Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Political Power and the Use of Geographic Space

该项目的目标是评估帝国如何组织省级住区的建筑来传达政治信息。历史上有许多关于政治如何利用纪念碑和炫耀的建筑来传递权力的研究。然而，关于定居点布局如何造成和维持不平等的分析很少，主要集中在现代例子上。在一个案例中阐明这一问题将为理解建筑传播增加必要的历史深度和文化广度。研究结果将对研究人员和对通过建筑环境的日常体验行使权力感兴趣的公众有用。这项研究还将加强国际伙伴关系，并为后代社区提供材料，供其在遗产规划中使用。保存完好的遗址提供了一个难得的机会，可以详细研究布局与省级建筑交流之间的关系。研究人员假设，帝国对这个地方省级遗址的布局进行了广泛的重组，以通过形式上的相似来唤起其他中央权力机构的席位，并操纵通过定居点的行人活动，使遗址居民在日常生活中更容易看到纪念碑。研究人员将通过进行两项初步分析来评估这些主张。第一个将确定与城墙建设相关的考古地层中的有机材料的年代，以建立遗址增长和修改的绝对年代表，并确定这个地点与其他皇权所在地之间的形式相似性是否真的反映了对遗址建筑的操纵。第二个奖项使用高分辨率空间数据和地理信息系统软件平台来重建内部大道上的行人活动和定居点内政治纪念碑的能见度。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。

The goal of this project is to evaluate how empires organized the architecture of provincial settlements to communicate political messages. There are many studies of how polities throughout history used monuments and ostentatious buildings to communicate power. However, analyses of how settlement layout can create and maintain inequality are few and focus mainly on modern examples. Illuminating this issue within one case will add needed historical depth and cultural breadth to the understanding of architectural communication. The results will be useful to researchers and members of the public interested in the exercise of power through the everyday experience of the built environment. The research will also strengthen international partnerships and provide materials for descendant communities to use in heritage planning. A well-preserved site provides an uncommon opportunity to examine in detail the relationship between layout and provincial architectural communication. Researchers hypothesize that the Empire broadly reorganized this local provincial site's layout to evoke other seats of central authority through formal similarities, and to manipulate pedestrian movement through the settlement to make monuments more visible during the daily, lived experience of site inhabitants. The researchers will evaluate these propositions by conducting two primary analyses. The first will date organic materials from archaeological strata associated with wall construction to build an absolute chronology of site growth and modification and determine if the formal similarities between this and other seats of imperial power indeed reflect manipulation of site architecture. The second uses high-resolution spatial data and a Geographic Information Systems software platform to reconstruct pedestrian movement along internal avenues and the visibility of political monuments within the settlement.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.