Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant: Long Term Societal Response to Volcanic Exposure

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate the impact of volcanism on the development and trajectories of past societies. Disasters are typically framed as externalized crises which pass judgment on a society’s resilience. However, these narratives often ignore how disaster reveals underlying tensions and inequalities, and how disaster is capitalized upon for systemic change within social fields. This project will examine how trends of shifting social organization, power distribution, and a society’s priorities are amplified in the context of disaster. Disasters can open new means and motivations to divert or accelerate social trends: communities can choose to communally support each other through bottom-up organization schemes, just as institutions and their leaders can seek to entrench their power and control through top-down administration. Each person also has a unique social and environmental exposure to the hazard itself, which informs the decisions they make to maintain or alter their behavior, or even leave the affected landscape entirely and emigrate. These contestations and negotiations play out along already-established social conventions and power dynamics – and their consequences establish expectations for how to respond to future disasters. Studying disaster-affected societies through this lens contributes to understanding of the development of social complexity. This research also deepens a growing literature on the role of disaster in the human experience, and helps illustrate how modern society can contend with our own increasing number of disasters worldwide. This project examines one specific aspect of disaster and society, that of the impact of volcanism in a coastal region. It was impacted several times by volcanic eruptions that began in the highlands and deposited volcanic ash (tephra) widely but unevenly. This presents the opportunity to complement and expand on interpretations of regional volcanic exposure and its interaction with trajectories of social complexity. Investigation will take place at a site which preserves stratified occupations in domestic features like house floors, storage pits and hearths. Excavation and site survey will recover ceramic, lithic, paleoecological, and biological material correlates to assess if residents altered their land use and social arrangements; and will also identify tephra related to source and time of eruptions. These correlates will support rigorous, interdisciplinary interpretations which discuss the social-ecological dimensions of disaster through time. Understanding how these communities negotiated volcanic vulnerability broadens archaeological discussions of alternative social complexity, and aids modern communities exposed to these volcanic hazards by learning from past events. 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.