Anthropology Commons^™

Applying Settlement Models Through Chemical Analysis In Bartow County, Georgia, Bryan A. Moss*

Symposium of Student Scholars

During the Middle Woodland Period (300 BC – AD 600), ceremonial centers began to rise throughout the Eastern United States. These centers were hubs for ritual feasting and religious activities related to the Hopewell Mortuary Cult of Ohio. This project will focus on the Leake site and its relation to the surrounding villages in Northwest Georgia, each of which contains Swift Creek sherds. The Swift Creek Complicated stamped pottery contains curvilinear lines which are not present in other decorations of the Middle Woodland period. Swift Creek pottery is prominent in Middle Woodland ceremonial sites and is integrated into the Hopewell …

Comparison Of Middle Woodland Settlement Models In Georgia And Ohio, Bryan A. Moss*

Symposium of Student Scholars

During the Middle Woodland period (200 BC – AD 400), there was an increase of cultural complexity and the rise of a mortuary cult throughout much of eastern North America. This cult included a wide interaction network called the Hopewellian Interaction Sphere, which dates to the Middle Woodland period in the Mid-West. This interaction, which reached into the Southeast, involved the exchange of information between groups in both regions. This project uses spatial analysis through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify patterns in site layout and organization by comparing settlements in both regions. The focus of testing will be between …

Jaws And Effect: A Preliminary Archaeological Analysis On Shark And Ray Remains From The Coastal Florida Site Of Marineland, Isabella Rosinko

Symposium of Student Scholars

Marineland is a coastal Florida site, located in the East and Central archaeological region, and occupied from the Middle Archaic (5000-3000 BC) to the St. Johns I and II periods (AD 500-1565). My focus will be on faunal remains dated between the St. Johns I and II periods. For this project, I will be conducting a zooarchaeological analysis of shark and ray remains. Zooarchaeology is the study of animal or faunal remains found in archaeological contexts. The faunal remains present at Marineland encompass a number of species, from terrestrial mammals to crabs. Historically there has been little archaeological significance given …

Detecting Bacterial Species From Ancient Human Skeletal Samples, Ariel Owens, Daisy Mcgrath, Tsai-Tien Tseng

Symposium of Student Scholars

Diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) via morphological analysis is difficult and often inconsistent. With next-generation sequencing (NGS), ancient host microbiomes can be subjected to metagenomic analyses for the detection of TB in silico. Suitable bioinformatic workflows are needed for reliable ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of causative agents. This study aims to enhance available bioinformatic screening methods to create more suitable bioinformatic processes and generate insights in relation to TB.

This research utilizes publicly available NGS data accessed through the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Initial quality control steps included adapter trimming with Trim …

Analysis Of Vertebrae Pathologies Of Grave A650 Chryssi Island, Crete, Greece, Abbey E. Bartmess, Susan Kirkpatrick Smith

Symposium of Student Scholars

This study of multiple, co-mingled adult individuals located in grave A650 on Chryssi Island, Crete, Greece, examines the prevalence of several pathologies of the vertebrae. This grave was built into a collapsed Late Minoan period house (1400-1100 B.C.E.). Grave A650, which likely dates to the 5th – 7th century C.E., shows evidence of being used over a long period of time and may have served as an ossuary. The pathologies of approximately 30 recovered vertebrae, both complete and incomplete, show signs of degenerative joint disease, spondylolisthesis, and body expansion. Researching this data aims to accomplish a comprehensive understanding of what …

Who Were Mississippian Period Artists And What Was In Their Toolkit?, Riley James

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Mississippian Period lasted from approximately 1000 to 1550 CE and occurred in the regions of the North American Southeast and Midwest. Society followed a strong system of hierarchy with major settlements with mounds and palisades exerting political control over smaller towns and villages. In Georgia, the most notable Mississippian period site and settlement is Etowah, which belonged to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). The SECC was an exchange network of culture and spirituality that dominated most of the Mississippian period and is largely defined by its iconography and artifact trends. It is the general consensus that most Mississippian period …

