Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research
IBSS Interdisciplinary Team Exploratory Project:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12614/nsf12614.htm
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504832
“IBSS-Ex: EMPCIT: Growth and collapse of empires
and cities since 4000 BCE
Overlapping state
extraction areas in Southeast Asia
PI: Christopher Chase-Dunn
(Sociology and IROWS, UCR)
Co-PI: Eugene
Anderson (Anthropology, UCR)
Co-PI: David
Wilkinson (Political Science, UCLA)
Draft
12-3-14; 11833 words
Project Calendar Schedule: Submitted to NSF: December 2, 2014; Start date: July 1, 2015; End date:
June 30, 2017; Duration: 30 months. Indirect cost rate= 52%.
PROJECT SUMMARY
This exploratory
interdisciplinary project will test hypotheses about the causes of world
historical patterns of development -- specifically the causes of changes in
city and empire sizes from the fourth millennium BCE to the present. The EMPCIT project will develop templates for a data set constructed
to make use of a recently
developed geographical network methodology for studying interactions among
entities (cities and empires). This data base structure will make it possible
to test causal propositions derived from the comparative evolutionary
world-systems perspective, geopolitics, and human ecology -- theoretical
perspectives that are being developed by sociologists, anthropologists and
political scientists to form a multidisciplinary sociohistorical theoretical
research program. The quantitative relational network data set will include the
territorial sizes of states and empires (polities), the population sizes of cities
and polities, interaction links and climate change in nine world regions over
the past 6000 years. The study will estimate the boundaries and intensities of
human interaction networks based on exchanges of everyday necessities, the
trade of high value goods, the interactions of fighting and allying polities,
and the diffusion of arts, religions, and knowledge production. EMPCIT will
code the power configurations of interstate systems (sets of fighting and
allying polities) and the world-system positions of settlements, polities and
regions (core, semiperiphery and periphery) within regional interaction
networks. Propositions will be tested using several different units of
analysis: individual cities and polities, networks of interacting cities and
polities and spatially constant regions, e.g. Africa. Following the claims of
some world-system scholars, the project will also consider the whole global
(Earth-wide) network as a single context for studying the causes of changes in
urban and polity scale. An interdisciplinary team from archaeology,
anthropology, geography, history, political science, sociology, ecology and
climatology will carry out this exploratory research project. The
multidisciplinary theoretical research program that will be developed will come
primarily from anthropology, sociology, political science and geography, but
participation by climatologists, historians, computer scientists and ecologists
will be important for the development of feasible and cutting-edge data
protocols and for help in implementing innovative geographical network research
methods.
Intellectual Merit
The long-term upward trend in the sizes of
cities and polities is well known, but still in dispute are the proximate and
contextual causes of these trends. The EMPCIT project will improve upon
existing quantitative estimates of the sizes of cities and polities to identify
those instances in nine world regions in which upsweeps in polity and city
sizes occurred, and will empirically examine the human and natural factors that
have been hypothesized to be the causes of instances of scale change. The project will also identify instances of
collapse in the sizes of polities and cities and will study their causes. The
project will use both standard comparative methods and a recently developed
geographical network approach to data development that combines GIS with formal
network analysis. This will contribute to the scientific understanding of the
causes of the emergence of complexity and hierarchy in human societies and will
expand the capability for understanding complex spatial processes.
Broader Impacts
Scientific explanations of the development of complexity and hierarchy in human societies will help scholars, educators and policy-makers to better understand the patterns of historical sociocultural evolution and their implications for the future of humankind. The results of this research will have important implications for issues such as societal responses to climate change, ecological degradation, population density, the changing nature of the global city system, the rise and fall of hegemonic core powers, transitions from unipolar to multipolar power situations, as well as resilience and systemic collapse. The EMPCIT project will make its standardized geospatial data set publicly available and will coordinate and collaborate with other world historical data consortia. Participants in the project will develop undergraduate and graduate level courses and research projects to train students to do interdisciplinary research and develop infographic presentations for classroom and general educational use.
Project Description
The
EMPCIT project will use both quantitative estimates of population sizes of the
largest cities in world regions and estimates of the territorial sizes of
largest states and empires to study the causes of changes in the scale of human
institutions. Upsweeps are instances in which the largest settlement or polity
in a region significantly increases in size for the first time. The project
will use world regions and whole interaction networks (world-systems) as well
as single polities and cities as units of analysis.[1]
This proposed interdisciplinary research is organized around the territorial
sizes of polities[2] and the
population sizes of cities because these are relatively easily ascertainable
quantitative indicators of system size and complexity. Interval scale metrics
are needed in order to tell the difference between small and large changes in
scale. When human sociocultural systems
are studied over long periods of time cyclical processes of population growth
and decline, the rise and fall of large and strong polities, are empirically
evident. This project will employ a systematic method[3] of
differentiating between a “normal” upswing or downswing in which the scale of
sociocultural organization is fluctuating around an equilibrium level and an
event of growth or decline that is significantly greater than the normal
fluctuations (see Figure 1). Focusing on
the largest cities and polities in each region rather than on individual cities
or polities makes these cycles of upswings, downswings, upsweeps and collapses
visible. Are the forces and conditions
that cause upsweeps simply larger than those that cause upswings, or are
different factors involved? Or do they combine in different ways? And are the
causes of upsweeps the same as the causes of collapses but in reverse? The
project will use upswings, upsweeps, downswings, downsweeps and collapses of
city and polity sizes as dependent variables to be explained. This project will
study city and polity sizes in nine world regions from 4000 BCE until 2010 CE.
Figure 1. Types of Medium-term Scale Change
in the Largest Cities and Polities
This
project will use several different entities as foci of data collection and
units of analysis:
- individual cities and polities
(states and empires),
- the largest cities and polities
within regions,
- nine spatially constant world
regions (Africa, Western Asia, Eastern Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia
and Oceania, South Asia, Europe, North and Central America, and South
America ),
- networks of cities linked by
exchanges of bulk goods (food and everyday raw materials),
- networks of polities based on
political/military interaction (diplomacy, alliances, and warfare),
- networks of cities based the
long-distance trade of prestige goods, and
- the whole Earth-wide network.
