Digital Commons Network^™

State Dependency Of The Forest-Tundra-Short Wave Feedback : Comparing The Mid-Pliocene And Pre-Industrial Eras Using A Newly-Developed Vegetation Model, Pablo Paiewonsky

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The forest-tundra-short wave feedback is the dominant short wave (SW) vegetation feedback at mid-to-high northern latitudes and is an important feedback in Earth’s climate system, especially due to its potential role in modulating glacial cycles. Little research has been done on how the strength of this feedback might vary with the background climate state. It is hypothesized that the feedback has generally strengthened over the last four million years. The feedback mechanism is hypothesized to be weaker under warm Northern Hemispheric conditions when tundra is primarily confined to the high Arctic than under cooler conditions in which the forest-tundra boundary …

Child Abuse In The Archaeological Context, Nicole Marie Popielarz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Children have been a widely ignored subject in archaeology so it follows that child abuse has not been studied in detail in the archaeological context. This paper combines both forensic anthropology studies and Bioarchaeological studies to see if child abuse is a modern phenomenon. Signs of both non-accidental trauma and neglect have been documented by authors in the archaeological record. The purpose of this paper will be to describe signs of both nonaccidental trauma and neglect. Then examples in archaeological studies will be reviewed. The future of the study of abuse in the archaeological context is also discussed at some …

Evolution Of Lemur Pelage Color Variation, Amanda Nicole Spriggs

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation investigates the selective pressures that may be driving variation in pelage color patterns in Eulemur, Varecia, and Propithecus. This is addressed by exploring the relationship between the lemur pelage colors and ecological variables, such as habitat type, predation pressures, visibility variables, and level of sympatry. The following model is presented here to describe the evolutionary mechanisms that are thought to be maintaining pelage coloration in lemurs: Pelage color and pattern are potentially used to (1) signal to conspecifics information such as mate quality, (2) signal to congenerics species identity, and (3) avoid signaling the individual’s presence to predators. …

Black Death Bodies, Sharon Dewitte, Maryanne Kowaleski

Faculty Publications

The fourteenth-century Black Death was one of the most important and devastating epidemics in human history. It caused or accelerated important demographic, economic, political, and social changes throughout the Old World and has therefore been the subject of scholarly research in a variety of fields, including history, anthropology, demography, and molecular biology. In this paper, we examine the Black Death (specifically, the first and second outbreaks of fourteenth-century plague, c. 1347–1351 and 1361–1362) from bioarchaeological and historical perspectives, focusing on attempts to reconstruct mortality patterns and addressing the questions: Who died in England during the Black Death? How did they …

Loss And Renewal: My Sicilian Roots In New Orleans, Lyndsey Nuebel

4.Inheritances

Lyndsey Neubel reflects on her upbringing in Slidell, Louisiana and her Sicilian family’s roots in the New Orleans area. Using frameworks of critical whiteness, she examines how the suburban environment of Slidell shaped her sense of self and heritage. Neubel’s grandfather tells her about their family’s immigration story, his Sicilian-American identity, and family life in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. Nuebel explores how racism, segregation, and white flight shaped urban space and the suburbanization of the North Shore. She then analyzes how these sociocultural dynamics affected her preconceptions about New Orleans when she began attending the New Orleans Center …

Upfront: A Way Of Life On Barataria Boulevard, Shelbey Leco

4.Inheritances

Leco examines the culture of the West Bank of New Orleans and her Sicilian, Filipino, and Cajun French heritage. Opening with a detailed ethnographic description of a typical scene in the West Bank Walmart parking lot, Leco frames her thoughts about her hometown of Marrero, Louisiana. In conversations with her parents, Leco learns about her family’s immigration stories, occupations, and foodways. Leco’s paternal great-grandfather was a first generation Filipino-American who lived and worked in Manila Village, a Filipino fishing community on an island in Barataria Bay. Leco then describes her religious upbringing, the Immaculate Conception Parish community, and the cultural …

