Collaborative Research: Reconstructing Classic Genetic and Social Kinship Networks

家庭和家庭关系是全世界所有人类社会社会交往的基础。人类学对当代亲属系统的重建揭示了家庭研究对理解更广泛的社会政治关系是多么有洞察力。然而，迄今为止，人们对过去的亲属关系做法知之甚少。古代历史文本侧重于社会精英成员。虽然这些资料清楚地表明，皇家婚姻是至关重要的政治联盟，但有必要从冰山一角开始，开始在社会层面上理解亲属关系，以真正理解更广泛层面上的政治关系和互动。考古遗传学的最新进展为理解古代世界的这种关系提供了巨大的潜力。该项目的重点是在广泛的社会规模上重建整个社会亲属关系实践。该项目将提供一个微妙的理解如何在不同层次的社会和政治等级的亲属制度的运作，它将打开大门，以社会规模的重建亲属的做法在过去。该项目为博士后研究人员提供了连接社会科学和自然科学的分析技术培训，以及为早期职业研究人员提供合作培训机会。该项目有旗舰外联和参与组成部分，将在学生和研究人员之间建立国际桥梁，并直接让利益攸关方和后代社区参与。通过多种科学和大众出版物以及互动活动传播研究成果，研究探讨：（1）婚姻联盟是如何被等级社会的不同成员所利用的;（2）婚姻模式在政治之间是如何变化的;（3）婚姻模式如何随着时间的推移而变化，从一个社会的兴起到它的衰落和政治崩溃。这些问题将通过系统分析过去30年收集的大量考古数据，结合新的放射性碳测年和考古遗传学分析来解决。全基因组古代DNA分析将用于重建21个精英和平民家庭的遗传历史，以便在中央集权和政治权力和权威下降期间，在三个不同地点提供对亲属关系习俗和婚姻联盟的社会规模理解。本研究中开发的框架将作为一个模型，可用于世界多个地区，以更好地了解权力和不平等制度的出现和延续。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。

Family and familial relations form the underlying basis of social interaction in all human societies around the world. Anthropological reconstructions of contemporary kinship systems have revealed how insightful the study of families are to understanding broader socio-political relationships. Yet to date, there is very little understanding of past kinship practices. Ancient historical texts to focus on elite social members. While these sources clearly show that royal marriages were vitally important political unions, it is necessary to move below the tip of the iceberg and begin to understand kinship at a societal scale to truly understand political relationships and interaction at a broader level. Recent advances in archaeological genetics offer enormous potential to understand such relationships in the ancient world. This project focuses on reconstructing the entirety of social kinship practices at a broad social scale. The project will provide a nuanced understanding of how a kinship system operated at different levels of social and political hierarchy, and it will open the door to societal-scale reconstructions of kinship practices in the past. This project provides training for a postdoctoral researcher in analytical techniques that bridge the social and natural sciences, as well as collaborative training opportunities for early career researchers. The project has flagship outreach and engagement components that will build international bridges between students and researchers, and directly involve stakeholders and descendant communities. Dissemination of results will be achieved through a multiplicity of scientific and popular publications, as well as interactive activities.The research examines: (1) how marriage alliances were employed by different members of a hierarchical social hierarchy; (2) how marriage patterns varied between polities; and (3) how marriage patterns changed over time, through a society’s rise to its decline and political collapse. These questions will be approached by systematically analyzing extensive archaeological data collected over the past 30 years, in combination with new radiocarbon dating and archaeogenetics analysis. Genome-wide ancient DNA analysis will be used to reconstruct the genetic history of 21 elite and commoner households in order to provide a societal scale understanding of kinship practices and marriage alliances at three different sites during periods of centralization and decline in political power and authority. The framework developed in this study will serve as a model that can be employed in multiple regions of the world to better understand the emergence and perpetuation of systems of power and inequality.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.