This
project will improve upon earlier efforts to identify upsweep and collapse
events (Inoue et al 2012 and Inoue et al 2015) by upgrading the
estimates of city and polity sizes (see below). An example of results obtained
using the territorial sizes of the largest polities in the expanding
political/military network that formed as result of the coming together of the
Mesopotamian and Egyptian interstate networks around 1500 BCE is shown in
Figure 2.
Figure 2:
Largest Empires in the Central Interstate Network, 1500 BCE- 2000 CE[4]
The polity scale upsweeps are
circled in Figure 2. In some cases these are composite upsweeps in which the
increase to a new scale was carried out by more than one polity. Recall that
this method focusses on a characteristic of the larger network – the
territorial size of the largest polity – rather than characteristics of single
polities. Figure 2 also shows that the period between the Islamic and Mongol
upsweeps was a relatively long period of smaller polity sizes that would
qualify by our standards as a systemic collapse.
The main interdisciplinary theoretical
thrust of the proposed research is based on a scope of comparison that comes
from anthropology, archaeology and world history. This scope is combined with
competing explanations of scale changes that come from ecology, sociology,
history and political science, especially international relations theory.[5] Sociology gave birth to the world-system
perspective (Wallerstein 1974), which posits the existence of a hierarchical
Europe-centered interstate system that emerged in the long sixteenth century CE[6] in
which some polities (those in the core) exploit and dominate others (the
semiperiphery and the periphery). This
proposed research will utilize an anthropological and world historical
framework to compare small, regional and global world-systems over the past
6000 years (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014). .
Political scientists focus on political
institutions and on international relations, especially regarding power
dynamics among competing states, institutions of diplomacy and arms races.
International relations theory focuses on geopolitics as a struggle for power
in which military capabilities and warfare are central components. Geopolitics
is most often understood as a multiplayer game in which territorial strategies
are an important element, in means and ends, of power struggles. Most international
relations theorists focus on the interstate system that emerged in Europe after
being institutionally defined by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 CE. The
approach proposed here uses an anthropological and world historical framework
to examine the nature of interstate systems since the emergence of early states
in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) contend that
world-systems, defined as interaction networks with consequential effects for
local social structures, are the most important unit of analysis for explaining
large-scale social change. The
evolutionary[7]
world-systems perspective allows comparisons between whole interaction networks
that are different in size, period and location. They point out that different kinds of
interaction have distinct spatial characteristics and degrees of importance in
different kinds of world-systems. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) employ a
place-centric approach that bounds spatial networks by asking what reproduces
or changes the social structures of a designated locality. Always important are
low value per unit of weight food and everyday raw materials (bulk goods) that
form a network that is usually spatially smaller than the network of
political/military interaction among polities. And there are even larger
networks formed by exchanges of information and prestige goods that may be
consequential for local social structures. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) also turn
the issue of core/periphery hierarchies into an empirical question rather than
a definitional assumption. The evolutionary comparative world-systems approach
allows for the possibility that world-systems might exist that do not have
core/periphery hierarchies, and indeed the small-scale system in indigenous
Northern California studied by Chase-Dunn and Mann (1998) did not have much in
the way of interpolity domination or exploitation. Core/periphery hierarchies
evolve along with other types of inequality as the capabilities of some
societies to extract resources from distant regions develop.
Most state-based world-systems are organized
as hierarchical interstate systems in which core polities and cities exploit
and dominate non-core peoples. Power is organized in different ways in
different systems and so what semiperipherality is in any system depends on
what coreness and peripherality are. These are relational concepts. But it is
possible to identify these world-system positions in very different kinds of
systems based on characteristics that are usually associated with them such as
population density, geographical location, and differences in modes of
accumulation (foraging, pastoralism, horticulture, agriculture, scale of
irrigation, industrialization). Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) describe a phenomenon they call “semiperipheral development.”
This involves the observation that
peoples and polities that are semiperipheral vis a vis the larger world-system of which they are a part are more
likely to implement technological and organizational forms that facilitate
upward mobility and/or that change the developmental logic of world-systems. One variety of this
phenomenon involves semiperipheral marcher states that conquer older core
regions to produce an upsweep in polity size. Another variety involves
semiperipheral capitalist city-states that are agents of commodification -- the
expansion and deepening of trade networks. Increasing trade and production for
exchange facilitates provides a fertile context for the emergence of larger
cities and larger polities.
There are several possible processes that
might account for the phenomenon of semiperipheral development. Randall Collins (1999) has argued that the phenomenon of
marcher states conquering other states to make larger empires is due to the
“marcher state advantage.” Being out on the edge of a core region of competing
states allows more maneuverability because it is not necessary to defend the
rear. This geopolitical advantage allows military resources to be concentrated
on vulnerable neighbors. Peter Turchin (2003) has argued that the relevant process
is one in which group solidarity is enhanced by being on a “metaethnic
frontier” in which the clash of contending cultures produces strong cohesion
and cooperation within a frontier society, allowing it to perform great feats.
Carroll Quigley (1961) distilled a somewhat similar theory from the works of
Arnold Toynbee. Another factor affecting within-group solidarity is the
different degrees of internal stratification usually found in premodern systems
between the core and the semiperiphery. Core societies develop old, crusty and
bloated elites who rely on mercenaries and “foreigners” as subalterns, while
semiperipheral leaders are often charismatic individuals who identify with
their soldiers and citizens (and vice versa). Less inequality within a polity
often means greater group solidarity. And this may be an important part of the
semiperipheral advantage. Ibn Khaldun’s (1958) model of nomadic barbarians
conquering decrepit old civilizations has been an inspiration to some of this
thinking. And the tie with internal inequality may also be linked with waves of
population growth within polities – the so-called “secular cycle” (Goldstone
1991; Turchin and Nefadov 2009).
Hub theories of innovation have been popular
among world historians (e.g. McNeill and McNeill 2003; Christian 2004) and
human ecologists (Hawley 1950). These hold that new ideas and institutions
emerge in central settlements where information crossroads are located. Mixing
and recombination of ideas and information leads to the emergence of new
formulations. Recent studies have shown
evidence that information exchange, innovations, and political, economic and
social activities increase exponentially with city size (Ortman et al.
2014).
