Modeling Long-Term Urban and Rural Settlement Dynamics

Alders, Wolfgang, Oakland CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Carla Klehm at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying urban-rural dynamics. This project investigates the social processes of urbanization within a regional settlement system. It advances scientific knowledge on these aspects of human social and organizational behavior through a long-term archaeological study. This research contributes to general knowledge about rural and urban social change by investigating the spatial settlement patterns of communities which differentiated themselves from urban institutions and negotiated with the centralization of power in urban centers. How small human groups related socially to the emergence of urban formations has been an important anthropological question with implications for understanding long-term sustainability and resilience. However, most research has used examples from primary centers of urban formation globally. In contrast, this research deepens an understanding of urban-rural interaction through a consideration of large urban centers over the long-term. The results of this research will inform general understandings of human adaptations to social transformation and political instability globally. This project uses archaeological methods and geospatial analyses to understand the spatial and material relationships between rural communities and large urban settlements, from the 11th to 19th centuries CE. The extent to which urbanization meant the (dis)integration or subordination of indigenous rural social networks is unresolved, as are the ways rural communities related to the social world. This research will refine models of global urbanism by investigating rural settlement dynamics in relation to urban development over time. The project asks, to what extent were rural communities entangled economically and materially with town dwellers, and how did urban-rural settlement dynamics change from the precolonial period, through colonial contact, and into the 19th century? This project uses low-cost, high-resolution aerial and multispectral satellite imagery to create a predictive model for rural site distribution, integrating historical maps, textual sources, hydrological models, geological data, and automated object-based image analysis of drone imagery to detect cultural significant features. Next, the project uses this model to develop a targeted survey of the urban hinterland. Finally, test excavations will be used to compare material culture from rural hinterland sites with already excavated collections from urban centers. This will enable an understanding of the spatial and material patterns across time and in relation to urban centers. 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.