Digital Commons Network^™

Coming To Know The Local Environment: Children's Experiences In Rautamai Gaunpalika, Nepal, Elsie Nicole Love

Dissertations and Theses

This qualitative research, conducted over three months from late monsoon season into early fall of 2018 with twenty-six children and thirteen adults, explores how children in the hills of Rautamai Gaunpalika, Province 1, Nepal come to know their local environment. Semi-structured interviews with children, their family members, and teachers, and participant observation with children as they worked and played in forests, fields, and streams, suggest that outside of school, children come to know their local environment in the following ways: through participation in and application of knowledge to subsistence practices; through collaborative learning and teaching in mixed-age groups; through relationships …

Collective Expressions Of Monacan Indian Nation Identity: A Communicative Arts Genre Study, Gretchen E. Casler-Cline

Masters Theses

This study considers the current communicative arts practices of the Monacan Indian Nation, an Indigenous Virginia tribe of approximately 2500 people located in Amherst County, Virginia. Historically the tribe was a large nation that extended from the falls of the James River near Richmond, Virginia to the Southwestern portions of the state near Roanoke and now the Monacan Indian Nation homeland is at Bear Mountain in Amherst County, Virginia. The study was conducted through interviews and observations at tribal events such as the annual Powwow and culture class, as well as consistent attendance and participation as a musician at St. …

2022 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2022 IGGAD Conference: Who Owns This? Communities, Heritage, and Preservation.

The Architecture And Landscape Of Slavery In Fredericksburg, Virginia, Douglas W. Sanford

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The African Americans who endured institutional enslavement played a critical role in the history of Fredericksburg from its 18^th-century founding to its Civil War era turmoil. Only recently have historians, archaeologists, and architectural historians brought scholarly and more public attention to bear on the people who comprised over a third of the city’s population as well as its main labor force. Surprisingly little archaeological work on slave-related sites and structures has occurred. This research relies on a combination of architectural and documentary evidence to visualize slavery’s built environment in Fredericksburg as well as the demographic and cultural parameters …

Rebuilding Along The Rappahannock: The Methodologies Of Urban Archaeological Survey In Fredericksburg And Beyond, Kerri S. Barile

Northeast Historical Archaeology

**I can definitely do an abstract if the other articles in the Fredericksburg volume have one!**

Transnationalism And Identity: The Dream Of ‘Better Life’ For Egyptian Migrants In The Uae, Aliaa Ellawaty

Theses and Dissertations

In the modern globalized world, there has been a shift in migration studies that now focus on those immigrants from a transnational perspective. Thus, their lives are not detached from the transnational space that is not only about the point of departure and the point of arrival, but it is more related to the interconnections that emerge in the transnational space. This means that individuals are no longer tied to ethnic and cultural diversities, but by the transformations in the sociality of the transnational space. For many years, the United Arab Emirates has been a great attraction for middle-class Egyptians …

Past-Futures Of Harlem: Black Urban Space At The Limits Of Spatial Justice, Dane C. Ruffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The racial capitalist development of the U.S. metropolitan landscape has been shaped by the involuntary displacement and dispersal of Black communities. From the dispossession of the Half-Free Negro Lots around the Fresh Collect pond in the seventeenth century to the clearing of Seneca Village to build Central Park in the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth-century police-facilitated “race riot” in the Tenderloin district of Manhattan, which fueled the move to Harlem, the four-hundred year history of Black Manhattan alone provides substantial evidence of this and is in no way unique in this regard. Incomplete, yet ongoing, is what …

Property In Pieces: Land, Oil And Uncertainty In A Mexican Ejido, Margaret Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pemex has been a symbol of Mexican nationalism and a steward of the nation’s oil patrimony for more than 75 years, but few scholars have studied the messy ways in which oil extraction has played out in rural communities. This dissertation does that, while also analyzing the way in which various forms of property—national patrimony, private property, and communal property—are articulated in three dimensions (3D) in an ejido (communal agrarian community) in northern Veracruz. Horizontally, land has shifted from being collectively owned and managed to being divided into individually held plots which are not always recognized. Meanwhile, a web of …

P3k14c, A Synthetic Global Database Of Archaeological Radiocarbon Dates, Erick Robinson

