Anthropology Commons^™

Qumran: Archaeology And Theories Of Identification, Ann Putz

Nebraska Anthropologist

Research at Qumran has lead many archaeologists, religious figures, and other academics into disagreements about what the site really was during the time of the Romans in the Holy Land. Qumran was first excavated in the 1950 's after scrolls were found in the caves surrounding the site. The site has some very unique features not found anywhere else in Israel or Jordan, leaving the researchers somewhat confused. Qumran has had several occupations and has also been rebuilt many times due to earthquakes. This only adds to the confusing in determining what the site of Qumran really was.

The Mythological Role Of Gender Ideologies: A Cross-Cultural Sample Of Traditional Cultures, Richard Owens

Nebraska Anthropologist

Hunting and gathering along with horticultural societies provide a basis for understanding contemporary ideologies. Such groups are generally labeled as egalitarian societies from their status and treatment of females. A survey of traditional hunters-gatherers and horticultural societies compared their mythological charters on gender ideologies to the dally interactions of gender roles in order to determine their level of influence on the culture. Traditional societies are thought to be a basis to observe gender stratification among all known societies. The division of labor is in all cultures, as a means to limit control economic resources, often favoring men. In this paper …

The Rwandese, Clea Msindo Koff, Ralph J. Hartley

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Rwandese are a set of peoples who live in the country of Rwanda in eastern central Africa who today number an estimated 7.9 million.2 Rwanda is a small country that has the highest population density (numbers of people per square-mile) in Africa. All Rwandese speak Rwanda (Kinyarwanda), and some speak French, Swahili, or English. Rwandese identify with three population groups called Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. Today, these labels are used as ethnic identifiers; however, in the past they designated an individual's occupation. It is not clear if the words Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa existed in ancient times when people …

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The 2002 Season, Nicholas Rauh, Luann Wandsnider, F. Sancar Ozaner, Michael Hoff, Rhys Townsend, Matthew Dillon, Mette Korsholm, Hulya Caner

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Project conducted archaeological and geoarchaeological research in the Gazipaşa area from July 20 through 1 September 2001. Several goals were met this season. Under the direction of Michael Hoff and Rhys Townsend, detailed plans were completed of monumental structures at the sites of Asar Tepe, Lamos, and Selinus. At Lamos, in particular, the team made a number of finds, including the discovery of an inscribed statue base of large size in a small podium complex on a hill above the so-called "stadium."

Land Use And Ceramic Distributions In Western Rough Cilicia, Turkey, Jennifer Ferrell

Nebraska Anthropologist

The Rough Cilicia Survey Project (RCSP) has been collecting data on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey (known as Rough Ci/icia) since 1996. This paper is a preliminary analysis of how the architectural and ceramic data collected by the survey team may be utilized. It is theorized here that the frequency of certain ceramic types may be linked to amount of architecture. However, this paper is not meant to be conclusive, but is rather a starting point for future studies of this data.

Reliability Assessment Of Surface Archaeological Survey Results From Western Rough Cilicia, Turkey, Melissa Kruse

Nebraska Anthropologist

Surface archaeological data provides a wealth of readily available and easily accessible information about past human behavior and settlement systems. It is important that survey results of suiface remains be recorded accurately and provide reliable information for interpretation of regional artifact distributions, density, and variations of the archeological record. A resurvey methodology was developed to assess the reliability of results of the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey along the coast of southern Turkey. Analysis employed statistical quantification and an overview of factors effecting reliability of surface survey results. The resulting duplicated documents of the same suiface record at different points in …

Detection Of Giardia Duodenalis Antigen In Coprolites Using A Commercially Available Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Marcelo Luiz Carvalho Gonçalves, Adauto Araújo, Rosemere Duarte, Joaquim Pereira Da Silva, Karl Reinhard, Françoise Bouchet, Luis Fernando Ferreira

Karl Reinhard Publications

The objective of this experiment was to assess the utility of a commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for diagnosis of giardiasis in archaeological human remains. The kit, a monoclonal antibody assay, is used to detect the presence of Giardia-specific antigen 65 (GSA65) in human feces. We utilized the assay in ancient fecal material. The material included desiccated feces found in mummies or in archaeological sites, and sediments from latrines. A total of 83 specimens, previously examined microscopically for parasites, were examined. The ELISA detected 3 positive samples, dated to about 1200 AD, 1600 AD, and 1700 AD. …

Multidisciplinary Coprolite Analysis, Karl Reinhard, Dennis R. Danielson, Mark Daniels, Sérgio Augusto De Miranda Chaves

Karl Reinhard Publications

Coprolite analysis, as reviewed by Reinhard and Bryant (1992), contributes unique and detailed information regarding diet and parasitic disease. We present here an analysis of dietary components of coprolites from Bighorn Cave using macroscopic remains, pollen concentrations, and phytoliths. In addition, we analyzed Bighorn Cave coprolites for evidence of parasitic organisms, especially intestinal worms. Such analyses of coprolites have become important methods for reconstructing past dietary and medicinal practices. Pollen concentration and phytolith quantification techniques have recently been developed, but until this report no known attempt has been made to synthesize pollen, macroscopic, and phytolith data from a single coprolite …

The Fort Clark Archeology Project, 2000-2001 Historical Archeological Investigations., William J. Hunt Jr.

