With National Science Foundation CAREER award, archaeologist Dr. John Kantner will investigate why social and political inequities appeared in a small, egalitarian community 1,000 years ago in what is now northwestern New Mexico. The research is guided by principles from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, ecology, psychology, and economics, that together show how human behavior is guided by evolutionary and cultural forces that often lead to cooperation but also can result in competition and inequality. The model that Dr. Kantner will evaluate proposes that the development of new sociopolitical relationships is stimulated by specific contextual changes, such as climatic improvements or exposure to new religions, that affect how people evaluate their regular interactions with one another. Depending on the nature of the changes, human relationships can be restructured such that inequities develop. While this study considers this process in one specific prehistoric community, both the theoretical foundations for the research as well as the detailed explanatory model have wider implications for understanding human behavior.
The CAREER funding will allow Dr. Kantner to conduct five years of interdisciplinary archaeological research on the selected prehistoric Anasazi community. The investigations will include traditional survey and excavation of family households combined with the use of modern remote-sensing equipment and geochemical analyses in order to reconstruct the social and economic history of the community. To minimize destruction of irreplaceable archaeological sites, to avoid disturbing federally protected prehistoric cemeteries, and to make the most efficient use of the funding, a targeted sampling approach will be used. In addition to the archaeological fieldwork, computer-based geographical (GIS) techniques will be used for reconstructing what the climate and landscape were like through the community's history. The results of the research will include a detailed social, economic, and political history of the community as well as a precise paleoecological history. These two sequences can then be compared, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation of the model for the origins of village-level inequality.
Undergraduate and graduate students from Georgia State University (GSU), an urban environment that accommodates a generally disadvantaged student body, will be integrated into all stages of the research-from field work to professional activity and public outreach. Much of the funding will therefore indirectly and directly support student training in archaeology and professional research. A portion of the CAREER funding will support the purchase of equipment and development of facilities for conducting modern archaeological research. Students will also assist in the development of an educational website providing updates on the research to the wider public and to other professionals. By the end of the five year research program, GSU will have an updated infrastructure for archaeological research and for teaching the science of archaeology, and Dr. Kantner will have completed a comprehensive case study of the emergence of sociopolitical differentiation, providing a foundation for future professional research and student learning experiences.
