Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant; Exploring Changing Social Organization In The Emergence Of Complex Societies

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Analysis of social networks at different spatial scales, both egalitarian and hierarchical in nature, is useful for understanding the organization of societies in the past as well as the present. The discipline of archaeology is well suited to investigation of social change over millennia and to identifying significant variation in human lifeways. Andrew Womack of Yale University and his colleagues in China will investigate different networks formed during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods (c. 2600-1900 BC) in Gansu province of northwest China, an area with tremendous potential for revealing a different form of social organization in the past than those known for well-studied areas to the east in China and elsewhere. The project will investigate whether people in early Gansu, thought to be a cross-roads for interaction with peoples to the west in Eurasia, developed a different kind of organizational system in which there was resistance to social hierarchies on the basis of wealth. Several new methods of data collection and analysis will be employed, providing useful training for local archaeologists. Womack and Chinese colleagues will identify different kinds of social networks created through activities such as craft production and mortuary rites in the Tao River valley of southern Gansu Province. As other anthropological research has established, mortuary goods can be a key indicator of both status and the nature of social networks. The team will identify patterns of interaction as identified from specific production methods of ceramics at different spatial scales and infer how social networks expanded over time through coalescence of populations at funerals for important individuals. It also will investigate why, around 2000 BC, elaborate funerals were abandoned in the region. The team also will use effective methods to identify specific signs of use on vessels, to identify raw materials used for production, and to infer degree of standardization across space and time. These data will then be used to infer the character of social networks through the production, circulation, and consumption of pottery vessels and how they changed over time.