Esther Boserup (1965) developed a
demographic theory that focuses on population growth and population pressure as
the master variables behind social change. Technological change was explained
as an adaptation to population density nearing or exceeding the carrying
capacity of the environment under a given technological regime. Cultural
ecology and population pressure have important implications for sociocultural
development when they are combined with the idea of social and ecological
circumscription proposed by Robert
Carneiro (1978). Carneiro explained the social organizational ruptures that
produced the first states in terms of population pressure in a geographic
situation in which outmigration was impossible or very costly. Under these
conditions people stay and fight rather than migrating. High levels of warfare
kill off population and reduce population pressures. Some systems get caught in
a vicious cycle in which warfare operates as a demographic regulator (e.g.
Kirch 1991). But in other systems people become tired of warfare and allow the
emergence of elites who organize larger polities that regulate conflict and
resource allocation (property). The elements of population pressure,
intensification of production, ecological degradation, technological change,
conflict, and circumscription are combined in different ways by different
theorists, but these are the main ingredients that comprise most of the
explanations of long run cultural evolution by archaeologists and many
anthropologists (e.g., Johnson and Earle 1987; see also Chase-Dunn and Hall
1997: Chapter 6).
The EMPCIT project will test a large number of
hypotheses because it employs multiple units of analysis and several kinds of
network links. The main dependent variables will be changes in the scale of
polities and cities. Individual polities and cities will be studied, and the
sizes of the largest of these within regions and interaction networks will be
studied as characteristics of the region
or network.[8]
The project divides the indicators of scale change into upswings, upsweeps,
downswings, downsweeps, surges and collapses (Inoue et al 2012). Though these are all based on the sizes of largest
cities and polities, timing and the way in which the unit of analysis is
employed (regions vs different kinds of networks) will affect the
identification of these scale changes. The main independent variables that will
be studied are: world-system position of polities and cities
(core-semiperiphery-periphery), the power configurations of interstate systems
(Wilkinson 2003), changes in the intensity of warfare, network node centrality,
the centralization of whole networks (graph centrality); climate change,
environmental degradation, and the project will examine the extent to which
changes in the sizes of cities are associated with changes in the sizes polities.
In addition to focusing on the largest cities or polities in each region or
network the project will also compute the size distributions of largest cities
and polities. Urban geographers have long theorized about the causes and
consequences of city size distributions.[9]
Our comparison of largest polities in East Asia, Europe and West Asia and the
Central Interstate Network will enable us to ascertain how the size
distributions change over time and how these are related with scale changes.
Here are some examples of the large number of testable hypotheses generated by
these independent and dependent variables:
1. Upsweeps
of polity and city sizes have been mainly caused by the phenomenon of
semiperipheral development – marcher states and capitalist city-states (world-systems theory)
2. Settlements
that have greater centrality in exchange networks are more likely to innovate
and grow, causing upswings and upsweeps
(hub theory)
3. Environmental
degradation causes collapses of cities and polities (Diamond 2005).
4. Climate
worsening (droughts, flooding) causes downswings and collapses.
5. Rapid
climate worsening may cause adaptive responses that eventually lead to city and
empire upsweeps (Fagan 2005).
6. Innovations
occur at centrally located network nodes that facilitate polity and urban
upsweeps.(node theory)
7. City
upswings and upsweeps are caused by polity upswings and upsweeps.
8. When
formerly disconnected regional networks become linked with one another, forming
larger interaction networks, cycles of urban and polity growth become
synchronized (Beaujard 2005, 2010).
9. It
is in periods of relatively intense warfare that polity upsweeps occur.
10. Large
empires originate from metaethnic frontiers in which cultures with different and
conflicting values interact (Turchin 2003).
11. Regions
and networks with lognormal size distributions should be more stable than those
with flat or primate size distributions.
Comparative Framework
This section outlines the proposed comparative interdisciplinary framework for studying the causes of scale changes of city and polity sizes. The EMPCIT project will study expanding and declining interaction networks among human communities as both units of analysis and as contextual causes of scale changes in the sizes of cities and empires. Human interaction networks have expanded over the long run (globalization), but in the medium-run there have been cycles of network expansion and contraction.
The best way to spatially bound human social
systems is an old question that continues to generate heated disputes among
social scientists. Michael Mann (1986) notes that different important kinds of
interaction have different spatial scales, and so the notion that societies
have single spatial boundaries is usually incorrect and causes much
misunderstanding. Many regionalists define regions in terms of homogenous
attributes, either natural or social.
Comparative civilizationists have tended to focus on the core cultural
characteristics that are embodied in religions or world-views and have
constructed lists of such culturally defined civilizations that then become the
“cases” for the study of social change (e.g. Melko and Leighton 1987). Another
approach that defines regions as areas with homogenous characteristics is the
“culture area” approach developed by Carl O. Sauer and his colleagues
(e.g.Wissler 1927). This project gathered valuable information on all sorts of
cultural attributes such as languages, architectural styles, technologies of
production, and kinship structures, and used these to designate bounded and
adjacent “culture areas” that have been widely used to organize studies of
indigenous peoples (e.g. the Smithsonian
Handbook of North American Indians).
A major problem with both the civilizationist
and the cultural area traditions is the assumption that homogeneity is a good
approach to bounding social systems. Heterogeneity rather than homogeneity has
long been an important aspect of human social systems because different kinds
of groups often complement one another and interaction often produces co-evolution
and differentiation.[10]
The effort to bound systems as homogeneous regions obscures this important
fact. Spatial distributions of homogeneous characteristics do not bound
separate social systems. Indeed, social heterogeneity is often produced by
interaction, as in the cases of core/periphery differentiation, urban/rural,
and sedentary/nomadic systems. Even sophisticated approaches that examine
distributions of spatial characteristics statistically must make quite
arbitrary choices in order to specify regional boundaries (Burton, Moore,
Whiting and Romney 1996). David Wilkinson (2003) has made a strong case for
studying civilizations as networks of allying and fighting polities and he has
produced a chronograph of the expansion of the interstate system that emerged
when the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems became linked around 1500 BCE
(Wilkinson 1987). Many world-systems scholars have contended that trade
networks are the best unit of analysis for spatially bounding whole systems
(Abu-Lughod 1989; Beaujard 2005, 2010). Immanuel Wallerstein (1995; 2011
[1974]) contends that a hierarchical core/periphery division of labor,
especially the one that emerged in the long 16th century CE, is the
best way to bound a world-system. And several eminent scholars claim that there
has been a global (Earth-wide) single system for millennia (Lenski 2005; Frank
and Gills 1994; Modelski 2003; Modelski, Devezas and Thompson 2008, and Chew
2001, 2007). This research project will operationalize all these units of
analysis and will pit them against one another regarding their relevance for
explaining scale changes of polities and cities.
