Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

In-Law Conflict: Women’S Reproductive Lives And The Roles Of Their Mothers And Husbands Among The Matrilineal Khasi, Donna L. Leonetti, Dilip C. Nath, Natabar S. Hemam, Evelyn Blackwood (Comment By), Patricia Draper (Comment By), Harald A. Euler (Comment By), Mhairi A. Gibson (Comment By), Mark R. Jenike (Comment By), R. Khongsdier (Comment By), Karen L. Kramer (Comment By), B. T. Langstieh (Comment By), Kimber Haddix Mckay (Comment By), Gillian Ragsdale (Comment By), Eckart Voland (Comment By)

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Human behavioral ecologists have shown that the reproductive lives of women are affected by both their husbands and the grandmothers of their children. Study of the combined effect of the roles of the husbands and mothers of 650 Khasi women aged 16–50 years supports the ideas that the reproductive agendas of husbands may require more than women want to invest and that mothers provide support and protective services to their daughters and grandchildren. In the absence of the woman’s mother, the husband’s agenda appears to have more influence on her reproductive career. In a cooperative vein, women’s mothers may contribute …

Review Of The Archaeology Of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center, Edited By Stephen H. Lekson, Carrie Heitman

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon is one of two synthesis volumes resulting from the National Park Service Chaco Project (1971-1982) (see also Mathien 2005). As the capstone to that project, this volume has much to offer the student of Chaco and those interested in the intellectual history and trajectories of archaeological theory. From 1999 to 2004, Stephen Lekson (and many others) organized six working conferences to address different dimensions of Chacoan prehistory. Broadly called the Chaco Synthesis, the topics included ecology and economy, architecture, the organization of production, the Chaco world, and so- ciety and polity and concluded with a …

Re-Evaluating The “House” In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Carrie Heitman

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

IN RECENT YEARS, a growing number of archaeologists have explored the potential of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of “house societies.” His and subsequent works describe ethnographic contexts where people are organized through houses ranked according to their age and connection to ancestors. Using Puebloan ethnographic literature and cross-cultural comparisons, the house model helps to draw out the symbolic meaning of Chaco-era architecture. Looking specifically at the classificatory distinction between “great houses” and “small houses” in Chaco Canyon (A.D. 850–1180), my research compares the evidence for house creation, manifestation, maintenance, and abandonment in both great and small house contexts. Using data generated …

Landscapes Of Settlement In Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology Of Human Impact And Climate Fluctuation On The Millennial Scale, Thomas H. Mcgovern, Orri Vesteinsson, Adolf Fridriksson, Mike Church, Ian Lawson, Ian A. Simpson, Arni Einarsson, Andy Dugmore, Gordon Cook, Sophia Perdikaris

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of M´yvatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change.

Conducting Cross-Cultural Research In Teams And The Search For The “Culture-Proof” Variable, Patricia Draper

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Objective: Cross-cultural research must always deal with the problem that meaning systems and behaviors cannot be readily compared from one culture to the next because the sociocultural context can vary so widely.
Design: The organizers of Project AGE: Age, Generation, and Experience, a multicultural study of aging, recognized this problem and devised instruments for studying age that allowed for cultural variation as well as comparability at higher levels of abstraction. The principal investigators of Project AGE and the individual researchers made every effort to gain an emic understanding (understanding based on categories recognized by the local respondents) of people’s attitudes …

Human Modifications To The Landscape Of Hunt And Sheep Mountains, Wyoming: Exploring Socially Constructed Space, Ralph J. Hartley

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Abstract The cultural topography of two adjacent mountain tops in the northern Bighorn mountain range of the state of Wyoming, USA, is examined through several field and computer aided techniques. Socially constructed space, as reflected in cumulative architectural features through time, was initially revealed by high resolution aerial photography of the mountain tops. Features observed included clusters of stone circles, solitary rock structures commonly known as vision quests, and various sized rock cairns. Field mapping of all features with high resolution GPS allowed exploratory analysis of spatial relationships of stone circles using categorical data and tessellation models in GIS. The …

Houses Great And Small: Reevaluating The 'House' In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Carrie Heitman

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In recent years, a growing number of archaeologists have explored the potential of expanding Lévi-Strauss’ concept of house societies to better understand specific archaeological contexts. Looking specifically at the classificatory distinction between “great houses” and “small houses” within Chaco Canyon (A.D. 850–1180), I suggest this theoretical model might yield new insights with regard to four symbolic dimensions of house construction: the use of wood, directional offerings, resurfacing practices, and the bones of ancestors. Using Puebloan ethnographic literature and cross-cultural comparisons, I suggest a house model analysis may serve to integrate anomalous “ceremonial” dimensions of house construction in an effort to …

Paleo-Indians, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

Paleo-Indians were the earliest people to inhabit the Americas. Between thirty and eleven thousand years ago, small, highly mobile groups of huntergatherers extended their hunting areas throughout Beringia (the landmass that joined Siberia and Alaska) and into the Western Hemisphere. This “bridging landmass” emerged slowly from beneath the Bering Sea as more than nine million cubic miles of glacial ice accumulated over southern Alaska, Canada, Labrador, and Greenland. About twenty to eighteen thousand years ago an immense “ice dome” (the Laurentide glacier) towered more than one mile over present-day Hudson Bay. Two lobes of ice spread southward over …

The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate, Raymond Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Debate around the ecologically noble savage represents two markedly different research threads. The first addresses the issue of conservation among native peoples and narrowly focuses on case studies of resource use of ethnographic, archaeological, or historic sources. The second thread is broader and more humanistic and political in orientation and considers the concept of ecological nobility in terms of identity, ecological knowledge, ideology, and the deployment of ecological nobility as a political tool by native peoples and conservation groups.