Digital Commons Network^™

2012-2013, Csusb

Anthropology Department newsletter

No abstract provided.

What Happened In Prehistory?, Peter N. Peregrine

Faculty Monographs

Archaeologist Peter N. Peregrine provides a brief, readable, and thorough introduction to world prehistory. Peregrine takes the reader through five major "revolutions" in human life, from the origins of our genus through the emergence of modern cognitive abilities to the development of agriculture, cities, and states, and, finally, into the modern world. Peregrine focuses on broad patterns and processes making this a perfect resource for readers who want a quick, readable overview of the human past. Peregrine is an award-winning scholar who has conducted archaeological research on five continents during his twenty-five year career. He is currently Professor of Anthropology …

Why Anthropology Of Childhood? A Short History Of An Emerging Discipline, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The paper has four goals: to refute the claim that anthropologists have not studied childhood; to provide a cursory history of the field; to provide an organizational schema for reviewing the literature in the field and; to suggest a strategy for future scholarship in the anthropology of childhood.

May All Its Days Be Circus Days An Enthnographic Exploration Of Circus In Sarasota, Fl, Chrystal E.I. Kersey

Theses & ETDs

Circus has had an enormous economic and cultural influence on Sarasota since the Ringling Brothers and Barnum&Bailey Circus winter quarters were established in Sarasota in 1927. This thesis attempts to elucidate how the role of circus has changed in the community from 1927 to April 2012 within the framework of Sarasota heritage. I also tried to address the prospects for the continuation of the area's circus legacy by briefly examining the state of the circus industry in and out of Sarasota. My insights are derived from interviews with people involved in the Sarasota circus community, ethnographic notes and historical readings.

Creating An Interactive Past Digital Technologies For Public Representation Of Archaeological Sites And Artifacts, Alexis Santos

Theses & ETDs

Archaeological sites are met with a wide array of constraints ranging from limiting budgets to a lack of standing structures that pose unique challenges when creating representations of the sites and artifacts for the public. This thesis notes that archaeologists have not widely embraced digital technologies for the representation of archaeological sites and artifacts, posits that digital technologies enable archaeologists to excel within financial and material constraints, and argues for an expanded use of digital technologies in archaeological representations. Specifically, this thesis focuses on how three digital technologies � augmented reality, video mapping and online repositories � can enable the …

Organizational Culture, Emotional Labor, And The Work Role Of Mental Health Case Managers In A Managed Care Company, Justin Mihalick

Theses & ETDs

The purpose of the managed behavioral health care industry is to implement processes and standards for ensuring cost savings in the provision of psychiatric and substance abuse treatment to individuals enrolled in insurance plans. These for-profit companies employ licensed psychotherapists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses in call-center workplaces to carry out specific administrative roles. This study focuses on an organizational unit of mental health clinicians whose work involves an area of growing emphasis in commercial managed care, the coordination of patient care through telephonic case management. Using ethnographic interviews, I explore normative workplace rules and beliefs governing how case managers …

Lochner Disembedded: The Anxieties Of Law In A Global Context, Peer Zumbansen

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

This paper explores, in an inevitably cursory manner, some of the main challenges facing a legal theory of transnational governance today. In part building on and responding to William Twining’s identification of key problems of law in a global context (2009, 2012), the following essay adopts a two-fold approach. One element is to suggest a conceptual architecture, which captures law in its transformational state through a focus on 'actors, norms, and processes.' Secondly, the essay proposes 'case studies' as a central methodological device to explore the nature, scope, function of governance – both legal but also non-legal governance – in …

This Paper Is Only Skin Deep: The Socio-Cultural And Biological Reality Of Human Variation, Paige Jamieson

A with Honors Projects

This project is an anthropological study of human variation and "race".

