Correlation of Political and Economic Power

Washington State University, Pullman WA

Investigators

Abstract

The role of economic interactions in political and social organization in past and present societies is a matter of debate. Archaeology is well situated to address how economies impact and were influenced by socio-political structures. This project examines the relationship between economic and sociopolitical organization in a prehistoric society. It focuses on the role of lithics, or stone tools, in an economy to broadly understand how individuals of different sociopolitical statuses interacted through economic activities. The project draws from and adds to anthropological research on the role of economies in power differentials in both the past and present. Importantly, the approach of the project works to illustrate the complexity of past economies, providing a more nuanced view of past human behaviors. Research activities will include opportunities for students, including mentorship experience, and professionalization opportunities. Project members will conduct flintknapping, or stone tool production, workshops, which will connect local residents with past technologies used in the region. This project addresses the relationship between economic and sociopolitical structures, It documents regional scale production and distribution of lithics to understand how these tools were made, exchanged, and used. These data are utilized to understand whether past economic activities involved competition among producers of the same tools and addresses how membership or allegiances with certain political groups impacted peoples economic interactions. To address these issues, this project conducts excavations of known lithic production areas, analyzes previously excavated materials, and geochemically sources the stone used to make the materials to trace the location of the potential distribution networks of these materials. The geochemical sourcing will employ a novel application of the geochemical technique, Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to trace the distribution of lithics from their production through their use and discard.. These methods provide a clear picture of a prehistoric economy shedding light on the ways in which economies served as mechanisms for mediating socio-political divides. 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.