Collaborative Research: Peripheral Neighborhoods in City Creation

The goal of this project is to understand how neighborhoods at the geographical margins of a city may or may not be socially peripheral to that city and how that affects the historical trajectory of that city. Specifically, the research team will undertake research to study the relationship between people’s investment of time, energy, and resources into urban neighborhoods, their identity in relation to their neighborhood and the city overall, and the length and intensity of their occupation.

Archaeology is uniquely situated to address these questions over the course of a city’s history, with a focus on material evidence for engagement, identity, and inequality. By considering neighborhood diversity in relation to level of investment in the city, one can understand whether social, economic, and political ties created through intentional engagement lead people to stay and continue to participate in that city or, conversely, whether a lack of such ties may lead to more rapid abandonment of those neighborhoods.

This may help people understand the nuanced relationship between social investment and local participation, diversity of neighborhood identities, and the futures of modern cities from a bottom-up, grass-roots perspective. Additionally, this project will provide a space for students to learn techniques of archaeological survey and excavation as well as opportunities for the local community, which is largely comprised of immigrant or first-generation community members, to engage with and understand the similarities and differences between their modern experience of a city and those of people living in that space in the past.

Focusing on the lived experiences of people in different neighborhoods in an ancient city, researchers will consider the local investments (e.g., architecture, infrastructure, neighborhood organization) and the potential benefits (e.g., access to certain goods, spaces, or activities) that coincide with actively participating in the city and its goings-on. Researchers will address these questions at a prehistoric city which was occupied by both local and non-local peoples for roughly three centuries.

Using non-invasive geophysical survey to search for subterranean archaeological features, soil coring, and targeted excavation, researchers will compare two neighborhoods at the physical periphery of the city to gauge whether occupants were also socially peripheral or whether they were fully engaged in central city projects, activities, and ideas. Researchers will examine architectural style and neighborhood organization, including distribution of public buildings, proximity to causeways connecting areas of the site, mound-and-plaza groups where community ceremonies would have occurred, and areas of leveling or filling for habitation which are indicative of local level of physical and social investment.

Finally, researchers will compare the proportions of material types that are typical of the central portion of the site to see if people living in these peripheral neighborhoods had access to the same kinds of objects, raw materials, and food as people living closer to the city center, i.e., is there a social benefit to fully engaging in the urban project.

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.