A major concern of social science research has been to identify the mechanisms underlying the development of socially complex societies and the ways in which larger towns and cities exert centripetal forces that draw together and integrate the populations of these societies. Only archaeology can trace the earliest parts of this development, during which the patterns built on later were established. Systematic study of early complex societies has shown considerable variability in the social, environmental, and economic conditions that foster their development, and comparisons of archaeological cases reveal patterns in this variability that provide insight into how different developmental forces can combine and complement each other. This project will focus especially on the relationship between political authority and the organization of systems for providing a population with the utilitarian goods of daily life. The connections between early rulers and these basic economic systems are poorly known. Researchers ask whether, how, and to what extent controlling, managing, or profiting from the production and distribution of basic goods contributed to the ability of early rulers to project their political authority. The different forms that this relationship could take might set the stage for political entities founded on different core principles and lead to greater or lesser long-term political stability. Greater understanding of the basic factors that encourage economic development and political stability in large-scale societies makes a clear contribution in a world composed of such societies, with varied organizational patterns and histories and and with different degrees of success in achieving political stability and in providing for the economic needs of their populations.
This project will assess the degree to which changes in distribution networks of basic goods correspond with the centralization and decentralization of political units. Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, the doctoral candidate, Camilla Kelsoe, will carry out a geochemical analysis of a sample of utilitarian pottery sherds recovered by previous research from two Neolithic walled towns in the Jianghan Plain of south-central China. Patterns in the compositional variability of these pottery sherds will be examined to delineate pottery distribution networks through the late Neolithic period (3300-2000 BCE). One of these two towns, Xiaocheng, developed and became increasingly centralized through this period, while the population of the other, Taojiahu, became less centralized. These alternative trajectories present an ideal case in which to systematically assess the relationship between centralized political authority and economic development. In addition to its substantive results, the project will provide essential research training for the doctoral candidate and foster closer academic collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and several institutions in China: Wuhan University, the Hubei Province Institute of Archaeology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Central South University.
