Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Intra-Skeletal Variation In Stable Isotopes Through Non-Destructive Approaches: Applications Of The Patterns Of Skeletal Remodeling To Biological Anthropology, Armando Anzellini

Doctoral Dissertations

Stable isotope analysis is a well-established method in biological anthropology used to deliver data on residence, diet, and life history. Samples for these analyses are often collected from the diaphyses of long bones with an assumption of an expected rate of turnover between five and ten years, depending on the skeletal element. However, the biological foundations of this assumption are still uncertain, especially concerning the intra-skeletal and intra-element variation of isotopic signatures that may relate to patterns of remodeling. Exploring these gaps in intra-element isotopic variation requires fine-grained work using multiple bones from multiple individuals, but such work is limited …

Morbidity, Mortality, And Marginalization: An Intersectional Investigation Of Respiratory Stress And Differential Frailty In Industrial-Era England, Derek A. Boyd

Doctoral Dissertations

Respiratory disease affects more than one billion people today, particularly in urbanizing areas of low- and middle-income countries due to overcrowding, air pollution, poor sanitation, and differential access to life-sustaining resources. We can look to the past to understand the social, economic, and environmental factors that influence respiratory disease burden among urban dwellers because conditions in the urbanizing areas of antiquity mimic those observed in lower- and middle-income countries today. This study explored the impact of classism, sexism, and regional inequalities on respiratory disease burden among urban dwellers with differing levels of social and economic marginalization in England during the …

Sphenoidal Sinuses And Spherical Harmonics: Variation And Covariation Of The Most Morphologically Diverse And Least Understood Paranasal Sinus, Katharine Grace Josephine Ryan

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding the shape variation of the human sphenoidal sinus is important to several areas of research. This includes clinical investigation (sinus pathology and safe endoscopic endonasal surgical practice) and paranasal sinus evolution (for which there is still no consensus). Yet, the sphenoidal sinus has high morphological variation, prohibiting its quantification through traditional geometric morphometric landmarking methods. The sphenoid body, and thus also the sinus contained within, is located directly at the developmental center of the basicranium in humans, where the three cranial fossae meet at the midline, and adjacent to the three synchondroses which are the sites of cranial base …

An Archaeological Study Of Pit Cellars And Ethnic Identity In Tennessee, Daniel Whitaker Howard Brock

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines pit cellars in Tennessee. Pit cellars are pits excavated into the ground typically underneath historic structures and are often referred to as subfloor pits, root cellars, or hidey holes. Archaeologists believe these pits were generally used for the storage of food or personal items and can provide valuable household-level information normally not obtained from other features. These pits were usually filled quickly after their use and often contain artifacts which provide data on diet, personal space, kinship, gender, race, ethnicity, class, spiritual beliefs, and the conditions of slavery. Pit cellars were also regularly constructed by their users …

Assessing Multiple Lines Of Evidence For Gene Flow In Archaeological Contexts, Angela Marie Mallard

Doctoral Dissertations

This multi-study dissertation assesses the ability of two skeletal analysis methods—a model-bound quantitative genetic method (Relethford-Blangero) and a model-free biological distance method (Mahalanobis’ D²)—to evaluate gene flow in the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico based on archaeological models. The first study uses dental metric data from the Sonoran Desert and Mogollon Rim (c. 1600 B.C. to A.D. 1450) to pilot the Relethford-Blangero method in this context. Notably, the method shows that populations from two large sites have less than expected dental variance, failing to support a gene flow event despite material culture pointing to at least two coexisting …

Yaupon Drink: A Medicine Bundle In The Atlantic World, Steven P. Carriger Jr

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines yaupon drink, a tea made from yaupon holly along with other ingredients, as a medicine bundle in the Atlantic World. Originally a medicinal drink used by Native Americans across the what is today the American South, over time the tea became a trade good demanded by the Spanish and a medicinal herb sought by European botanists and medical practitioners. Chapter One traces yaupon’s origins across the southeast and bundles the drink into the many cosmic and social connections it held. Chapter Two shows how the Spanish colonial presence offered an alternative to yaupon in Florida, through Christianity …

