Matching Items (16)
Description
People come together and form communities in cities across the world but the processes behind community formation are not well understood. Some researchers theorize that having populations with similar characteristics is important; others argue that the existence of public spaces for interaction is key. I use archaeological data collected over six seasons of field work and archival data from The Granada Relocation Center (Amache) National Historic Landmark, a World War II (WWII) Japanese American incarceration center in Southeastern Colorado, to demonstrate the role that participation in previous social communities has on the formation of new social networks. The concept of social cohesion acts as a framework for understanding how access to public spaces and participation in different types of social activities creates a sense of neighborhood community among a dislocated population.
During WWII Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast to ten incarceration centers, disrupting existing communities and forcing the formation of new ones. Amache is one of ten incarceration centers which housed families and individuals. The site resembled an urban center with public facilities and residential areas that functioned as neighborhoods. Archival and archaeological data indicate that residents developed socially defined neighborhoods. Internees modified each neighborhood through the creation of landscape features and development of social activity which provided a venue for residents to interact and form a sense of community identity.
Neighborhood residents clustered based on their affiliation to previous communities both in California and in the temporary detention centers. Clustering in demographically similar neighborhoods facilitated the development of new social interactions and led to the proliferation of landscape features and social events seen in the archaeological and archival record. I identify patterns of neighborhood interaction through an examination of the archaeological record and social network analysis using archival newspapers. Applying archaeological data in partnership with social network data illustrates the range of strategies used by incarcerees to create new communities and problematizes working with a single data source when attempting to identify socially defined neighborhoods.
During WWII Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast to ten incarceration centers, disrupting existing communities and forcing the formation of new ones. Amache is one of ten incarceration centers which housed families and individuals. The site resembled an urban center with public facilities and residential areas that functioned as neighborhoods. Archival and archaeological data indicate that residents developed socially defined neighborhoods. Internees modified each neighborhood through the creation of landscape features and development of social activity which provided a venue for residents to interact and form a sense of community identity.
Neighborhood residents clustered based on their affiliation to previous communities both in California and in the temporary detention centers. Clustering in demographically similar neighborhoods facilitated the development of new social interactions and led to the proliferation of landscape features and social events seen in the archaeological and archival record. I identify patterns of neighborhood interaction through an examination of the archaeological record and social network analysis using archival newspapers. Applying archaeological data in partnership with social network data illustrates the range of strategies used by incarcerees to create new communities and problematizes working with a single data source when attempting to identify socially defined neighborhoods.
ContributorsKamp-Whittaker, April Elizabeth (Author) / Smith, Michael E. (Thesis advisor) / BurnSilver, Shauna (Committee member) / Clark, Bonnie J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
I propose a new approach for the analysis of social transformations within the context of colonialism. Drawing on concepts used by historical sociologists, combined with insights from historians and archaeologists, I forge a synthesis of relational mechanisms that concatenated into processes of categorical change. Within the social sciences, mechanisms are formally defined as specific classes of events or social interactions that are causally linked and tend to repeat under specific conditions, potentially resulting in widespread social transformations. Examples of mechanisms include formal inscription through spatial segregation and adjustments in individual position through socioeconomic mobility.
For New Spain, historians have identified at least three macroscale shifts in the social structure of the viceroyalty. I examine the mechanisms that led to these changes in two distinct contexts. The Port of Veracruz (Mexico), located along the main axis of colonial exchange, offers a shifting baseline for comparison of the long-term trajectory of colonial interaction and categorical change. I undertake a finer grain study at the borderland presidios of Northwest Florida, where three presidios were sequentially occupied (AD 1698-1763) and historically linked to Veracruz through formal recruitment and governmental supply.
My analysis draws on two independent lines of evidence. Historically, I examine census records, maps, and other colonial documents. Archaeologically, I assess change in interaction mainly through technological style analysis, compositional characterization, and the distribution of low visibility plain and lead-glazed utilitarian wares. I document the active expression of social categories through changing consumption of highly visible serving vessels.
This study demonstrates that colonial transformations were driven locally from the bottom up and through the top-down responses of local and imperial elites who attempted to maintain control over labor and resources. Social changes in Florida and Veracruz were distinct based upon initial conditions and historical contingencies, yet simultaneously were influenced by and contributed to broad trajectories of macroscale colonial transformations.
For New Spain, historians have identified at least three macroscale shifts in the social structure of the viceroyalty. I examine the mechanisms that led to these changes in two distinct contexts. The Port of Veracruz (Mexico), located along the main axis of colonial exchange, offers a shifting baseline for comparison of the long-term trajectory of colonial interaction and categorical change. I undertake a finer grain study at the borderland presidios of Northwest Florida, where three presidios were sequentially occupied (AD 1698-1763) and historically linked to Veracruz through formal recruitment and governmental supply.
My analysis draws on two independent lines of evidence. Historically, I examine census records, maps, and other colonial documents. Archaeologically, I assess change in interaction mainly through technological style analysis, compositional characterization, and the distribution of low visibility plain and lead-glazed utilitarian wares. I document the active expression of social categories through changing consumption of highly visible serving vessels.