"Still Here, Trying To Find My Way": Understanding The Experiences Of Hiv Disruption And Reorganization Among Older African Americans In Detroit, Andrea Nevedal

Wayne State University Dissertations

Adults aged fifty and older are the fastest growing age group with HIV/AIDS. Research on older adults with HIV has focused primarily on health status and physiological changes that occur as people age with HIV. However, little is known about the socio-cultural consequences that occur when older adults are diagnosed with HIV and as they age with HIV. Drawing from an anthropological approach to the life course and Becker's (1997) framework of life disruption, this dissertation research explored to what extent people experienced disruption from living with HIV and reorganized their lives after experiencing disruption.

The specific aims included identifying …

Classroom Atmosphere: Does It Reflect One’S Culture?, Sojung Kim

Student Scholarship

This article is written in order to find out whether the classroom atmosphere would reflect one’s certain culture and how cultural values would be reflected on student’s attitude in a class setting through observing and comparing the classroom atmosphere in two different countries, South Korea and the U.S.

Tzinacamoztoc, Possible Use Of A Lava Tube As A Zenithal Observatory Near Cantona Archaeological Site, Puebla, Mexico, Ramón Espinasa-Pereña, Ruth Diamant

KIP Monographs

An artificial structure was discovered under a natural skylight inside Grutas de Tzincacamóztoc, in the vicinity of the archaeological site of Cantona. The structure is made up of piled rocks, defining a pentagonal enclosure with a central mound. Detailed measurements and computer modeling allowed tracing of the sunbeam path projected on the structure and on the cave floor, particularly for dates of astronomical and/or Mesoamerican calendrical importance. This corroborates the possible prehispanic use of this site as a complex and sophisticated gnomon. Se descubrió una estructura artificial bajo un tragaluz natural en las Grutas de Tzinacamóztoc, cerca del sitio argueológico …

The El Gigante Rockshelter: Preliminary Observations On An Early To Late Holocene Occupation In Southern Honduras., Timothy E. Scheffler, Kenneth G. Hirth, George Hasemann

KIP Monographs

The El Gigante rockshelter in highland Honduras was occupied as early as 10,000 years B.P and provides information previously lacking about the earliest periods of Honduran and Central American prehistory. Three distinct cultural horizons were identified and dated at the site using conventional and accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates that correspond to the Early Archaic, the Middle Archaic, and the Formative to Classic periods. Dry conditions within the rockshelter resulted in excellent archaeological preservation across all time periods. Excavations documented a clear sequence of residential activity represented by well-defined cultural strata containing hearth and pit features as well as dense …

Copala Triqui Rhetoric Discourse Of Peace, Sharone Horowit-Hendler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Our team worked with a native speaker of Copala Triqui, Román Vidal Lopez, to write the Address to the Triqui People, a message of peace for the Copal Triqui. We translated it to Spanish and English, and worked on creating a lexicon of Copala Triqui.

Ethnography On The Pottery Place, Ciara Reilly

A with Honors Projects

This project outlines my observations made while working at the Pottery Place, specifically about older customers.

Sex Differences In Sports Across 50 Societies, Robert O. Deaner, Brandt A. Smith

Peer Reviewed Articles

Sports have been frequently explored in cross-cultural studies, yet scant attention has been paid to female participation. Here we coded the occurrence of sports and related activities for males and females in the societies comprising the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) probability sample. We then tested several predictions derived from evolutionary theory. As predicted, in all 50 societies with documented sports, there were more male sports than female sports; hunting and combat sports were almost exclusively male activities; and the sex difference in sports was greater in patriarchal than in nonpatriarchal societies. These results show that a robust sex difference …

Sex Differences In Sports Across 50 Societies, Robert O. Deaner, Brandt A. Smith

Peer Reviewed Articles

Sports have been frequently explored in cross-cultural studies, yet scant attention has been paid to female participation. Here we coded the occurrence of sports and related activities for males and females in the societies comprising the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) probability sample. We then tested several predictions derived from evolutionary theory. As predicted, in all 50 societies with documented sports, there were more male sports than female sports; hunting and combat sports were almost exclusively male activities; and the sex difference in sports was greater in patriarchal than in nonpatriarchal societies. These results show that a robust sex difference …

