Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Legacies of Colonial Dislocation and Resettlement

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

Using the concept of landesque capital—the cumulative investments of labor on durable improvements to the land and its continued maintenance—this research examines how a traditional colonized community responded to forced changes in their traditional settlement pattern. First required to abandon a long-occupied homeland the group was resettled in centralized villages. However following resettlement in some cases group members reclaimed traditional areas. This research examines in detail both the abandonment and reclaimation process. It asks, what are the spatial and temporal patterns of the abandonment of some irrigation and field systems (and not others), and what are the spatial and temporal patterns of those that were later reclaimed. The team will use a pedestrian archaeological survey and satellite remote sensing image analysis to investigate the construction, maintenance, abandonment, and reclamation of agricultural field and irrigation systems. These methods provide a unique opportunity to scale up beyond locality-level case studies toward regional scale analysis. The research complements traditional analyses of colonial written sources through a spatially-integrated archaeological, remote sensing, and ethnohistorical approach, which will, in turn, enable locality- to regional-perspectives on colonial mass resettlement. Ultimately, this research will enable a clearer understanding of both the traumas caused by forced resettlement and the varied forms of resilience of communities, as they forged new relationships to their built agricultural landscapes. 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.