Processes Underlying the Rise of Social Complexity

Suny At Albany, Albany NY

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to contribute to global urbanism studies aimed at understanding what sociopolitical strategies can foster or undermine societal stability and urban resilience. This project explores the different sociopolitical strategies used, first to establish and then maintain social cohesion in an early urban center. As urbanism scholars seek to find ways to apply the knowledge gained from archaeological research, it is becoming clear that successful urbanism not only incorporates sound environmental planning and urban food production, but also sage sociopolitical maneuvering and stable forms of social organization. These sociopolitical strategies and the activities that result from them leave their mark on cities, their layouts, and their public spaces. This project will undertake the methodological challenge of investigating how different sociopolitical strategies can be identified archaeologically by investigating the activities that took place in urban public spaces, plazas, and assess how the greater public benefited or were alienated from these spaces and the activities in them. The research will include a geophysical survey of a monumental area at a city that first flourished but then was largely abandoned. The team will use the geophysical survey results to guide shovel testing and targeted excavations to systematically collect plaza floor samples for chemical analysis and associated artifacts and burials for archaeological study. Through the proposed excavations and analyses the research team will test whether the plazas served as areas for market exchange, craft production, public food processing and feasting, communal burial, and public ritual activities. These processes leave distinctive artifact and chemical signatures in the archaeological record. The goal will be to investigate the activities that took place in the plazas and test previous findings that suggest that construction and expansion of such a public monumental area occurred as the city’s leadership shifted towards a more corporate form of governance. 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.