This study demonstrates that colonial transformations were driven locally from the bottom up and through the top-down responses of local and imperial elites who attempted to maintain control over labor and resources. Social changes in Florida and Veracruz were distinct based upon initial conditions and historical contingencies, yet simultaneously were influenced by and contributed to broad trajectories of macroscale colonial transformations.
ContributorsEschbach, Krista (Author) / Stark, Barbara L. (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Michael E. (Thesis advisor) / Alexander, Rani T (Committee member) / Worth, John E. (Committee member) / Bearat, Hamdallah (Committee member) / Peeples, Matthew A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Slavery is a significant factor to consider when studying Mexica society and its economy, including societal roles and gendered labor. Many scholars who explore slavery within this culture and state look at the topic from specific angles and focus on the post-conquest and colonial periods. Pre-Columbian slavery is mentioned only briefly in the histories of the Mexica despite it being a key facet of their way of life. Questions of gender and class in relation to slavery are often missing from examinations of the topic. This project will, therefore, examine the process of enslavement, slave status and labor, and the written and visual evidence of enslaved individuals within Mexica society during the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. By specifically examining slavery within the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and the Mexica region, this thesis will argue that enslaved women played a much more significant role than enslaved men, and that slaves constituted a social class in pre-Columbian Mexica society.
ContributorsRodriguez, Jennifer N. (Author) / Baker, Hannah (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Michael E. (Committee member) / Avina, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This research combines traditional archaeological analysis with lidar data to investigate infrastructure, residential architecture, and neighborhoods in a completely new way. Taken together, these analyses show the shape and form of this city during its apogee in CE 650, while providing a deeper understanding of its civic administration through the use of multiple urban levels (citywide, district, neighborhood, and residential/plazuela). Independently, any one of these results may provide an incomplete picture or inaccurate conclusion, but, when conjoined, the analyses interdigitate to shed light on the city as a whole. This research showcases the physical infrastructural power of this city through the widespread distribution of its urban services among the city’s districts while still highlighting tiers of urban services among districts. It reinforces the idea of household architectural autonomy through the lack of standardization in the built environment, while also highlighting the relative equality of residences. And, it emphasizes both citywide and neighborhood-based similarities in categorical identities that would have facilitated collective action among individuals in the past by reducing the friction to initiate collective endeavors. Taken together, these results suggest both autocratic and collective governance, and views from different urban levels when combined provide a more detailed perspective on the multiple interacting and concurrent processes that determined urban life and structure in the past. These analyses also hold the potential to shed light on other governance practices in future comparative urban research on archaeological, historical, and modern cities. However, the initial findings reported in this dissertation suggest that Caracol enjoyed a more collective system of governance processes despite the hieroglyphic record of a lineage of rulers.
ContributorsChase, Adrian Sylvanus Zaino (Author) / Smith, Michael E. (Thesis advisor) / Nelson, Ben A. (Committee member) / York, Abigail M. (Committee member) / Peeples, Matthew A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation research examines neighborhood socio-spatial organization at Calixtlahuaca, a Postclassic (1100-1520 AD) urban center in highland Mesoamerica. Neighborhoods are small spatial units where residents interact at a face to face level in the process of daily activities. How were Calixtlahuaca's neighborhoods organized socio-spatially? Were they homogenous or did each neighborhood contain a mixture of different social and economic groups? Calixtlahuaca was a large Aztec-period city-state located in the frontier region between the Tarascan and Triple Alliance empires. As the capital of the Maltazinco polity, administrative, ritual, and economic activities were located here. Four languages, Matlazinca, Mazahua, Otomi, and Nahua, were spoken by the city's inhabitants. The combination of political geography and an unusual urban center provides an opportunity for examining complex neighborhood socio-spatial organization in a Mesoamerican setting. The evidence presented in this dissertation shows that Calixtlahuaca's neighborhoods were socially heterogeneous spaces were residents from multiple social groups and classes coexisted. This further suggests that the cross-cutting ties between neighborhood residents had more impact on influencing certain economic choices than close proximity in residential location. Market areas were the one way that the city was clearly divided spatially into two regions but consumer preferences within the confines of economic resources were similar in both regions. This research employs artifact collections recovered during the Calixtlahuaca Archaeological Project surface survey. The consumption practices of the residents of Calixtlahuaca are used to define membership into several social groups in order to determine the socio-spatial pattern of the city. Economic aspects of city life are examined through the identification of separate market areas that relate to neighborhood patterns. Excavation data was also examined as an alternate line of evidence for each case. The project contributes to the sparse literature on preindustrial urban neighborhoods. Research into social segregation or social clustering in modern cities is plentiful, but few studies examine the patterns of social clustering in the past. Most research in Mesoamerica focuses on the clustering of social class.
ContributorsNovic, Juliana (Author) / Smith, Michael E. (Thesis advisor) / Stark, Barbara L. (Committee member) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Harlan, Sharon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory.
To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.
ContributorsCesaretti, Rudolf (Author) / Lobo, Jose (Author) / Bettencourt, Luis M. A. (Author) / Ortman, Scott G. (Author) / Smith, Michael E. (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2016-10-05