Digital Commons Network^™

Clovis Lithic Manufacturing Variability At The Allendale Chert Quarries: A Preliminary View From 38al228, Allendale County, South Carolina, Andrew James Weidman

Occasional Papers – Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey

Abstract

This research is the result of archaeological testing that occurred from 2010–2012 at 38AL228, a multi-component quarry related site in Allendale County, South Carolina. This thesis 1) provides a summary of the testing in order to define the cultural sequence and isolate the Clovis component for further analysis, and 2) compares the Clovis lithic assemblage from 38AL228 with the Clovis lithic assemblage from the Topper site (38AL23) to explore possible manufacturing variability based on distance from the source of raw material within the Allendale chert quarries. The premise for the comparative analysis is framed around the concept of differential …

African Fire Cultures, Cattle Ranching, And Colonial Landscape Transformations In The Neo-Tropics, Andrew Sluyter, Chris S. Duvall

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“Becoming Ioway: Using Auto-Ethnography To Understand The Fourteen Ioways’ Journey Of Colonization, Spirituality And Traditions Through Tribal Dance Exhibitions, Sarita R. Mc Gowan

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the colonization and traditional spiritual practices of the Ioway people to show that their traditions have survived the effects of colonization also known as white settlers. I focus on issues of cultural traditional exhibition dance and that complicates the question of the nation-state’s exclusively trying to dissemble the Native Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska of colonization and the effects on the Ioway people past and present. I use personal experience of being a tribal member to discuss how the tribes’ oral history allows for the preservation of Ioway cultural identity and religious traditions.

The Crossed Bands Motif: What Does It Mean?, Brittany Luther

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The crossed bands motif is an iconographic symbol that appears among many Mesoamerican cultures' art including Olmec, Izapan and Maya spanning from the Early Pre-Classic to the Classic periods in Mesoamerica. Pierce explains in his theory on signs that icons, symbols and indices all contain meaning. This meaning was given to the signs by the one who commissioned the medium on which the sign is placed; therefore it is important to understand the meaning of these signs to learn more about the person or people who built them. The crossed bands motif has previously been studied based on individual pieces …

Preserving Fields Of Conflict: Papers From The 2014 Fields Of Conflict Conference And Preservation Workshop, Steven D. Smith

Faculty Publications

From 12 through 15 March 2014 conflict archaeologists and preservationists met in Columbia, South Carolina, to present 54 papers and 14 posters at the 8^th Biennial Fields of Conflict Conference. In conjunction with the conference, a workshop was held on the preservation of battlefields across the globe entitled “Call to Action: National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program Battlefield Preservation Workshop.” The 33 papers in this volume are extended abstracts of those papers presented in a popular format. The goal of this volume is to make conflict archaeology assessable to the public and raise the awareness of the critical …

Maritime Alpine Cairns In Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study, William J. Hunt Jr., Ralph J. Hartley, Bruce Mccune, Nijmah Ali, Thomas F. Thornton

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report describes the goals, data recovery methods, data analysis, and conclusions of a pilot project “A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study of Alpine Cairns, Baranof Island, Southeast Alaska,” funded by the National Science Foundation under Project No. 1230132. The project brought together experts in the disciplines of archaeology (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), lichenology (Oregon State University), and Tlingit oral history (Oxford University) to address questions regarding artificial prehistoric, high altitude cairns. Data were collected in 2013 and 2014. Pedestrian archaeological inventory recorded 50 cairns at 5 sites. Archaeological data includes cairn dimensions, GPS positions, still photographic images, and video documentation. Four cairns …

Linearly Stressed To Death: Consideration Of Early Childhood Stress As A Main Contributor To The Regional Variability In Classic Maya Mortuary Profiles, Nicholas Billstrand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Late and Terminal Classic periods were times of great social, economic, and political change in Maya civilization. Scholars have suggested that increasing levels of dietary stress during this time may have been the result of ecological instability, drought, warfare, and significant levels of population movement across the Maya lowlands. All of these processes may have affected human health and left measurable markers of stress in human skeletal material. The burial population recovered from two sites on Ambergris Caye, located near the coast of Belize, have significantly more sub-adult individuals than sites in inland Belize, such as Actuncan, suggesting the …

Alternatives To Charcoal For Improving Chronometric Dating Of Puget Sound Archaeological Sites, James W. Brown

All Master's Theses

Radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites in the Puget Lowlands can be problematic. Dating specific cultural events associated with features and sites is difficult due to the ubiquity of charcoal in forest soils and poor preservation of bone in acidic soils. These conditions have impeded the development of regional cultural chronologies. The lack of dates for critical time periods also inhibits testing processual models of cultural change. Evidence for the timing and rate of ecological, economic, and political change is critical for testing evolutionary models in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Radiocarbon dating highly burned bone (calcined bone) and luminescence dating fire-modified …

