Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Pvc-Lot-015-E-011, Russell Smith

Four Valleys Archive

No abstract provided.

Bipedalism Is A Balancing Act: Talus Landmarking In Facultative Bipedal Primates, Anita Patane

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Obligate bipedal locomotion, mandatorily walking on two legs, is vastly important as it is the fundamental precursor to the human lineage; it precedes tool usage and language. Chimpanzees, our closest living ancestors for the human ancestral condition, are often the proxy and are the dominant subject of human bipedalism studies. There are additional species, such as arboreal Black Spider Monkeys (Ateles paniscus) who habitually travel through the trees bipedally. These facultative bipedal primates (FBP) introduce a new lens to how modern human talus and calcaneus’ mobility has adapted to environmental shifts such as the transition from arboreal to …

Mexican Money Laundering In The United States: Analysis And Proposals For Reform, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Charles Lewis, William R. Yaworsky

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article explains some of the mechanisms through which corruption by high-level Mexican politicians and other organized crime members is facilitated in the United States through money laundering operations. The analysis is based on information contained in court records related to key money laundering cases, as well as in news articles and reports from law enforcement agencies. These materials highlight the interrelationships among U.S. drug use, cartel activities in Mexico, human rights abuses, Mexican political corruption, and money laundering in the United States. This work demonstrates the pervasive use of legitimate businesses and fronts in the United States as a …

A Grim End For Europe's First Civilization: The Fall Of Minoan Crete, Ashley Arp

Honors Theses

Early popular theories about the collapse of the Minoan civilization center around natural disasters, but geoarchaeological research from the past few decades has disproved these earlier theories. It is evident that the Minoan civilization continued to thrive for around a century after the volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami that had previously been credited as the cause for the collapse. Evidence of manmade destruction has been uncovered across the island of Crete c. 1450 BCE and this period was quickly followed by a drastic cultural shift that included more Mycenaean elements than had been found on the island previously. These destructions, …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Who Helps Tsimane Children And Adults?, Eric Schniter, Daniel K. Cummings, Paul L. Hooper, Maguin Gutierrez Cayuba, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Hillard S. Kaplan, Michael D. Gurven

ESI Working Papers

We consider several forms of helping behavior among Tsimane Amerindians of Bolivia, including provision of shelter, childcare, food, sickcare, loans, advice, and cultural influence. While kin selection theory is traditionally invoked to explain nepotistic nurturing of youngsters by closely related kin, much less attention has been given to understanding the help provided to children and adults by individuals without close genetic relatedness. To explain who provides the various forms of help that we consider, we evaluate support for several predictions derived from kin selection theory: that helpers are most often closely related and from an older generation, provide more help …

Student Ethnographic Research Experiences At The University Of Puget Sound, Andrew M. Gardner

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay describes programming at the University

of Puget Sound that allows undergraduate students to pursue

independent ethnographic research projects. This programming

undergirds all three of the subsequent student essays included in this

issue. The mission of this programming is to encourage “experiential

learning”—an objective that is aligned (and perhaps derivative)

of the methodological toolkit long deployed by anthropological

ethnographers. The essay describes the pedagogic goals that I

have been able to integrate into the supervision of this experiential

programming, and also discusses how we have sought to balance

independently-derived student research interests with the broader

research agendas codified …

Stains Of Emotion: Stories Carved By The Sun, Lucy Umland

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

This work consists of a series of creation myths crafted in the style of Eduardo Galeano's Genesis from the Memory of Fire Trilogy, Part 1. The myths delve into the origins of freckles, wrinkles, laughter, and tears. Each tale uses symbolism, anthropomorphism, and fragmented, nonlinear timelines reminiscent of Galeano's work. Through poetic language and metaphor, the myths explore themes of love, loss, gender roles, cultural diversity, and unity. Analysis reveals the stylistic choices inspired by Galeano's writing. Themes are interwoven throughout the myths, portraying the shared human experience across diverse cultures while emphasizing the enduring nature of storytelling.