Dating The Seals Of Harappa: A Radiocarbon Approach, Grace Abernathy

Symposium of Student Scholars

For many years, Indus seals have puzzled archaeologists with their detailed motifs and undeciphered script. There is no pattern to the relationship between motifs and inscriptions, as each motif has been found scattered across the greater Indus region. In looking at the context of the seals and radiocarbon dating of charcoal, bone, and shell in a singular site, there may be a definitive pattern between certain motifs and the time periods they were used. This study uses contextual analysis to identify chronological patterns of seals discovered at the site of Harappa. Should any patterns arise, this research study could be …

Analyzing Perspectives On Archaeological Curation: A Case Study From The Civil War Site Of Pickett’S Mill, Isabella Rosinko

Symposium of Student Scholars

Foundationally archaeology is defined as the scientific study of material remains, uncovered through survey and excavation. Meaning the field is dependent upon the accumulation of things: ceramics, stone tools, natural material, historic artifacts, etc. One way in which site assemblages are dealt with is through the process of curation, the storage and care of assemblages for extended periods. This is a varying process, across nations, states, and institutions. In the context of the United States, the National Preservation Act (1966), Reservoir Salvage Act (1960), and Archaeological Resource Protection Act (1979) provide standards for the long-term storage and management of archaeological …

Demographic Change In The North Atlanta Metro Area, Zachary Lloyd

Symposium of Student Scholars

The northern Atlanta suburbs are perhaps the premiere destination for migrants, both domestic and international, into the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. Filled with activities, good schools, and endless dining options, these communities are not only relatively safe to raise a family in, but also offer plenty to do for married couples and retirees. The counties of Gwinnett and Cobb, along with the northern portion of Fulton County (known as North Fulton) are the traditional northside suburban destinations, but growth there has slowed because much of the land is now densely developed. Predictably, the suburbs have extended northward through the counties of …

A Technological Analysis Of Ancient Maya Shell Beads From Pacbitun, Belize, Kimberly A. Kiddoo

Symposium of Student Scholars

Ancient Maya had one of the most complex societies in the New World. Their society was driven by the production of goods, including items made from stone, bone and shell. to shell objects were made into various shapes including pendants, bracelets and beads, possibly used for jewelry or as currency. At Pacbitun, located in west central Belize, 1,000’s of shell items in the form of beads have been found in and around homes that date to the Middle Preclassic period. Beads as well as marine detritus and chert drills have been found together indicating they were produced on site. This …

Immigration And Food Security: Assessing Levels Of Food Security Among Cabo Verdean Immigrant Households And Their Use Of Public Food Assistance Programs, Alexandria Seigler

Symposium of Student Scholars

On February 24, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security implemented the new public charge rule, which impacts new immigrants to the United States. An immigration officer must decide whether the person applying for a green card or visa will become a “public charge,” meaning that they will likely become dependent on government benefits. This project is part of a Diplomacy Lab team of KSU faculty and students sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. We are researching the experiences of new Cabo Verdean immigrants to the United States. My specific research focuses on food security and the use of public …

An Archival Study Of The Walnut Grove Plantation And The Young Family, Jennifer Billingsley

Symposium of Student Scholars

An Archival Study of the Walnut Grove Plantation and the Young Family

By Jennifer Billingsley

The Walnut Grove Plantation is situated near the confluence of the Etowah River and Pettit Creek in Cartersville, an area rich with history. The history of Walnut Grove is far-reaching into the past, beginning in the 1800s with the arrival of the family of Robert Maxwell Young from Spartanburg, South Carolina. As a location for the Kennesaw State University Archaeology Field School taught by Dr. Terry Powis, some basic knowledge about the property and family has previously been compiled with a focus on the Civil …

A Look Into The History Of Racial Diversity In The Congregation Of The Cathedral Of Christ The King, Devlin Mcelrone