Territoriality, Monumentality, And Religion In Formative Period Nepeña, Coastal Ancash, David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara, Koichiro Shibata, Matthew Helmer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sherds With Style: A Ceramic Analysis From A Protohistoric Site In Oktibbeha County, Mississippi., Allison Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A key part of understanding the lesser known contact period in the Southeastern United States is studying the effects of contact on Mississippian chiefdoms and their descendant population. The Starkville Archaeological Complex is an archaeological pattern of a distinct clustering of contact-era sites in the Blackland Prairie physiographic district of northeast Mississippi. Atkinson (1979) defined these sites as a dispersed settlement pattern with distinct ceramic assemblages associated with European metal. The ceramics are characterized as sandy historic Chickasaw pastes with Mississippian-like distinct curvilinear or angular surface decorations. This thesis is an analysis of the ceramic assemblage excavated in 2016 from …

“To Nurture Something That Nurtures You”: Care, Creativity, Class, And The Production Of Urban Environments In Deindustrial Michigan, Megan L. Maurer

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

In this dissertation I investigate how gardeners and beekeepers in a small, deindustrial city in Michigan used their activities to produce their environments. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, I consider what kind of labor gardening is. For residents of Elmwood, gardening was a way to care for households, communities, and ecosystems. Furthermore, this care was performed through a type of creative, material labor that served to address forms of alienation experienced by these individuals. While all sorts of Elmwoodites gardened, they did so in ways that were specific to their experiences of race and class. These experiences, in …

Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey Report On The 2016 Field Season Cole’S Hill, Brewster Garden, And Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, David B. Landon, John M. Steinberg, Brian N. Damiata

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In May and June of 2016, a field school from the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with Plimoth Plantation and the Town of Plymouth, undertook a fourth season of work as part of Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey. The approaching 400th anniversary (1620-2020) of the founding of Plymouth Colony, New England’s first permanent English settlement, provides a unique opportunity to revisit our scholarly understanding of the Colony’s history. Working with community partners and descendant organizations, including the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and local museums, we …

A Critical Analysis Of The Effects Of Language Policy, Curriculum, And Assessment On Arabic L1 Student Performance In An Esl 1 Classroom, Juliane Bilotta

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a preliminary analysis into looking at the ways in which Arabicspeaking ESL students are inadvertently marginalized by state standardization, curriculum, and dominant forms of classroom interactions in a NJ recovery program. Specifically, this analysis addresses the absence of orthographic training and a reliance on teacher-fronted, textbook based classroom exercises as a problematic structure that limits opportunities for Arabic-speaking students to participate successfully in an ESL 1 classroom. This data was collected during six-weeks of preliminary research during the summer of 2016 in a Jersey City, NJ ESL classroom. Using transcriptions of recorded data from lessons that typify …

Embodied Madness: Contextualizing Biological Stress Among 19th And 20th-Century Institutionalized Euro-American Women, Madeline M. Atwell

Theses and Dissertations

The late 19th and early 20th-centuries in the United States were periods in which white women of middle and low socio-economic status were admitted into insane asylums at a higher rate than men for the first time in recorded history. An existent body of literature helps us to comprehend the social and cultural climate in which the institutionalization of women was both acceptable and commonplace; yet few studies have paired this research with the information that can be revealed on the bones of those institutionalized. A sample of 53 institutionalized women from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection were analyzed …

Process-Based Modelling Shows How Climate And Demography Shape Language Diversity, Michael C. Gavin, Thiago F. Rangel, Claire Bowern, Robert K. Colwell, Kathryn R. Kirby, Carlos A. Botero, Michael Dunn, Robert R. Dunn, Joe Mccarter, Marco Tulio Pacheco Coelho, Russell D. Gray

Biology Faculty Research

Aim

Two fundamental questions about human language demand answers: why are so many languages spoken today and why is their geographical distribution so uneven? Although hypotheses have been proposed for centuries, the processes that determine patterns of linguistic and cultural diversity remain poorly understood. Previous studies, which relied on correlative, curve-fitting approaches, have produced contradictory results. Here we present the first application of process-based simulation modelling, derived from macroecology, to examine the distribution of human groups and their languages.