.
Figure
3: Nine world regions for studying the emergence of
large cities and polities\
The
world regions delineated in Figure 3 represent the nine constant spatial
regions the EMPCIT project will study. These boundaries have been chosen in
order to facilitate the study of the emergence of largest cities and polities
over the past 6000 years.[11]
Using these regions will also allow us to address the important issues raised
by world historians and civilizationists who compare regions (e.g. Pomeranz
2000; Scheidel 2009, Wong 1997; Morris 2010, Frank 1998). The project will also
be able to compare the use of spatially constant regions to the use of networks
and to compare regions with networks. The proposed operationalization of
network boundaries will first compile a propositional inventory of statements
by social scientists about when smaller networks expanded, merged and when
larger networks engulfed smaller ones (e.g. Beaujard 2005; 2010; Wilkinson
1992a; 1992b 1993). Then the project will use data on trade networks,
historical accounts of warfare and diplomacy and studies of the diffusion of
plants, animals, and technologies and ideas to evaluate the claims made by
scholars about interaction networks and the timing of their expansions. The
proposed units of analysis are listed on pages 2 and 3 above.
Chronological Issues
For
purposes of comparing the timing of changes in city and polity sizes across
different world regions it is important to have accurate absolute chronologies
for the regions being compared in order to examine issues of priority and
synchrony. Unfortunately there is still considerable disagreement about the
absolute dating for Mesopotamia before 1500 BCE. Mario Liverani (2014: 9-16)
explains why estimates of absolute dates are so uncertain. Relative dates of
events needed for estimating polity and city sizes are based on “king lists.”
Thus an event, such as a conquest, is said to have occurred in the third year
of the reign of King X. Considerable effort has been made to figure out the
correspondences between different kings’ lists in Mesopotamia and their
correspondence with Egyptian king lists, which are more continuous. These are then
converted in to calendar years by ascertaining their relationships with
astronomical events such as eclipses. Unfortunately there is a period after the
fall of the Babylonian empire in which king lists are missing for Mesopotamia,
and there is disagreement about the timing of astronomical events. Thus the
length in years of the occluded period is in dispute, and this results in
so-called, short, medium and long chronologies for the period before the Late
Bronze Age, with an error of as much as 100 years.[12]
Absolute dating is needed in order to compare the timing of scale changes
across world regions. So it matters to us whether Ur was sacked in 2004
BCE, and thus is eliminated from the list of large cities and large polities in
2000 BCE, or in some other year 50 years earlier or later. Liverani (2014: 15)
is satisfied to use the middle chronology for Mesopotamia and the surrounding
regions, but he is not trying to compare the timing of changes in the Ancient
Near East with other world regions. The EMPCIT project will also use the middle
chronology, while being careful to determine which chronology has been used in
the sources from which estimates are coded. And the project will be chary
regarding temporal comparisons among regions before 1500 BCE.
The EMPCIT goal is to achieve a
minimum temporal resolution of about every twenty-five years because the
project is studying middle-run growth/decline phases of polities and cities.
Archaeological evidence of the areal sizes of settlements and hearth counts can
be used to estimate settlement sizes, but the limitation here is often temporal
resolution. Studies that rely on radiocarbon dating and archaeological phase
periodization often do not achieve a level of temporal resolution that would make
settlement growth/decline phases visible (e.g. Ortman, Cabaniss, Sturm and
Bettancourt 2014). When temporal resolution is poorer than every 100 years it
is likely that some of the cycles of growth and decline will be missed.
Data
Upgrading
Improvement of estimates of the population sizes of
cities and the territorial sizes of polities is an endless task. The ultimate
intent of the EMPCIT project is to include all the towns and cities with
10,0000 or more people and all the polities with .01 or larger square
megameters of territory in the nine world regions from 4000 BCE to 2010 CE. But
in the exploratory phase of the project (the first two years) the project will
prioritize by focusing on upgraded data sets that include the ten largest
cities and polities in each of the world regions at 25-year intervals since
4000 BCE.
Improving
estimates of the territorial sizes of polities
Determining scale
shifts requires real metric (interval-level) estimates, not just periodizations
of growth and decline. The territorial sizes of polities are difficult to
estimate from archaeological evidence alone (see
Smith and Montiel 2001). What the EMPCIT project wants to know is the size of the area over which a central power
exercises a degree of control that allows for the appropriation of important
resources (taxes and tribute). The ability to extract resources falls off
with distance from the center in all polities, and controlling larger and
larger territories requires the invention of new transportation, communications
and organizational technologies [what Michael Mann (1986) has called
“techniques of power”]. Military technologies and bureaucracies are important
institutional inventions that make possible the extraction of resources over
great distances, but so are new ideologies and new technologies of
communication (Innis 1950).[13]
Estimating
the territorial sizes of states and empires has been based on the use of
published historical atlases and historical accounts. For the ancient and
classical worlds these are based primarily on knowledge about who conquered
which city, and whether or not and for how long tribute was paid to the
conquering polity. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether or not tribute is
asymmetrical or symmetrical exchange. Only asymmetrical (unequal) exchange signifies
a tributary imperial relationship. Otherwise it is just trade and does not
signify an extractive relationship.
The pioneer coder of
the territorial sizes of polities is Rein Taagepera (1978a, 1978b, 1979,1997).
This project builds upon Taagepera’s monumental work and uses his methods.