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Historical archeological work during the summers of 2000 and 2001 has been directed toward development and installation of a series of interpretive panels relating to the history, archeology, and peoples living at Fort Clark. In anticipation of this, investigations in 2000 included small scale testing and large scale geophysical surveys at the village and both trading posts. Fieldwork in 2001 was more focused and utilized geophysical survey data from both years to guide a multi-university field school excavation at Fort Clark. Excavation goals were to clarify the structural history and evolution of the post, discern functional change in one portion …

Out Of Africa: Origins Of The Taenia Tapeworms In Humans, Eric P. Hoberg, Nancy L. Alkire, Alan De Queiroz, Arlene Jones

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty Publications

Phylogenetic and divergence date analyses indicate that the occurrence of Taenia tapeworms in humans pre-dates the development of agriculture, animal husbandry and domestication of cattle (Bos spp.) or swine (Sus scrofa) Taeniid tapeworms in Africa twice independently colonized hominids and the genus Homo prior to the origin of modern humans. Dietary and behavioural shifts, from herbivory to scavenging and carnivory, as early Homo entered the carnivore guild in the Pliocene/Pleistocene, were drivers for host switching by tapeworms to hominids from carnivores including hyaenids and felids. Parasitological data provide a unique means of elucidating the historical ecology, foraging behavior …

Play Patterns And Gender, Carolyn P. Edwards, Lisa Knoche, Asiye Kumru

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This cross-cultural analysis examines the gendered patterns of play seen in children worldwide. Play is a culturally universal activity through which children explore themselves and their environment, test out and practice different social roles, and learn to interact with other children and adults. Early in life, children identify themselves as a “girl” or a “boy,” and this basic self-categorization lays a foundation for their developing beliefs about with whom, what, how, and where they will play. Children play an active role in their own and their peers’ “gender socialization” (the process by which they come to acquire the knowledge, values, …

Response To Critique Of The Claim Of Cannibalism At Cowboy Wash, Patricia M. Lambert, Banks L. Leonard, Brian R. Billman, Richard A. Marlar, Margaret E. Newman, Karl J. Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

The original authors of Billman et af. (2000) are joined by three other analysts from the Cowboy Wash research team to respond to the critique of this article by Dongoske et af. (2000). Dongoske and his coauthors state that Billman et af. (2000) failed to test alternative hypotheses or to consider alternative explanations for the findings at 5MTJOOJO and similar sites. The original authors point out that alternative hypotheses were examined and rejected, leaving a violent episode of cannibalism as the most plausible explanation for the remains found at 5MTJOOJO. Dongoske et af. also question many aspects of the osteological, …

Birth Order, Sibling Investment, And Fertility Among Ju/’Hoansi (!Kung), Patricia Draper, Raymond Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Birth order has been examined over a wide variety of dimensions in the context of modern populations. A consistent message has been that it is better to be born first. The analysis of birth order in this paper is different in several ways from other investigations into birth order effects. First, we examine the effect of birth order in an egalitarian, small-scale, kin-based society, which has not been done before. Second, we use a different outcome measure, fertility, rather than outcome measures of social, psychological, or economic success. We find, third, that being born late in an egalitarian, technologically simple …

Sandal Types And Archaic Prehistory On The Colorado Plateau, Phil R. Geib

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Perishable artifacts provide an alternative to projectile pointsfor examining spatial patterns in Archaic material culture between northern and southern portions of the Colorado Plateau of the North American Southwest. This is so because they possess a potential great variety of specific construction and design attributes and can be directly dated to establish independent chronolo- gies of development. The analysis and dating of a collection of warp-faced plain weave sandals from Chevelon Canyon, Ari- zona demonstrates the potential utility of perishable artifacts to our understanding of prehistory. The collection provides an importantfirst sample of early Archaicfootwearfor the southern Colorado Plateau. AMS …

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The Year 2000 Season, Nicholas K. Rauh, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

During the 2000 season the RCASP Survey Team surveyed approximately five square kilometers in the vicinity of Lamos and along the ridges surrounding the Adanda River valley in interior Rough Cilicia. Geoarchaeological inspection of beach, lagoon, and terrace deposits of the Hacimusa River was conducted by F. Sancar Ozaner and Hülya Caner. Together Ozaner and Caner identified the locations where geomorphological trenches would be excavated during the 2001 season. Caner also collected surface sediments from lagoonal deposits of the Hacimusa and Bickici Rivers for further analysis. Under the direction of Michael Hoff and Rhys Townsend, a preliminary architectural map was …

