Exploring Indigenous Involvement In The Fur Trade At The Bridge River Pithouse Village, British Columbia, Rebekah Jean Engelland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Much research has been done on the Fur Trade period occupation of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River site. This thesis investigates the cause of resource intensification seen in the increase in projectile points, faunal remains, hide scrapers, and fire-cracked rock (FCR). In order to determine the impetus of this change, I compare the fracture patterns of FCR, the size of FCR, the densities of FCR, deer NISP, and slate scrapers, and the population estimate from the fur trade floor and roof to the last floor and roof of the previous occupation. This will determine whether the resource intensification was …

Mapping Ethnophysiographies: An Investigation Of Toponyms And Land Cover Of Missoula County, Montana, Emily L. Cahoon

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis investigates the ethnophysiography of Missoula County, Montana via place names. Toponyms and landscape have been observed to have a relationship that can be studied through many lenses. Ethnophysiography, the study of how language and landscape relate to each other via human conceptualization, is a lens that was applied to this thesis because it recognizes the embodied information that toponyms carry and investigates landscape accordingly. Thus, the following research seeks to understand if ethnophysiographic diversity exists between toponyms in the Salish and English languages of Missoula County, Montana by analyzing place names and land cover in GIS and analyzing …

The Effects Of Heavy Metal Contamination In Soil On Dna Degradation After Decomposition, Samantha Hofland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The application of DNA is an ever-expanding field of research with many implications in the field of forensic investigation. Research into DNA obtained from soil is ongoing and suggests a new avenue in forensic investigation. This research seeks to understand the effects of heavy metal on the preservation of DNA within soil after decomposition of remains. Using pigs as a proxy for human remains, the effects of heavy metal contamination on the microbial environment and endogenous pig DNA was observed. This gave broad insight into the effect of surface burial and Western Montana; summer climate has on DNA degradation.

Theories On The Pedagogy Of Asla (Accelerated Second Language Acquisition): A Piikuni Student Approach, Robert Patrick Hall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is an exploration in the pedagogy of ASLA to understand how and why it is successful at being a methodology that enables an instructor to teach endangered languages effectively. The paper explores the current deficits within language revitalization programs and argues that ASLA can improve endangered language programs

The Influence Of Ancestry, Sex, And Age On The Morphology Of The Frontal Sinus In Black And White Individuals, Hope Annelise Vance

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The frontal sinus is a cavity located in the frontal bone and is completely unique to every individual. The morphology is influenced by a number of factors, such as environment, genetics, and perimortem injury. This study focuses on the role that ancestry, sex, and age play in the appearance of this feature; the morphology and shape of an individual’s frontal sinus is influenced by their sex and ancestry to some degree. The following analysis observes the relationship between the maximum width (MW), maximum depth (MD), degree of asymmetry (DOA), and maximum height (MH) of the frontal sinus and the individual’s …

Luminous Threshold, Peggy Wen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Luminous Threshold is an interactive experience exploring the liminal transition between the viewer and ambiguous spaces. My thesis exhibition incorporates two paintings, one continuous pulsing light structure, two sound-activated light structures, and a black cube that is perceived to be inserted through the gallery wall. The paintings and forms explore liminality within a two-dimensional space, while the light pieces create an ephemeral viewer- participation experience. Liminality, defined by Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner, is one of three stages in life an individual will go through. It is considered a Rite of Passage or Threshold and is the ambiguous transitional …

A Comprehensive Forensic Case Report For The Bonner County Coroner Case #20-100, Megan Copeland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This report consists of an inventory of the skeletal remains of case #20-100, assessment of the minimum number of individuals (MNI), a biological profile if possible, and a literature review of ­­­the use of DNA in ancestry estimations. The skeletal remains are consistent with an MNI of one. The remains are likely from a male individual, and skeletal features display a mixture of European and Asian characteristics. The individual is estimated to be between of 25-35 years old with an estimated stature of between 5’1” and 5’6”.

