Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Automated Mound Detection Using Lidar And Object-Based Image Analysis In Beaufort County, Sc, Carl P. Lipo, Matt Sanger, Dylan Davis

Anthropology Datasets

The study of prehistoric anthropogenic mounded features– earthen mounds, shell heaps, and shell rings – in the American Southeast is stymied by the spotty distribution of systematic surveys across the region. Many extant, yet unidentified, archaeological mound features continue to evade detection due to the heavily forested canopies that occupy large areas of the region, making pedestrian surveys difficult and preventing aerial observation. The use of object-based image analysis (OBIA) as a tool for analysing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, however, offers an inexpensive opportunity to address this challenge. Using publicly available LiDAR data from Beaufort County, South Carolina and ...

Say What?: Demystifying Discourse Analysis For Archaeology Students, Cynthia L. Van Gilder

Journal of Archaeology and Education

Most archaeology instructors are eager to have their students appreciate that the study of the past is relevant to the present. In fact, most current introductory textbooks include a section, however brief it may be, on the socio-politics of archaeology. These discussions are usually framed around how ideas about the past have been used to justify abuse (e.g., Nazi archaeology to support an Aryan homeland), or how the involvement of descendant communities in research is now considered best practice in the field (e.g., NAGPRA, community based archaeology). One of the most powerful tools for understanding how what we ...

Seasonal Round Travel Routes And The Cost Of Mobility, Evan Mills

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In 1985 a settlement and subsistence model of seasonal round mobility was proposed by Statistical Research, Inc. This model proposed four travel routes used by the Late Prehistoric Serrano to access the higher elevation village site known as Rock Camp to gather acorns and pinyon nuts in the fall. This research investigates the proposed routes, as well as an additional route, for energy efficiency and archaeological evidence of use in prehistory. Data collection involved using experimental methods designed to gather controlled physiological data for evaluating the efficiency of traveling each route. Archaeological sites present on the travel routes and within ...

Chocolate: A Brief Review Of Recent Research, Marshall Joseph Becker

Anthropology & Sociology

No abstract provided.

Representation Of The Human Musculature In The Bronze Age Aegean, Emily R Brower

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Bronze Age sculptures range from abstract to realistic, but how accurate are the realistic sculptures? To answer this question, it is useful to compare three pieces of artwork: Prince of Lilies from Knossos, Kouros from Palaikastro, and the Boxer Rhyta from Ayia Triadha to a musculature replica. These pieces originate from the Bronze Age in the Aegean. What this comparison will tell us is how much the ancient peoples were studying the human body, along with the reasons as to why these sculptures were portrayed with such realistic characteristics. To accomplish this goal this paper takes the artifacts background into ...

Climate Change And Threatened Heritage: Archaeology's Burden, Barry R. Gordon

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

Climate change and archaeology are currently intertwined, as more and more archaeologists around the world must deal with the effects it causes on the sites they work on. Threatened cultural resource sites are being swept away at alarming rates, and excavation projects are becoming more and more like salvage digs.

Old Collections, New Insights: Technological Organization Of The Lungren Site (13ml224), A Middle Archaic Residential Camp, Warren Davis

Culminating Projects in Cultural Resource Management

The Lungren Site (13ML224) is a Middle Archaic campsite located in Mills County, Iowa. The site was excavated in the 1960s during the Smithsonian River Basin Surveys, and represents one of a relatively small number of well-preserved Archaic period sites known in western Iowa. Lithic artifacts from the Lungren assemblage were reanalyzed as part of this thesis in order to derive better understanding of technological strategy and land-use by the mid-Holocene bison hunters who left these tools behind. Analysis of lithic debitage and raw material illustrates heavy utilization of locally acquired raw material for tool making. This includes both expedient ...