Variation In Cortical Bone Distribution In The Aging Adult Appendicular Skeleton, Alice Fazlollah Gooding

Doctoral Dissertations

This study considers the effects of age on the distribution of bone in the adult skeleton. Age effects on the skeleton have been studied for diagnosis of osteoporosis or as mechanical compensatory changes to bone shape with loss in density. However, adult skeletal morphology is the result of a lifetime of genetic, dietary, activity, and biochemical factors. With these influences, it unclear at what age(s) bone geometry shifts to adapt to the physiological and mechanical demands placed on it, or, how these adaptations vary within and between bones.

This research addresses these questions by examining skeletal data obtained from the …

Gender, Lithics, And Perishable Technology: Searching For Evidence Of Split-Cane Technology In The Archaeological Record At The Mussel Beach Site (40mi70), Megan M. King

Doctoral Dissertations

Perishable artifacts made from plants and fibers were likely an integral part of daily life in the prehistoric Southeast. While these items rarely survive in the archaeological record, their manufacture may be identified through the examination of non-perishable tools, specifically lithic artifacts. Observations by ethnographers, travelers, and missionaries in the Southeast have cross-culturally identified women as the primary harvesters and collectors of plant materials for both subsistence and material culture production. While most accounts leave out specific details regarding the tools utilized in production of perishable objects, there is reason to suspect that lithic artifacts were used in various plant …

An Exploration Of The Effects Of Taphonomy On Isotope Ratios Of Human Hair, Tiffany Bivens Saul

Doctoral Dissertations

Isotope analyses of human remains have been conducted with growing frequency over the past thirty years in anthropology, in both archaeological and forensic contexts. Analyses of isotope ratios of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and strontium from teeth, bones, and hair have provided information regarding individual diet and geographic movement during different life stages. Hair grows at a predictable rate and provides a serial recording of diet and travel history for the weeks and months just prior to death. What has not been systematically studied is whether postmortem decompositional changes to the body have an effect upon isotope …

The Effects Of Racialization On European American Stress In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Kimberly T. Wren

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores disparities in stress among European Americans (EA) and between EA and African Americans (AA) in racialized communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Comparisons among EA and between EA and AA are conducted to understand the biological consequences of racialization. Racialization is the process of assigning people to hierarchical categories for purposes of political, social, and economic discrimination. This dissertation investigates how racialization might have affected childhood stress using biocultural theory and facets of critical archaeology theory. Indicators of stress from skeletonized individuals in the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection, and the Robert …

Adorned Identities: An Archaeological Perspective On Race And Self-Presentation In 18th-Century Virginia, Johanna Hope Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Institutionalized slavery helped to create the concept of race in the American mind and forced people into new social categories based on superficial bodily characteristics. These new social categories resulted in the formation of identities that were continuously negotiated, reinforced or challenged through daily bodily practices of self-presentation that included ways of dress, adornment, and physical action. Because slavery was defined on the body, an embodiment approach to plantation archaeology can shed new light on the construction of racial identities. This historical archaeology project combines an archaeological analysis of personal adornment artifacts with a close reading of travel sketches, mass-produced …

Tactics, Strategies, Spaces, And Places: The Spatial Constructions Of Race And Class On Virginia Plantations, Andrew Philip Wilkins

Doctoral Dissertations

This research incorporates overseers into the discussion of how constructed space and social relations informed and shaped one another on colonial and antebellum Virginia plantations. Studies of plantation space and landscape often contrast slave owners and slaves in dualistic views of plantation societies. My question is how the organization, use, and meaning of spaces at multiple scales intersected with the historical constructions of race and class. I address this question through a detailed examination of plantation layouts, quarter arrangements, outdoor spaces, and architectural spaces to identify meaningful distinctions or similarities between the spaces created for and by slaves and overseers. …