On Swearwords And Slang, Robert Moore

Faculty Publications

Slang lexemes and swearwords are commonly discussed in conjunction with each other as though they were slightly different versions of the same phenomenon. However, they clearly are not, as a careful consideration of their different prototypical functions reveals. Each of these lexical categories has a central or core function, and in each case this function is linked to the obligatory expression of affect. Different kinds of affect are entailed in the prototypical uses of slang and of swearwords, but in the case of both of these lexical types, this affect is incompatible with the formality and deference of honorifics, or, …

Another Day, Another Donut: Political Economy, Agency, And Food In A Montanan Homeless Shelter, Jacqueline Devereaux Semmens

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite widespread undernutrition among the homeless, there has been little anthropological research on the experience of food insecurity in this population. Between 20 and 40 percent of the homeless population is undernourished and one third regularly miss meals (Gelberg 1995). This thesis addresses the significant problem of food insecurity in the homeless from a political economic perspective, analyzing how larger social structures influence the individual person. Fifteen residents at a shelter in Missoula, MT were interviewed about their dietary practices and experience of social service programs. The macro-social level influences the diet of the individual in two important ways: first, …

Down Low Under The Big Sky, Amee Marie Schwitters

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Often synonymous with the rural environment is a sense of a heteronormativity and pervasive homophobia. Despite stories of gay men fleeing rural, conservative areas for larger, more accepting cities, not all men have chosen to leave. Some have chosen to quietly maintain their identity, modifying their sexual schemata in response to the desire to stay within the rural cultural environment. It is known that homophobia and stigmatization of same-sex sexual acts regulate a person's ability to be open about their sexual encounters, but exactly how they influence the daily lives of down low men who have sex with men (MSM) …

Social Norms, Discrete Choices, And False Dichotomies, Eric Schniter, Nathaniel Wilcox

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Eric Schniter and Nathaniel Wilcox comment on Bram Tucker's article, "Do Risk and Time Experimental Choices Represent Individual Strategies for Coping with Poverty or Conformity to Social Norms? Evidence from Rural Southwestern Madagascar", which "revisits a debate played out in Current Anthropology as to whether subsistence decisions are the result of individual strategy to cope with poverty and increase wealth... or conformity to social norms."

Joyce Apsel On The Oxford Handbook Of Genocide Studies. Edited By Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp., Joyce Apsel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Edited by Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp.

Ethnographic Methods, Kathleen M. Adams

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although ethnographic methods derive from the discipline of sociocultural anthropology, because of their potential for producing insights into human actions and behaviors they have come to be embraced by sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists interested in gaining insights into human behavior. Ethnographic methods fall into the broader category of qualitative methodologies and are aimed at nnderstanding cultural practices, human beliefs and behaviors, and sociocultural changes over time. As such, ethnographic methods are particularly apt for tourism-related research and for tourism policy planning, as noted by a number of recent tourism scholars (Cole, 2005; Grabum, 2002; Nash, 2000; Palmer, 2001, …

"People...Do Not Come With Standardized Circumstances": Toward A Model For An Anthropology Of E-Government, Marc K. Hebert

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many Americans appreciate the availability and ease of using government websites to conduct their business with the state. What then of the most vulnerable in society? How do they access and use a standardized application process for government assistance, considering their potential resource, educational and physical constraints? Many go to public libraries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which shifts the responsibility to help applicants from the government agency administering the program to local actors whose primary duties lie elsewhere.

The aim of this research is to document the experiences of three groups of people, primarily located in a central Florida, urban …

A Draft Genome Of Yersinia Pestis From Victims Of The Black Death, Kirsten I. Bos, Verena J. Schuenemann, G. Brian Golding, Hernán A. Burbano, Nicholas Waglechner, Brian K. Coombes, Joseph B. Mcphee, Sharon Dewitte, Matthias Meyer, Sarah Schmedes, James Wood, David J. D. Earn, D. Ann Herring, Peter Bauer, Hendrik N. Poinar, Johannes Krause