Symposium of Student Scholars

This paper aims to assess the history of the Cathedral of Christ the King, a Catholic church in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, in terms of diversity. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the diversity of the church congregation in terms of race, while also focusing to a lesser extent on socioeconomic background and age. The area the church is in is primarily composed of upper-middle-class white families and it was through this observation that I came upon this topic. To investigate this issue, the first method used was spot sampling and constant monitoring of the congregation …

Haves Versus Have Nots: Analyzing Swift Creek Ceramic Distribution Within The Middle Woodland Etowah River Valley, Isabella Rosinko, Morgan Bendzinski

Symposium of Student Scholars

Swift Creek Culture refers to prehistoric Native American peoples of Florida and Georgia who produced a distinctive type of pottery, called Swift Creek Complicated Stamped, dating from 20 BC to AD 805. This Middle Woodland pottery type can be identified by curved geometric decorations stamped onto clay with a wooden paddle. Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery was widely traded across the Eastern Woodlands among high-status individuals and is therefore regarded as a prestige item. The preeminent Swift Creek site of the Etowah River Valley during the Middle Woodland is the Leake site. At the Leake site, there were three conical …

Kill Zones And Their Use During The American Civil War: An Archaeological Review Of The Battle Of Pickett’S Mill, Jeremy Wolfe

Symposium of Student Scholars

While not well known in the list of battles during the Atlanta Campaign late in the American Civil War, it is marked as an overwhelming Confederate victory in the face of looming defeat in the war itself. With the Union suffering nearly two thousand casualties, the tactics and strategies used by the Confederate army no doubt aided in their victory. During the battle, Union soldiers were drawn into a ravine where Confederate soldiers could easily fire down on them. The Union men followed the ravine up into a flat area where they were then fired on again with accurate rifle …

Student Loan Debt Impacts On Choosing A Field Of Study, Lance Mcgonigle

Symposium of Student Scholars

Student Loan Debt Impacts on Choosing a Field of Study

Abstract

Lance McGonigle – Email: lmcgonig@students.kennesaw.edu

Student loan debt has been steadily rising over the last handful of decades, and many students who take these loans have little to no knowledge about the financial challenges that these loans can bring. This research is aimed to understand how student loan debt impacts a students’ field of study choice during their time as a college student, or if this has any affect at all. In doing a qualitative, humanistic study; exploratory research was conducted using inductive reasoning along with the use of …

Laryngeal Vocals In Old World Locals: Air Sacs Usage In Bonobos, Chelsea Trenbeath

Symposium of Student Scholars

Except for humans, extant great apes have evolutionarily conserved lateral ventricular air sacs extending from laryngeal saccules. Humans are the only species of Hominidae that lack this anatomical feature attached to the primary vocal apparatus. As we are the only species that produces spoken language, this association has led to hypothesis that the loss of lateral ventricular air sacs was necessary for the evolution of spoken language. However, why these sacs are conserved in all other hominids remains unclear. Computer modeling has indicated that air sacs may increase resonance properties, but there are no data from great apes indicating which …

The Stamp Of The Swift Creek Culture: An Analysis Of Middle Woodland Pottery At The Traversent Site In Georgia, Juliana Damico

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Woodland period (1000 BC – AD 1000) in the Southeastern US is characterized by sedentary horticulturalists living in villages located along major rivers. The Middle Woodland subperiod (300 BC – AD 600) is further defined by the appearance of distinctively decorated pottery. Specifically, Swift Creek pottery (ca. AD 100- 600/850) is known for its elaborate curvilinear designs that were stamped onto pre-fired vessels using carved wooden paddles. The pottery is said to be unique in that no two designs were exactly the same. It has been argued that this pottery was traded exclusively among elites at larger Swift Creek …

Understanding Early 20th Century Tenant Farming In Bartow County, Georgia, Joshua Reed