Taagepera used Atlases and historical descriptions of events to estimate the
territorial sizes of states and empires. This project will improve upon his
estimates by using Atlases that had not been published when Taagepera did his
work (e.g. Schwartzberg (1992). The project will also use online sources such
as Wikipedia and Geacron. The values produced from these tertiary sources will
be checked with regional experts (see Data Management section).The EMPCIT
polity data template will utilize Taagepera’s method of coding the year in
which polity sizes change, usually as a result of conquests, and will designate
area in square megameters as Taagepera did. It will also include a standardized
identification code for each separate polity, fields for alternative names of
the polity, geocodes for the location of the capital city and estimates of the
population size of the polity.[14]
The proposed project will also include polygon points indicating the borders of
the polity. Early states and empires often had fuzzy boundaries, and in some
regions historians have argued that two separate polities may have combined
jurisdiction over bordering areas. In order to produce a single estimate of the
sizes of such polities the EMPCIT project will divide them equally between the
two overlapping centers. States and empires are assigned to world regions based
on the location of their capital cities.
Improving
estimates of the populations sizes of cities
The EMPCIT project
will develop a template for coding characteristics of individual cities that
will include estimates of the size of the built up area as well as estimates of
the population size. The city template will also include a unique identifier,
fields for alternative names of the city, and the geocodes of the city center.
Accurate estimation of the population sizes of both contemporary and ancient
urbanized areas is a complicated problem. Daniel Pasciuti (Pasciuti 2003;
Pasciuti and Chase-Dunn 2003) has proposed a measurement error model for
estimating the sizes of settlements based on the literature in archaeology,
demography and urban geography.[15]
The EMPCIT project defines settlements as a spatially contiguous built-up area.[16]
This is the best definition for comparing the sizes of settlements across
different polities and cultures because it ignores the complicated issue of
governance boundaries (e.g. municipal districts, etc). But it still has some
problems. Most cultures have nucleated settlements in which residential areas
surround a monumental, governmental or commercial center. In such cases it is
fairly easy to spatially bound a contiguous built up area based on the
declining spatial density of human constructions. But other cultures space
residences out rather than concentrating them near a central place (e.g. many
of the settlements in the prehistoric American Southwest such as Chaco
Canyon). In such cases it is necessary
to choose a standard radius from the center in order to make comparisons of
population sizes over time or across cultures.
Existing
compilations of city sizes rely primarily on:
1.
Tertius
Chandler 1987 Four Thousand Years of
Urban Growth: The Edwin Mellen Press
2.
George
Modelski 2003 World Cities: –3000 to 2000. Washington, DC: Faros 2000
3.
Ian Morris 2013 The Measure of Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Tertius
Chandler’s (1987) compendium is still the most comprehensive study of large
cities, but substantial improvements were made in George Modelski’s (2003)
compendium. Ian Morris also provides estimates of the largest cities in his
book on measuring the development of Eastern and Western civilizations (Morris
2013). The project will improve upon existing city size data sets by
collaborating with other projects and incorporating data sets produced by
others.[17]
The proposed city template will include both the calendar year in which the
size of a city is known to have rapidly changed (e.g. the example of the sack
of Ur mentioned above) as well as interpolated estimates for the standardized
years used by Chandler and Modelski.[18]
The Plan
The research and analysis will be conducted
at the University of California-Riverside.
The PI and the co-PIs will coordinate the project along with research
associates at the Institute for Research on World-Systems. The project will be
conducted with graduate students and advanced undergraduates who will work for
pay or for course credit. Weekly project
meetings will be held in Riverside using online videoconferencing for those participants
not in Riverside. Progress reports and research papers will be presented at
annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, the International Studies
Association, the Society for American Archaeology and the Social Science
History Association.
Throughout the project, intellectual
cooperation will be sought from senior investigators from different
disciplines. The following colleagues have indicated that they are not involved
in any other IBSS proposal and are willing to collaborate on this project:
·
Gullermo
Algaze (Archaeology, University of California-San Diego, Regional Focus: West
Asia)
·
Robert
J. Allen (Earth Sciences, University of California-Riverside)
·
Philippe
Beaujard (History, Unoversité Paris 1-CEMAF, Regional
Focus: Africa, South Asia)
·
Albert
Bergesen (Sociology, University of Arizona)
·
Robert
Denemark,(Political Science, University of Delaware)
·
Raymond
Dezzani (Geography, University of Idaho)
·
Colin
Flint (Political Science, Utah State University)
·
Jonathan
Friedman (Anthropology, University of California-San Diego, Regional Focus: South-East Asia and Oceania)
·
Barry
Gills (Development Studies, University of Helsinki)
·
Thomas D. Hall (Sociology, Depauw University,
Regional
Focus: Central Asia)
·
Robert Hanneman (Sociology, University of
California-Riverside)
·
Mogens
Hansen (Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & L, University of Copenhagen, Regional Focus: Europe)
·
Jed
Kaplan (ARVE, Lausanne, Switzerland, Regional
Focus: Europe)
·
Andrey
Korotayev (Global Studies, Moscow State University,
Regional Focus: West Asia, Africa)
·
Bai-Lian
Li (Botany and Plant Sciences, UCR)
·
Patrick Manning, (University of Pittsburgh, Regional Focus: Africa)
·
Ian
Morris (History, Stanford University)
·
J.B.