Location

The Australian continent is used as a case study to demonstrate the power of simulation modelling for identifying processes shaping …

Gender Division In Sport: Through The Eyes Of Female Student-Athletes At Cms, Kris Brackmann

CMC Senior Theses

In this ethnography (anthropology thesis) I explored the binary gender division in modern sports culture through the analysis of stereotypes shaped by the history of women's sport, iconography of female athletes portrayed by mainstream media, and the reinforcement of stigma and pressure to conform to social norms by the normalized everyday discourse of college men and women at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges. Even though Title IX brought significant gender equality to sport in terms of women's access to athletic participation and facilities, I argue that there is still much work to do to modify social attitudes toward women's sports. While CMS female …

Do Muslim Village Girl’S Need Saving?: Critical Reflections On Gender And The Suffering Child In International Aid, Rania Kassab Sweis

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In her chapter, "Do Muslim Village Girl’s Need Saving?: Critical Reflections on Gender and the Suffering Child in International Aid," Dr. Rania Sweis poses the following questions: What does it mean when powerful actors in western based international NGOs recognize the Muslim village girl as the ultimate savable victim'? What gendered and racialized logics arc at play in this category's strategic deployment, and what arc their tangible effects for both NGOs and village girls who receive aid'? She argues that large-scale international aid projects that aim to speak for, uplift and save Muslim village girls in Egypt and other countries …

Neonatal Shoulder Width Suggests A Semirotational, Oblique Birth Mechanism In Australopithecus Afarensis, Jeremy M. Desilva, Natalie M. Laudicina, Karen R. Rosenberg, Wenda R. Trevathan

Peer Reviewed Articles

Birth mechanics in early hominins are often reconstructed based on cephalopelvic proportions, with little attention paid to neonatal shoulders. Here, we find that neonatal biacromial breadth can be estimated from adult clavicular length (R² = 0.80) in primates. Using this relationship and clavicular length from adult Australopithecus afarensis, we estimate biacromial breadth in neonatal australopiths. Combined with neonatal head dimensions, we reconstruct birth in A. afarensis (A.L. 288-1 or Lucy) and find that the most likely mechanism of birth in this early hominin was a semi-rotational oblique birth in which the head engaged and passed through the inlet …

A Natural History Of The Drag Queen Phenomenon, Michael Moncrieff, Pierre Lienard

Anthropology Faculty Research

The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens' public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen's public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman's costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among …

The Analysis Of Contact-Era Settlements In Clay, Lowndes, And Oktibbeha Counties In Northeast Mississippi, Emily Lee Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project is to compare the spatial distribution of sites across Clay, Lowndes, and Oktibbeha counties between the Mississippi and Early Historic periods using site files from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), sites were mapped chronologically to examine change through time to investigate how people reacted to European contact and colonization. Site locations and clusters also were used to evaluate possible locations of the polities of Chicaza, Chakchiuma, and Alimamu discussed in the De Soto chronicles. Sites in Clay, Lowndes, and Oktibbeha counties were chosen due to the existence of …

Before Me, After Me, Through Me: Stories Of Food And Community In Eastern Kentucky, Abigail Myers Huggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This text contextualizes and presents twenty-three oral history interviews conducted in eastern Kentucky during the summer of 2016 as a part of a Master of Arts thesis in southern studies. The interviews were conducted with people specifically connected to food, farming, and community activism in and near Letcher County, Kentucky. The interviews explore such topics as: past and present food traditions, seed saving, gardening, farming, food preservation, herbalism, local food systems, food access, youth, theater arts, lgbtq+ advocacy, and appalachian identity. This document complements an online collection of oral history excerpts created as an audio documentary portion of the overall …

Cafeteria Culture: An Anthropological Approach To Lunchtime In A Central Florida Elementary School, Emily Herrington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public school cafeterias are used by nearly 51 million children (ages 4-17) in the United States every day. With over 40% of the approximately 73 million children (ages 0-17) participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), public school lunches carry resounding nutritional, social, and educational significance for their consumers. This fact, coupled with frequent media attention to school lunch food, notwithstanding, a notable lack of social scientific engagement with both students' perspectives and NSLP operators persists. Divided into two studies, this research utilizes ethnographic methods to explore students' lunchtime experiences within a Central Florida public elementary school cafeteria. Both …