Identifying Archetypal Attributes Of Maya Ceremonial Architecture: Clues To The Late Classic Sociopolitical Status Of Pacbitun, Belize, George Micheletti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The E Group complex is one of the most widely known archetypes in Maya archaeology. The complex's easily recognized configuration has helped archaeologists to identify this archetype at hundreds of sites throughout the Southern Maya Lowlands. However, things are not always what they appear to be. Conducted by Jaime Awe and colleagues (2016), a reinvestigation of excavation data of assemblages long designated as E Group complexes in a region known as the Belize River Valley revealed several unique attributes not typical of the E Group complex. Awe et al. (2016) suggest that these assemblages appear to function more as "eastern …

Diet And Migration In Coastal Oaxaca: Identifying Effects Of Political And Social Collapse Through The Utilization Of Stable Isotope Analysis, Jacklyn Rumberger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study involves the investigation of diet and mobility among people living in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico, during the Late Classic (AD 500-800) and Early Postclassic (AD 800-1200) periods. Specifically, this research focuses on how political and social collapse affected subsistence practices and diet, particularly maize agriculture and consumption, as well as human migration. Archaeological evidence suggests that Río Viejo, the region's largest urban center before AD 800, experienced multiple periods of political fragmentation and instability during its long history, specifically during the Early Classic (AD 250 - 500) and Early Postclassic periods, making it an ideal …

Women In The Machinery Of War: Gender, Identity & Resistance Within Contemporary Middle Eastern Conflict, Nana-Korantema A. Koranteng

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which gender and identity are imagined in times of war especially in the cases of women who participate in armed struggle within the Middle East. I focus particularly on how US and UK media's framing of these women's lives and experiences distort the ways in which we understand conflict within the contemporary Middle East. Through the case studies of female militants or supports of militancy in Palestine and the Islamic State I seek to highlight women's stories and lived realities in an attempt to understand what drives them to use particular model's …

Late Fremont Cultural Identities And Borderland Processes, Michael T. Searcy, Richard K. Talbot

Faculty Publications

he spread of maize farming across the American Southwest reached its northernmost extent west of the Rockies by the first or second centuries ad (James Allison, personal communication, 2014; Allison 2014), in the area encompassing the Colorado Plateau north of the Colorado River and the eastern portion of the Great Basin. he practitioners of farming in this area, the Fremont, generally resemble other Southwest farmers in material culture, social structure, settlement, and land use. hey are markedly different from contemporaneous hunter- gatherers to the west, north, and east in these same characteristics and in general economic strategy. Changing paradigms have …

Approaches To Teaching Latin American Culture Through Film: Children’S Plight In Poverty- And Violence-Ridden Countries, Delia V. Galvan Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Students at the beginning levels of foreign language study have many borders to cross and many challenges to negotiate. This paper reports the results of a preliminary study involving the use of full-length films to engender intercultural sensitivity and understanding among two groups of first-year students of Spanish. Both films depict hardships of children in Spanish-speaking countries—as a result of conscription or as a result of child labor. The paper discusses the contextualization of the films for the students, the students’ responses to questionnaires, portions of classroom discussion that indicate growth in the areas of focus, and implications of the …

Bioarchaeological Analysis Of Oak View Landing (40dr1): An Archaic Population In The Kentucky Lake Reservior, Katy D. Grant-Mclemore

Master's Theses

The biocultural examination of the Archaic population recovered at Oak View Landing (40DR1) investigates the lifeways and adaptations of prehistoric people as they reflect sociopolitical and subsistence strategies.

A comprehensive bioarchaeological analysis was conducted on the adult individuals (18 males, 16 females, 16 of indeterminate sex) excavated from a multiple occupation site located along the Tennessee River in Decatur County, Tennessee. Skeletal indicators used to understand biocultural phenomena were assessed macroscopically on cranial and postcranial elements. Furthermore, mortuary data, for adults and subadults, were used to determine any patterns of preferential treatment at death.

