Collaborative Research: The Relationship between Agriculture and Social Change

This project investigates prehistoric farming practices to understand how wealth and inequality are generated under conditions of crisis. Intensive farming and the control of agricultural surplus have long been understood as key factors amplifying social inequality. In turn, during periods of ecological and social instability, it is assumed that farmers adopt more diverse and dispersed farming and herding strategies, resulting in limited wealth and inequality.

Yet, this traditional account makes simplistic assumptions about the relationship between food production, the environment, and sociopolitical complexity. Can intensive farming persist despite conditions of drought, warfare, and political instability? Conversely, can the adoption of more diverse subsistence strategies actually lead to widening social inequality?

Archaeology is well suited to investigate acute and long-term changes in farming, the environment, and human relationships. This project takes on immediate urgency in the present when traditional farmers and pastoralists in marginal environments around the world face increasing sociopolitical and ecological challenges. Through this project, the primary investigators train undergraduate and graduate students in transnational archaeological field methods and in cutting-edge analytical methods at their respective universities in the US, preparing the next generation for careers in science and cultural resource management.

The research team analyzes direct proxies of agricultural and pastoral practices and compare them to measures of social inequality during a period of long-term drought and dramatic sociopolitical changes. The research takes place in a prehistoric highland valley, a region with significant deep time human occupation, vast agricultural infrastructure, and abundant natural resources.

The researchers excavate a large settlement and associated agricultural terraces, analyze excavated materials and legacy collections from multiple sites, and conduct specialized chemical analysis of human, plant, animal, and soil remains to reconstruct food webs, field management systems, and patterns of human and herd mobility. They also analyze land use and settlement patterns using unmanned aerial vehicles, three-dimensional computer modeling, and Geographic Information Systems.

The multi-methodological approach allows the researchers to investigate agropastoral strategies and sociopolitical organization across communities living in close proximity but with different ecological potentials and divergent sociopolitical histories.

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.