Symposium of Student Scholars

Tenant farming is an agricultural system in which farmers cultivate crops or raise livestock on rented land. Tenant farming became prominent directly following the American Civil war due to the bad economy former slaves and poor whites faced. Tenant farmers oftentimes owned equipment and supplies and were provided with food and other necessities from the landowners. The Adams family house is a historic building situated in Cartersville, Georgia located only a few miles northwest of the Etowah Indian Mounds. The house was constructed on the Walnut Grove Plantation, owned by the Young family since the early 1830s. Abandoned for a …

Home Sweet Home: An Architectural Analysis Of Houses During The Middle Mississippian Period In The Etowah River Valley, Jordan Farkas

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Mississippian period lasted from AD 1000 to AD 1550. It is divided into three different subperiods, Early (AD 1100-1200), Middle (AD 1200-1375), and Late (AD 1375-1550). Mississippian life, in general, is characterized by a ranked society, large villages located on floodplains near major rivers, a subsistence base centered on maize agriculture, as well as the use of triangular-shaped projectile points in hunting and new forms and decorative motifs on pottery for cooking and storage. One of the biggest developments in the Mississippian period revolves around house architecture and construction practices. After AD 1200, house design shifts away from rectangular …

Detecting Bacterial Species From Ancient Human Skeletal Samples, Ariel Owens, Daisy Mcgrath, Tsai-Tien Tseng

Symposium of Student Scholars

This paleopathological study aims to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) and other Mycobacterium species in silico from skeletal samples that belonged to 28 Polish individuals in the Neolithic period under PRJNA422903 from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA). After next-generation sequencing (NGS), bioinformatics methods are heavily relied upon for identification of pathogens from complex samples. We implemented a bioinformatics pipeline, with custom-built databases, utilizing the following software tools: Trim Galore! and Kraken2. After adapter trimming, Kraken2 was used for taxonomic classifications. We have found that Mycobacterium is present in all 28 individuals. The average percentage of MAC …

Ironing Out The Data: A Review Of Chronometric Hygiene For Iron Age Sites In Southern India, Kady Yeomans

Symposium of Student Scholars

In southern India the Iron Age is usually dated to about 1500-200 BC using carbon-14 dating. However, since the early advent of C14 dating in the late 1940s, our knowledge of how carbon decays over time has changed thanks to advancements in science. Some of the earlier archaeological dates have the potential to be less useful than others due to older collection practices and processing methods. This paper presents results from a chronometric hygiene process that was applied to the current data. Chronometric hygiene is vital to continually assess the viability and accuracy of C14 dates. Dates that cannot be …

Hematogenous Osteomyelitis In Juveniles: An Examination Of Pathophysiology And Variation In Occurrence In The Archaeological Record And Contemporarily

Symposium of Student Scholars

Osteomyelitis is a general term for a group of diseases that cause inflammation of the bone. In most cases, the cause is infectious agents entering the bloodstream from other infected areas, especially traumatic or surgical wounds (hematogenous osteomyelitis). The main causative agents are Staphylococcus aureus (staph) and Streptococcus (strep). Other causes of osteomyelitis include indirect infection from soft tissue infections or sepsis (Ortner 2003, 181). Although osteomyelitis can occur at any age, hematogenous osteomyelitis is especially prevalent among juveniles. The location of occurrence is related to the timing of development of the growth plates, as well as the vascular supply …

Diversity In Video Games: The Personal Experience Of Gamers

Symposium of Student Scholars

Diversity in video games has often been ignored or caricaturized such as in Final Fantasy VII, where the main character, Barret Wallace, is portrayed as African American. Video games are now big business, impacting almost every facet of American society and earning more than $91.5 billion dollars annually. This research explores how triple A games portray character identities and why these portrayals may be changing? Data will come from five semi-structured interviews with gamers about their experiences and perceptions about how diversity in video games affects their views about and enjoyment of the games they play. Do diverse characters enhance …

