Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rock Or Relic? Lithic Technology And Social Life In The Mimbres Mogollon Region Of Southwestern New Mexico, Jeffrey Dylan Clark Person

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research project investigates stone tool technology at pithouse and pueblo sites in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. Starting around AD 550, people in this area were shifting from mobile foragers who moved in seasonal rounds to sedentary village farmers. This process of subsistence change sparked further changes in material culture and social organization across the Mimbres region. The dissertation focuses on lithic debitage, the stone flakes and rock shatter that resulted from reducing stone cores into usable cutting and scraping tools. Debitage from three Mimbres sites, the Harris site, La Gila Encantada, and Elk Ridge were …

Gendered Bodies, Engendered Lives: Bioarchaeological Exploration Of The Intersectionality Of Gender, Health, And Trauma At Turkey Creek Pueblo, Arizona (Ad 1225-1286), Claira Elizabeth Ralston

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines the relationships between sex, gender, and health at Turkey Creek Pueblo (AD 1225-1286), the earliest aggregated Pueblo community in the Point of Pines region of east central Arizona, to better understand their roles in producing differential health outcomes. To gain a view of these interactions, I use osteological, mortuary, and ethnohistoric data to explore how gender, as a social institution, informed divisions of labor and experiences with traumatic injury at Turkey Creek Pueblo, because this site was occupied during a socially dynamic and important period in the pre-contact American Southwest. Using these data, I explore how sex, …

The Role Of Small Puebloan Architectural Sites On The Southern Shivwits Plateau, William M. Willis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This work concerns itself with the Virgin Branch Pueblo of the southern Shivwits Plateau. Within their settlement systems lies considerable variation in terms of architectural sites. The smallest of these sites are often referred to as fieldhouses, a term that has distinct meaning within the archaeological discourse of the American Southwest. Fieldhouses are seasonally occupied structures used by Puebloan people during the agricultural growing season. They arise out of the necessity of land tenure systems that evolve in response to growing competition for arable land in the face of population pressure and finite resources. This research finds that the small …

The Role Of Style In Community Identity And Group Affiliation: An Archaeological Study Of Virgin And Kayenta Branch Ceramics, Daniel Melvin Perez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research focuses on the Virgin Branch heartland of the North American Southwest, an archaeological area spanning southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona. The interplay of Virgin Branch community identity, group affiliation, and social interaction over time, between ca. 300 B.C. and A.D. 1225, is considered intra-regionally and in the context of interactions with neighboring Kayenta Branch populations of northeastern Arizona. The principal question for this research is: How is Virgin Branch group identity communicated and reflected through expressions of technological and painted designs styles on pottery amidst intra- and inter-regional events and interactions over time? Support for this …

The Impact Of Alzheimer Disease On Semantic Knowledge, Maileen G. Ulep

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The research furthers the understanding of the impact of Alzheimer disease (AD) on cognition and the organization of semantic knowledge in the brain, which might contribute to the development of diagnostic and staging tools, and interventions to palliate cognitive deficits. The disruption of semantic knowledge in AD is well documented in the literature. Much of the existing research focuses on the general impact AD has on semantic knowledge. This study explores the impact of AD on specific domains of knowledge, chiefly, living kinds and artifacts, critical to ordinary functioning. The content, organization and structure of the investigated domains of knowledge …

Teaching Haitian Studies And Caribbean Digital Humanities: A Rasanblaj Of Critical Pedagogical Approaches And Black Feminist Theory In The Classroom, Crystal A. Felima

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

Digital humanities provide an opportunity for collaborators to connect with various people, disciplines, and resources to produce and share knowledge. It also allows creators and users to navigate research and scholarship through partnerships and online engagement. This article features an undergraduate digital humanities course taught in spring 2018 titled “Haitian Studies and Culture” at the University of Florida. In this course, students considered ways of speaking, writing, researching, and representing Haiti, while engaging in critical discussions related to issues and questions of access, authorship, interpretation, and representation. This essay serves as a reflection statement by highlighting how the author explored …

Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Subsistence Practices At The Lake Roberts Vista Site (La71877) Gila National Forest, New Mexico, Laura A. Benedict

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This work examines the faunal subsistence practices at Lake Roberts Vista, a small Mimbres pueblo with a pithouse component occupied during the Late Pithouse to Classic Mimbres periods (A.D. 550-1130). It is in the Sapillo Valley, a tributary to the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico. Inhabitants consumed mostly deer and rabbits throughout their occupation. Evidence suggests a decline in Artiodactyla resource abundance in later years based on a declining Artiodactyl Index and an increasing fragmentation rate of Artiodactyla bones. Inhabitants captured more cottontails than jackrabbits throughout their occupation.

Locating A Marketplace At The Ancient Maya City Of Lakamha’, Mexico Using The Configurational Approach, Jonathan Roldan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In some cases, plazas that undergo archaeological testing for marketplace activity are identified using a method known as the configurational approach. This preliminary research method compares plaza locations to a list of associated features, often treated as a list of criteria. However, this approach has been criticized for its speculative nature and the equifinality of the results. Additionally, some argue that these “criteria” are only a list of assumptions. Until now, the configurational approach has received little attention due to its limitations and speculative nature, yet it remains an integral part of the preliminary process in marketplace research. This project …

Locating A Marketplace At The Ancient Maya City Of Lakamha', Mexico Using The Configurational Approach, Lydia Wolfe, Jonathan Roldan

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

Research Goal: Test configurational approach (Rejected markets, Confirmed markets), Propose market location at Lakamha', Mexico

Investigating Ancient Maya Late Postclassic Period Households And The Associated Function Of The Buildings At Santa Rita Corozal, Belize, Melissa Badillo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Previous archaeological research conducted by the Corozal Postclassic Project (1979-1985) focused primarily on the Postclassic Period at the site of Santa Rita Corozal in northern Belize. Through that research, Santa Rita was demonstrated as an important Postclassic Maya city which likely served as the capital of the ancient Maya province of Chetumal. Given the major reorganization that occurred in the Maya Lowlands at the end of the Classic Period, the assessment of a Postclassic site would demonstrate what, if any changes in the organization of Postclassic Period sites, took place. An extensive analysis of the associated artifact assemblages of six …

Re-Analysing Astronomical Alignments Of Potential E Group Structures To Demonstrate The Utility Of Archeoastronomy Research About The Ancient Maya, Elizabeth Karen Shikrallah

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There has been much study of Maya astronomy and the relationship and/or manifestation of astronomy within architecture and other aspects of Maya material culture. Despite this, there is little agreement about the commonalities and variation in potential astronomical representation across sites and regions as it is difficult to compare sites to determine whether spatial patterning exists between similar building classifications. Also, it can be difficult to understand and pursue archeoastronomy research due to the jargon and methodology employed. This thesis provides an updated dataset that shows the utility of pursuing archeoastronomy research about the ancient Maya. Combining archaeological and archeoastronomical …

Quantifying Surplus And Sustainability In The Archaeological Record At The Carthaginian-Roman Urban Mound Of Zita, Tripolitania, Brett Kaufman, Hans Barnard, Ali Drine, Rayed Khedher, Alan Farahani, Sami Ben Tahar, Elyssa Jerray, Brian N. Damiata, Megan Daniels, Jessica Cerezo-Román, Thomas Fenn, Victoria Moses

Anthropology Faculty Research

Cultural ecological theory is applied to a spatially and temporally bounded archaeological data set to document long-term paleoeco-logical processes and associated sociopolitical behaviors. Volumetric excavations, treating the material culture of an archaeological matrix similar to an ecological core, can yield quantifiable frequencies of surplus goods that provide a multiproxy empirical lens into incremental changes in land use practices, natural resource consumption, and, in this case, likely overexploitation. Archaeological methods are employed to quantify cultural ecological processes of natural resource exploitation, industrial intensification, sustainability and scarcity, and settlement collapse during the colonial transition between Carthaginian and Roman North Africa. The data …

