Doctoral Dissertation Research: Tracing Transformations through Compositional Analysis

This doctoral dissertation project investigates the conditions under which groups form and why they are perpetuated across generations. Frontier regions, where disparate groups come into contact, offer the best contexts to study these processes in pre-modern eras. When disparate groups interact, alternative organizational and economic traditions must be negotiated.

Archaeologists infer that when these processes result in the creation and maintenance of material and immaterial boundaries at local scales they correspond to group formation. A key question is whether group formation results from categories being imposed by the more powerful group, or if intra-community dynamics of the subordinate group play a more significant role.

How these scenarios develop across generations allows archaeologists to reconstruct strategies of assimilation, hybridization and/or resistance by the subordinate group. The project trains a graduate student in archaeological science.

To reconstruct these transformations, this research evaluates technological and stylistic variation in ceramics over time as a proxy for understanding change and group formation. Five sites are excavated to collect data from two recognized phases of occupation. Analyses assess high- and low-visibility attributes of ceramic manufacture.

These attributes respectively capture patterns of intentional affiliation and markers of community membership encoded in unconscious habits of manufacture. The approach facilitates a comparison of aspirational affiliation compared to ancestral affiliation to reconstruct group dynamics. Provenance data is provided by instrumental neutron activation analysis.

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.