Faculty Publications

Technological advances in DNA recovery and sequencing have drastically expanded the scope of genetic analyses of ancient specimens to the extent that full genomic investigations are now feasible and are quickly becoming standard1. This trend has important implications for infectious disease research because genomic data from ancient microbes may help to elucidate mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infections. Here we report a reconstructed ancient genome of Yersinia pestis at 30-fold average coverage from Black Death victims securely dated to episodes of pestilence-associated mortality in London, England, 1348–1350. Genetic architecture and phylogenetic analysis indicate …

Conclusion: Meditations On The Archaeology Of Northern Plantations, Stephen A. Mrozowski,, Katherine Howlett Hayes, Heather Trigg, Jack Gary

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A summary of the methods employed and the conclusions reached after nine seasons of archaeological fieldwork are presented. Emphasis is placed on the success and limitations of the methods employed in the investigations at Sylvester Manor and results of those investigations. Although excavations concentrated on the plantation core, additional areas examined produced little in the way of archaeological features. The results, although preliminary, point to a major role for Native Americans as laborers during the earliest phases of the plantation’s operation. Landscape evidence also suggests an evolving economy as the Manor transitions from a provisioning operation to a commercial farm/tenant …

Zooarchaeological Evidence For Animal Husbandry And Foodways At Sylvester Manor, Sarah Sportman, Craig Cipolla,, David Landon

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Analysis of over 12,000 zooarchaeological specimens recovered from Sylvester Manor provides archaeological evidence to complement the limited historical information about stock raising and food consumption on the plantation. The analyzed collection derives from the south lawn midden deposit at the site, and contains primarily the remains of domestic sheep, cattle, and pigs. The domestic animal ages, based on tooth eruption and wear, suggest aspects of the animal husbandry system. The patterns of skeletal part representation suggest most of the bones from the midden are refuse from household consumption rather than waste from exported foodstuffs. The Sylvesters and their tenant farmers …

Cider, Wheat, Maize, And Firewood: Paleoethnobotany At Sylvester Manor, Heather Trigg, Ashley Leasure

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The paleoethnobotanical analysis program at Sylvester Manor is designed to investigate the relationships between the Sylvesters, their workers, and the botanical environment. Most of the contexts sampled provide information about domestic household consumption. The site residents used large quantities of oak for fuel and possibly building construction. Documents provide more robust information about the production of crops and interactions with Native peoples, suggesting that local Native Americans provided a source of labor for the production of crops.

The Laboratory Excavation Of A Soil Block From Sylvester Manor, Dennis Piechota

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This article describes a method of retrieving a large intact soil block from the midden area of the Sylvester Manor site. The soil was micro-stratigraphically excavated within a laboratory setting and analyzed using new approaches to the direct observation of micro-artifact distributions and trace residues on soil surfaces. Low technology analytical methods were selected from fields unrelated to archaeology but readily accessible to workers in a standard archaeological processing laboratory. Preliminary findings are presented in the hope that new low-cost field and laboratory methods can be developed. For example particle mapping of micro-artifacts by direct observation of soil profiles is …

Material Culture And Multi-Cultural Interactions At Sylvester Manor, Jack Gary

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The material culture recovered from Sylvester Manor’s 17th-century deposits not only informs our understanding of the plantation’s depositional history but also is characteristic of cultural interactions between Europeans, Native Americans, and possibly Africans. The mixture of cultural material in these deposits suggests intense and sustained cultural interactions that have lead to the production and use of certain materials outside of their cultural norms. Several of these items are European goods altered for use in Native or possibly African cultural systems, while other items reflect the creolization of material culture by blending morphological and stylistic attributes of two material cultures. These …

The Use Of Soil Micromorphology At Sylvester Manor, Eric Proebsting

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Soil micromorphology is a vibrant sub-discipline of archaeology that studies sediment fabric, color, composition, shape, layering, and sorting using intact soil cores and thin sections. This technique takes into account the dynamic relationship between people and the world in which they live, and has contributed useful archaeological data to the Sylvester Manor Project. This paper constructs a landscape history for portions of the South and West lawns using soil cores and thin sections. Results reveal how Sylvester Manor’s lawn, Midden, and Brick and Mortar Layer were composed, as well as how they were changed over time by plant and animal …