A Household Approach To Reconstructing The Townsend Sites In East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways And Daily Practice Within A Mississippian Settlement, Jessie Luella Johanson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines how foodways differences between the multiple Mississippian settlements that were occupied circa 900 to 1300 CE at the Townsend sites (40BT89, 40BT90, and 40BT91) in East Tennessee, U.S.A., reflect the distinct choices people made in response to variation in the social conditions they faced in a boundary location. Located in a narrow valley cove at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, these sites lie between two physiographic provinces, the Ridge and Valley Province to the west and the Blue Ridge Mountains Province to the east, as well as between two cultural traditions, the Hiwassee Island to the …

The Accuracy Of The Biological Profile In Casework: An Analysis Of Forensic Anthropology Reports In Three Medical Examiners’ Offices, Hillary Renee Parsons

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the accuracy of the biological profile from forensic anthropology reports among 204 resolved and 284 unresolved skeletal cases at the medical examiners’ offices in New York City, NY; Harris County, TX; and Pima County, AZ. Current forensic anthropological methods used to estimate the biological profile are developed from skeletal reference collections conferring variable degrees of accuracy. Evolving standards for evidence and expert witness testimony have ushered in an era of robust statistical validation for forensic methods, yet accuracy rates are unknown in anthropological casework. Considering 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains persist in medical examiner’s offices in …

Excessive Acquisition: What Is It? What Makes It Happen?, Melanie Doss

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study draws on the philosophical concept of hermeneutics and theories of the self and self-regulation to investigate the underlying meanings expressed and experienced by the self and the other in the behavior of excessive acquisition. In accordance with the methods outlined by the phenomenological and grounded theory traditions, data were collected from 15 persons afflicted with excessive acquisition, defined as the self and 12 persons afflicted by excessive acquisition, defined as the other. The data content collected from in-depth interviews, field notes, observations, and electronic messages formulated the emergent Parent Themes of Emotion, Space, Economics, and Time. …

Parents’ Perceptions And Responses To Infant Emotions, Lauren Renee Bader

Doctoral Dissertations

Parents respond to their infants’ emotions in ways they believe are most appropriate. These reciprocal interactions make up the infants’ social-emotional environment and appear to guide future development and relationship formation; this trajectory is supported mostly from research in Western industrialized contexts. This dissertation consists of three studies and addresses the following over-arching research questions: How have parents’ perceptions of infant emotions been studied? How do Gamo mothers in rural Southern Ethiopia perceive their infants’ emotions and what do they believe are appropriate responses to emotions? Do Gamo mothers vary in their feelings about their infants’ negative emotions and is …

A Characterization Of Human Burial Signatures Using Spectroscopy And Lidar, Katie Ann Corcoran

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is an analysis of terrestrial remote sensing data sets collected at the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility (ARF). The objective is to characterize human burial signatures using spectroscopy and laser scanning technologies. The development of remote human burial detection methodologies depends on basic research to establish signatures that inform forensic investigations. This dissertation provides recommendations for future research on remote sensing of human burials, and for investigators who wish to apply these technologies to case work.

Data used in this study include terrestrial spectra, aerial hyperspectral imagery, satellite multispectral imagery, terrestrial light detection and ranging (LIDAR), and …

Understanding Population-Specific Age Estimation Using Multivariate Cumulative Probit Regression For Asian Skeletal Samples, Ji Eun Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

For many years, the field of anthropology has encouraged anthropologists to assume that population variation exists in skeletal aging although interpretations of population specificity in skeletal aging have been inconsistent. This project investigates age progressive changes in modern East and Southeast Asian populations, and attempts to quantify the magnitude of differences or similarities in skeletal aging between different Asian groups as a first step to develop a more inclusive age estimation method for Asian populations. Specifically, this study explores the utility of currently available age estimation methods for Asian populations, asks whether a population-specific aging method should be region-specific (Thai …

Modeling Prehistoric Health In The Middle Cumberland Region Of Tennessee: Mississippian Populations On The Threshold Of Collapse, Christina Laiz Fojas

