation to a wider range of variables and thereby provides insight into how political strategies play out differently over a range of varying conditions. Ultimately, the research will do much to illustrate how "mobile" polities provide examples of alternative trajectories for the development of alternative political systems and as such should provide better insight into the ways in which human societies do or do not adopt more complex forms of organization.To address this research topic, Dr. William Gardner of Yale University, along with colleagues in Mongolia, will explore the "bottom-up" processes at play in the local acceptance, configuration, and enactment of political changes during the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (ca. 10th to 4th century B.C.) that eventually led to the first regional-scale polity founded on the steppe of Mongolia, The Xiongnu (ca. 3th century B.C.). Working in the greater Burgastai/Tarvagatai region of north central Mongolia, data from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age periods will consist of 1) trends in exchange relationships as revealed by neutron activation analysis of ceramics; 2) trends in long distance interactions and movements as understood by isotopic analysis of herd animals; and 3) the role of monumentality in sociopolitical development. This data will be contextualized by previous archaeological research in the neighboring Egiin Gol region in an effort to determine the extent to which individual members and households were involved in a community's effort to establish itself within larger political organization. In total, the question addressed by studies of steppe societies are not just "pastoral" question per se but instead, a general question on human organization at the household and community scale viewed through the lens of mobility and agro-pastoralism.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.