Recognition Of Treponematoses In Post Repatriation X Ray And Cd Rom Nebraska Record, Karl J. Reinhard, Bruce Rothschild, Christine Rothschild, Larry Martin

Karl Reinhard Publications

Repatriation has compromised the opportunity to directly examine skeletons and to apply new diagnostic criteria and techniques. Pre-repatriation approaches to non-metric data acquisition, must make a number of assumptions: ( I ) Phenomena must be correctly identitied and segregated; (2) Criteria for severity must be specific to the phenomena studied; and (3) As criteria for disease rewgnition may change with time, it is valuable only as long as the raw data is also recorded. As part of data preservation, x-rays and CD-ROM images were recorded for skeletons trom Nebraska sites undergoing repatriation. This report concentrates on four of them 250K …

The Role Of Mummy Studies In Paleoparasitology, Adauto Araujo, Karl J. Reinhard, Luiz Fernando Ferreira

Karl Reinhard Publications

Paieoparasitology has advance during the past decade to the status of a statistically based science focused on problems of disease ecology and geographic distribution of parasitism. For most of its development, paleoparasitology has focused on the analysis of coprolites and latrine sediments. During the past few years, mummies have been increasingly included in paleoparasitology studies. We evaluate in this paper the interpretive value of mummies relative to other sources of paleoparasitological data.

EI estudio de la paleoparasitologia ha logrado transformarse, en esta ultima decada, en una ciencia basada en la estadistica, enfocada a temas tales como la ecologia de enfermedades …

Paleopharmacology, Karl Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

An emerging field devoted to the exploration of the archaeological record for evidence of medicinal plants.

In the future, archaeology will have a role in pharmaceutical research. In the late twentieth century, much of the world’s pharmaceutical research has been based on ethnographic documentation of tribally recognized medicinal plants. Once the active chemical compounds in the plants are identified, they are either extracted or synthesized for commercial use. The American film Medicine Man depicts this approach. As shown in the film, such pharmacological research is threatened by declining tribal populations with loss of traditional herbal knowledge coupled with declining biodiversity. …

Archaeoparasitology, Karl Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

The field devoted to the identification of parasite remains in the archaeological record and the reconstruction of past human-parasite interactions. Parasitic disease has always been a major problem. Recent summaries of the prevalence of parasitic diseases in the world today show that there are 4.5 billion infections with all species of parasitic worm, 1 billion infections with giant intestinal roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), 750,000,000 infections with whipworms (Trichuris trichiura), 900,000,000 infections with hookworm (Ancylostoma duodenale and Necator americanus), 657,000,000 infections with filarial worms, 200,000,000 with blood flukes (schistosome species), and 489,000,000 infections with malaria. These infections cause between 1,590,000 to 3,130,000 …

Coprolite Analysis: The Analysis Of Ancient Human Feces For Dietary Data, Karl Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

Although archaeological fieldwork is hot and dirty, the most “earthy” side of the discipline is the laboratory analysis of coprolites. Each coprolite contains the remains of one to several actual meals eaten in prehistory, and analysis of many coprolites provides a picture of ancient diet that is unique in accuracy.

The term coprolite originally referred to fossilized feces in paleontological context. In archaeology, the term broadened to refer to any formed fecal mass, including mineralized, desiccated, or frozen feces and even the intestinal contents of mummies. Coprolites contain the remains of animals (parasites) that lived in the humans, the foods …

Room To Maneuver: !Kung Women Cope With Men, Patricia Draper

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Among the !Kung San of Botswana, women are sometimes beaten by their husbands and coerced by other men, particularly their fathers. The factors that contribute to this form of aggression are various and are changing over time as a consequence of new economic and residential practices now seen among the !Kung as they have transformed themselves from mobile foragers to primarily sedentary food producers. The responses of women and their supporters to incidents of wife abuse are also changing. In this essay several episodes of wife beating that came to my attention during recent fieldwork among the !Kung will be …

Late Prehistoric High Plains Foragers: Starving Nomads, Affluent Foragers?, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Past human groups of the High Plains have been variously characterized as starving nomads and affluent foragers. In fact, these terms do not capture the multi-faceted nature of the human foraging experience on the High Plains. Relying on human ecology and archaeological interpretations, this paper examines the coping strategies used by Late Prehistoric foragers in the high variance environment of the High Plains, which was relatively less variable during the early part of the Late Prehistoric time period and more variable in the later part.