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Archaeologists increasingly use large radiocarbon databases to model prehistoric human demography (also termed paleo-demography). Numerous independent projects, funded over the past decade, have assembled such databases from multiple regions of the world. These data provide unprecedented potential for comparative research on human population ecology and the evolution of social-ecological systems across the Earth. However, these databases have been developed using different sample selection criteria, which has resulted in interoperability issues for global-scale, comparative paleo-demographic research and integration with paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental data. We present a synthetic, global-scale archaeological radiocarbon database composed of 180,070 radiocarbon dates that have been cleaned according …

What Is Islamic Studies?: European And North American Approaches To A Contested Field, Leif Stenberg, Philip Wood

Books

Explores the vibrant, divided and evolving field of Islamic studies in Europe and North America
Covers topics ranging from gender and secularism to pop music and modern science

Discusses contemporary and historical approaches in Islamic Studies

Features contributions from leading scholars studying Islam and Muslims, including Shahzad Bashir, Hadi Enayat, Juliane Hammer, Aaron Hughes, Carool Kersten, Susanne Olsson and Jonas Otterbeck

Addresses the role of both Muslims and non-Muslims in the ongoing construction of Islam
The study of Islam and Muslims in Europe and North America has expanded greatly in recent decades, becoming a passionately debated and divided field. This …

The Social World(S) Of The Scooter: Two-Wheeled Mobilities In Cairo And Alexandria, Ahmed El Serougui

Theses and Dissertations

My research project looks at the scooter as a particular type of two-wheeled motorcycle, which has shot into prominence as a specific mode of transportation used by middle class women and men in the past few years and has been notably visible in prominent Egyptian cities. This research is based on a multi-sited ethnography in Alexandria and Cairo, tracing the scooter through the urban landscape in time and space, addressing first questions related to navigating the city in times of pandemic and what kind of theory could be produced from these ordinary cities in such an extraordinary time.

This research …

Hospitality On The Camino De Santiago: Clues From Interviews With Hospitaleros During The Pandemic, Berenika Seryczynska, Piotr Roszak, Tomasz Duda

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The practice of making the pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago (the Way of Saint James), one of the three most important medieval pilgrimage routes in Europe, has undergone various transformations related to religious, cultural and political considerations. In 2019, the Pilgrim’s Reception Office in Santiago de Compostela recorded 327,378 pilgrims from all over the world. The aim of this research was to understand the impact of the pandemic on hospitaleros – the individuals who host pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago – and perform a comparative analysis against the hotel industry. In particular, it was noted that in a …

Invited Perspective - Nutritional Needs And Implications For Children In Subsistence Marketplaces, Nagendra Rangavajla

Subsistence Marketplaces

Today, while the number of stunted children is decreasing in all geographies, the progress is not consistent. Moreover, there is an increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescent. Globally, about half of all children under five do not receive essential nutrients, often unnoticed until too late. On the other end of the spectrum, the incidence of overweight and obesity in 5-19 year old has increased from 4% in 1975 to 18% in 2016 ¹. These trends reflect a ‘triple burden of malnutrition’, a burden that impacts the survival, growth, and development of children, and in turn, …

A Decolonial Feminist Ethnography: Empowerment, Ethics And Epistemology, Jennifer Manning

Books/Book Chapters

A decolonial feminist ethnography is an empowering research methodology that can situate the knowledge, lived experiences and worldviews of ‘others’ who are often marginalised in management research, thought and practice. This methodology focuses on the importance of ethics and epistemology in shaping the methods of knowledge production while striving for empowerment in the research process. A decolonial feminist ethnography is a messy, bricolaged way of doing research. It is also an empowering methodology that draws attention to differences, inequalities and ‘otherness’. Reconfiguring critical ethnography to recognise the coloniality of power, a decolonial feminist ethnography enables researchers to consider and address …

The Glorious Past And The Ecologically Modern: A Guided Journey Through Reconstructions Of China In Rural Shanxi, Melinda Herrold-Menzies

EnviroLab Asia

The article traces an EnviroLab Asia research trip designed to learn how “traditional” music and “folk” dance had been used to transform a loose configuration of farms into an integrated organic agricultural cooperative. This trip was second part of a multi-pronged case-study project looking at music, agriculture and sustainability in Indonesia and China. The importance of this research trip was to build collaborative relationships with our colleagues in Shanxi so that we will be able to produce interdisciplinary research with multinational partners in the future.

