Other Anthropology Commons^™

Binding Ochre To Theory, Simone E. Nibbs

Pomona Senior Theses

Widely found throughout the archaeological and artistic records in capacities ranging from burial contexts to early evidence of artistic expression, red ochre has been studied in archaeological and art conservationist communities for decades. Despite this, literature discussing binders is disparate and often absent from accessible arenas. Red ochre is important historically because its use can be used to help further the understanding of early humans, their predecessors, and their cognitive capabilities. However, there is not much written speculation on the processes involved in binder selection, collection, and processing. Based on the idea of these three activities associated with binders, I …

Xrf And The Corrosion Environment At Camp Lawton: A Comprehensive Study Of The Archeological Microenvironment Of A Civil War Prison Camp, Amanda L. Morrow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author's abstract: Handheld X Ray Fluorescence (XRF) technology is a new and emerging method in the field of archeology. This thesis discusses the results of XRF comparative analysis and comparative chemical analysis between a given ferrous metallic artifact's corrosion environment (the surrounding soil matrix) and the subsequent corrosion products formed on the artifact. The hypothesis is that the data will demonstrate a chemical correlation between the two. Iron and chlorine are the two major elements discussed in the study. The artifacts in the sample set have been collected from Camp Lawton (9JS1), a Confederate Prison for Union Soldiers located in …

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

Gestation Length, Mode Of Delivery And Neonatal Line Thickness Variation, CléMent Zanolli, Luca Bondioli, Franz Manni, Paola Rossi, Roberto Macchiarelli

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The transition from an intra- to extra-uterine environment leaves its mark in deciduous teeth (and first permanent molars) as an accentuated enamel incremental ring called the neonatal line (NL). This prominent microfeature separates the enamel formed during intrauterine life from that formed after leaving the womb. However, while the physical structure of this scar is well known, the bases of its formation are still a matter of investigation. In particular, besides the influence of the birth-related abrupt environmental and dietary changes and the role played by physiological factors such as hypocalcaemia, it has been suggested a direct relationship between NL …

The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh

Michael D Sharbaugh

Water sources in the United States' New England region are laden with arsenic. Particularly during North America's colonial period--prior to modern filtration processes--arsenic would make it into the colonists' drinking water. In this article, which evokes the biocultural evolution paradigm, it is argued that colonists offset health risks from the contaminant (arsenic poisoning) by ingesting copious amounts of seven spices--cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, vanilla, and ginger. The inclusion of these spices in fall and winter recipes that hail from New England would therefore explain why many Americans associate them not only with the region, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas, …

Four Types Of Activities That Affect Animals: Implications For Animal Welfare Science And Animal Ethics Philosophy, D. Fraser, A. M. Macrae

Ethnozoology and Animal Welfare Collection

People affect animals through four broad types of activity: (1) people keep companion, farm, laboratory and captive wild animals, often while using them for some purpose; (2) people cause deliberate harm to animals through activities such as slaughter, pest control, hunting, and toxicology testing; (3) people cause direct but unintended harm to animals through crop production, transportation, night-time lighting, and many other human activities; and (4) people harm animals indirectly by disturbing ecological systems and the processes of nature, for example by destroying habitat, introducing foreign species, and causing pollution and climate change. Each type of activity affects vast numbers …

Language And Living Things, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

Ethnobiology is often regarded as a quaint and excessively particularistic specialty, as its modern practitioners trace the complexities and subtleties of specific systems of folk classification and nomenclature. Their finegrained descriptions and elegant analyses are at once too “thick” and too “thin” for most nonspecialists, who, in any event, await syntheses of what has been learned from such inquiries, preferably in the form of comparative studies in the tradition of anthropology’s concern with generalizations that illuminate the wider human condition. Rising to this challenge, Cecil Brown has long pursued, in numerous papers and now in this book, crosscultural “uniformities” as …

Ndumba Folk Biology And General Principles Of Ethnobotanical Classification And Nomenclature, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

Brent Berlin's proposed "general principles of classification and nomenclature" are examined as they apply to folk biology in Ndumba, a Papua New Guinea hzghlands society. Focusing on Ndumba folk zoology, supplemented with a previous analysis of their folk botany, Berlin's analytical schema for ethnobiological classification is supported, but principles of nomenclature in ethnobiology appear to be in need of reconsideration.

"The New Guinea Highlands" Region, Culture Area, Or Fuzzy Set?, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

The criteria for delineating "the New Guinea Highlands," a fundamental category in Melanesian anthropology, are variable, vague, and inconsistently applied, with the result that there is little clarity or agreement with regard to its characteristics and its membership. So far as the literature is concerned, "the New Guinea Highlands" is a fuzzy set. The common resort to notions of "cores," "margins," or "fringes" is an attempt to preserve an essentialist approach but inevitably leads to the same confusion. The continued use of "the Highlands" as an analytic or theoretical construct carries the costs of misleadingly implied homogeneity, with marginalization of …

Cognitive Foundations Of Natural History, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

Since the 1960s, ethnobiology has gone beyond the documentation of plants and animals deemed “useful” in specific societies’ economies, or those that are “good to think” in their cosmological systems, to a nomothetic investigation of folk conceptualizations of the natural world as organizations of cultural knowledge. “General principles” and “universals” in the classification and naming of living things have been proposed that now play a major role in our growing understanding of human cognition.

