Anthropology Commons^™

Describing And Comparing Archaeological Spatial Structures, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Quantitative archaeological spatial analysis today is radically different from that introduced more than 20 years ago. Today spatial analysis is couched in more general formational terms that include earlier functional pursuits. Today spatial analysts (1) focus on individual formationally sensitive artifact or element attributes, rather than on types; (2) use distributional rather than partitive methods and techniques; (3) consider a suite of such attributes to construct the formational history of archaeological deposits; and, least commonly, (4) undertake comparative spatial analysis. An elaboration of the latter tactic is proposed here, that of characterizing spatial structure in terms of structural elements (or …

Cattle, Co-Wives, Children, And Calabashes: Material Context For Symbol Use Among The Il Chamus Of West-Central Kenya, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines systemic contexts for symbol use among the Maa-speaking Il Chamus in the Lake Baringo region of west-central Kenya. The systemic context for symbols and material culture consists of the environmental constraints and behavioral responses that characterize pastoralist life in East Africa. The author's interest in this problem developed in response to Ian Hodder’s work among the Il Chamus, Pokot, and Tugen in the Baringo District. Unlike Hodder, however, the author argues that symbols and their use in East Africa can be more productively explained from a materialist perspective. Specifically, it is proposed that symbols affixed to certain …

Dorothy M. Mcewen: An Appreciation, Peter Bleed

Nebraska Anthropologist

Over the past 18 years, the University of Nebraska-Uncoln Department of Anthropology has seen many changes. We have moved, changed leadership, become computerized, added and lost faculty, and recruited, registered and graduated hundreds of students. Through all of those changes, the department has been blessed with a very steady hand at the helm of our office. Dorothy McEwen has been a dependable rock in a sea of change.

Dorothy came to the department as a temporary worker in the "Division of Archeological Research." In 1978 Dale Henning needed some help producing reports and brought Dorothy in to crank out pages …

Humankind's Greatest Gift: On The Innateness Of Language, Tina Brown

Nebraska Anthropologist

Although the environment has an effect on the quality of language development, the fact that language is limited to the human species, that neurological structures of the brain specialize in language functions, and that universal characteristics of language and language development occur independently of environmental factors suggests that human language has a definite biological component.

Busy Corporations: The Effects Of Corporations On The Environment And The Public, Markus Craig

Nebraska Anthropologist

This paper is the result of one semester's research into the external costs of corporate structure, detailing some of the corporate business practices, their inherent implications, and effects on the environment and on people. This paper helps unravel the adversarial relationship between modem corporations and the environmental and labor movements in the US, concentrating on a survey of the literature of the last two decades and isolates some major themes fundamental to an understanding of this important debate.

Circular Or Rectangular Ground Plans: Some Costs And Benefits, Arwen L. Feather

Nebraska Anthropologist

Architecture, as a technological strategy, provides shelter from the environment with the minimum possible cost in construction and maintenance of dwellings. There is a significant cross-cultural relationship between ground plan shape and settlement permanence. Circular ground plans are associated with impermanent settlements and rectangular ground plans with permanent settlements. The structural strengths and weaknesses that exist in the dwellings with either circular or rectangular ground plans contrast with each other and affect selection. Architectural design, then, is determined by choices between the needs of people in a given environment and what costs adapting to that will incur.

Reservoirs And Reservations, Karen M. Griffin

Nebraska Anthropologist

In the late 1930s and 1940s. the Army Corps of Engineers was heavily involved in the development plans for a number of large dams located throughout the country. Many of these dams, and the reservoirs they created, have either been situated on Native American reservations or have had direct impact on reservations. This paper proposes that while the original intent of these dams was to benefit a number of people, there may have been those who saw dams as a convenient tool in the fight to terminate and assimilate the Native American population. Evidence regarding two of these projects, the …

Length Of Widowhood: According To The Grave, Charles Geisel

Nebraska Anthropologist

Widows have outlived their husbands in every society for thousands of years, but medical advances have almost doubled people's life-spans in the last century. This growing longevity could affect the spouse survivorship. as average life expectancy for females increases more quickly than for males. Lengths of survivorship for the last 150 years and tendencies of age groups for husbands and wives show that widows are adapting to this life-span. Demographic research at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln. Nebraska. provided data for a statistical test of changes in survivorship.

Overgrazing: Is A Solution Available?, Brian Osborn

Nebraska Anthropologist

Overgrazing is a growing problem which results in land degradation and a loss of habitat for local wildlife. This paper reviews overgrazing and reviews the degradation it causes, comparing the Sahel region in Africa to the Great Plains of the United States. Both areas have an enormous problem with overgrazing, a problem unlikely to be solved by technology. The only solution lies in a change of attitude and practice by the human population.