Owens, (History, Idaho State University, Regional
Focus: Europe, South America)
·
Walter
Scheidel (History, Stanford University, Regional
Focus: Europe)
·
Michael
E. Smith, (Anthropology, Arizona State University, Regional
Focus: North and Central America)
·
Joseph
A. Tainter, (Environment and Society, Utah State University, Regional Focus: North and Central America)
·
William
R. Thompson, (Political Science, Indiana University)
·
Peter
Turchin (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of
Connecticut)
·
Douglas White (Anthropology, University of
California-Irvine)
Further
expertise will be sought from the following scholars: Frances Berdan
(Anthropology, California State University-San Bernardino, Regional Focus: North and Central America), Sing
Chew (Sociology, Humboldt State University), Claudio Cioffi-Revilla
(Computational Social Science, George Mason University, Regional Focus: Central Asia) Kajsa Ekholm Friedman (Anthropology, Lund
University, Regional Focus: Europe), Julian
Go (Sociology, Boston University), Peter Grimes (Institute for Research on
World-Systems, University of California-Riverside), Ho-Fung Hung (Sociology,
Johns Hopkins University, Regional Focus: East Asia), Victor B. Lieberman, (History, Asian
and Comparative History, University of Michigan, Regional Focus: South-East Asia and Oceania), Luis Múzquiz (University of Madrid), Teresa Neal (History, University of
California-Irvine, Regional Focus: West
Asia, Africa, South Asia), Dan Pasciuti (Sociology, Johns Hopkins University),
Joachim Rennstich (International Social Work, International YMCA University of
Applied Sciences), Peter Robertshaw (Anthropology, California State
University-San Bernardino, Regional Focus:
Africa, South Asia), Peter Taylor (Human Geography, Northumbria University),
Marilee Wood (Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, Regional Focus: Africa, South Asia), J. Daniel Rogers (Archaeology, Department of
Anthropology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Regional Focus:
Central Asia), Joseph E. Schwartzberg (Geography, Emeritus, University of
Minnesota, Regional Focus: South Asia), Nikolay Kradin (Head and Professor,
Department of Social Anthropology,
Far-Eastern National Technical University; Head and Professor, Department of World
History, Archaeology and Anthropology,
Far-Eastern Federal University, Regional Focus: Far East , Central
Asia), Peter Spufford (Hisotry, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge,
Regional Focus: Europe), Christopher I. Beckwith, (Professor, Central Eurasian
Studies at Indiana University, Regional Focus: Central Asia), Norman Yoffee
(Near Eastern Studies, Anthropology, Emeritus, University of Michigan, Regional
Focus: West Asia ), and Philip L. Kohl (Anthropology, Professor, Wellesley College, Regional Focus: Central
Asia).
All these scholars will be invited to
participate in an early meeting in which the research plan will be
fine-tuned. The project will also hold
an organizational gathering to get feedback on the plans in conjunction with
the annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA). The EMPCIT
Data Archive will be housed at the University of California-Riverside. The
project will employ formal network analysis, time-series analysis and
structural equations modeling to estimate the sizes and directions of the
effects of independent variables on scale changes.
Expected Project Significance
This project will
contribute to scientific understanding of the emergence of complexity and
hierarchy in human societies. The long-term upsweep of the scale of cities and
polities is widely known, but heated debates still rage regarding the proximate
and contextual causes of these trends. While certain human and natural factors
have been famously hypothesized to be the causes of instances of these scale
changes, empirical testing of hypothetical causes has been limited by the
comprehensiveness, accuracy, and verifiability of extant data sets on the scale
changes. So the EMPCIT project will improve the testability of causal
hypotheses by generating a data set that is better in these regards. This work
will contribute to the accurate delineation of trade and political/military
interaction networks as they merged and engulfed one another to constitute the
contemporary global system of today. The
project will use not only well-established methods for organizing and analyzing
data, but also a cutting-edge data structure that combines GIS with formal
network analysis. The project will increase the legibility of the complex
spatial processes that led to the emergence of the increasingly global society
of today.
Interdisciplinary
Character of the Project
The EMPCIT data base will use standardized
geographical network protocols in order to make the data freely available for
use by scholars from different disciplines. The framework of comparison is
anthropological and world historical. The hypotheses to be tested come from causal
models proposed by political scientists, anthropologists and sociologists,
especially those who are informed by interdisciplinary perspectives such as geopolitics,
human ecology, and the comparative evolutionary world-systems approach. The EMPCIT
project emphasizes cooperative interdisciplinary exploration of the pathways by
which scale changes have occurred in cities and polities. The project will coordinate and collaborate with
other interdisciplinary consortia that are currently compiling relevant data. The
project will further develop a multidisciplinary theoretical research program by
engaging scholars from different disciplines at the levels of empirical
measurement and the development and testing of causal models. The EMPCIT project
will produce articles, monographs and infograms that are intended for a broad multidisciplinary
audience.
Broader
Impacts
The project's intellectual impact lies in the
development of a more holistic approach to understanding the connections
between climate change, demographic expansion and contraction and the size and
complexity of human social organization. By
confirming or disconfirming the accuracy of contending scientific models of the
development of complexity and hierarchy in human societies, the project will
help scholars, educators and policy-makers to grasp the main patterns of
historical sociocultural evolution. Such
understanding matters for societal responses to major challenges of the 21st
century: climate change, ecological
degradation, population density, the emergence of global city regions, the rise
and fall of hegemonic core powers, and transitions from a unipolar to a
multipolar geopolitical structure. The project will have important implications
regarding the understanding of past systemic resilience and collapse, and these
will have significant implications for the future. The project will develop
undergraduate and graduate-level courses and research projects to train
students to do interdisciplinary research and particularly to develop infographic
presentations for teaching scholars and the general public.
Results from Prior
NSF Support. None in last 5 years
Preservation and
Documentation of data: The detailed standards, procedures, and protocols of the
data collection will be discussed and determined among PIs and senior advisors
at a conference at the beginning of the research project. The goals of data collection and data
preservation will include the following:
·
Archive
population sizes, territorial sizes, climate change data, geophysical
characteristics of polities, coordinates (use Universal Transverse Mercator
(UTM) coordinate system), polity maps, trade and military network nodes, level
of trade, materials transported between the nodes, warfare, alliances and
diplomacy.
·
Obtain
the consultation of experts for each region to review the data quality and to
help resolve instances in which estimates are found to be inconsistent. Expert
consultants will also carefully review the final data archive. Remaining
disagreements among experts and sources will be included in the final data
archive, including indicators of the quality of estimates based on the level of
consensus among experts. (for experts’ regions, see pages 9 and 10)
·
Create
a catalog of archived information.
·
Provide
technical assistance to research assistants for the collection of data and data
input based on the collection standards and protocols in science.
To
ensure that the data will be understood and used appropriately by the general
public and scholarly users the data documentation will specify: the data
collection method, data collection context, data structure and organization,
reports on data reliability and validity, and data quality reports (including
descriptions of manipulation of the data that have been conducted). The project data archive will be included in
the data section of the World-Systems Archive
(http://wsarch.ucr.edu/), a publically available archive that has
been housed at the University of California-Riverside since 2000 CE. It is a secure
institutional repository at UCR that allows access to the academic and public
communities. The PI will preserve the
database in accessible and usable form for five years after finalization of the
IBSS grant.