The Evolution Of Agrarian Landscapes In The Tropical Andes, Courtney Shadik, Mark B. Bush, Bryan G. Valencia, Angela Rozas-Davila, Daniel Plekhov, Robert D. Breininger, Multiple Additional Authors

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Changes in land-use practices have been a central element of human adaptation to Holocene climate change. Many practices that result in the short-term stabilization of socio-natural systems, however, have longer-term, unanticipated consequences that present cascading challenges for human subsistence strategies and opportunities for subsequent adaptations. Investigating complex sequences of interaction between climate change and human land-use in the past—rather than short-term causes and effects—is therefore essential for understanding processes of adaptation and change, but this approach has been stymied by a lack of suitably-scaled paleoecological data. Through a highresolution paleoecological analysis, we provide a 7000-year history of changing climate and …

An Introduction To The Yanomami Humanitarian Crisis And An Interview With Carlos Messiass On Contemporary Brazilian Indigenous Issues, Ethan Mccullough

Departmental Student Research

The following document covers how the rise of Jair Bolsonaro, based around a coalition of expansionist cattle ranchers and extractive industry representatives, has led to the massive explosion of illegal gold mining within the Yanomami in the Amazon. This increase in mining has led to a rapid increase of malnutrition, malaria, and mercury poisoning within the Yanomami population, as well as a significant rise in violence and human rights abuses. Other topics covered include, the previous increase of illegal mining on Yanomami land in the 1980s, Bolsonaro's anti-Indigenous rhetoric while campaigning for presidency, the role of the U.S. in Operation …

Serving The Voiceless: Analyzing Local Organizations For Immigrant Empowerment, Daniel Kabithe, Acia Diallo, Kiya Demps, Chance Brown, Aliyah Whitfield

Undergraduate Research Events

This research project delves into the landscape of community organizations that serve the immigrant population in Louisville, Kentucky, focusing on 6 key entities: La Casita Center, Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Catholic Charities of Louisville, English Conversation Club, Backside Learning Center, and American Community Center. Through a combination of interviews, phone calls and research, we discovered the roles, missions, and offered services by each organization. Through these methods, we identified some of the critical needs within the immigrant community and examined how these organizations address them. Additionally, we discovered that not only did our research highlight the importance of the services provided, …

#Dusomething! A Qualitative Exploratory Study To Identify Challenges And Opportunities For Improvement In Du's Response To Sexual Harassment And Assault, Alejandro Cerón, Amanda Cali, Briana Cox, Camille Cruz, Camryn Evans, Cyndal Groskopf, Ashley Joplin, Clayton Kempf, Kēhaulani Lagunero, Jayvyn Jakai Lewis, Aili Limstrom, Gray Messersmith, Cal Quayle, Yadira Quintero, Michael Sze, Aaron Toussaint, Sami Zepponi

Anthropology: Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The purpose of this course-based research project was to identify where DU has made progress in its response to sexual harassment, identifying challenges and opportunities for improvement, with the hope that the results will support the DU community’s efforts to prevent, address, and eradicate sexual harassment.

Forging Identity: Learning About Craft Production And Identity Through The Analysis Of Hand-Made Nails, Linda Zuniga

Anthropology and Sociology Student Research

Nails may not seem exciting. After all, their function is self-evident: nails hold things together. On closer examination, however, nails are quite useful. They can help to determine a site’s chronology, reveal variability in commodity consumption, and reflect the economic activities that occurred in an historic village. Here, I present the analysis of nails from Stoddartsville, a 19th century milling village in northeast Pennsylvania. Different blacksmiths introduce subtle variability into the finished form of a nail, yielding differences in attributes such as nail head length, nail head thickness, and number of head facets. I used these attributes to determine the …

Gaining Insight Into Lithic Technology In Eastern Pennsylvania Through The Study Of An Amateur Collection, Khori Newlander, Linda Zuniga