Doctoral Dissertations

This research explores differences in mortality and survivorship resulting from factors associated with the abandonment of the Middle Cumberland Region (MCR) of Tennessee during the Mississippian period (ca. 1000-1500 AD). My dissertation investigates whether individuals from the Late Mississippian period had a greater risk of death than individuals from the Early Mississippian period. Adult age-at-death estimates (n=545) were calculated using Transition Analysis, a Bayesian maximum likelihood method. Gompertz and Gompertz-Makeham hazard models were utilized to reconstruct the mortality profile of the MCR as they model human adult mortality and generate robust parametric mortality profiles. Rather than recount the prevalence of …

The Evaluation And Refinement Of Nonmetric Sex And Ancestry Assessment Methods In Modern Japanese And Thai Individuals, Sean D. Tallman

Doctoral Dissertations

Effective biological profiles in forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology depend on the development, validation, and refinement of population-specific methods. However, most methods were developed in North America on individuals of African and European descent, and it is unlikely that such methods can generate accurate biological profiles for Asian individuals. Moreover, Native Americans have served as biological proxies for Asians due to their distantly shared genetic history, resulting in largely untested assumptions that Native Americans and Asians are homogenous and share nonmetric sexually dimorphic skeletal features and a unique suite of cranial traits that can be used in ancestry assessment.

This study …

New Perspectives On The Seventeenth-Century Protohistoric Period In East Tennessee: Redefining The Period Through Glass Trade Bead And Ceramic Analyses, Jessica Nicole Dalton-Carriger

Doctoral Dissertations

The Protohistoric period in East Tennessee is poorly understood in the archaeological record and is defined as the intermediate period between the Late Mississippian and Historic periods in the seventeenth century. Earlier research focused on depopulation, population replacement, and the rise of Overhill Cherokee settlements in the eighteenth century, with little attention to the transitional Protohistoric period. The goal of this dissertation is to examine new fields of evidence and employ new dating methods in order to fully understand the Protohistoric period in East Tennessee

This dissertation does this in three ways. It explores three hypotheses concerning the habitation of …

Evaluating Differential Nuclear Dna Yield Rates Among Human Bone Tissue Types: A Synchrotron Micro-Ct Approach, Janna Michelle Andronowski

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular human identification has conventionally focused on DNA sampling from dense, weight-bearing cortical bone tissue from femora or tibiae. A comparison of skeletal elements from three contemporary individuals demonstrated that elements with high quantities of cancellous bone yielded nuclear DNA at the highest rates, suggesting that preferentially sampling cortical bone is suboptimal (Mundorff & Davoren, 2014). Despite these findings, the reason for the differential DNA yields between cortical and cancellous bone tissues remains unknown.

The primary goal of this research is to ascertain whether differences in bone microstructure can be used to explain differential nuclear DNA yield among bone tissue …

The Effect Of Social And Environmental Stresses Among The Historic Arikara Native Americans, Jocelyn Diana Minsky-Rowland

Doctoral Dissertations

The Arikara Native Americans from the Anton Rygh, Mobridge, Larson and Leavenworth sites, inhabited the Great Plains of western North America (AD 1600-1832). The Arikara experienced climatic changes, warfare, interactions with novel groups of people and disease epidemics and therefore represent an opportunity to assess differential risk of death in a stressful context. The overarching question of this project is, in the historic context of environmental and social stresses, do these environmental and social stresses (as indicated by specific skeletal markers that occur during childhood) increase the risk of death from later infectious disease or warfare related trauma experienced in …

An Analysis Of Skeletal Trauma Patterning Of Accidental And Intentional Injury, Shauna Lynn Mcnulty

Doctoral Dissertations

The ability to determine the cause of skeletal trauma – i.e. an injury produced by blunt, sharp, or ballistic forces - is critical in assessing the manner of death. The purpose of this study is to examine the patterns of injury between known accidental and intentional trauma cases while considering demographics, fracture features, and the location of injuries in individuals of varying ages, sexes, and ancestries. The current literature has identified a pattern for intentional injuries that is focused on the head, neck, and face, while accidental trauma tends to be more dispersed throughout the skeleton with more injuries found …

A Quantitative Genetic Analysis Of Limb Segment Morphology In Humans And Other Primates: Genetic Variance, Morphological Integration, And Linkage Analysis, Brannon Irene Hulsey