Results from this study indicate that …

Burial Chronological Sequencing Of The Colonial Maya Cemetery At Tipu, Belize Using Fluoride Ion Analysis, Nicole Musselwhite

Master's Theses

This thesis ascertains the sequence of burials using fluoride ion electrode analysis at the colonial cemetery at Tipu, Belize in order to explore demographic and other cultural effects associated with European contact. The cemetery at Tipu in west central Belize, dating from within the first century of Spanish contact, has provided one of the largest and best preserved Maya skeletal series, with over 500 burials recovered. While this series has undergone vast amounts of analysis, there has yet been an analysis conducted to view how patterns changed over time. This is of interest given the rapid culture change associated with …

Paleopathology At The Shady Grove Site (22qu525): A Study Of Health In The Upper Yazoo Basin During The Middle Mississippian Period, Christopher Brady Davis

Master's Theses

The Mississippian Period (AD 1000-1539) is characterized by increasingly sedentary populations, mound building, ranked societies, and intensified agriculture. As agriculture spread throughout the Eastern Woodlands, it led to widespread health consequences, including poor nutrition and increased levels of infection. Also, environmental shifts during the Mississippian Period (AD 1000-1539) caused drier conditions, potentially leading to crop failures further exacerbating nutritional problems.

This thesis focuses on the health of the Shady Grove site in the Upper Yazoo Basin, a Middle to Late Mississippian medium sized mound center where an ossuary containing up to 100 individuals was excavated in 2010. Focusing only on …

Conflicted Tourism : Heritage Narratives, Sectarian Schism, And Economic Growth In Northern Ireland., Ashleigh Larissa Bixby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines tourism as a politically charged facet of the economic process in Northern Ireland. While violence has abated in the region, sectarian conflict continues to affect Northern Irish society. Tourism has helped develop the economy by opening the market to visitors through the marketing of the region as unique and different. As conflict in the region is ongoing, the rise of tourism as a viable economic strategy raises the question: how does the Northern Irish tourist industry reconcile the past and ongoing conflict in order to present the region as a desirable tourist destination? The answer lies in …

The Influence Of Iron On Arctic Thule Migration Patterns, Alina T. Aquino

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Arctic scholars have yet to fully understand the reasons behind the migration of Thule culture from the western to the eastern Arctic. This rapid movement across such a vast area into environmentally diverse regions marks a critical period of cultural change that is usually summarized by two theoretical positions. Ecological theories postulated environmental changes placed selective pressures on traditional food sources that required Thule hunters to follow migrating prey. Theories that focused on material acquisition alternately proposed the Thule followed the trail of meteoric iron eastward into northwestern Greenland.

This research sought to examine the eastward Thule migration from another …

Hydrocentric Infants And Their Alchemic Sedimentation: Artfully Binding The Bodily Soul Among Xié River Dwellers Of Northwestern Amazonia, Elizabeth Rahman

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Settlement-Size Scaling Among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems In The New World, W. Randall Haas, Cynthia J. Klink, Greg J. Maggard, Mark S. Aldenderfer

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Settlement size predicts extreme variation in the rates and magnitudes of many social and ecological processes in human societies. Yet, the factors that drive human settlement-size variation remain poorly understood. Size variation among economically integrated settlements tends to be heavy tailed such that the smallest settlements are extremely common and the largest settlements extremely large and rare. The upper tail of this size distribution is often formalized mathematically as a power-law function. Explanations for this scaling structure in human settlement systems tend to emphasize complex socioeconomic processes including agriculture, manufacturing, and warfare-behaviors that tend to differentially nucleate and disperse populations …

Is Political Evolution Over? An Anthropological Analysis Of The Twentieth Century, Robert Bates Graber Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Why did human societies grow from small bands and villages into highly populous nations and empires? This process, termed political evolution, is explained by one major strand of anthropological theorizing as having resulted from population pressure, warfare, and conquest. War is seen as having been essential because polities do not willingly surrender autonomy. The 20th century apparently brought both an increase in population pressure (the ratio of humans to the available resource base) and a considerable amount of war, but only a modest increase in political evolution as measured by the average population of nations. One interpretation of this is …

The Art Of Passing: What Transgender People Can Teach Us About Gender, Jennifer Clark-Grainger

Anthropology Undergraduate Senior Theses

In this thesis I explore several published articles as well as the life-stories of five Caucasian, transgender informants from the Southeastern United States (specifically, long-term residents of Alabama). This research examines the role "passing" within the transgender community and contains information from interviewees who successfully passed as the opposite gender from the gender they were assigned at birth. These interviews helped me gain understanding, not only about the colorful lives of both those who are transgender and their partners, but also about patriarchy and the gender-binary system we, as Americans, are adhering to. It was my desire to learn from …

Humanitarianism's History Of The Singular, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

In “The New Universalism” Daniel Bertrand Monk and Andrew Herscher bring together global history and global humanitarianism to argue the emergence of a new (perverse) universal singular—a monadological refugee and form of refuge that threaten to efface both. By putting shelter and displacement side by side, they insightfully point us to different global patterns, such as the turn to the principle of the particular. Monk and Herscher read these patterns against the grain, offering us—almost in passing—a new history of humanitarianism.