Striving Towards Authenticity In The Self Through Dress And Appearance: Stories Of Latina Adolescent Immigrants, Mary Alice Casto, Jennifer Paff Ogle, Maricela Demirjyn, Amanda Morales, Sarah Silvas-Bernstein

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

We sought to explore how Latina adolescent immigrants experience immigration across adolescence as they seek to know and express their authentic selves through dress and appearance. Our work was informed by theories of acculturation, identity, and authenticity. Participants included 12 immigrant women who identified as Latina and who immigrated before age 16. Open-ended interviews focused on participants’ memories of their immigration experiences during adolescence. Data were analyzed using constant comparison processes. Findings revealed that, for participants, the typical challenges of adolescence were complicated by immigration that included constructing an authentic identity at the intersection of two cultures. Immigration produced a …

Exploring The Relationship Between Nutrition And Cribra Orbitalia: The Comparison Of Dietary Stable Isotope Comparisons Of Juveniles From Kuelap, Peru, Lissette S. Osorio

Honors Undergraduate Theses

A juvenile’s dependency on their caregiver is significant to the overall development of nutritionally related pathological lesions. However, not all skeletal pathology is caused by nutritional stress; despite anemia being the usual inferred cause, the origin of Cribra Orbitalia (CO) – lesions on the orbital roofs of the cranium– is undetermined. The purpose of this research is to compare the reconstructed diets of juveniles with and without CO and explore connections to dietary patterns (inferred from stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen). Rib bone samples of 79 juveniles with and without CO were sampled from the Kuelap archaeological site …

Accessing 3d Data, Francesca Albrezzi, John Bonnett, Tassie Gniady, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lisa Snyder

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, as well as community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. This chapter will cover modes, audiences, assets and decision points, technology requirements, and limitations impacting access, as well as providing recommendations for next steps.

Population Sustainability In Rural Great Plains Towns, Andrew Husa

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

As researchers look to define a narrative of population decline throughout the region, the rural Great Plains towns that have been able to sustain their populations and attract new residents have seemingly gone unnoticed. This article features case studies from six rural Nebraska towns that address key questions regarding the population sustainability of rural Great Plains towns. Along with a discussion on the significance of geographic location in population growth or decline, this study includes several examples of how rural towns have used their locations to their advantage, created more job opportunities, enticed new residents to move in, and/or dealt …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

Investigating Mobility Through An Oxygen Isotope Study Of The Medieval Cemetery At Kilroot, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Hannah Pytleski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Mobility is an important, multifaceted process involving complex interactions of culture, politics, and economics while also intersecting with individual identities, like religion, status, gender, and age. As such, a multitude of people from different origins can comprise a settlement or a community, which may be detectable through biogeochemical assessment. This study employs stable oxygen and carbon isotopic analysis to evaluate evidence for residential mobility within the early to late Medieval Kilroot cemetery (c. 6th to 16th centuries A.D.) at County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The site is 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) east of Carrickfergus Castle and the surrounding town, which was …

The Use Of Stable Carbon And Nitrogen Isotope Analyses To Examine Diet, Life Course, And Social Identities Among The Meroitic Elite Of Sai Island, Sudan, Rachel Lotze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The focus of this thesis is to learn more about the diets and lives of Nubian individuals who lived on Sai Island during the Meroitic period (250 BC to AD 250) using an approach based in life history, gender, and social identity theory. These individuals were in buried the cemetery 8-B-52.B and they were part of the elite social class. Dietary analysis was conducted by analyzing the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from bulk samples of human bone collagen. A total of 34 bone samples were analyzed, and 31 of those samples were determined to be well-preserved. These data were …

Ambiguous Appalachianness: A Linguistic And Perceptual Investigation Into Arc-Labeled Pennsylvania Counties, Crissandra J. George

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The Appalachian Regional Commission (2022) designates 52 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties as Appalachia, excluding only the southeast portion of the state. Matthew Ferrence, in Appalachia North, states that his "home is sometimes called Appalachia, sometimes Rust Belt, other times Midwest, even though very few who live there would accept any of those labels as correct" (xi). This ambiguous and fluid identity is due to the shaping, forming, and changing of Pennsylvania’s role within society from a founding colony to a thriving state with industry, unselfishly spoiling others, to the grounds of converging identities (Ferrence xi). This ambiguous identity makes …

Hanford Nuclear Site Cultural Resource Gis Analysis: A Case Study Investigating Pre-Contact Travel Networks And Site And Artifact Locations, Luciana R. Chester

