Collaborative Research: Adaptative Strategies Under Empire Transitions

Much is understood about how empires grow, but far less is known about how and why the effects of their growth persist among local populations from one regime to the next. Understanding the long-term economic, ecological, and health impacts of imperial expansions requires concerted attention to moments of transition between regimes, when both imperial powers and local populations adopt, reject, and/or reorganize existing infrastructure and resources.

A team of researchers are employing strategies from archaeology, osteology, and biogeochemistry study how transitions between imperial regimes shape long-term trajectories in household economies, diet, and health and how they continue to have substantial legacy effects on the global distribution of wealth, political power, and health outcomes. The project provides critical training opportunities for students and enhances international understanding of an emerging heritage destination that provides substantial economic opportunities to local communities.

The project focuses on these transitions across two empires. The situation offers an excellent context for studying these processes because the empires had variable effects on local communities. By comparing indicators of household economic activity, diet, and health at sites, the project employs multidisciplinary perspectives to examine how changes in the organization of resources, infrastructure, and populations under one empire shaped pathways of development under the next and how Indigenous strategies of resilience responded to these successive challenges. The research contributes to a new theoretical framework for studying imperial transitions.

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.