Fortifying Saint Cloud: Searching For Fort Holes, Charles Peliska

Culminating Projects in Cultural Resource Management

This thesis is about my efforts to locate Fort Holes – a civilian fortification built in September of 1862 in response to the nearby threats of Native American violence. A decade after the western parts of Minnesota were opened to Euro-American settlement, the actions of government agents, traders, and a small group of Native American actors led to violence on the frontier. The citizens of Saint Cloud constructed Fort Holes in a week and it only stood for a couple of years before they removed the lumber for the growing city. Throughout Minnesota, citizens constructed over 50 of these expedient “settlers ...

A Macroscopic Examination Of Expedient Tools: Comparing Replicated Collections And Precontact Collections To Aid In Determining Site Type, Heather R. Adams

Culminating Projects in Cultural Resource Management

This thesis project was utilized to examine the use of expedient tools, or stone tools made with little to no production effort, through macroscopic means to determine if specific activities were being enacted on a site. CRDA8-Site5 (36GR0418) functioned as an Early, Middle, and Late Woodland lithic reduction and tool production locus, based on the recovery of 2,442 precontact artifacts, including lithic debitage, chipped stone tools, and polished, ground, and pecked stone tools (PGP). The lack of artifact rich features with datable charcoal and additional artifact types, such as faunal remains, left little to give insight into further site ...

Transitions: The Study Of A Late Nineteenth Century Minnesota Farmstead During A Period Of Agricultural Transition, Theresa Gilbertson

Culminating Projects in Cultural Resource Management

The late 19^th century in Minnesota was largely shaped by immigration, and Benton County was no exception. The region was a prime location for families, providing land that was both fertile and abundant. It was common for a couple members of a family to head west first, the rest of the family joining at a later time. Families could find land near each other and stick together in a new country. Benton County boasts a number of farmstead sites from this period of time. In 1873, John Keefe homesteaded one of these farms.

Diversity in population was not the ...

Decisions Set In Stone: Spatial Analyses Of Ozark Rock Art Sites, Elements, And Motifs With Gis, Jordan Lee Schaefer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to spatially analyze rock art distributions in the Salem Plateau section of the Arkansas Ozarks. Statistical tests, such as chi-square and t-testing, are applied to provide an objective view of rock art patterning in relation to the overall landscape. The data collected from these methods allow one to discern the locational preferences for rock art, which potentially reveal cultural details about the people involved with its creation. Multiple analytical perspectives are applied throughout, initially focusing on comparisons with expected values and random points. Later statistical tests use bluff shelter distributions as reference data ...

Social Organization And Environmental Patterning At Tel Abu Shusha: An Integrated Spatial Approach To Survey Archaeology, Seth Price

Theses and Dissertations

Tel Abu Shusha, located in the Jezreel Valley of Palestine, is a large-scale archaeological site possibly identified as the cities of Biblical Gaba or Roman Gaba Hippaeon/Gaba Philippi. Surface archaeological survey of the surrounding area, conducted by the Jezreel Valley Regional Project during 2017, revealed extensive assemblages of visible settlement features dating primarily to middle and late Islamic periods. This research seeks to answer questions of settlement decision-making and societal organization, by integrating archaeological, textual, environmental, and geospatial data sources. In addition to visual interpretation, Kolmogorov-Smirnov nonparametric tests are used to gain insight on environmental settlement preferences; Ripley’s ...

Malaria In The Prehistoric Caribbean : The Hunt For Hemozoin., Mallory D. Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the increase in resistance to anti-malarials and global warming trends expanding the habitation range of the mosquito vector, research highlighting the biogeographical contexts of infected populations is critical to understanding epidemiological patterns. A bioarchaeological approach to epidemiology can shed light on previous disease patterns and aid in the prediction of future outbreaks of diseases like malaria. Currently, there is no direct evidence of malaria in the Americas prior to European contact; however, skeletal, archaeological, paleoenvironmental, historic, and ethnohistorical evidence strongly suggest the presence of Plasmodium spp. malaria in indigenous Caribbean skeletal remains held in the Yale Peabody Museum of ...