Analytical Perspectives On A Protohistoric Cache Of Ceramic Jars From The Lower Colorado Desert, James Bayman, Richard Hevly, Boma Johnson, Karl J. Reinhard, Richard Ryan

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

A cache of hermetically sealed ceramic jars found in the Lower Colorado Desert was examined using chronometric dating, pollen and macrofossil extraction, design analysis, and water retention experimentation. The cache apparently dates to the protohistoric fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Findings from these studies contribute to knowledge in four problem areas: (1) ceramic jar function and use-history; (2) storage technology and caching behavior; (3) ceramic dating and chronology; and (4) symbolic iconography. Biotic remains from inside the jars document their use for transporting a variety of riverine and desert plants, before they were finally filled with flowers and seeds, and placed …

Costs And Benefits Of Monogamy And Polygyny For Yanomamö Women, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In this paper I analyze some of the economic costs and benefits of monogamy and polygyny for Yanomamö women. The evolutionary ecological model of resource defense polygyny predicts that when female choice is operative females will choose those males who control resources that will maximize a female’s reproductive success. A female will choose a polygynous strategy (i.e., become a co-wife) if a currently married male has more resources to offer than other unmarried males or monogamous males. This model has been successfully used to predict polygynous mating in tribal societies where males are stratified in terms of their ownership or …

Ams Dating Of Plain Weave Sandals From The Central Colorado Plateau., Phil R. Geib

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

AMS radiocarbon dates on plain-weave sandals from caves of the central Colorado Plateau are reported. The sandals range in age from about 6900 to 3200 B.P. (ca. 5700-1450 cal. B.C.). The findings strengthen a case for both population and cultural continuity during the Archaic period, and support a related argument that middle Archaic break in the occupancy of several important shelters such as Cowboy Cave resulted from settlement pattern change and not regional abandonment. The dates demonstrate that living accumulations within some shelters of lower Glen Canyon resulted from Archaic foragers and not Puebloan farmers as previously claimed. Benchmark Cave, …

Analytical Perspectives On A Protohistoric Cache Of Ceramic Jars From The Lower Colorado Desert, James M. Bayman, Richard H. Hevly, Boma Johnson, Karl J. Reinhard, Richard Ryan

Karl Reinhard Publications

A cache of hermetically sealed ceramic jars found in the Lower Colorado Desert was examined using chronometric dating, pollen and macrofossil extraction, design analysis, and water retention experimentation. The cache apparently dates to the protohistoricfifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Findings from these studies contribute to knowledge in four problem areas: (1) ceramic jar function and use-history; (2) storage technology and caching behavior; (3) ceramic dating and chronology; and (4) symbolic iconography. Biotic remains from inside the jars document their use for transporting a variety of riverine and desert plants, before they were finally filled with flowers and seeds, and placed in …

Using Statistics To Analyze The Ancient Egyptian Scarab, Sarah C. Guthmann

Nebraska Anthropologist

The University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM) houses a significant collection of nearly 100 ancient Egyptian scarabs. The collection is a wonderfully diverse group, providing examples of different usage and stylistic conventions, as well as spanning several periods of ancient Egyptian history (from the First Intermediate Period to the late New Kingdom). The scarabs vary in size, type of inscription they bear. and materials from which they were produced. This study statistically demonstrates that assignments of specific dimensions of scarab size and particular inscription types were not random occurrences. nor was the employment of certain materials and particular inscription types …

Women, Polygyny And Power, Michelle J. Lundeen

Nebraska Anthropologist

This paper focuses on the power possessed by polygynous women within the domestic sphere. comparing women in wealth increasing polygynous societies (represented by the Swazi of Africa and the Mormons of North America) with women in sororal polygynous societies (represented by the Mardudjara of Australia and the Achuar of South America) in an effort to determine which of these patterns is related to greater domestic power for women.