Evaluating A Need For Somatic Access To Classical Objects In Public Museums, Jerod G. Peitsmeyer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Physical experiences with ancient art objects in museums are rare. Display paradigms in most public institutions continue to propagate systems of participant interaction that reinforces unequal power structures. The Montana Musuem of Art and Culture (MMAC) is the current custodian of an ancient, Rhodian wine amphora that provides an opportunity to examine a novel system of somatic participation. This proposal upends traditional gatekeeping practices and serves as a powerful and progressive, humanist touchstone; an olive branch extended to the general public from behind the walls of higher education and the ramparts of privileged scholarship. This study reimagines the amphora's future …

Summer Vacation In The Wild: An Historical And Archaeological Study Of Timber Land Fraud In The Tobacco Plains, Montana, Tyler Jay Rounds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

During the 19th and early 20th century, Congress passed several laws intended to allow average Americans the chance to acquire portions of the public domain for their own benefit. However, contemporary observers and historians alike have noted that several of these laws—especially the Homestead Act and the Timber and Stone Act—were instead used by speculators and lumber companies to amass large landholdings by orchestrating and purchasing fraudulent entries. Local historical tradition suggests that Eureka Lumber Company, Bonners Ferry Lumber Company, and J. Neils Lumber Company employed this tactic within the Kootenai National Forest (KNF), though the veracity of such claims …

The Lost Histories Of The Shetayet Of Sokar: Contextualizing The Osiris Shaft At Rosetau (Giza) In Archaeological History, Nicholas Edward Whiting

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Osiris Shaft is one of many archaeological signatures associated with Egypt’s Giza Plateau, the most well-known of which are the Great Pyramids. However, the role(s) the Osiris Shaft feature played in the religious and daily practices of ancient Egyptians remain(s) unknown. This research seeks to contextualize the Osiris Shaft in Egyptian history to learn more about this feature’s story. In order to achieve this goal, this thesis examines funerary deities associated with Memphis theology and explores archaeological investigations related to the Osiris Shaft, including the work of Dr. Zahi Hawass and investigations by the Giza Mapping Project. Thanks to …

Uncovering Cooperation In Housepit 54, Bridge River, British Columbia, Canada, Megan Denis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There is a significant amount of literature regarding the theory of cooperation, as well as ethnographies and data from modern populations that clearly show cooperation, yet it is difficult to tease that information out of the archaeological record. My thesis will focus on floors IIi to IIc of Bridge River’s Housepit 54 in British Columbia, Canada, which extends from the Bridge River 2 period to the Bridge River 3 period and includes two incidents of resource stress and one of resource plenty. These times of fluctuating resource availability should result in the population utilizing different approaches to social organization. By …

Non-Indian Reservations, Joshua Matthew Rosenau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is a skeptical treatment of the logical distinctions presumed to exist between “Indian” and “non-Indian” people. Despite representing 99 percent of the U.S. population, “non-Indians” represent a legal identity which has no explicit definition. The basis for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions regarding non-Indians and Indians rests not on any objective, empirical or logical criterion or proof, but rather on the “assumption of a ‘guardian-ward’ status. This thesis investigates this assumption, and recommends that we suspend judgment on whether the difference between “Indians” and “non-Indians” can be determined either by logical argument or by legal assumption.

A Moral Influenza: An Historical Archaeological Investigation Of The Prohibition Era In The United States 1920-1933, Kelli Michele Casias

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following exploration of National Alcohol Prohibition in the United States employs an interdisciplinary approach to understand the impetus of the large-scale defiance of liquor laws and to identify the physical manifestations of the social process of mass resistance in the archaeological record. Historical documentation, newspaper publications, oral histories, landscape analysis of road development in Montana, and an archaeological survey of a mountain homestead site where manufacturer of illicit alcohol took place are used to contextualize the Prohibition Era from the perspective of the offender. The research goals of this work are varied and include documentation of the archaeological footprint …

Benthic Invertebrate Paleontology Of The Late Mississippian (Serpukhovian) Bear Gulch Limestone, Central Montana, Amy Elizabeth Singer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Bear Gulch Limestone of the late Mississippian central Montana is a significant Konservat Lagerstätte known and a part of one of the most complete mid-Carboniferous stratigraphic sections in the world. Despite containing a well-described fish fauna, the most diverse and abundant Carboniferous fish fauna known, nothing was known of the invertebrate assemblages, and many aspects of the geology remained enigmatic. With few rocks of this age available for study worldwide, the Bear Gulch Limestone contains an important record of life and Earth history near the Pennsylvanian boundary, a time of climatic change.

Using new outcrop data combined with subsurface …

Devastation And Displacement: The Destruction Of Native Communities As A Result Of Specifically The Garrison Dam On The Missouri River In North Dakota And The Dalles Dams On The Columbia River In Oregon, Farryl Elisa Hunt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

ABSTRACT MASTER’S THESIS

Devastation and Displacement: The Destruction of Native Communities as a Result of the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River in North Dakota and the Dams on the Columbia River in Oregon

By Farryl Elisa "Lisa" Hunt

This master's thesis in anthropology is a cross-cultural analysis that explores two intersecting yet distinct discourses of destruction and displacement for two groups of Native people in Oregon and North Dakota. The building of The Dalles Dam in Oregon and The Garrison Dam in North Dakota damaged thriving livelihoods due to the loss of irreplaceable flooded areas.