All Master's Theses

This thesis uses Global Information Systems (GIS) to investigate travel networks and site locations on the Hanford Nuclear Site. I construct a spatially referenced base map of historical travel routes, compare amounts of areas with and without archaeological survey, and analyze the location of archaeological sites. Government Land Office maps (GLO’s) mapped trails between1860’s and 1890’s. GIS analysis helps calculate relative frequencies and the densities of site and artifact types within 2 km buffers along the Columbia River corridor and trails. Collaboration between agencies and tribes facilitates consultation on all matters related to Hanford, and shared management of data covering …

The Difference Is In The Details: Attachment And Cross-Species Parenting In The United States And India, Shelly Volsche, Rijita Mukherjee, Madhavi Rangaswamy

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of the current research was to explore changes in Indian attitudes and practices with pet dogs and cats and compare them with responses from the United States. Pet parenting, defined as the investment of money, emotion, and time in companion animals, is a form of alloparental care (care given by someone other than the offspring’s biological parents). Pet parenting appears to emerge in cultures that (1) demonstrate high rates of urbanization, (2) have declining total fertility rates (average births per woman), and (3) support life orientations beyond reproduction (collectively called the second demographic transition). A total of 1,417 …

Gis-Automated Delineation Of Hospital Service Areas In Florida: From Dartmouth Method To Network Community Detection Methods, Changzhen Wang, Fahui Wang

Faculty Publications

Since the Dartmouth Hospital Service Areas (HSAs) were proposed three decades ago, there has been a large body of work using the unit in examining the geographic variation in health care in the U.S. for evaluating health care system performance and informing health policy. However, many studies question the replicability and reliability of the Dartmouth HSAs in meeting the challenges of an ever-changing and a diverse set of health care services. This research develops a reproducible, automated, and efficient GIS tool to implement Dartmouth method for defining HSAs. Moreover, the research adapts two popular network community detection methods to account …

Preliminary Report 2021: Geophysics, Coring, And Excavations At Hólar; Geophysics At Kálfsstaðir, Guðný Zoëga, John M. Steinberg

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

This report outlines the 2021 work at Hólar in Hjaltadalur as part of the Hjaltadalur Archaeological Survey Project (HASP). The results of soil coring suggest that the farmstead of Hólar is the most extensive farmstead measured using this method in the area of Skagafjörður. After over 1200 cores and 17 excavations (6 of which were part of the 2021 research), there are still no confirmed pre-1104 cultural deposits at Hólar. This difficulty in identifying the pre-1104 domestic occupation implies that Viking Age Hólar was probably not large. The Hólar farmstead domestic space seems to be tightly defined and constrained rather …

Considering The Needs, Challenges, And Assets Of School Systems In Rural Meatpacking Communities During Covid-19: The Roles Of Schools As Vehicles Of Community, Edmund T. Hamann, Amanda R. Morales, Ricardo Martinez

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

For more than 40 years, the relocation of meatpacking from urban to rural communities and the related change of who works in these high-risk, modestly compensated positions has brought Spanish-speaking and African and Asian refugee populations to communities like the seven focal Nebraska communities we consider here. These seven, five rural and two part of multi-county metropolitan areas, all have majority Latinx school enrollments and they all have been particularly hard hit by both the first and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were each also foci of a special new course we co-taught in December 2020 called: “Pandemics, …

Megaliths And Monumental Architecture At Coal Bed Village, An Ancestral Pueblo Site In Southeastern Utah, James R. Allison, Fumi Arakawa, Marion Forest, Katie K. Richards, David T. Yoder

Faculty Publications

Worldwide, megaliths are a common form of monumental architecture in Neolithic and later societies. Archaeologists in western Europe, and other parts of the world where megalithic monuments occur, have often discussed the meanings of megalithic features as well as their associations with ritual, territoriality, and social organization. In the Pueblo Southwest, most monumental architecture takes the form of large, unusually tall buildings (“great houses”), oversized ritual architecture (“great kivas”), or landscape features (roads and berms), all of which are most commonly associated with the Chaco system. Ancestral Pueblo people also occasionally built with ostentatiously large rocks, but megalithic features and …

Difficult Dialogues: Toward Building Community Through Conversation, Jessica Rhyne, David Marlow

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

This paper examines the construct of community: its nature, ontological significance, and role in society, as well as determining factors in community fragmentation and the role constructive dialogues can play in community building. With this knowledge, a campus conversation was orchestrated to explore students’ perceptions of our community and wicked problems confronting our world.

Students were asked the ways in which they engage with their communities, what barriers they identify as inhibiting community cohesion, and potential paths for progress. Challenges with orchestration as well as student responses are discussed.

This paper concludes that, among this demographic, there is very little …