Nebraska Anthropologist Volume 13: 1996-1997 Table Of Contents

Nebraska Anthropologist

ARTICLES

01 Intellectual Property Rights: A Focus on Photography of Native Americans (Jennifer Wiggins)

07 National Language Policy in the United States: A Holistic Perspective (Cody L. Knutson)

17 Overgrazing: Is a Solution Available? (Brian Osborn)

23 Reservoirs and Reservations (Karen Griffin)

31 Humankind's Greatest Gift: On the Innateness of Language (Tina Brawn)

37 Using Statistics to Analyze the Ancient Egyptian Scarab (Sarah C. Guthmann)

45 Busy Corporations: The Effects of Corporations on the Environment & the Public (Markus Craig)

53 Phosphorous Concentrations at the Arner Site (Jenifer W. Putnam)

57 Circular or Rectangular Ground Plans: Some Costs & Benefits …

Phosphorous Concentrations At The Arner Site, Jenifer W. Putnam

Nebraska Anthropologist

Phosphate analysis of soil samples from the Arner site located in the Oglala National Grassland provides information on ancient activity patterns. This technique yields data that provide a direction for investigation during the next field season.

National Language Policy In The United States: A Holistic Perspective, Cody L. Knutson

Nebraska Anthropologist

English is not the official national language of the United States of America. However, this issue has often come to the forefront of many political debates, since language encompasses a wide array of political, economic and various other social implications. Acknowledging the right to the retention of local culture, a historical and cross-cultural study of language policy is interpreted to justify a limitation on the number of languages at the national political level if flexibility is maintained for individual states to adjust to the needs of their constituencies.

Intellectual Property Rights: A Focus On Photography Of Native Americans, Jennifer Wiggins

Nebraska Anthropologist

In 1990, many believed that Native Americans were aided in their fight for equality and justice with the passing of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This act did not, however, include items of intellectual property such as photographs. It is now vitally important, as we enter the technological age, that Native Americans regain control of their images, beliefs, and religion that are captured on film. However, it is not feasible that all photographs depicting Native Americans can be returned. Those to which they do have a viable reclaimance are the photographs that show private religious …

Creating Bicultural Identities: The Role Of School-Based Bilingual Paraprofessionals In Ontemporary Immigrant Accommodation (Two Kansas Case Studies), Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study locates the professional and informal practices of school-based bilingual paraprofessionals (paras) in the context of the larger social phenomenon of acculturation, cultural brokerage, and identity construction. It demonstrates how the paras in two Kansas communities transform an assimilationist mandate into something quite different, the promotion of bicultural identities, as part of a process called “additive biculturalism.” Additive biculturalism incorporates Weiss’s characterization of paras as cultural brokers (1994), but expands upon it significantly. As the first part of additive biculturalism, bilingual paras model and promote bicultural identities among the English-Learner students and parents they work with. As the second …

Review Of Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology: Expanding Archaeological Method And Theory, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In the 1960s, several practitioners (James Deetz, James Hill, William Longacre, and Robert Whallon) of what was eventually called the "New Archaeology" used ceramic stylistic elements to support claims about the postmarital residence of prehistoric populations. In particular, Hill and Longacre argued for two post-A.D. 1000 pueblos in Arizona that the observed lack of variation in ceramic stylistic elements was owed to the practice of matrilocal residence. Anthropologically informed common sense grounded their assumptions that females, schooled by their mothers, were responsible for ceramic production. These interpretations especially the under-supported assumptions---were criticized on many counts.

The Ethnobot Any Of A Mestizo Village, Christina A. Pereira

Nebraska Anthropologist

The study of ethnobotany examines the role plants play in a society. In many
subsistence-based agricultural societies plants provide a variety of resources for the subsistence of the people, including food, medicine, tools, and adornment. This paper examines the manner in which members of a Mexican mestizo village utilized local plants in their daily lives. Data is drawn from an ethnographic field school rsearch during the summer of 1995 in the ejido Emilio Carranza, near the town of Los Rayon in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. Residents classified plants in four broad categories, and maintained many of the most …

Aboriginal Adaptations On The Colorado Plateau: A View From The Island-In-The-Sky, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, Alan J. Osborn, Jesslyn Brown, Galen Burgett, Linda Scott Cummings, Ralph J. Hartley, Susan Vetter, Jennifer Waters, Tony Zalucha

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This final report documents the results of archaeological inventory, excavation, and analysis of prehistoric cultural resources within a 45-kilometer (28-mile) long corridor in the Island-in-the-Sky District of Canyonlands National Park, Utah. During three field seasons of survey, mapping, and excavation in 1983-1985, the research team recorded 32 artifact scatters, plotted 90,000 prehistoric artifacts and 250 historic items, completed 600 one-square-meter test pits, and conducted 10 block excavations. Block excavations at two locations in Gray's Pasture revealed a plant processing/hunting field camp (42SA16858) and a disturbed pithouse (42SA8506). Associated features and materials included a puddled clay-lined hearth, a slab-lined pit, a …