Many Faiths, One Beginning: Universality In Norse, Maya, Greek And Celtic Faiths

Symposium of Student Scholars

Numerous religious faiths have pervaded the world for much of known human history, but these belief systems often have significant variation in their core tenets, especially with those that have no contact. Religions which are in close proximity to one another tend to have some degree of syncretism, such as having comparable deities, due to having some transmission of their cultures. One group of similar base beliefs is the Indo-Europeans, with its members having been studied for parallels before. To contend with these previous studies, this project will look at the beliefs of the Norse, Greek, and Celtic cultures, all ...

Gender And Religion In A Shifting Social Landscape: Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Practices, Ad 600-700, Caroline Palmer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

My thesis examines seventh-century East Anglian mortuary practices and cross-correlates grave goods and human remains to determine whether there was an expression of the sexual division of labor during this period of social and religious change. I argue that gender roles changed as a result of adopting kingdoms and Christianity. Prior to this time period, Anglo-Saxons were primarily pagan and were buried with extensive burial goods. In addition to changes in religious and burial practices, during the Final Phase (600-700 AD) there appears to have been a division of labor that was not as dichotomous in the Migration Phase (450-600 ...

The Roscoe Perry House Site: A Long-Term Prehistoric Occupation In The Hudson Valley, Dylan C. Lewis

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

This report analyzes the stored collection of artifacts excavated from a historic house overlooking the Rondout Creek and the Hudson River. This is a multicomponent site. It contains fifteen archaeological phases ranging from the Early Archaic to the Contact Period.

Paleoclimatic Drought Conditions In The Northern Big Belt Mountains And The Effect On Lithic Materials, Sarah Roberts

Carroll College Student Undergraduate Research Festival

This paper will be answering the question of how paleoclimatic drought conditions in the Northern Big Belt Mountains affects, or does not affect, the distribution of lithic materials. The hypothesis states that during times of environmental stress, there will be a decrease in “expensive” materials such as obsidian and dacite. Additionally, the archaeological record will show a constant amount of “cheap” materials, such as Oregon chert, throughout time. Data was collected at 24LC2289- also known as the Sundog site- an archaeological site excavated in the northern Big Belt Mountains outside of Helena, Montana in the summer of 2017. A primary ...

Structural And Compositional Investigation Of Pottery Samples From Guatemala, Pressley S. Nicholson

Undergraduate Research Conference

Purpose of investigation: The composition and characteristics of Mayan pottery samples from Guatemala was investigated.

Recovering Parasites From Mummies And Coprolites: An Epidemiological Approach, Morgana Camacho, Adauto Araújo, Johnica J. Morrow, Jane E. Buikstra, Karl Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Papers/Publications

In the field of archaeological parasitology, researchers have long documented the distribution of parasites in archaeological time and space through the analysis of coprolites and human remains. This area of research defined the origin and migration of parasites through presence/absence studies. By the end of the 20th century, the field of pathoecology had emerged as researchers developed an interest in the ancient ecology of parasite transmission. Supporting studies were conducted to establish the relationships between parasites and humans, including cultural, subsistence, and ecological reconstructions. Parasite prevalence data were collected to infer the impact of parasitism on human health. In ...

Reconstructing Late Holocene Paleofloods Along The Middle Tennessee River And Exploring Links With Climate And Land Use, Lance Stewart

Scholars Week

Sediment stored in floodplains and low alluvial terraces along the middle Tennessee River reflects flood frequency and magnitude during the past ca. 2800 years. This study uses the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and geochronology of three alluvial terraces to infer past flooding and explore links with climate change and anthropogenic land-use practices. Four sites located on different geomorphic landforms adjacent to the Tennessee River preserve records of at least 11 major flood events from 2780 ± 185 BP to 100 ± 10 BP. Buried soils at three sites are older than ca. 1380 BP and suggest a relatively recent period of landscape stability compared ...