An Assessment Of Trace Elements Distribution In Teeth Utilizing A Sample Group From Postclassic Lamanai: The Application Of La-Icp-Ms In Bioarchaeology And Forensics, Michelle Hawkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trace element analysis of skeletal remains and teeth is a common research technique in biological and forensic anthropology. In particular, LA-ICP-MS has become a widely-accepted tool for analyzing and mapping the distribution of trace elements in teeth. Investigation into the relative spectral intensities and spatial distribution of thirteen trace isotopes (13C, 24Mg, 27Al, 31P, 44Ca, 47Ti, 52Cr, 55Mn, 56Fe, 66Zn, 88Sr, 138Ba, 208Pb) within teeth was undertaken using LA-ICP-MS. The total archaeological sample of teeth (N=26) was comprised of four tooth types (UCI, ULI, UPM1, and UPM2) and 18 individuals from a Postclassic Lamanai site. In preparation for analysis, teeth …

Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Before Abandonment: Social Change In Pre-Colonial Housepit 54, Bridge River Site (Eerl4), British Columbia, Kathryn L. Bobolinski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Housepit 54 at the Bridge River pithouse village in south-central British Columbia provides a glimpse into the complex cultural practices that occurred in this area in the past. This village, which includes approximately 80 semi-subterranean structures, was occupied during four periods, approximately 1800- 1600 cal. B.P., 1600-1300 cal. B.P., 1300-1000 cal. B.P. and 500-100 cal. B.P, firmly placing the site within both a historic and a pre-Colonial context. The two pre-Colonial floors, IIb (1288-1058 cal B.P.) and IIa (1184-1050 cal B.P.), that represent the occupation of Housepit 54 directly prior to the pre-Colonial villages abandonment are the focus of this …

Potentially Dangerous Enemy Aliens: Experiences At Fort Missoula And Transformative Immigration Policy In The United States, Daniel Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this paper, I attempt to comprehend the experiences of Italian and Japanese internees who were detained at Fort Missoula’s Alien Detention Center during World War II. Furthermore, I draw upon historical patterns of United States’ immigration policies that greatly affected perspectives and social values between various ethnic groups. Simultaneously, national immigration policies shifted across space and time reflecting ethnocentric ideals and discriminatory campaigns that altered past cultural, political, and economic landscapes. The events that produced the internment of Italian and Japanese men at Fort Missoula varied greatly and are critical to examine through historical records. Such records pertain to …

Data For The Distribution Of Flat-Backed Canteens, Kristina L. Whitney

Anthropology Graduate Student Publications

Since water transport vessels are often a highly conservative vessel form, the appearance of a new water vessel shape—the flat-backed canteen—in the American Southwest around the time of Spanish arrival raises questions concerning its introduction. These data are the basis of a study aimed at documenting the presence of the flat-backed canteen in the American Southwest from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries and explores changes in their distribution and use through time. A total of 128 flat-backed canteens were analyzed from archaeological and ethnographic collections, while 97 additional New World canteens were documented through an extensive literature review. Its contemporary …

Spytinĕv (Ce 875-915), Duke Of Bohemia: An Osteobiographic Perspective On Society Status And Stature In The Emerging Czech State, Marshall Joseph Becker

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Etruscan Gold Dental Appliances, Marshall Joseph Becker

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Anthony F. C. Wallace: Homage To A Professor, Marshall Joseph Becker

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

You Can’T Walk Where There Is No Ground, Paul Stoller

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Archaeological Gis Analysis Of Raised Field Agriculture In The Bolivian Amazon, Thomas W. Lee

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Modern agricultural systems have been criticized for their detrimental effects on the environment and a general emphasis on crop yield rather than long-term sustainability. Traditional forms of agriculture may provide case-specific examples of sustainable alternatives for contemporary societies. In the seasonally inundated savannas of the Llanos de Mojos, pre-Columbian Indians piled earth into ‘large raised field platforms’ elevated high enough above the floodplain to allow crops to grow. Archaeological evidence indicates that raised field agriculture supported much larger populations than those found in the Beni today. The examination of satellite imagery has revealed more than 40,000 individual fields spread across …