Research Paper
The task is to
study a premodern[2] settlement
system of a whole political-military network [3] composed
of interacting polities. On October 22 please turn in a single
sheet of paper with your name, email address and the main premodern settlement that will be the focus of your study
of a settlement system and the time period you will study.
Also include full citations for at least three specific library (non-Internet)
sources of information about the focal settlement and the other settlements
with which it is interacting. You may also include internet sources.
A
political/military network is a network of polities that are allying and making
war on one another, like the modern international system or earlier regional
PMNs composed of chiefdoms, states or empires. PMNs have settlement systems
composed of cities, towns, villages and hamlets and may be in interaction with
nomadic peoples who live in temporary camps. Pick a single focal settlement
(for example a specific Chumash village before the Europeans arrived in
Southern California, or Carthage from 300 to 50 BCE). Use the idea of nested
interaction networks in Chase-Dunn and Hall to try to estimate how far
the bulk goods, prestige goods, political-military networks and information
network extend away from your focal settlement. For example, what is the most
distant settlement from which the focal settlement occasionally gets food
(etc.)? These are the spatial boundaries of the world-system of which your
focal settlement is a part. Also study the relations that the humans living in
your focal settlement have with nature: how they get their food, raw materials,
fuel, and water? And study the transportation networks that link your focal
settlement to other settlements. Use the idea of a settlement size
distribution to examine the relative population sizes of the
settlements that are linked together in your settlement system. Also use other
ideas and readings from the course in your consideration of this settlement
system.
Data on the population
sizes of cities are available from Tertius Chandler’s Four
Thousand Years of Urban Growth. The population estimates for the cities in
Chandler are in a machine-readable dataset called citypop5.xls that is accessible on the
course web site. David Wilkinson’s maps of cities and their civilization may
also be helpful. These are at https://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/asa01/wilkinson.htm
Tell the story of
the settlement system of which your focal settlement is a part, and suggest
explanations for the patterns that you find. The text of your paper should be
no longer than 10 typewritten pages of text. Bibliography, pictures and maps
can be on additional pages.. Include a bibliography of your sources and maps if
you can find them. The paper is due on December 3.
Read the list of requirements above several
times during the period in which you are working on your paper and be sure to
do each of the things that are requested. A Guide
to Writing Research Papers: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/PlanResearchPaper.html
[1] Settlement systems are networks of
interacting settlements.
[2] Premodern means
before 500 years ago or, if more recent, a settlement that has had no
significant interaction with Europeans.
[3] A political-military network (PMN) is a regional system of interacting
polities (chiefdoms, states or empires) that make alliances or war with one
another.