Doctoral Dissertations

Limb segment lengths (and, by extension, limb proportions) are widely studied postcranial features in biological anthropology due to the seemingly consistent phenotypic patterning among human and fossil hominin groups. This patterning, widely presumed to be the result of adaptation to thermoregulatory efficiency, has led to the assumption among biological anthropologists that limb proportions in humans are phenotypically stable unless long periods of extreme environmental conditions force adaptive change. Because these traits are considered stable, they have been used to inform multiple areas of anthropological inquiry, including investigations of phylogenetic relationships and fossil species identification, locomotor behavior and the evolution of …

Technological Adaptations At Dust Cave, Alabama (1lu496): An Evaluation Of Organizational Strategies From The Late Paleoindian To The Middle Archaic, Katherine Elizabeth Mcmillan

Doctoral Dissertations

Stone tools are one of the most common and lasting classes of artifacts in the archaeological record. Through the application of appropriate theoretical frameworks to the study of lithic assemblages, we may seek invaluable insights into the nature of human behavior in the past. In this study, I present a detailed analysis of the chipped stone tool assemblage from Dust Cave (1LU496), a stratified rockshelter site in northwestern Alabama. This site has preserved a record of nearly 7,000 years of human occupation, spanning the Pleistocene- Holocene transition, a period of great climatic and cultural change in North America.

Through the …

A Biologically Informed Structure To Accuracy In Osteometric Reassociation, Kyle Mccormick

Doctoral Dissertations

Commingled assemblages present a common situation in osteological analysis where discrete sets of remains are not readily apparent, thereby hindering biological profile construction and the identification process. Of the methods available for resolving commingling, osteometric reassociation is considered a reliable and relatively objective technique. Traditional osteometric sorting methodologies is a decision-making, error-mitigation approach, where possible matches are eliminated if the calculated pvalue exceeds an analyst-defined threshold. This approach implicitly assumes that all bone comparisons are equally accurate as long as the threshold is attained. This assumption, however, is not based in biological reality. This study tests a hypothetical structure of …

Advancing Social Justice Through Conflict Resolution Amid Rapid Urban Transformation Of The San Francisco Bay Area, Amanda Jo Reinke

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1970s, communities throughout the United States have been enthusiastically adopting dispute resolution mechanisms outside the formal legal system. Emerging from the reparative turn in sociolegal studies and widespread social critique in the 1960s and 70s, alternative justice models have been theorized, developed, and implemented by scholars and affected communities. In particular, alternative justice – forms of conflict resolution outside the formal legal system – seek to subvert the formal legal system’s disproportionate impact on marginalized communities by providing accessible, non-criminalizing, and inclusive conflict resolution. Advocates claim such models advance social justice by uplifting restoration rather than retribution, emphasizing …

Investigating Cranial Variation In Japanese Populations Using Geometric Morphometrics, Beatrix Dudzik

Doctoral Dissertations

The Japanese archipelago exhibits an immense amount of variation in culture and history, despite the lay population mostly considering the modern Japanese a homogeneous population. Japan has experienced an amazing amount migration activity. These migration events are well represented in the archaeological record and have provided fodder for hypotheses proposed for peopling of the new world.

Biological anthropologists have tested hypotheses surrounding the initial peopling of the islands using linear data in conjunction with non-metric traits of the skull. Recent molecular studies have provided evidence for population substructure, which suggests an original founding group of North Asian descent, and a …

Is Quantitative Ultrasound A Valid Technique For Assessing Bone Quality In Deceased Infants?, Miriam Elizabeth Soto Martinez

Doctoral Dissertations

There is no quantitative method for evaluating infant bone quality that is non-invasive, portable, brief in scan duration, and does not use ionizing radiation. This study investigates the relationship between components of infant bone quality and a measure of quantitative ultrasound (QUS), speed of sound (SOS), to provide insight into the validity of QUS as a diagnostic tool for evaluating infant bone quality. The study sample was comprised of 78 infants between the age of 30 weeks estimated gestational age and 12 postnatal months receiving an autopsy at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences and Texas Children’s Hospital. Bone …