Who’S Buried In Custer’S Grave?, P. Willey, Douglas D. Scott

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

On 10 October 1877, the year after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, General George A. Custer’s coffin was transported from a temporary grave in Poughkeepsie, NY, by steamer and cortege to permanent interment in the U.S. Military Academy’s Post Cemetery. The ceremony included the appropriate military and funerary rituals. There were, nevertheless, reasons to believe that Custer’s skeleton may not have been in the coffin—thus, he may have missed his own funeral. Custer’s remains, or part of them, may have been overlooked during the exhumation and left on the battlefield, only to be recovered around 1940. These bones, as …

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The 1999 Season, Nicholas K. Rauh, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In 1999 the team turned attention to an area of mountainous rural hinterland behind Iotape and some 500 m above the valley of the Delice Çay and the village of Kahyalar.Employing coarse interval survey methodology we conducted a sweep of a network of ridges extending from a peak known locally as Nergis Tepesi to the village of Kahyalar below. When evidence of past human activity or disturbances was observed by the team, especially architectural remains or ceramics clusters of more than one sherd per square meter, the area became designated as a 'site', if only for purposes of recording. Once …

From Chiefly Provisioning To Commercial Fishery: Long-Term Economic Change In Arctic Norway, Sophia Perdikaris

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Stratified farm mounds with excellent organic preservation in the Lofoten and Vesterålen islands in Arctic Norway provide a long-term record of changing human use of fish. In Arctic Norway, zooarchaeological signatures of intensive dried fish production extend back into the Iron Age, indicating a substantial role for cured cod prior to the beginning of the historical stockfish trade in c. AD 1200. North Norwegian chieftains of the late Iron Age and Viking periods clearly disposed of substantial staple surpluses of stockfish as well as the better documented prestige goods (furs and ivory). A comparative study of substantial collections spanning the …

Geophysical Survey As A Conservation Tool, Anne M. Kern

Nebraska Anthropologist

With the introduction of cultural resource management and the passage of federal preservation legislation more than thirty years ago, American archeology has recognized the need for noninvasive practices that produce significant, new data while preserving the non-renewable archeological record. In the early I 970s, Thomas Lyons and the National Park Service's Cultural Resource Management Program began to develop a non-invasive paradigm placing new emphasis on remote sensing techniques. Developments in geophysical methods over the past twenty to thirty years allow archeologists to preserve the archeological record, practice Lyons' non-invasive archeology, and collect high-quality data. A discussion of the advantages and …

Conservation Ethics: The Web Linking Human And Environmental Rights, Meghan Sittler

Nebraska Anthropologist

The Earth should be seen as an ecological whole. Environmental and human rights should be fashioned in a similar horizontal plane rather than in the traditional concept of a vertically arranged hierarchy. Examining the management practices of vast ecosystems on two continents provides examples of the integral relationship of all organisms in an ecosystem. The Serengeti Ecosystem in Africa and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the United States are characterized by both cultural and ecological extirpations. The comparing of cultural and ecological issues concerning these diverse and distinctive ecosystems demonstrates the intricate web connecting human and environmental rights.

Still An Open Book: Analysis Of The Current Pre-Clovis Vs. Clovis Debate From The Site Of Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania And Monte Verde, Chile, Jay T. Sturdevant

Nebraska Anthropologist

One of the most prominent features of Paleo-Indian studies has been the debate concerning who first inhabited the continents of the Americas. Two sites that have been at the forefront of this debate over the last 25 years are Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania and Monte Verde, Chile. Because of their status as possible Pre-Clovis sites, a review of the questions surrounding these sites should reflect the current status of the Pre-Clovis debate. Presently neither site has been able to make a decisive argument for a Pre-Clovis occupation in the Americas so it is important that archaeology not get ahead of itself …

The Fact And Fiction Of Vikings In America, Karri L. Springer

Nebraska Anthropologist

Many people do not fully understand the stories, history, archaeology or evidence for Viking presence in North America. This paper evaluates the stories against the scientific evidence found to date. Archaeologists, although qualified to discuss all sides of the arguments, rarely do, because of the lack of career rewards for doing so. However, the problems associated with hoaxes should be important to all archaeologists interested in maintaining credibility with the public. Viking legends are well suited for such evaluation. The Kensington runestone hoax is emphasized in this evaluation while other Viking hoaxes are overviewed. Relevant evidence from archaeological sites in …

Mormon Polygamy In The Nineteenth Century: The Practice Of "The Principle" In Reality, William Volf

Nebraska Anthropologist

During the nineteenth century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, encouraged the development of polygamous marriages. The primary rationale for the practice was to bring in as many pre-existing spirits into the present world and to allow all females the chance to be married. The practice of polygamy was the ideal marriage form and each church member was to behave in a manner with polygamy as a goal. It is found that among males, only the wealthy and higher level Church leaders were the members that such a practice benefitted. There is evidence that the additional …