Nebraska Anthropologist Volume 12: 1995-1996 Table Of Contents

Nebraska Anthropologist

AN HONORING

03 Dorothy M. McEwen: An Appreciation (Peter Bleed)

1995 ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD SCHOOL

05 Summer 1995 Field School: An Overview (Emilia Clements-Gonzalez)

07 The Effects of a Long-Term Drought on the Economic Roles of Hacendado and
Ejidatario Women in a Mexican Ejido (Jodi L Biskup and Darcy L. Boellstorff)

15 The Ethnobotany of a Mestizo Village (Christina A. Pereira)

ARTICLES

31 Environmental Resources and Range Size: A Study of Modem and Ancient Hunter Gathers (George H. MacDonell)

47 Women in Development: The Need for a Grassroots Gender Planning Approach (Darcy L. Boellstorff)

57 Geophagy: Adaptive or Aberrant Behavior? (David …

Paleoecological Implications Of Plant/Animal Grazing Relations On The Mammoth Steppe Of Eastern Beringia, Andre Antinori

Nebraska Anthropologist

This paper reassesses the areal extent of Mammoth Steppe in Eastern Beringia and discusses some of the ways in which grazing and topography entered into the maintenance of the Mammoth Steppe. Large, generalist grazing mammals, by their grazing style, helped maintain the Mammoth Steppe by removing old-growth and by stimulating grass plants to reproduce vegetatively. These grazers also promoted uniformity in growth-form and uniformity in plant biomass (phytomass) above and below the ground surface. During the late Pleistocene these large, generalist grazers were eliminated from interior Alaska by Paleolndian hunters and their predatory animal companions. The loss of these large, …

Review Of Skeletal Biology In The Great Plains: Migration, Warfare, Health, And Subsistence, Edited By Douglas W. Owsley And Richard L. Jantz. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. 415 Pages., Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

The editors and contributors to this large, impressive volume present thirty-two chapters that deal with Great Plains skeletal biology. The goal of these diverse investigations was to derive critical information from human skeletal remains about past inhabitants of the Plains, including prehistoric and historic Indians, as well as Euro-Americans. These contributions are organized topically into five parts: (1) archaeology; (2) demography and paleopathology; (3) biological distance measures and skeletal morphology; (4) diet and subsistence strategies; and (5) warfare. The studies represent the collaborative efforts of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, ethnologists, ethnohistorians, and physical scientists. A major impetus for these …

Geophagy: Adaptive Or Aberrant Behavior, David E. Engberg

Nebraska Anthropologist

Geophagy, clay or dirt eating, is a worldwide phenomenon of long historical precedence. Historically perceived as an irrational behavior, today, growing evidence supports the contention that earth eating has adaptive value. Case studies from Africa and the United States illustrate the practice. A literature review shows that three primary explanations have been offered to account for the presence of geophagy in human populations. The first argues that geophagy has medicinal value as an anti-diarrheal and as a dietary supplement in vitamin and mineral poor environments. The Second contends that geophagy is a culturally transferred practice. The third states that earth …

The Effects Of A Long-Term Drought On The Economic Roles Of Hacendado And Ejidatario Women In A Mexican Ejido, Jodi L. Biskup, Darcy L. Boellstorff

Nebraska Anthropologist

Data is drawn from the 1995 summer field school in applied anthropology and appropriate technology held in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. University of Nebraska-Lincoln students worked as a field team studying the impact of economic development and social initiatives on a rural former ejido. This paper focuses on how a severe regional drought has transformed the economic roles of ejido women of the hacendado and ejidatario classes. Data was gathered using ethnographic field techniques such as participant-observation and interviews. Preliminary analysis shows that women react to the drought by seeking alternative means of generating income. These include the …

Women In Development: The Need For A Grassroots Gender Planning Approach, Darcy L. Boellstorff

Nebraska Anthropologist

While the recognition of the roles of women in Third World society is increasing, the adequate operational frameworks for including the concerns of women involved in development planning has not kept pace. Models generally used in planning ignore the importance of gender in social structures. Development in the Third World has historically provided little benefit to women, generally leaving them in a more vulnerable social and economic position. Gender planning holds the key to the implementation of successful development programs in Third World communities by recognizing different social relationships between women and men occur from society to society and are …

The Native American Grave Protection And Repatriation Act: A Necessary But Costly Measure, Tina F. Brown

Nebraska Anthropologist

The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act has had an immense impact on Amencan Anthropology. NAGPRA protects NatiVe Amencan skeletal remains and burial goods by ordenng those held for research or display retumed, and by restricting future excavations. In the course of its enactment, it has divided anthropologists on the basis of moral convictions and research priorities. Its history is long, and its future is uncertain.