This thesis will utilize …

Appealingly Unpeeled: The Layered Lemons In Dutch Golden Age And Contemporary Art, Amanda Barr

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the lemon holds a prominent visual, economical, socio-cultural, and moral position. This trend would then be repeated in contemporary art, beginning in roughly the 1970s. This thesis, in two parts, will explore the significance of the prevalence of the lemon and their recurrent presence in both Dutch Golden Age art and modern and contemporary artwork. This multivalent approach will look at lemons as not only a visual representation of fruit, but a symbol of larger concepts such as globalization, commercialism, colonialism, sexuality, religion, linguistics, mythology, and pop culture.

Complicity And Climate Change, Shalomita Kristanugraha

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As individuals, how should we understand our personal complicity in climate change related harms? In this thesis, I argue that the predominant way we think of complicity within the Western moral paradigm—that is, as a distribution problem—is inadequate in helping us understand the nature of our complicity in climate change related harms. This inadequacy, in turn, psychologically hampers individual citizens residing in high-emitting nations of the Global North from effective and sustainable social and political engagement with climate change. To address the inadequacy and obstructions that result from it, I follow the discussion between Christopher Kutz and Iris Marion Young …

The Built Environment At Plaza H, Cahal Pech: A Study In Resiliency, Rachel A. Steffen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to understand the human response to extreme environmental, social, and political change during the Terminal Classic (750-1050 CE) at Cahal Pech. Across the Maya lowlands, this period is distinguished by the end of divine kingships, the cessation of new monumental architecture, rapid changes in prestige goods and trade networks, and population decline at many major centers. Cahal Pech, a medium-sized ceremonial center, experienced great shifts in political power and access to resources during the Terminal Classic. This thesis attempts to understand the last occupation of the site, prior to abandonment. Field data for this study is derived …

A Snapshot Of Care: Creating Models Of Care For Individuals Included In The Terry Collection, Felicia Robyn Sparozic

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Utilizing the bioarchaeology of care model, this research formulates a model of care based on ethnohistorical and skeletal markers of pathologic conditions. The index of care is the method used to create models of care, and this requires social, cultural, economic, environmental, and mortuary contexts to determine the resources required to aid a person through injury or disability. This paper investigates the impact of known medical, occupational, and morgue records that accompanied each selected individual in the skeletal collection. This additional information, beyond what is gained from skeletal analysis, generates a complex model of care. A more complex model of …

"Black Colorism And White Racism: Discourse On The Politics Of White Supremacy, Black Equality, And Racial Identity, 1915-1930", Hannah Paige Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following study unravels how Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists understood the race problem and its solution between 1915 and 1930. The racial identity and experiences of these three distinct groups, each informed how they understood the race problem and its solution. The divergent notions about the source of and solution to the race problem coalesced with colorism, sowing seeds of intraracial and interracial conflict and cooperation between the Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists as they navigated how to redress white supremacy and black equality. According to black integrationists and Garveyite black …

Fabrications, Molly V. Rivera

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The objects that surround us tell a story of our past, and act as physical stand ins for a person, place, or experience no longer present. My work explores the significance of objects and how we use them to preserve our memories and make them tangible. Memory is ephemeral and changes over time, simultaneously growing weaker and stronger. I use clay to accentuate this relationship, visually depicting both preservation and decay.

Inspired by my personal narrative, I recreate specific objects of significance by hand. This results in subtle variations of the original, much like the changes in our memory over …

Secrets Of Soil: A Geochemical Investigation And Spatial Analysis Of The Early Living Floors Of Housepit 54, Bridge River, British Columbia, Nathaniel Louis Perhay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This is an exploratory study to assess the ability of using geochemical sampling to give insight into the subsistence behavior of the inhabitants of Housepit 54 and a look at the spatial organization of activity areas on floors IId, IIe, and IIf. The geochemical make-up of soils can give great insights into former actives that have disturbed or occurred in or around the soil. Anthropogenic soils are formed through the complex interplay between humans and natural factors. This geochemical study will use chemical signatures to tease out the daily activities that were performed by the inhabitants of Housepit 54. A …

Down The Deer Path: Reflections On The Future Of Hunting In America, Jackie A. Bussjaeger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This collection of chapters delves into the dramatically shifting landscape of hunting sports from a personal perspective of a young hunter. As older hunters age out of the sport, hunter-funded conservation initiatives are in danger of losing support. This work examines the nature of relationships between hunters, their prey, and their worldview, as well as the elements of hunting that appeal to new hunters, and the challenges they may face as they become the hunters of the future.

