Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Effect Of Pastoral Adaptation On Urbanization Processes

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Mobility plays a significant role in human interaction, organization, and social transformation. The interaction between mobile and settled populations as well as the social tensions arising from these interactions is becoming an increasingly critical aspect of contemporary human society. The migration crisis currently taking place among populations in the Middle East and North Africa is one such example of the profound effects that mobility (whether by climate, political instability, or choice) has on modern society. How do mobile people interactive with, integrate into, and transform communities? Anthropology has long strived to illuminate the relationship between mobility/migration and social transformation. Similarly, archaeology is aptly positioned to contribute to these critical international discussions by providing long-term contexts in which these interactions have played out in human history and by representing the diversity of interactions and outcomes than can inform on the array of contemporary human experiences. This project will apply innovative and interdisciplinary methods to illuminate the diverse means by which humans unite to develop and sustain complex social and political systems such as cities and states, particularly focusing on the agency of mobile populations in these contexts. Research will be conducted at the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (c. 1500-800BC) Qizqala cemetery site, located in the Serur Valley of the Naxçývan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan. Urban development is traditionally predicated on sedentary agriculture. Unlike traditional models, the South Caucasus offers a perspective in which emerging complex polities depended primarily on mobile pastoralist populations. Researchers will investigate how mobile pastoralists in the Serur Valley negotiated authority during urbanization. Using intra-tooth isotopic analyses for mobility, the research will offer novel and detailed insights into short-term mobility that reflects individual-level experiences in seasonal/recurrent, highland/lowland, and long/short distance scales. Mortuary analysis will complement isotopic analyses to examine the degree of control mobile people had over economic, political, and sacred resources for construction of mortuary space as reflected in style, location, and elaboration of burials. Collectively, individual experiences with mobility in life, paired with evidence of power, status, and agency from material contexts in burials, will provide sensitive measures of shifting political, economic, and social relations that reflect the dynamic roles of mobile populations in emerging urban spaces. Understanding how mobile pastoralists interacted with administrative systems to negotiate space and power in these emergent urban spaces will be essential to unraveling how complex sociopolitical structures develop and are sustained. Furthermore, research will be conducted with the Naxçývan Archaeological Project, the first joint American-Azerbaijani team of researchers and students advancing collaborative international and interdisciplinary research in this region. Collaborating with Azerbaijani students will play a critical role in the project and training students in bioarchaeological methods will both advance the engagement of underrepresented groups in the sciences and promote future collaborative research and publication endeavors with this region.