| In this dissertation, I attempt to quantify the amount of human energy employed in earthen monumental construction at the Moundville polity in west-central Alabama, as a means of exploring the organizational variability of the control of surplus labor and material resources in an emerging complex society. To help reconstruct the scale of sociopolitical differentiation invested in mound building, I create an assessment that calculates the energy necessary to excavate, transport, and compact mound and plaza soils. Theories and methods from other disciplines such as geotechnical engineering, human physiology, human biology, and ergonomics combined with archaeology provide a rational for reformulating the units of measure in energetic studies from person-hours to kilojoules.;The analysis supports a model in which the mounds on Moundville's plaza periphery were constructed using kin-based labor, whereas the mounds on the central axis of the site were constructed using work crews with laborers drawn from the population of the entire polity. This division indicates that while elite power, which was symbolically reinforced through conspicuous consumption of energy in the form of human labor, may have been responsible for the construction of the largest mounds at Moundville, there was still a strong emphasis on kin-based segments in terms of the allocation of labor and material resources. |