Sharing of data: The data produced by
the EMPCIT project will be shared among collaborators in the data construction
stage and with the general public in the final stage. The EMPCIT project
collaborates with SESHAT: The Global History Data Bank; the Collaborative for
Historical Information and Analysis, ARVE
(Atmosphere Regolith Vegetation) and the Open History Project.
Data
entry:
The project participants will enter the data by accessing the URI of the data
Website. RDF[19] uses
URIs to the two ends of the link between the Webs. The data Website is thus shared across
different users at any time. The linking
structure with RDF allows multiple coders to share and modify the data on the
project Website from different locations.
Data
improvement:
As the project collects more data, the collaborators will use them for testing
hypotheses. The structured data will be
integrated and shared among collaborators.
Data
adoption:
As the database is finalized, the data archive will be made into an open data
archive online. The final data will be
made available for public and academic use.
Use
of the DBpedia (Databasepdia): The data search implementation of DBpedia
is compatible with RDF and Triplestore.
DBpedia will be utilized for the project’s research questions and for
data sharing for public use. The project
will obtain structured information of concepts from Wikipedia applying the
DBpedia. The project will use the
obtained data from the DBpedia as a reference for examining the completeness of
our database. With a structured
acquisition of information with DBpedia, the project can assess what areas of
information are lacking or incomplete.
While the project compiles data obtained with queries using the DBpedia
it may also locate missing resources that exist in Wikipedia. The project will
also contribute to Wikipedia to fill out the data that is gained from the
project research so that the newly obtained data are shared with other researchers
and the general public.
Policies and
provisions for re-use, re-distribution, and the production of derivatives: Rights to copy,
adapt, include, distribute, share, reuse, or display the data in other
publications are expected. Public users
of this database are free to adapt the data with attribution of author(s).
WORK SCHEDULE
1st year (July 1,
2015 - June 30, 2016)
Organize
and implement coordination and communication among principal investigators and
advisors. Begin weekly Project Meetings at University of California, Riverside.
Set up the web site for the research project which presents the proceedings of
the research and data gathering. Hire
and train undergraduate and graduate research assistants. The first Working Conference with the
Advisory Committee will be held at UC-Riverside in January 2016.
Theoretical Issues: Critique the project
conceptualization of city and polity scale changes with the project
participants at Project Meetings and the Working Conference. Produce an
expanded propositional inventory of explanations of polity and city scale
changes from different social science disciplines. Develop a complete
propositional inventory of the spatial and temporal boundaries of whole human
interaction systems since 4000 BCE.
Data: Develop coding protocols and
templates for settlement/city population sizes, empire territorial sizes, core/semiperiphery/periphery
status, power configuration of interstate networks, network properties of
trade, warfare and alliances, and climate change. Begin search and acquisition
of the data through a systematic search of libraries of UCR, UCLA, and
Interlibrary Loan Collections as well as digitized databases on the Internet. The
first phase of the project will target the ten largest cities and ten largest
polities in each world region. Develop initial version of the project database
using obtained information. Fine-tune
design of the database. Locate significant gaps in the data. Make a plan
for efficiently filling them given resource constraints. Discuss the degree of
consensus among coders for error-control purpose of each coding in the database. Merge the
already-coded data into a prototype of the web-based data entry following the
developed common set of coding criteria.
Database and Data
Management System: Data
merging is done with Resource Description Framework (RDF). By using URIs to the two ends of the link
between the Webs, allowing data to be modified and shared across different
users. Apply the Data Management System
(DBMS), Triplestore (3store), and alternatively use Intensively-Linked Entities
(ILE). Extract, import, and manage
triples (Meta data) from RDF database into Triplestore, and ILE, if
necessary. Utilize the advantages of
each database scheme based on specific research and analytical questions.
·
Represent
data historical geographic environment with RDF-Triplestore and ILE
·
Implement
cartographic visualization of abstract relationship among entities with
ILE.
·
Implement
bi-directional network analyses for testing real data which show the property
with ILE.
Adjust
application of Data Management System flexibly as the project increase the data
entry and modifies hypotheses.
Analyses: Start to test our
baseline hypotheses with the data obtained from preliminary coding. Discuss, revise, and alter these. Conduct overlapping coding and examine the
degree of consensus of among coders.
Examine the interactions of the groups of cities and polities.
Education: Develop
interdisciplinary courses on “The evolution of large-scale, complex settlements
and polities” at UCR and UCLA. Establish
an educational web site on “Cites and Empires in World History” which supports
the educational goals of interdisciplinary studies. Graduate and undergraduate student
participants in the project will present their own research papers at
conferences at American Sociological Association (August), International
Studies Association (March), the American Anthropological Association
(December) and other local and relevant professional venues.
2nd year (July 1,
2016 - June 30, 2017)
Coordinate
and communicate among principal investigators and advisors in the beginning of
the second year to fine-tune the research project and database. Reflect criticisms and suggestions from
advisors to improve the analytical strategies, database development, and
hypotheses testing. Continue weekly
Project Meetings at UC-Riverside.
Continue update the research project website. Students finalize the coding and entering the
data on web-based archives by the beginning of 2016. Test hypotheses utilizing
completed dataset. Produce final report
of the research. Create a research
proposal to apply for the IBSS Large Interdisciplinary Research Projects in the
second year of the project.
Data: Finalize the coding and entry of data on the project
archive. Conduct final checks of the data by experts on the regions
and periods.
Database and Data
Management System:
Finalize
the development of database utilizing RDF-Triplestore and ILE.
Analyses: Test the hypotheses
and alternative hypotheses that have been developed in the project. Finalize
the results of the tests of the research hypotheses.
Education: Continue courses and
student involvement in research. Extend the educational website with links and
information on the researches and data archives in cross-disciplinary fields.
Students finalize the coding and entering of the data and start analysis of the
collected data. Students present
solely-authored and a co-authored research papers at the aforementioned,
relevant regional conferences, and the International Sociological Association,
World Congress in Vienna. Students
submit these papers for publication and are involved in publication of
books.
Proposal Writing: submit a December
proposal for an IBSS Large Interdisciplinary
Research Projects.