The Life History Of Learning Subsistence Skills Among Hadza And Bayaka Foragers From Tanzania And The Republic Of Congo, Sheina Lew-Levy, Erik J. Ringen, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Ibrahim A. Mabulla, Tanya Broesch, Michelle A. Kline

Anthropology Faculty Research

Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a …

“Our Languages Do Not Die, They Are Being Killed”: Indigenismo And Its Effects On Indigenous Language Revitalization, Nathalie Martinez

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Language and identity are political acts that are inextricably linked to and rooted in socio-historical and socio-political events. Existing scholarship on identity-based social movements has yet to address language activism as a part of its theoretical framework. This paper seeks to consider the unique socio-historical context of indigenismo—an ideological wave coordinated by non-Indigenous groups seeking to define Indigenous identity—for the analysis of language activism within the field of social movement theory. Drawing from historical, ethnographic, and applied linguistic studies, this article examines indigenismo in Abiayala—the continental Western hemisphere commonly referred to as the Americas—to highlight the impact of the policies …

Preliminary Analysis Of Periosteal Reaction Of The Tibia In The Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery (1851-1913), Jordan Phillips

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Gender-based occupational differences during the height of the Industrial Revolution are particularly apparent when examining the risk of injury and disease. For Buffalo, NY, this was no exception, as it acted as an urban center that enticed numerous European immigrants seeking employment. This study investigates tibial periosteal reactions by sex and anatomical location from the Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery (1851-1913) to illuminate life in this historic era. The type and extent of reactions were scored, and these criteria were compared by side (e.g., left) and bone segment (e.g., proximal ⅓ of diaphysis) for each individual with tibia(e). Of the 181 …

Violence And Masculinity In Small-Scale Societies, Debra L. Martin

Anthropology Faculty Research

© 2021 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. Archaeological and ethnographic accounts of violence in small-scale societies represent a baseline for thinking about the ways that violence and masculinity originated and evolved, becoming entwined social processes. Male violence (lethal and nonlethal) is expressed in diverse and complex ways because it is associated with social spheres of power and influence, and it is embedded within ideologies, histories, and collective memories. Applying anthropological research on violence as a generative and transformational social process demonstrates how violence plays a key role in creating, maintaining, and transforming social structures in …

Sports Under Quarantine: A Case Study Of Major League Baseball In 2020, Kari L.J. Goold, Reynafe N. Aniga, Peter B. Gray

Anthropology Faculty Research

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This case study entailed a Twitter content analysis to address the pandemic-delayed start to Major League Baseball (MLB) in the shortened 2020 season. This case study helps address the overarching objective to investigate how the sports world, especially fans, responded to MLB played during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The methods investigated the common themes and determined who used predetermined Twitter hashtags. We recorded how many times external links, photos, emojis, and the 30 MLB teams were mentioned in the 779 tweets obtained during 39 days of data retrieval. Results showed that …

Zooarchaeology Of Bone, Antler, And Ivory Technologies: A Case Study From The Central Anatolian Bronze And Iron Age Site Kaman Kalehӧyük, Sarah Raffae Macintosh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The proposed dissertation research investigates bone, antler, and ivory technologies in central Anatolia (present-day Turkey) during the Bronze and Iron Ages (ca. 3000-100 Before Current Era or BCE). At this time, rural agrarian societies were transforming into more complex polities and states. This transformation was marked by a rapid increase of social complexity as documented in the archaeological record in terms of monumental administrative and religious buildings, uniform ceramic ware, and writing. The current archaeological record also informs us about the rate of technological change in pottery, architecture, and metallurgy, as typology, style, and function are widely documented and studied …

Love In South Korea: Transformations Of Intimacy And Gender Relations In Korean Romantic Relationships, Alex Joseph Nelson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romantic love holds a central place in South Korean imaginaries, animating television dramas and pop ballads, but has been largely overlooked in Korea's ethnographic record. Drawing on data collected through 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, survey research, interviews, and analysis of folklore, the present study investigates how South Koreans conceptualize romantic love, how those conceptions have changed over time, and the ways they are transforming with the Korean field of gender relations.

This study documents love's entwinement with marriage in South Korea. Koreans are developing companionate ideals of marriage that shift the focus of kinship from the parent-child relationship to …

Excavating Gender: The Embodiment And (Re)Presentation Of Social Relations In Mierzanowice Communities Of The Early Bronze Age, Mark Paul Toussaint

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The construction of gender in a society is based on a discursive relationship between culture and biology. Ideological components are often translated into structural factors, which condition access to social and biological resources and exposure to risk. Cumulative differential health outcomes for groups can become embodied in ways that affect the skeleton. By conducting population-level analyses of skeletal markers of health and trauma, bioarchaeologists work backwards to attempt to reconstruct social conditions. Archaeological and mortuary context is an important part of this process.

Cemeteries of the Mierzanowice Culture (MC) in southern Poland (2300-1600 BCE) offer a unique opportunity to study …

Emotion Perception In Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, Maria Gendron, Katie Hoemann, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Shani Msafiri Mangola, Gregory A. Ruark, Lisa Feldman Barrett

Anthropology Faculty Research

It has long been claimed that certain configurations of facial movements are universally recognized as emotional expressions because they evolved to signal emotional information in situations that posed fitness challenges for our hunting and gathering hominin ancestors. Experiments from the last decade have called this particular evolutionary hypothesis into doubt by studying emotion perception in a wider sample of small-scale societies with discovery-based research methods. We replicate these newer findings in the Hadza of Northern Tanzania; the Hadza are semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers who live in tight-knit social units and collect wild foods for a large portion of their diet, …

The Internal, External And Extended Microbiomes Of Hominins, Robert R. Dunn, Katherine R. Amato, Elizabeth A. Archie, Mimi Arandjelovic, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Lauren M. Nichols

Anthropology Faculty Research

The social structure of primates has recently been shown to influence the composition of their microbiomes. What is less clear is how primate microbiomes might in turn influence their social behavior, either in general or with particular reference to hominins. Here we use a comparative approach to understand how microbiomes of hominins have, or might have, changed since the last common ancestor (LCA) of chimpanzees and humans, roughly six million years ago. We focus on microbiomes associated with social evolution, namely those hosted or influenced by stomachs, intestines, armpits, and food fermentation. In doing so, we highlight the potential influence …

Context Matters: Construct Framing In Measures Of Physical Activity Engagement Among African American Women, Stephanie M. Mcclure, Travis Loux, Enbal Shacham, Eileen Gillespie, Denise Hooks-Anderson

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Assessment of psychosocial factors influencing health behavior typically privileges conceptual consistency (framing constructs similarly across contexts) over conceptual specificity (context-specific framing). Modest statistical relationships between these factors and health behaviors, and persistent racial disparities in health outcomes raise questions about whether conceptually consistent framing fully captures relevant predictors. Ethnographic studies suggest not - that perceptions influencing health behaviors are multifaceted and contextual. To test this, we added items querying contextualized predictors of intention to engage in leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) to a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)-based survey and examined the psychometrics of the adapted subscales. We measured internal consistency …

A Community Of Care: Patterns Of Pathology And Trauma With A Focus On The Bioarchaeology Of Care At Carrier Mills, Il (10,000 – 1000 Bp), Alecia Schrenk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Illness and injury are universal human experiences which are endowed with cultural meaning. Bioarchaeology has only recently begun to engage with the socioeconomic impacts of illness, injury, impairment, and healthcare provisioning in the past. This study examines how the Middle Archaic (6000 – 300 BC) and Early Woodland (1000 – 200 BC) hunter-gatherer community of Carrier Mills, Illinois was affected by and managed the socioeconomic burdens of poor health. The data presented in this study used bioarchaeological analyses to reveal patterns of poor health and healthcare provisioning within the Carrier Mills community. Bioarchaeology is ideally situated for such investigations since …

Living On The Move: The Digital Nomad Mobile Phenomenon Identity And Practice, Virginia Rachele Smercina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following exploratory project used a qualitative mixed method approach by means of a preliminary blog analysis of thirty-seven blogs and twenty-five semi-structured interviews for data collection on individuals known as digital nomads. The theoretical foundations of this study are centered on practice theory, structuration theory, as well as discussions surrounding cultural identity. The project’s aim is to increase our understanding of the digital nomad phenomenon by asking four research questions: Who are the digital nomads? How is digital nomadism practiced? Why choose to live on the move? Is digital nomadism sustainable? The discussion includes how the digital nomad identity …

Religion, History, And Place In The Origin Of Settled Life, Alan Simmons

Anthropology Faculty Research

This is a book review of "Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life" by Ian Hodder.

Archaeological Analysis In The Information Age: Guidelines For Maximizing The Reach, Comprehensiveness, And Longevity Of Data, Sarah W. Kansa, Levent Atici, Eric C. Kansa, Richard H. Meadow

Anthropology Faculty Research

With the advent of the Web, increased emphasis on “research data management,” and innovations in reproducible research practices, scholars have more incentives and opportunities to document and disseminate their primary data. This article seeks to guide archaeologists in data sharing by highlighting recurring challenges in reusing archived data gleaned from observations on workflows and reanalysis efforts involving datasets published over the past 15 years by Open Context. Based on our findings, we propose specific guidelines to improve data management, documentation, and publishing practices so that primary data can be more efficiently discovered, understood, aggregated, and synthesized by wider research communities.

Sex, Energy, Well-Being And Low Testosterone: An Exploratory Survey Of U.S. Men’S Experiences On Prescription Testosterone, Alex A. Straftis, Peter B. Gray

Anthropology Faculty Research

Prescription testosterone sales in the United States have skyrocketed in the last two decades due to an aging population, direct-to-consumer advertising, and prescriber views of the benefits and risks to testosterone, among other factors. However, few studies have attempted to directly examine patient experiences on prescription testosterone therapy. The present exploratory study involved an online self-report survey of U.S. testosterone patients who were at least 21 years of age. The primary focus was on patient perspectives concerning motivations leading to the initiation of testosterone therapy and the perceived effects of treatment. Responses to open-ended questions drew upon a coding scheme …

Grandparenting In Urban Bangalore, India: Support And Involvement From The Standpoint Of Young Adult University Students, Peter B. Gray, Watinaro Longkumer, Santona Panda, Madhavi Rangaswamy

Anthropology Faculty Research

A variety of caregivers, including grandparents, help raise children. Among grandparents, most Western samples evidence a matrilateral (i.e., mother’s kin) bias in caregiving, and many studies show more positive impacts and stronger relationships with grandmothers than grandfathers. The aim of the present study is to test competing hypotheses about a potential laterality bias and explore contrasts between grandmothers and grandfathers in a sample of urban young adult university students in Bangalore, India. A sample of 377 (252 women) relatively mobile and high socioeconomic status individuals 17 to 25 years of age completed a survey consisting of sociodemographic and grandparenting questions. …

An Exploration Of Attitudes Toward Dogs Among College Students In Bangalore, India, Shelly Volsche, Miriam Mohan, Peter B. Gray, Madhavi Rangaswamy

Anthropology Faculty Research

Conversations in the field of anthrozoology include treatment and distinction of food animals, animals as workers versus pests, and most recently, emerging pet trends including the practice of pet parenting. This paper explores attitudes toward pet dogs in the shared social space of urban India. The data include 375 pen-and-paper surveys from students at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bangalore, India. Reflecting upon Serpell’s biaxial concept of dogs as a relationship of affect and utility, the paper considers the growing trend of pet dog keeping in urban spaces and the increased use of affiliative words to describe these relationships. …