Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governance, Organizational Complexity, and the Role of Pastoral Communities

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这一博士论文研究项目探讨了将不同的田园社区纳入治理进程以满足牧民和牲畜的饮食和流动性需求是否会影响治理的障碍。该项目与游牧和流动社会的研究有关，尤其与社区一级的治理、流动性和放牧之间的关系的研究有关。这是目前一个迫在眉睫的问题，因为世界各地的现代牧民都在努力应对全球化、被迫定居以及由于国际边界、环境变化和牧场退化而导致的流动性下降。除了为考古学研究生提供经验、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训提供资金外，该项目还将通过广泛传播其发现来增强公众对科学和科学方法的理解。该研究使用两种现有的国家形成模型，评估了基于人和牲畜饮食和流动模式随时间的变化而建立的分散和集中的政治结构的假设。这项分析的数据来自两个墓地的挖掘，以及对人和羊骨骼遗骸的稳定(δ13C和δ15N)和放射性(87Sr/86Sr)同位素分析。该项目有望从一个研究不足的领域产生见解，阐明独特的内生和本土形式的复杂政治组织，并评估历史文件的真实性。这些发现将突出全球形式的工业化前政治复杂性存在的变异性，并加强更广泛的人类学需求，以检查从非以农业为中心的人类组织模式产生的数据。这一奖项反映了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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This doctoral dissertation research project explores whether barriers to governance could be influenced by the incorporation of disparate pastoral communities into processes of governance to service the dietary and mobility needs of herders and livestock. This project is relevant to research on nomadic pastoralism and mobile societies, and is especially pertinent to studies dealing with the relationships between governance, mobility, and herding at the community level. This is an immediate concern currently, as modern herders everywhere grapple with globalization, forced sedentarization, and reduced mobility due to international borders, environmental change and pasture degradation. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in archaeology in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project would enhance public understanding of science and the scientific method by broadly disseminating its findings.Using two existing models of state formation, this research assesses hypotheses for a decentralized and centralized political structure based on changes in human and livestock diet and mobility patterns through time. Data for this analysis comes excavations at two cemeteries and stable (δ13C and δ15N) and radiogenic (87Sr/86Sr) isotope analyses of human and sheep skeletal remains. This project holds promise to generate insights from an understudied area, elucidate unique endogenous and indigenous forms of complex political organization, and evaluate the veracity of historical documents. Such findings would highlight the variability that exists in global forms of pre-industrial political complexity and reinforce the broader anthropological need to examine data generated from patterns of human organization that are not agriculture-centric.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.