Many Faiths, One Beginning: Universality In Norse, Maya, Greek And Celtic Faiths

Symposium of Student Scholars

Numerous religious faiths have pervaded the world for much of known human history, but these belief systems often have significant variation in their core tenets, especially with those that have no contact. Religions which are in close proximity to one another tend to have some degree of syncretism, such as having comparable deities, due to having some transmission of their cultures. One group of similar base beliefs is the Indo-Europeans, with its members having been studied for parallels before. To contend with these previous studies, this project will look at the beliefs of the Norse, Greek, and Celtic cultures, all …

Ceramic Analysis And Radiocarbon Dating, Savana Deems

Symposium of Student Scholars

Ceramic Analysis and Radiocarbon Dating

Savana Deems

Student Scholar Symposium Spring 2016

Radiocarbon dating is not always a fool proof method of dating an archaeological site. There are many factors that can skew the data, such as back fill for a cultural feature coming from an area where a forest fire occurred thousands of years before, or at the very least, this data may not give the entire narrative of the occupation of a site. Sometimes a project may not be able to afford the hundreds of dollars required per sample to analyze charcoal remains. Ceramics however, are free to …

Sowing Seeds Of Opportunity: The Convergence Of Agriculture And Acculturation For Refugees In Atlanta, Cameron Owens Dunlap

Symposium of Student Scholars

In 2015, there were 60 million people displaced by conflict and persecution. With refugees and asylees arriving en masse in foreign receiving countries, it is critical that host nations utilize methods of resettlement and integration that are both beneficial and sensitive to the needs of these vulnerable populations. This study documents an innovative win-win approach to community integration that benefits both hosts and refugees alike. Qualitative data was collected through more than 10 sessions of participant observation on community farms and more than 7 semi-structured interviews with program management and refugees to answer the question, what opportunities for these refugee …

The Grad Commons In The Academic Library: Reimagining Collaborative Learning Spaces And Services For Graduate And Professional Students Through Participatory Design, Michael Courtney, Erika L. Jenns

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

During the Fall 2013 semester, the Indiana University Libraries officially launched the Grad Commons, a flexible, multipurpose space in the heart of the Herman B Wells Library’s research collection stacks to provide graduate and professional students easy access to the information resources and subject librarian expertise vital to their research. As part of a much larger vision that has sought to fulfill user needs by reimagining conjoined library spaces such as the Learning Commons, a 24/7 technology-infused learning center where students work on class assignments from start to finish, and the Scholars’ Commons, designed to stimulate scholarly conversation, interdisciplinary exchange, …

Bone Deterioration Due To Domesticated Rodent Scavenging, Logan N. Howard

Symposium of Student Scholars

This project examines the deterioration of bone caused by rat scavenging. Additionally, it will focus on what types of bones rats prefer when scavenging remains. The expected outcome is that the rodents will prefer the antler, with concentrated scavenging on the diaphysis due to the marrow withim the core.

The purpose for this project is to compare the markings left upon bones from rat gnawing. Knowing the effects of rat markings on remains are important when differentiating between traumatic damages and postmortem scavenging. Rat gnawing on human bones sometimes causes breakage associated with skeletal trauma, so distinguishing between the two …

The Revolution Of Fitness: A Contemporary Analysis Of How Technology And Personal Training Influences Consumer Behavior In Two Atlanta, Georgia Fitness Centers, Krista L. Cross

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Revolution of Fitness: A Contemporary Analysis of How Technological and Personal Training Influences Consumer Behavior in Two Atlanta, Georgia Fitness Centers

Krista Cross (Kennesaw State University)

"Krista Cross"

Today, fitness gyms and private health clubs are globally recognized as multi-billion-dollar establishments. This study explores the development of the modern gym and fitness culture, particularly the emergence of fitness trends such as personal training and technology. This paper aims to understand how and why training in the gym has become so important for people. A comparative case study approach was used to consider personal training and technological influences, which are …