Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Material Culture in Social Differentiation

This doctoral dissertation project investigates how smaller scale, largely non-commercial economies become integrated into larger, regional, and commercializing economies. One of the ways to examine the processes by which this occurs is through the exchange items that circulate within these systems. As both people and ideas travel along with trade routes social and cultural structures shape and are shaped by these interactions. Anthropological archaeology allows for the opportunity to explore the dynamic of these relationships across cultures and throughout time, which permits understanding not only novel arrangements that exist in particular places and times but also, more importantly, common patterns that emerge in seemingly diverse circumstances. These commonalities, in turn, reflect the range of human behavioral patterns in the face of culture contact and economic relationships. This insight has relevance for understanding both the past arrangements that produced current circumstances and the present processes in a globalized economy. Specifically, this project examines the social organization of a Medieval crafting economy in a region which existed on the periphery of much larger economic systems. This project explores how the economic relationship affected the organization of social and economic systems. Glass is the central focus of the project for several reasons. Relevant glass chemistry has been well-studied in adjacent regions, with discrete glass recipes and associated chronologies identified. This project uses chemical analysis, by means of portable x-ray spectrometry and laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry, to identify the composition of relevant glass to allow for a comparison with the known compositional groups established through previous research. Glass objects are common finds on relevant sites associated with different social groups and each of these site types have produced evidence for glass working. This permits identification of long-distance and local exchange networks, and potential differences in approaches by different social actors. Placing the glass evidence generated by this project within the broader context of crafting permits a more refined picture of the organization of this early economy and its relationship to larger economic systems is produced. This, in turn, contributes to the larger anthropological goal of understanding the cross-cultural development of early and modern economies. 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.