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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Patterns In Dental Health: Investigating Dental Disease At The Archaeological Site Of Kuelap In Chachapoyas, Peru, Vu Tran Jan 2016

Patterns In Dental Health: Investigating Dental Disease At The Archaeological Site Of Kuelap In Chachapoyas, Peru, Vu Tran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social organization influences individual well-being and overall community health, which may lead to health disparities that manifest in teeth. The research in this thesis explores social variability by analyzing patterns in dental disease at the archaeological site of Kuelap in Chachapoyas, Peru. The ancient Chachapoya (AD 900-1535) were a complex society but the nature of that complexity is not well understood based on traditional archaeological correlates. Since burials at Kuelap lack grave goods that are often used to discriminate variation in social status or identity, bioarchaeological dental proxies were tested. The dental remains of 106 individuals (7 subadults, 54 adult …


A Comparison Of Shovel Testing And Surface Collection As Archaeological Site Discovery Methods: A Case Study Using Mississippian Farmsteads, Cameron Smith Howell Jan 2016

A Comparison Of Shovel Testing And Surface Collection As Archaeological Site Discovery Methods: A Case Study Using Mississippian Farmsteads, Cameron Smith Howell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shovel testing and controlled surface collection are commethods of archaeological site investigation that are generally approved by state and federal agencies as well as the academic community for cultural resource management projects and research. While both techniques are equally utilized, little research has been conducted on how equivalent these techniques are in terms of their efficacy for finding site. This thesis seeks to find a way to compare these techniques by creating mathematical models to describe how well the methods behave when tested on known datasets generated from Mississippian period farmsteads. The predicted performance can then be compared to real …


From Turkeys To Tamales: Paleoindian To Preclassic Period Faunal Use At Maya Hak Cab Pek Rockshelter In Southern Belize, Stephanie Raye Orsini Jan 2016

From Turkeys To Tamales: Paleoindian To Preclassic Period Faunal Use At Maya Hak Cab Pek Rockshelter In Southern Belize, Stephanie Raye Orsini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Very little is known about Paleoindian and Archaic subsistence strategies of the people of Mesoamerica prior to the development of ceramics. Rockshelters with good preservation and stratigraphic deposits can provide excellent contexts for a comparative faunal analysis though time. In February of 2014 the Bladen Paleoindian and Archaic Project (BPAP), directed by Dr. Keith Prufer, began excavations at the rockshelter Maya Hak Cab Pek (MHCP). The site has evidence for human activities from the Paleoindian period (11,500 BC to 8,000 BC) through the Preclassic Maya period (2,000 BC to AD 250). This research uses zooarchaeological analysis to investigate animal use …


Fluorine Dating Of Human Bone At The Pre-Columbian Maya Cemetery Of Caves Branch Rockshelter, Belize, Morgan Isaacs Jan 2016

Fluorine Dating Of Human Bone At The Pre-Columbian Maya Cemetery Of Caves Branch Rockshelter, Belize, Morgan Isaacs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis tests the ion-selective electrode fluorine dating method on the remains from the Maya mortuary site Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) in Belize. CBR is a cemetery containing at least 400 burials from the late Preclassic to the Postclassic periods. The intensive use and reuse of the site has disturbed the burial matrices, making it difficult to seriate the burials. Fluorine dating analyzes the amount of fluorine that has accumulated in bone over time. In principle, an older burial will contain more fluorine from groundwater than a more recently buried bone; however, this principle must be tested at each site …


Linearly Stressed To Death: Consideration Of Early Childhood Stress As A Main Contributor To The Regional Variability In Classic Maya Mortuary Profiles, Nicholas Billstrand Jan 2016

Linearly Stressed To Death: Consideration Of Early Childhood Stress As A Main Contributor To The Regional Variability In Classic Maya Mortuary Profiles, Nicholas Billstrand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Late and Terminal Classic periods were times of great social, economic, and political change in Maya civilization. Scholars have suggested that increasing levels of dietary stress during this time may have been the result of ecological instability, drought, warfare, and significant levels of population movement across the Maya lowlands. All of these processes may have affected human health and left measurable markers of stress in human skeletal material. The burial population recovered from two sites on Ambergris Caye, located near the coast of Belize, have significantly more sub-adult individuals than sites in inland Belize, such as Actuncan, suggesting the …


Bioarchaeological Investigations Of The Red House Archaeological Site, Port Of Spain, Trinidad: A Pre-Columbian, Mid-Late Ceramic Age Caribbean Population., Patrisha Meyers Jan 2016

Bioarchaeological Investigations Of The Red House Archaeological Site, Port Of Spain, Trinidad: A Pre-Columbian, Mid-Late Ceramic Age Caribbean Population., Patrisha Meyers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2013 structural assessments associated with ongoing renovations of the Red House, Trinidad and Tobago's Parliament building, revealed human remains buried beneath the foundation. Excavations and radiocarbon dating indicate the remains are pre-Columbian with 14C dates ranging between approximately AD 125 and AD 1395. Due to the small overall sample size and the inability to attribute all individuals to a specific Amerindian period, the skeletal sample was considered as an aggregate. A bioarchaeological assessment of excavated graves and associated human skeletal material was conducted to determine the demographic profile and the pathological conditions exhibited by the collective skeletal 'population.' Osteological …


Common Ground: Uniting Archaeology And Secondary Social Studies Curricula, Jeremy Allen Haas Jan 2016

Common Ground: Uniting Archaeology And Secondary Social Studies Curricula, Jeremy Allen Haas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Archaeologists have been attempting to establish stronger connections with communities for several decades. Concepts such as stewardship can be presented to a larger audience, and archaeology can be a valuable tool for public education. Public schools across the nation are struggling to improve with limited resources. Archaeology can provide teachers with inexpensive resources that improve student learning while simultaneously helping teachers meet more rigorous standards. Using historical, archaeological, and cultural resources from the World War II Japanese American internment camp, Amache, I created a new supplementary curriculum that focused on the experience of Japanese and Japanese Americans during that era. …


German Pows Make Colorado Home: Coping By Craft And Exchange, Christopher Michael Morine Jan 2016

German Pows Make Colorado Home: Coping By Craft And Exchange, Christopher Michael Morine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From 1943 to 1946, the U.S. government held over 3,000 German POWs at Camp Trinidad in southern Colorado. In 2013 and 2014, archaeological fieldwork, interviews, and archival research were conducted in order to better understand the daily lives of those incarcerated at the camp. The information gathered about artifacts, environmental features, and personal narratives, reveals insights into the lesser known details of the prisoners' lives. Despite the U.S. military rules and regulations and efforts by American personnel within camp, prisoners created goods they wanted or needed. Acquiring the necessary goods was accomplished through modification of available goods, through scavenging the …


A Comparison Of Field Methods At Camp Lawton (9js1), William C. Brant Jan 2016

A Comparison Of Field Methods At Camp Lawton (9js1), William C. Brant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Camp Lawton was a Confederate POW Camp located in Jenkins County, Georgia during the latter part of the Civil War. This research uses shovel testing, metal detection, magnetometry, soil phosphate analysis, and terrestrial LiDAR scanning to attempt to ascertain which method, or combination of methods, is more effective on mid-19th century components in the Georgia Coastal Plain. Findings were inconclusive, but indicate that shovel testing and metal detection are the more effective methods. Data also suggest that areas of Confederate occupation at Camp Lawton probably covered a much larger area than previously anticipated.