Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Agricultural Labor Organizations and Management

In this doctoral dissertation research project researchers will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate millet cultivation and food preparation strategies during a multi-period site organization. By combining paleoethnobotanical and isotopic studies, the team seeks to understand the dynamic of interplay between subsistence strategies and social relations in the field and in the domestic context at multiple localities.

The research question is twofold. Was the millet harvest shared within or between households, or both? Were farming practices determined on the household level, the communal level, or a combination of the two?

In answering these questions, the project connects with broader anthropological issues, namely, the moral and social nature of food habits and food production. While much of the thematic discussion on the social use of food draws on contemporary and historical examples, this study examines the dimension of daily food performance in archaeological contexts.

In order to test hypotheses about millet production and consumption, the research team will employ two principal methods: (a) macrofossil crop processing analysis; and (b) stable isotopic analysis performed on plant remains. These measurements build on significant improvements in sample preparation and methodological refinements in recent years, and their successful applications in archaeological contexts in a range of markedly different environments.

The project will expand the understanding of regional farming practices in a global context. This project aims to raise awareness of the past, present and future utility of millet, to understand the nature of primary producers of this crop and their societies, and to situate their role in the broader trajectory of human agricultural systems on a global scale.

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.