Kin Selection, Raymond Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

When Hamilton (1964) published his theory of inclusive fitness it had no immediate impact in the social and behavioral sciences, even though ethnographers knew kinship to be a universally fundamental factor in human social organization, especially in egalitarian societies in which humans have spent nearly all their evolutionary history. In many ways, it was a theory that perhaps anthropologists should have devised: Anthropologists knew kinship fundamentally structured cooperation, identity, coalition formation, resource exchange, marriage, and group membership in traditional societies. It was not until 1974 with the publication of Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975) and especially Richard Alexander’s The Evolution of Social …

Gunflints And Musket Balls: Implications For The Occupational History Of The Eaton Site And The Niagara Frontier, Michael Roets, William Engelbrecht, John D. Holland

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The multicomponent Eaton site in West Seneca, New York, was the focus of a long-term archaeological project. While the major emphasis was the excavation of a mid-16th-century Iroquoian village, all artifacts are being analyzed. These include 12 gunflints and 8 musket balls deposited at some point after the abandonment of the Iroquoian village. This article describes these objects, their distribution and dating, and the implications of these artifacts for the history of the site and the region.

Continuity Of Lithic Practice From The Eighteenth To The Nineteenth Centuries At The Nipmuc Homestead Of Sarah Boston, Grafton, Massachusetts, Joseph M. Bagley, Stephen Mrozowski, Heather Law Pezzarossi, John Steinberg

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Stone tools have been found at all Nipmuc-related house sites in central Massachusetts dating from the 17th through 20th centuries. This article explores in detail the lithic assemblage recovered from the kitchen midden of the late 18th and early 19th century Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston farmstead in Grafton, Massachusetts. Quartz and quartzite lithics were found in similar concentrations as historic ceramics within the midden suggesting that these tools were in active use within the household. Ground-stone tools of ancient origin indicate curation and reuse of older materials, and knapped glass and re-worked gunflints suggest knowledge of flintknapping. This article argues that …

Changing Climates, Fading Cultures: A Study Of Place Annihilation As A Result Of Climate Change, Brooks A. Bolsinger

Honors Projects

Abstract

Research has established the phenomenon of cultural annihilation: the notion that the members of cultures can perceive a sense of loss when the geography upon which their culture is built undergoes a dramatic destructive change. This review examines prevailing literature to uncover existing and expected ways that climate change will impact cultures, specifically damaging the shared history that is infused into the geographic traits that make up a culture’s homeland. It examines three case studies - Native American tribes in Alaska, the island nation of the Maldives, and the country of the Netherlands – to highlight vulnerabilities that these …

25-Archaeological Investigations Of 20ok476: A Late Eighteenth Century Native American Site On Apple Island, Oakland County, Michigan, David S. Brose

Archaeological Reports

Archaeological investigations of Apple Island in Orchard Lake, Oakland County, Michigan, were casually begun in the early decades of the 20th century when the owners of the centrally located Campbell family farm plowed up and then reinterred a Native American burial accompanied by a pewter bowl filled with white shell beads. 2000 and 2003 discontinuous shallow excavations conducted by local middle school students under the direction of Michael Stafford of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, yielded quantities of animal bone and a scattering of European trade goods. Stafford assigned these to a “Fur Trade” site but never fully reported on …

The Archaeology Of Disjuncture: Classic Period Disruption And Cultural Divergence In The Tuxtla Mountains Of Mexico, Wesley D. Stoner, Christopher A. Pool

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Reconstructing human interaction systems has been a major objective of archaeological research, but we have typically examined the topic in a conceptually limited manner. Most studies have—intentionally or unintentionally—focused on how trade, communication, conquest, and migration foster cultural similarities over long distances. It has largely been a positivistic endeavor that exclusively features groups linked through a single network but glosses over how alternative networks intersect with the former through common nodes. Models of long-distance interaction have largely ignored variation in how external influences are negotiated across space within the receiving region. We adapt Arjun Appadurai’s concept of disjuncture to conceptualize …

Race And Inequality In Cuban Tourism During The 21st Century, Arah M. Parker

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

As the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba boasts beautiful scenery, as well as a rich and diverse culture. Yet, throughout Cuban history, the beauty of this famous socialist nation has been marred by social inequalities, primarily affecting class, gender, and race. In the Cuban tourism sector in particular, the three aforementioned components have been prevalent since the island’s inception of tourism in the early 20^th Century. With the recent political changes marked by the attempt to restore relations with the United States, this thesis will critically analyze the theories of Black Marxism, Intersectionality, and World Systems Analysis (WSA), …