Investigating the Socio-Ecological Entanglement of Integrative Mechanisms among the Charter States of South and Southeast Asia

Summary

The prime objective of the Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) project is to produce a comparative study of socio-ecological dynamics in a variety of low-density tropical urban civilizations through cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary investigations. This paper highlights the contribution of the SETS’s integrative mechanisms sub-project, whose primary goals are to examine, evaluate, and compare the integrative mechanisms evident within a sample of charter states in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica. Although anthropologists and archaeologists have identified various methods of state integration, this research concentrates on the monumental public architecture and spaces of the built landscape which foster integration. Such integrative mechanisms include, but are not necessarily limited to roads, temples, monasteries, markets, administrative nodes, hospitals, rest houses, and storage facilities. The construction and subsequent maintenance of these integrative mechanisms would have been an important factor in the consolidation and stability of early tropical states. Through their construction and continual maintenance states often become highly entangled in a web of reliance and resource input with their integrative mechanisms. This form of entrapment may then lead to lower levels of resiliency, and the vulnerability of the state in general.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• An Introduction to the Socio-ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) Project

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14510