Anthropology and Sociology Faculty Research

The farm fields of east-central Pennsylvania contain an abundance of artifacts that span much of regional prehistory. Not surprisingly, many of these artifacts have been collected by local amateurs. Here, we analyze an assemblage of projectile points collected from the Kramer Farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. We explore how morphometric attributes (e.g., size, shape), indices of retouch, and raw material vary in relation to projectile point type. Our analysis provides insight into projectile point design, lithic resource preferences, technological organization, and land use. Despite the imperfections that often characterize amateur collections and the controversy that surrounds their study, our analysis demonstrates …

Not Just Playing With Toys: Enculturation And Identity In A Historic Village In Northeast Pennsylvania, Amarah Karlick

Anthropology and Sociology Student Research

The archaeology of early industrial communities can yield material evidence of the pervasive, interrelated impacts of industrialization on work and domestic life. Archaeologists and historians investigating industrial communities have increasingly pivoted from a focus on great men and firsts in technological development to the local sociocultural contexts and consequences of industrialization. Here, I use the study of toys from Stoddartsville, a milling village in northeast Pennsylvania, to examine the lived experiences of children during the mid-nineteenth century. I suggest that children learned powerful lessons about identity, especially gender, as they played with toys at Stoddartsville. These lessons cemented the social …

Provisioning Services Decline For Both People And Critically Endangered Wildlife In A Rainforest Transformation Landscape, Katherine J. Kling, Timothy M. Eppley, A. Catherine Markham, Patricia C. Wright, Be Noel Razafindrapaoly, Rajaona Delox, Be Jean Rodolph Rasolofoniaina, Jeanne Mathilde Randriamanetsy, Pascal Elison, Mcantonin Andriamahaihavana, Dean Gibson, Delaid Claudin Rasamisoa, Josia Razafindramanana, Natalie Vasey, Carter W. Daniels, Cortni Borgerson

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The loss and degradation of forests and other ecosystems worldwide threaten both global biodiversity and the livelihoods of people who use natural resources. Understanding how natural resource use impacts landscape provisioning services for both people and wildlife is thus critical for designing comprehensive resource management strategies. We used data from community focus groups, botanical plots and an inventory of plant species consumed by the Critically Endangered red-ruffed lemur (Varecia rubra) to assess the availability of key provisioning services for people and endemic wildlife on the Masoala Peninsula, a rainforest transformation landscape, in northeastern Madagascar (Masoala National Park and 13 surrounding …

Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize …

The Domestication Of Machismo In Brazil: Motivations, Reflexivity, And Consonance Of Religious Male Gender Roles, H. J. François Dengah Ii, William W. Dressler, Ana Falcão

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The relationship between culture and the individual is a central focus of social scientific research. This paper examines motivations that mediate between shared culture norms and individual actions. Inspired by the works of Leon Festinger and Melford Spiro, we posit that social network conformation (the perceived adherence of one’s social network with norms) and internalization of cultural norms (incorporation of cultural models with the self-schema) will differentially shape behavior (cultural consonance) depending on the domain and individual characteristics. For the domain of gender roles among Brazilian men, religious affiliation results in different configurations of the individual and culture. Our findings …

Introduction:Towards An Economic Anthropology Of Catholicism, In The Age Of Pope Francis, Samuel Weeks, George Bayuga

College of Humanities and Sciences Faculty Papers

Introduction to Towards an Economic Anthropology of Catholicism, in the Age of Pope Francis.

Prevalence Of Drifting Osteons Distinguishes Human Bone, Katherine M. French, Sophia R. Mavroudas, Victoria M. Dominguez

Publications and Research

The histological, or microscopic, appearance of bone tissue has long been studied to identify species-specific traits. There are several known histological characteristics to discriminate animal bone from human, but currently no histological characteristic that has been consistently identified in human bone exclusive to other mammals. The drifting osteon is a rare morphotype found in human long bones and observationally is typically absent from common mammalian domesticates. We surveyed previously prepared undecalcified histological sections from 25 species (human n = 221; nonhuman primate n = 24; nonprimate n = 169) to see if 1) drifting osteons were indeed more common in …

Human Zoo Healthcare At The 1904 World’S Fair, Angel Blake

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Human Zoo Healthcare at the 1904 World’s Fair