Spirit Eye Cave: Reestablishing Provenience Of Trafficked Prehistoric Human Remains Using A Composite Collection-Based Ancient Dna Approach, Tre Blohm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Tribal Consultation Policy And Practice:A Case Study Of The Confederated Salish And Kootenai Tribes And Nmisuletkʷ (The Middle Fork Of The Clark Fork River) As A Tribal Trust Resource, Jennifer J. Harrington

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Formal, government-to-government Consultation between sovereign nations is a process of continuous relationship-building, a partnership and an agreement made with all points-of-view included in the process, with results that have the fingerprint of all nations involved evident. The Federal Government is obligated to work with Federally-recognized Tribes as sovereign nations in matters that have or will impact each Nation’s people and places (reservations, treaty-protected areas)—a process legally known as Consultation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as a federal agency, must uphold the Federal Trust responsibility which includes the act of Consulting with Federally-recognized Tribes on matters involving human health and the …

Understanding Native American Hemp Production, Cynthia Marie Steckdaub Coleman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis, I take an in-depth look at Native American hemp production through the lens of three hemp projects. My research sits within the history of colonization and dispossession. I look at two tribal hemp projects and one individual Native American hemp farm and describe how each project reaches for tribal sovereignty through hemp production. I look at how hemp fits into tribal worldviews, cultures, and the relationship tribal farmers have with hemp. Focusing on key elements of relationship, like respect, reciprocity, and responsibility, I examine how hemp production can be incorporated into Indigenous communities. Beyond relationships with the …

Conceptions And Receptions: A Case Study Analysis Of Community Engagement At Four Local Museums, Mary L. Casey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The theme of community engagement has been a prevalent topic of debate and discussion among museum professionals across the country, and so this thesis seeks to examine how four local museums connect with their local audiences in meaningful and successful ways. I focus on local museums because they have the unique opportunity to intimately engage their immediate community’s perceptions of identity and heritage, and relate the interpreted past in innovative ways that effectively resonate with the contemporary lives of current residents.The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, Strawbery Banke Museum, The Tuck Museum of Hampton History, and the James House Museum, …

Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Sex Determination And Modeled Fragmentary Analysis Of The Human Pubic Bone, Katherine Scot Baca

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Geometric morphometrics has become a more popular method in anthropology as three-dimensional data and research become more widely recognized and accessible. This research provides a refined method utilizing 3-D geometric morphometric analysis to determine sex from the human pubic bone. The study used a sample of N=378 individual pubic bones from the University of New Mexico Maxwell Documented Collection. Eight landmarks were digitized on each individual bone using a Microscribe Digitizer. Results from the Principal Components Analysis provide promising clustering between male and female groups, as well as indications that the method may be ancestry-specific, and that parity may have …

A Chip Off The Old Rock: An Investigation Of Hunter-Gatherer Lithic Behavior At Site 48pa551 Using The Field Processing Model, Emma Lydia Vance

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This research examines the lithic and raw material assemblage at site 48PA551, a McKean complex hunter-gatherer site in northwest Wyoming, through a lens of human behavioral ecology, central place foraging theory, and the field processing model. The identification of lithic technological patterns through this theoretical framework results in understanding the relationship between the landscape, hunter-gatherer behavior, and raw material procurement strategies in the region 4500 BP. The goal of this research is to identify economic decision making in reference to management of toolstone within the lithic assemblage uncovered at site 48PA551 during the 2018 field season. The expectation put forth …

Handing Down The Heritage: Preserving Irish Diasporic Identities In The Festival City Of Montana, Margaret Mary Walsh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Butte, Montana is a tough, historic industrial town in western Montana known for its mining, its Irish, and strangely, its festivals. The city boasts countless parades and community events each year for a variety of holidays as well as for showcases of traditions and ethnic pride. Three celebrations in particular, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, and An Rí Rá, attract visitors from all over the country – and world – who seek to experience the enthusiasm and splendor of these celebrations. So, what can these popular celebrations in Montana’s Festival City, Butte, reveal about the Irish community living there? …