Award Abstract # 1916824
Collaborative Research: Spatial Analysis of State Agropastoral Economies

NSF Org: BCS
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Recipient: TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: June 21, 2019
Latest Amendment Date: April 14, 2025
Award Number: 1916824
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: John Yellen
jyellen@nsf.gov
 (703)292-8759
BCS
 Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
SBE
 Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date: July 15, 2019
End Date: September 30, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $152,192.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $152,192.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2019 = $152,192.00
History of Investigator:
  • John Marston (Principal Investigator)
    marston@bu.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Trustees of Boston University
1 SILBER WAY
BOSTON
MA  US  02215-1703
(617)353-4365
Sponsor Congressional District: 07
Primary Place of Performance: Trustees of Boston University
MA  US  02215-1703
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
07
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): THL6A6JLE1S7
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Archaeology
Primary Program Source: 01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1391, 7298
Program Element Code(s): 139100
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.075

ABSTRACT

Dr. John M. Marston, of Boston University, and Dr. David Meiggs, of the Rochester Institute of Technology, in collaboration with colleagues from the US, the Netherlands, and Turkey, will undertake research to examine how societies manage sustainable agricultural production across the varied landscapes under their control. Anthropologists have documented different strategies used by social elites to manage agricultural economies, which reflect either collaborative, inclusive or hierarchical, exclusive mechanisms for maintaining societal stability and elite authority. Yet, the relationship between particular practices by elites and responses by farmers and herders is not well established, and social scientists seek to better understand how elite priorities were negotiated within a society and balanced against elite needs to secure goods used in external exchange. Archaeology offers a unique, long-term perspective on both successful and unsuccessful social responses by farmers and herders to these political strategies of elites under changing environmental conditions, and contributes to clearer understandings of the agricultural resilience of human societies, including societies today.

Previous research has been at a disadvantage when attempting to understand relationships between the geographic scale and seasonal organization of agriculture, and the responses of elite managers and state bureaucracies. This project will employ multiple analyses of plant and animal remains, excavated from the site of Gordion in Central Turkey and curated as museum collections, to study agricultural economies across two time periods that straddle a significant political and economic reorganization in the region. The international research team, led by Drs. Marston and Meiggs, will use isotopic analyses of plant and animal remains, as well as geographic information systems (GIS) models, to examine geographic patterns in both animal grazing and agricultural fields that supplied the population of Gordion. The results will shed light on the configuration and spatial organization of farming and pastoralism across several hundred years of significant social and environmental change in the region. This project will provide a "bottom-up" approach with which to evaluate linkages between elite control and agricultural practices. The research team will create multidisciplinary training opportunities for students and disseminate project data and methods via open source databases.

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.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Marston, John M and Vaiglova, Petra "Mapping land use with integrated environmental archaeological datasets" Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association , v.35 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1111/apaa.12185 Citation Details

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