DATA-MANAGEMENT PLAN
Database structure
and Database Management System (DBMS): The EMPCIT project will use Resource
Description Framework (RDF) and Triplestore for its database management system
(DBMS). In addition the project will
also employ Intentionally Linked Entities (ILE) in order to answer research
questions about network linkages among entities (cities, polities, etc.) and
entity groups.
Resource
Description Framework (RDF): RDF is a general framework for describing Web
resources (a Website and its contents). The RDF makes statements about web
resources in the form of triples
(data entities) composed of subject–predicate–object expressions.[20]
RDF allows structured data to be integrated and shared across different
applications.
RDF-Triplestore: The project will use
RDF in combination with an application called Triplestore. A triplestore is a specialized database that
is designed to be suitable for particular purposes for storage and retrieval of
triples. The project will store data in
a triplestore. The RDF query language,
SPARQL, is used to retrieve the stored information from the Triplestore. The key role of the Triplestore is to act as
a persistent storage zone for the system, to accept queries from SPARQL having
triples imported and exported via the RDF, and to integrate and display the
retrieved information. A Triplestore is
a specialized graph database in which triples (with graph property terms
described as nodes-edges-properties) store and display data. RDF-Triplestore allows efficient graph
searches. The EMPCIT project is
concerned with interaction networks among distinct entities (cities and
polities) as well as the interactions among different entity groups (e.g. trade
networks, political-military networks). Big graph properties are important for
studying the relational characteristics in such complex networks. With
hypotheses testing using the graph-based inquiry applying RDF-triplestore, the
patterns of relationships among the causal factors can be estimated.
UCINet
and ILE (Intentionally Linked Entities): For network analyses the EMPCIT
project will use both conventional formal network methods using UCINet
(Borgatti, Everett and Freeman 2002) and the method of Intentionally Linked
Entities (ILE). ILE is a flexible network database management application that
allows for the inclusion of attributes of entities (nodes) including their
geocodes. ILE has been developed by
Vitit Kantabutra and J.B.
Owens at Idaho State University (Kantabutra 2007; Kantabutora et al. 2010; Kantabutra and Owens
2013). ILE, written in the Ruby
programming language, has database management capabilities that are similar to
RDF-Triplestore, but it has additional advantageous characteristics of both
object-oriented and relational databases.
Having a graph database structure, the
RDF-Triplestore implementation allows entities of all kinds to be indexed as a
graph (in other words, no-indexing or index-free). In making queries with triples, the entity is
binarily selected as either having a certain queried property or not. This is not suited for situations in which
the research question involves an entity that has to be
identified from the data
in order to make queries.[21] In ILE, each datum is indexed. Entities can
be linked and entities or entity sets are selected with direct pointers. This
allows analysis of the relationships of entities with particular
properties. The data properties of the
proposed project comprise more than binary relationships or characteristics,
such as polities (entities) which are categorized into core, semiperipheral,
and peripheral positions within interstate or regional hierarchies. For queries in which the project needs to
identify specific entities using such relational multi-categories, the ILE-type
implementation is advantageous. This project needs to be able to understand
each case of individual polities and cities and so the ILE property of locating
a specific entity or entity set will be very useful for the analytical purposes
of the project.
In addition, analytical flexibility is
attained with a direct pointer. With
ILE, the stored physical data structures are tied as an entity set, which makes
it easier to aggregate functions, including averaging or finding minimums or
maximums (Kantabutra and Owens 2013). For instance, the units of data in the
proposed project are diverse, including cities, polities, sets of cities within
a polity, sets of cities that are linked by trade, sets of polities that are
linked by political/military interaction, sets of polities that are linked
by trade, nine spatially constant regions, and the whole globe. The data base
implementation needs to have the capacity to handle all these different levels
and units.
Finally, in ILE, the direct pointer also
allows bi-directional pointing, which is useful for distinguishing between
one-way and reciprocal relationships. Exchange networks among cities and
polities can be asymmetrical or symmetrical.
Trade relationships are two-way, but gift-giving or tributary
relationships may be one-way. The object of exchange (bulk goods, prestige
goods, or information) and the amount of exchange (low, medium, or high) will
vary over time and across entities.
Depending on the analytical questions being
asked both RDF-triplestore and ILE have advantages, the proposed project will
use both.
Sample RDF-Triplestore
query operation on the proposed database
RDF-Triplestore
can be applied to spatial network analyses.
The database integrates efficient graphs and geospatial analytical
capabilities.
Figure
4: Sample figure of the graph
representation of a query. (Data source: Ciolek, OWTRAD)
The Figure 4 shows an example of an RDF data structure
with geospatial and network information.
The
RDF query statements show a graph structure that represents the relationships
of resources and obtained values. The inquiry “find all the cities that are
located within a specified distance from the capital of a polity that was
engaged in warfare specified period of time” is represented in small scale in
Figure 4. This example of an RDF data
structure specifies the relationships between entities (cities or empires) and
certain values. For instance, city
Beijing has both attributes (geolocation, population size, etc.) and links with
other cities and the Ming Empire.
Prefix URI
.
ming: https://irows.ucr.edu/example/ming
beijing: https://irows.ucr.edu/example/beijing
warwhen: https://irows.ucr.edu/example/beijing/war/year
(Example for a coder-defined
ontology)
.
Table
1: Examples of URI representation
The relationships between attributes of
entities and relations among entities are identified by URIs (Table 1). The obtained value is given as a string and
may accompany a URI that defines its data type.
The RDF triples, the subject is represented by an entity with a URI
(circle in Figure 4), predicate indicates the relationship through its URI (arrow),
and object is denoted by a URI that contains a certain value of an attribute of
an entity (square box). The RDF, in this
manner, represents large amounts of relations among entities with a graph
representation.
Geospatial features are modeled in the same
manner using the RDF statements. Different spatial shapes, including both
points and polygons, are represented by the relationship of a point, having
every part as separate object with each URI.
Geospatial analyses such as finding the location of an event (in a
certain radius), finding the overlaps of shapes, finding the events/objects in
the intersections of two shapes, etc. are conducted with the RDF-Triplestore,
ILE, or other graph-based data management system.
Policies for access
and sharing data and plans for archiving data (See page 14, Data-Management
Plan)
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