Were precautions taken or put into place for the Human Zoo performers at the 1904 World’s Fair? This topic has been overlooked and understudied by historians, there are few articles written and we do not know the true death toll which shows the racism towards these indigenous peoples. The research for this project was conducted at the State Historical Society of Missouri, the St. Louis Mercantile Library, Newspapers.com, Archives.com, St. Louis Public Library, and the Missouri Historical Society, including research on primary sources such as official World’s Fair committee meeting minutes, hospital …

Tritons United: Against Gender-Based Violence, Kayla Bowling, Jessica Emert, Kimberly Werner, Maggie Gross

Undergraduate Research Symposium

This project presents the campus interventions UMSL’s Tritons United: Against Gender-Based Violence has been able to accomplish under the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women’s campus programming grant.We explain the goals of Tritons United and the structure of our Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT). Tritons United was established in 2019, and since then has implemented 6 campus education and 3 professional training curriculums on UMSL’s campus, one of which was developed by our team, and others are facilitated by in conjunction with our community partnering agencies and help from the Tritons United CCRT. The current campus interventions …

Recovering Ancient Dna Using The Polymerase Chain Reaction, Rose Jennings

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Investigations into aDNA offer a window into the past that modern DNA and paleontological studies alone cannot provide and help address the evolution and connections between hominids, domestication timelines, the analysis of populations over time, and general diversity. Progress in aDNA research has been inherently technology-driven, with modern molecular biology methods, such as the inventions of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), substantially increasing the analysis possibilities of aDNA. My research this semester has taken me along two parallel paths of investigation: literary research into aDNA and practical exposure to the laboratory techniques used in its analysis. …

Biographical Memoirs: Napoleon A. Chagnon, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Napoleon A. Chagnon (August 27, 1938–September 21, 2019), elected to the National Academy of Science in 2012. A Biographical Memoir by Raymond B. Hames, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Chagnon was a Renaissance anthropologist who made numerous fundamental contributions to anthropology. His films and ethnography have been viewed by millions around the world. He combined a humanistic eye in research with an unwavering scientific approach to human culture and behavior. He set multiple standards for long-term field research in terms of methodological rigor and refinement. He made some of the first tests of inclusive fitness theory in human behavior. And he was …

From Mind To Matter: Patterns Of Innovation In The Archaeological Record And The Ecology Of Social Learning, Kathryn Demps, Nicole M. Herzog, Matt Clark

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Archaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study of the adoption of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin to infer how patterns of cultural variation, invention, and innovation affect investment in new technologies over time and the conditions under which we could predict cultural innovation to occur. Using an agent-based simulation to investigate the conditions that manifest in the innovation of technology, we find the following: (1) increasing ecological variation results …

Regional Folk Beliefs, Edward D. Ives

Dr. Edward D. Ives Papers

This accession contains over 4,000 folk beliefs organized on individual, 4x6-inch index cards. A majority of the belief cards were collected by students participating during the 1960s as part of the American Folklore course taught by Dr. Edward D. “Sandy” Ives. Folk beliefs originate primarily from Maine and the Maritimes, but occasionally extend into other areas. Each download contains a copy of the 1965 syllabus for American Folklore, explaining the assignment given to students.

Please Note: A significant number of these cards are handwritten and are not currently available as typed transcriptions. The belief cards are organized into categories noted …

Impediments To Peace: In Response To ‘The Evolution Of Peace’ By Luke Glowacki (December 16, 2022), Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

A response to ‘The evolution of peace’ by Luke Glowacki (December 16, 2022)

While effective institutional practices are critical for the evolution of peace certain factors deter their effectiveness. In-group and out-group dynamics may make peace difficult between culturally distinct groups. Critical ecological conditions often lead to intractable conflict over resources. And within group conflicts of interest most prominently between generations may inhibit effective peace making

Cooking In The Past And For The Future In Latin America, Clare A. Sammells

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Winter 2024, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the ongoing Down The Bay Project.

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …