Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Accounts Of Engagement: Conditions And Capitals Of Indigenous Participation In Canadian Commercial Archaeology, Joshua Dent

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Indigenous engagement in Canadian archaeology encompasses jurisdictional variances, microcosmic colonial/resistance implications and the promise of mutually-beneficial heritage management practices. Drawing from literature commentary, primary document review, surveys and interviews, this dissertation explores consistency and uniqueness in the relationship between commercial archaeology and Indigenous peoples in Canada. Four Conditions of engagement and four Capital properties of engagement emerge and are theorized as constituting a framework capable of considering the diversity of engagement practice in Canada.

Conditions include: Regulation, Capacity (Developer and Community) and Relationships. The regulatory heritage regimes governing engagement are considered across provincial/territorial boundaries together with a host of legislation, …

To Temper Or Not To Temper: A Petrographic Textural Study Of Clays And Formative Ceramic Sherds From The Valley Of Oaxaca, Mexico, Cheri Lynn Price

Theses and Dissertations

Ceramics are one of the best forms of material culture archaeologists can use to analyze questions of social, political, economic, and ideological complexity. The purpose of this thesis research is to determine if the clays used to manufacture later Middle Formative-Terminal Formative ceramics in the Valley of Oaxaca were tempered or otherwise modified by looking at texture of sherds petrographically. Clay samples from around the valley, modern sherds, and Formative sherds were examined and compared using six different forms of analysis. The results show that it is most probable that the Formative sherds were not tempered. However, several sherds exhibited …

Death Keeps No Calendar: Dating Mortuary Hardware From The Saints Peter And Paul Parish Church Cemetery, Amanda Marie Roller

Theses and Dissertations

The concern of the Saints Peter and Paul parish members regarding the history and identity of the individuals buried in an almost forgotten section of the cemetery created an opportunity for archaeologists to work with a community by providing a voice for those buried there and facilitating community understanding and healing. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the temporal indicators of the Saints Peter and Paul cemetery to determine if the coffin hardware and associated artifacts present in excavated burials reflect the expected time of interment. The expected period of interment is 1872-1930. Coffin hardware and associated artifacts …

Gender Reflections: A Reconsideration Of Pictish Mirror And Comb Symbols, Traci N. Billings

Theses and Dissertations

The interpretation of prehistoric iconography is complicated by the tendency to project

contemporary male/female gender dichotomies into the past. Pictish monumental stone sculpture

in Scotland has been studied over the last 100 years. Traditionally, mirror and comb symbols

found on some stones produced in Scotland between AD 400 and AD 900 have been interpreted

as being associated exclusively with women and/or the female gender. This thesis re-examines

this assumption in light of more recent work to offer a new interpretation of Pictish mirror and

comb symbols and to suggest a larger context for their possible meaning. Utilizing the Canmore

database, …

Investigating The Functions Of Copper Material Culture From Four Oneota Sites In The Lake Koshkonong Locality Of Wisconsin, Jacqueline Marie Pozza

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Oneota use of native copper in the Lake Koshkonong locality between A.D. 1100 and 1400. Over 600 pieces of Oneota copper artifacts originating from four sites were documented and analyzed in order to investigate distribution, production, utilization, and the ideological and social significance behind this raw material. The artifacts analyzed for this study were recovered from Oneota sites adjacent to Lake Koshkonong in Jefferson County, Wisconsin: Crabapple Point (47JE93), Schmeling (47JE833), Koshkonong Creek Village (47JE379), and Crescent Bay Hunt Club (47JE904). These assemblages primarily included awls, beads, pendants, and fragmented material. The data set also includes unique …

Late Paleo-Indian Period Lithic Economies, Mobility, And Group Organization In Wisconsin, Ethan Adam Epstein

Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation focuses upon the organization of Pleistocene / Holocene period lithic technology in Wisconsin circa 10,000 – 10,500 years before present. Lithic debitage and flaked stone tools from the Plainview/Agate Basin components of the Heyrman I site (47DR381), the Dalles site (47IA374), and the Kelly North Tract site at Carcajou Point (47JE02) comprise the data set. These Wisconsin sites are located within a post glacial Great Lakes dune environment, an inland drainage/riverine environment, and an inland wetland/lacustrine environment. An assemblage approach is used to examine the structure of each site’s lithic economy. This broad approach to lithic organization …

Three-Dimensional Analysis Of The Development Of Upper Arm Musculoskeletal Stress Markers In Late Adolescents And Young Adults Of Archaic And Mississippian Populations Of Tennessee, Heather Marie Guzik

Master's Theses

This study compares three methods for the evaluation of morphology of musculoskeletal attachment sites. Two methods were macroscopic and the third was microscopic, utilizing three-dimensional laser scanning and fractal analysis The morphology of 19 upper limb attachment sites was observed in 33 males aged 15 and 30+ years, dating to the Archaic and Mississippian periods from the southeastern U.S. It was hypothesized that 1) the microscopic method would identify subtler differences than the macroscopic methods; 2) enthesis development would be greater in the Mississippian population due to the increased subsistence workload, even among younger individuals; and 3) late adolescents would …

From Sacred To Profane: European Materials Integration Into Mississippian Cosmology, Campbell Walker

Anthropology Undergraduate Senior Theses

Interpreting the significance of materials used by southeastern Native Americans to express their cosmological beliefs reveals certain trends that reflect changes in culture over time. We recognize that, for many hundreds of years within the Mississippian period, artifacts fashioned from specific materials reflected the relationship between these materials and their place in native cosmology. In the post-Mississippian period, nontraditional materials became available that were used to fashion these same traditional artifact forms. I present research on how Native Americans integrated these new materials into their cosmology by drawing analogies and distinctions between uses of traditional and nontraditional materials in relation …

Food Processing And Cooking Technology Of The Mimbres Mogollon (Early Pithouse Period Through The Mimbres Classic A.D. 200-1130), Ashley Morgan Lauzon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines food processing and cooking technology of the Mimbres Mogollon culture from A.D. 200-1130. Food processing and cooking technology includes any tool (chipped stone, ground stone, ceramics, basketry/perishables, etc.) or feature (fire-features, etc.) used to prepare, process, and cook food. Data on this technology as a whole is lacking in the region. The goal of this research is to document and explore the changes and developments in food-related technology over time and to investigate possible factors that influenced its development.

To document this technology over the course of approximately 1000 years, four case study sites were used: The …

A Morphometric Examination Of Cranial Vault Modification In The Middle Cumberland Region Of Central Tennessee, Gregory James Wehrman

Masters Theses

Cranial vault modification (CVM) is a physical manifestation of intersections between culture and biology. Cultural practices that apply pressure to the head during infancy result in significant reshaping of the skull and can be either intentional or unintentional. Occipital flattening is present among many Mississippian skeletal samples from the Middle Cumberland Region (MCR) of central Tennessee and is thought to be an unintentional result of childcare practices. Traditional methods for CVM classification have concentrated on visual assessment of location and means of flattening; however, this method is subjective. This thesis seeks to evaluate visual assessment of CVM through a morphometric …

Clay Pot Cookery: Dairy, Diet And Class During The South Levantine Iron Age Ii Period, Mary K. Larkum

Doctoral Dissertations

Goody’s (1982) model of cooking and its relation to hierarchy posits a correlation between class and cuisine that is typical of societies practicing intensive agriculture and creating storable surpluses. This archaeological case study tests his model using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analyses to investigate ancient food remains (fatty acids) preserved in unglazed clay cooking ceramics from archaeological sites across the Iron Age II period (1000-586 BCE) kingdoms of the southern Levant. These kingdoms are known historically as Ammon, Aram (Aram-Damascus), Edom, Israel, Judah, Moab and Philistia. Samples from this time period and region are suitable for use in this research …

There Is More Than One Way To Do Something Right: Applying Community-Based Approaches To An Archaeology Of Banks Island, Nwt, Laura Elena Kelvin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores how historical knowledge is produced and maintained within the Inuvialuit (Western Arctic Inuit) community of Sachs Harbour, NWT, to determine how archaeological research can best complement and respect Inuvialuit understandings and ways of knowing the past.

When archaeologists apply Indigenous knowledges to their research they often have limited understandings of how these knowledges work, and may apply them inadequately or inappropriately. I employ an archaeological ethnographic approach to help Ikaahukmiut (people with ties to Banks Island, NWT) articulate to archaeologists how they construct their knowledge of Banks Island’s past. Inuvialuit understandings of the past are experiential and …

A Bead Analysis Of Northern Chumash Village Site, Tstyiwi: Ca-Slo-51/H, Kaya Wiggins

Social Sciences

In the Spring of 2015, California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, conducted a field methods class at CA-SLO-51/H, led by Dr. Terry Jones. The site was found to correlate to the Northern Chumash village, Tstyiwi. The site included a rich assemblage of shell beads. Of the 302 beads recovered from the site, 27 different types of beads were identified. The diagnostic Olivella (Callianax biplicata) shell beads indicate a village occupation spanning from the Early Period through to contact and early post-contact. Shell bead manufacturing at the site is demonstrated by abalone shell bead blanks and …

'Improvement The Order Of The Age': Historic Advertising, Consumer Choice, And Identity In 19th Century Roxbury, Massachusetts, Janice A. Nosal

Graduate Masters Theses

During the mid-to-late 19th century, Roxbury, Massachusetts experienced a dramatic change from a rural farming area to a vibrant, working-class, and predominantly-immigrant urban community. This new demographic bloomed during America’s industrial age, a time in which hundreds of new mass-produced goods flooded consumer markets. This thesis explores the relationship between working-class consumption patterns and historic advertising in 19th-century Roxbury, Massachusetts. It assesses the significance of advertising within households and the community by comparing advertisements from the Roxbury Gazette and South End Advertiser with archaeological material from the Tremont Street and Elmwood Court Housing sites, excavated in the late 1970s, to …

Ceramic Consumption In A Boston Immigrant Tenement, Andrew J. Webster

Graduate Masters Theses

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Boston’s North End became home to thousands of European immigrants, mostly from Ireland and Italy. The majority of these immigrant families lived in crowded tenement apartments and earned their wages from low-paying jobs such as manual laborers or store clerks. The Ebenezer Clough House at 21 Unity Street was originally built as a single-family colonial home in the early eighteenth century but was later repurposed as a tenement in the nineteenth century. In 2013, the City of Boston Archaeology Program excavated the rear lot of the Clough House, recovering 36,465 artifacts, including …

Chase Home For Children: Childhood In Progressive New England, Katherine M. Evans

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis aims to further the study of childhood in archaeology through the examination of a children’s aid institution in Progressive New England. Specifically, this research explores how the Progressive and Victorian aims of Chase Home for Children, as expressed in primary sources, are manifested in the material culture. Chase Home participated in the larger Progressive movement in its mission to train children “in the practical duties, to encourage habits of honesty, truthfulness, purity and industry, to prepare them to take their position in life as useful members of society” (Children’s Home Pamphlet 1878). An analysis of small finds from …

New Perspectives On The Seventeenth-Century Protohistoric Period In East Tennessee: Redefining The Period Through Glass Trade Bead And Ceramic Analyses, Jessica Nicole Dalton-Carriger

Doctoral Dissertations

The Protohistoric period in East Tennessee is poorly understood in the archaeological record and is defined as the intermediate period between the Late Mississippian and Historic periods in the seventeenth century. Earlier research focused on depopulation, population replacement, and the rise of Overhill Cherokee settlements in the eighteenth century, with little attention to the transitional Protohistoric period. The goal of this dissertation is to examine new fields of evidence and employ new dating methods in order to fully understand the Protohistoric period in East Tennessee

This dissertation does this in three ways. It explores three hypotheses concerning the habitation of …

Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers

Museum Studies Theses

Museums today have many responsibilities, including protecting and understanding objects in their care. Many also have relationships with groups of people whose items or artworks are housed within their institutions. This paper explores the relationship between museums and Northwest Coast Native Americans and their artists. Participating museums include those in and out of the Northwest Coast region, such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Burke Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum. Museum professionals who conducted research for some of these museums included Franz Boas, …

Slave Subsistence Strategies At Thomas Jefferson’S Monticello Plantation: Paleoethnobotanical Analysis And Interpretation Of The Site 8 (44ab442) Macrobotanical Assemblage, Stephanie Nicole Hacker

Masters Theses

Throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, millions of enslaved Africans and African Americans were crucial to the success of plantations in the American South, but despite their numbers little exists in the written record to provide an accurate history for the African American slave community. However, archaeological and historic research shows that even under the constraints of slavery, enslaved African Americans were active in forming their own families and communities, countering ill-treatment and nutritional deprivation, maintaining their cultural and spiritual identities, and establishing ways to enhance their well-being. The research presented in this study emphasizes the utility of studying carbonized …

Deeply Rooted: A Feasibility Study Testing The Potential For Ams Dating Through Paleoethnobotanical Recovery Methods At The Topper Site (38al23), Sarah Elizabeth Walters

Masters Theses

Archaeologists often make limiting operational choices that — though considered and logical — are (sometimes) necessarily selective in nature. One such a priori framework posits that costly paleoethnobotanical recovery and associated analyses are not worthwhile when working in sandy, acidic soils; as dateable organic remains are too rapidly destroyed by inherent chemical and mechanical processes to allow for differential preservation. This research demonstrates that these destructive processes are largely misunderstood. Indeed, the successful collection of significant paleoethnobotanical material is possible from certain types of sandy soils previously thought to be organically sterile. Moreover, such paleoethnobotanical recovery efforts can yield viable, …

The Organization Of Technology In The Pine Hills Of Mississippi, Ronald W. Wise Jr.

Master's Theses

This thesis details the use of experimental flintknapping to better understand stone tool production and the organization of technology among Woodland period hunter-gatherers within the Pine Hills region of Mississippi. The Pine Hills region is characterized archaeologically by the presence of numerous sites consisting of flake scatters and little other material remains. Local tool stone resources consist of high grade chert in the form of small river cobbles, which restricts potential tool forms available to users.

Research for this project focused on the statistical analysis of debitage created during the experimental replication of stone tools using local chert cobbles. Special …

Twin Lakes Site: A Look Into Prehistoric Minnesota, Elizabeth K. Sharkey

Culminating Projects in Cultural Resource Management

Middle Archaic archaeological sites in Minnesota are rarely discovered and the cultural context of this period is poorly known. This thesis presents the research conducted on a recently identified Middle Archaic site in central Minnesota called Twin Lakes. The site was dated using modern dating techniques. This along with the in depth lithic and statistical analysis adds to the interpretation of the lifeways of early Minnesota people and an elusive time period in the state’s archaeological record.

The Dirt On The Collins Mounds Site, Carmelita Angeles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building monumental architecture has been one method used by humans to rise above an earthbound existence. In the United States, large earthen mounds were constructed from the Archaic period to the Mississippian period. The Collins Mound Site in Arkansas was recently dated to the Late Woodland period. For this study, soil samples were extracted from the northern section of the site for description and particle-size analysis. Erosion from plowing, wind, water, and gravity is the most likely process causing a decreased mound height and increased basal diameter. Mound fill likely originated near the river for two of the mounds and …

The Proof Is In The Pots: Residue Analysis Of Virgin Branch Puebloan Ceramics, Brenna Lynn Wilkerson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focuses on better understanding diet and subsistence strategies among Virgin Branch Puebloan groups living in the Moapa Valley in southern Nevada and on the Shivwits Plateau in northwestern Arizona. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to identify absorbed food residues in three types of Virgin Branch Puebloan ceramics (Moapa Gray Ware, Shivwits Ware, and Tusayan Virgin Series). The data produced by the residue analysis were used to compare patterns of subsistence between Virgin Branch Puebloan sites in the lowlands along the Muddy River and at upland sites on the Shivwits Plateau as these two areas have different environments …