Failure Of Treatment / Book Review, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

This is an extraordinary book, and one that I believe is unique in the literature of medical anthropology. Inspired by Victor Turner's "social drama, the extended case method" (p. 3), Gilbert Lewis presents "the ethnography of an illness" (p. 1), a detailed—sometimes day-by-day—account of a protracted illness suffered by Dauwaras, a Gnau-speaking man of the upper Sepik River in Papua New Guinea.

The Sweet Potato And Oceania, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

Debates about the introduction and diffusion of Ipomoea batatas in the Pacific have gone on for a century although largely without the benefit of a thorough botanical understanding of the plant. That is now provided in Yen’s monograph, which synthesizes the results and implications of his own two decades of research with the now massive literature on the subject.

Exchanging The Past, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

In 1980-1982, Bruce Knauft and Eileen Cantrell conducted fieldwork among the Gebusi people of the remote Nomad region of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Then, "indigenous customs seemed robust as well as profound" (p.13), including one of the highest homocide rates in the world, rooted sorcery accusations derived from spirit medium seances.

Tzeltal Folk Zoology, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

In some respects, this volume might be viewed as a companion piece to Berlin et al.’s Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification. It deals with the same people of highland Chiapas, Mexico, and an earlier version was Hunn’s doctoral thesis, supervised by Berlin. Nevertheless, it can also clearly stand on its own as a significant contribution to ethnology, with additional relevance to biosystematists, ecologists, linguists, and psychologists.

Auyana, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

Sterling Robbins was one of four ethnographers who conducted fieldwork in the early 1960s as part of James B. Watson’s New Guinea Micro-evolution Project. As such he was unavoidably caught in the turmoil over how to deal with the “loose structure” of New Guinea highland societies.

Evidence For A Peak Shift In A Humoral Response To Helminths: Age Profiles Of Ige In The Shuar Of Ecuador, The Tsimane Of Bolivia, And The U.S. Nhanes, Aaron D. Blackwell, Michael D. Gurven, Lawrence S. Sugiyama, Felicia C. Madimenos, Melissa A. Liebert, Melanie A. Martin, Hillard Kaplan, J. Josh Snodgrass

ESI Publications

Background: The peak shift model predicts that the age-profile of a pathogen’s prevalence depends upon its transmission rate, peaking earlier in populations with higher transmission and declining as partial immunity is acquired. Helminth infections are associated with increased immunoglobulin E (IgE), which may convey partial immunity and influence the peak shift. Although studies have noted peak shifts in helminths, corresponding peak shifts in total IgE have not been investigated, nor has the age-patterning been carefully examined across populations. We test for differences in the agepatterning of IgE between two South American forager-horticulturalist populations and the United States: the Tsimane …

Inflammatory Gene Variants In The Tsimane, An Indigenous Bolivian Population With A High Infectious Load, Sarinnapha Vasunilashorn, Caleb E. Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins, Suvi A. Vikman, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Hooman Allayee

ESI Publications

The Tsimane of lowland Bolivia are an indigenous forager-farmer population living under conditions resembling pre-industrial European populations, with high infectious morbidity, high infection and inflammation, and shortened life expectancy. Analysis of 917 persons ages 5 to 60+ showed that allele frequencies of 9 SNPs examined in the apolipoprotein E (apoE), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) genes differed from some European, African, and north Asian-derived populations. The apoE2 allele was absent, whereas four SNPs related to CRP and IL-6 were monomorphic: CRP (rs1800947, rs3093061, and rs3093062) and IL-6 (rs1800795). No significant differences in apoE, CRP, and IL-6 variants across age …

Between Structural Violence And Resistance: The Everyday Resistance Of Karen Migrants In Thailand, John Giammatteo

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This paper details the lives of eight Karen-Burmese migrants living in Mae Sot, Thailand, a city on the Thai-Burma border and one of the main legal crossing points between the two countries. The study demonstrates the important relationship between structural violence and everyday resistance. It documents how individuals in a legally liminal state can increase their security and it describes just how these linkages occur – that migrants utilize their liminality and “in-between” status and attempt to increase their security to avoid oppression and harassment in daily life. By linking these concepts – resistance and liminality posed against structural violence …

Liminality As A Space Of Self Reflection On El Camino De Santiago Del Norte, Amanda Redpath

Honors Capstone Projects - All

As ancient pilgrimage across Spain, El Camino de Santiago has affected the lives of the pilgrims that travel it for centuries taking on new meanings as it passes through time. Traditionally, scholars maintain that the focus of a pilgrim’s journey lies at the final destination, or pilgrimage center in Santiago de Compostela. This project demonstrates, however, that the emphasis should lie on the journey or period of liminality which through concepts of place has created a space for self-reflection and meditation. Analysis of pilgrim interviews within the context of a wide array of scholarly literature in the disciplines of anthropology, …

Designing A School Garden Space That Emphasizes Children's Wants And Uses Permaculture Design Methods, Mikhaela Mullins

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

A case study was organized at Saratoga Elementary school in Lincoln, Nebraska to obtain data on what children desire in a garden space. To collect this data a school garden space was constructed and an after school garden club was implemented. Students who participated in the after school garden club partook in the study by drawing their ideal garden. Elements that the subjects drew were identified and categorized into ‘highly desired’ and ‘somewhat desired’.

These elements were then incorporated into a proposed garden design plan for Saratoga. The proposal plan uses Permaculture design methods to emphasize sustainability.