Enslaved Labor In The Gang And Task Systems: A Case Study In Comparative Bioarchaeology Of Commingled Remains, William D. Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

This study designs and tests an approach intended to confront one of the major problems faced within biological anthropology, the commingling or mixing of human skeletal remains. The first goal of the study is to implement an approach to sorting mixed human remains in order that they can be made amenable to comparative study. Bioarchaeologists depend on an array of measures, preserved in the human skeleton, to assess the lifestyles and identity of past human groups. As many of these measures are preserved within the morphology of different bones, it is imperative that the association and context of remains are …

Kongo To Kings County, Marcus Alan Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to provide evidence to support the hypothesis that the artifact assemblage found in 1998 under the garret room floor in the attic of the Lott Farmstead is an extension of Kongo-descended cultural practices. This connection is shown by the presence of several artifacts that taken together, invoke a Kongo Cosmogram called the diKenga, alongside artifacts arranged in what is believed to be a Kongo N’Kisi, or spiritual container, that also originates in Kongo ideology. The ceramic found in the kitchen house with an incised X indicates a reverence to this diKenga symbol. Similar symbols have been found …

A History Of Violence: 3000 Years Of Interpersonal And Intergroup Conflicts From The Initial To The Early Colonial Periods In The Peruvian Central Coast. A Bioarchaeological Perspective, María Del Carmen Vega Dulanto

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to test research questions about the development of violence on the Peruvian central coast during the pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial times. This is the first study to provide a diachronic analysis of violence on the central coast. One null hypothesis was tested and falsified: that there are no differences in the prevalence and pattern of trauma over time on the central coast of Peru. Two complementary questions were also addressed: 1) Is there a relation between sociopolitical changes, natural catastrophes, competition for resources and violence? and 2) How did violence affect specific segments of …

Preliminary Insights Into Prehistoric Toolstone Preference Of Two Igneous Materials In The Tanana River Drainage, Interior Alaska, Brooks A. Lawler

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project examines prehistoric human mobility and raw material preference for tool manufacture in a 45,918 square mile portion of Interior Alaska, the Tanana River Drainage. A geographic approach is used to investigate the distribution of prehistoric obsidian and rhyolitic artifacts in relation to the sources of these materials. The objective of the investigation is to reveal spatial patterning in the distributions of artifacts made of these two materials, relative to each other and relative to the cost of obtaining these raw materials from their sources on the landscape. I examine a hypothesis based in human behavioral ecology and optimal …

Technological Adaptations At Dust Cave, Alabama (1lu496): An Evaluation Of Organizational Strategies From The Late Paleoindian To The Middle Archaic, Katherine Elizabeth Mcmillan

Doctoral Dissertations

Stone tools are one of the most common and lasting classes of artifacts in the archaeological record. Through the application of appropriate theoretical frameworks to the study of lithic assemblages, we may seek invaluable insights into the nature of human behavior in the past. In this study, I present a detailed analysis of the chipped stone tool assemblage from Dust Cave (1LU496), a stratified rockshelter site in northwestern Alabama. This site has preserved a record of nearly 7,000 years of human occupation, spanning the Pleistocene- Holocene transition, a period of great climatic and cultural change in North America.

Through the …

The Unsung Evolutionist: Charles Rau's Swiss Lake Dwelling Collection At The Smithsonian Institution, Liam C. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

During the second half of the nineteenth century, museums and collectors around the world engaged in a collecting frenzy focused on objects from the Swiss Alpine sites known as Pfahlbauten. Romantic reconstructions of these sites captured the antiquarian imagination and resulted in an artifact diaspora. Charles (Carl) Rau, a German-American archaeologist who became the first Curator of Antiquities at the Smithsonian Institution (SI), collected several hundred Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts from the lake dwelling sites of Robenhausen and Auvernier, donating this material as well as his library to the SI upon his death in 1886. This thesis investigates the …