Anthropology Commons^™

Predicting Body Mass From The Skeleton With An Application To The Georgia Coast, Shamsi R. Daneshvari

Anthropology ETDs

Body mass has been studied in multiple subfields within anthropology, including paleoanthropology, bioarchaeology, biomechanics, and forensics. Most previous studies that focused on predicting mass from the skeleton utilized population averages, living subjects, and/or small sample sizes. This study sought to create an individualized predictive model of body mass estimation from multiple skeletal elements. The new multiple element model was then compared to three models currently used by anthropologists. Three hypotheses were tested: 1) the multiple element model has a lower predictive error than the other models, 2) upper limb elements will predict mass more accurately and 3) articular dimensions predict …

The Discourse And Practice Of Native American Cuisine: Native American Chefs And Native American Cooks In Contemporary Southwest Kitchens, Lois Ellen Frank

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation analyzes the emergent Native American cuisine of the American Southwest. It consists of an ethnography of both Native American cooks, who are largely self-taught and practice in noncommercial settings, as well as Native American chefs, some self taught and some professionally trained and working in commercial settings. The ethnographic work includes both extensive and intensive field interviews with chefs and cooks, and close attention to their work in home and professional kitchens. Particular attention is paid to histories of food knowledge, as well as to food preparation concepts, techniques, performance, and aesthetics. The foods employed by these cooks …

Ceramic Resource Selection And Social Violence In The Gallina Area Of The American Southwest, Connie Irene Constan

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines the relationship between social violence and ceramic resource procurement. Do people in middle-range societies alter resource use in response to conflict? Specifically, does social strife influence the distance to which potters in middle-range societies will travel to collect ceramic resources? Distance and quality are primary elements in clay selection. Clay is heavy, so for many potters distance is the determining factor in clay selection (Arnold 1985, 2000). Arnold (1985, 2000) estimated procurement thresholds using worldwide ethnographic data from 111 traditional societies. He found that for both clays and tempers, people prefer to travel only one kilometer, but …

The Evolutionary Ecology Of Human Infancy, Amanda Veile

Anthropology ETDs

Infancy is a time of profound energetic trade-offs, and in many South American native groups, infant growth is stunted and mortality by infectious disease is high. The goal of this dissertation was to explore the nature of human infancy from a life history theoretical perspective. Specifically, I investigated infant growth, feeding patterns, and thymic development in two South American native populations, the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Pumé of Venezuela. This broad goal is addressed through four specific goals: 1) to model the weaning transition using behavioral data collected in Tsimane communities where infants experience varying mortality rates, 2) to …

Against The Odds: Indian Gaming, Political Economy, And Identity On The Pala Indian Reservation, Shasta Christina Gaughen

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation explores how the introduction of Indian gaming has affected identity, culture, and political economy on the Pala Indian Reservation in San Diego County, California. I propose that the economic and political changes that have taken place at Pala since the Pala Casino opened in 2001 can be explored against a theoretical backdrop of how history, politics, and power have constituted and are constituting local categories of identity, belonging, and culture for the Pala Band of Mission Indians. The theoretical understanding of Indian gaming as a consequence of federal policies has contributed to my analysis of how the Pala …

Making Modernity: Ideological Pluralism And Political Process In Zinacantán, Kristen Adler

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines political process and ideology in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on the Tsotsil-speaking community of Zinacantán. The complex interplay between constructions of tradition and modernity clearly indicates that Zinacantán is not the isolated, "closed corporate community" often portrayed in the anthropological literature. Rather, complexities that emerge from local narratives suggest profound ideological pluralism, e.g., liberal individualism alongside hierarchical complementarity. Through a focus on narrative and event, this work challenges received notions of tradition and modernity and demonstrates the diverse ways in which Zinacantecos are traditionalizing the modern and modernizing the traditional through reflexive communicative means. Although …

"We're Parents Too!" Changes In Father Involvement In Domestic Labor Among Urban Middle Class Dual-Worker Couples, Ruth Burgett Jolie

Anthropology ETDs

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate fathers involvement in domestic labor among middle class, dual-worker families in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I argue that men's participation in domestic labor is affected by their parental identities. Three things influence parental identity: (1) demographics, including socioeconomic position, age, race/ethnicity, (2) religiosity, meaning ones adherence to religious values and participation in a formal religious institution (Wilcox 2002:781), and (3) parental ideology, denoting the belief structure surrounding what a parent ought to do. Demography and religiosity are themselves mediated by parental ideology, and in turn also further shape, parental ideology. Parental ideology directly …

Domestic Architectural Production In Northwest Mexico, Elizabeth Arwen Bagwell

Anthropology ETDs

This study examines the organization of architectural production at Cueva Bringas and Cueva el Aguaje, two prehispanic coursed-adobe cliff dwellings in the Northern Sierra (Casas Grandes) region of northeastern Sonora, Mexico. Since there are no archaeological models of the organization of domestic architectural production, an ethnographic study was completed to establish a set of expectations for this data set. The results of this study found that architecture is primarily built by groups whose members are not part of the household intending to occupy the structure. In addition, architectural production varies by gender of the producer, level of complexity, production step, …

Evidence For A Change In The Rate Of Aging Of Osteological Indicators In American Documented Skeletal Samples, Wendy Elizabeth Potter

Anthropology ETDs

The question of uniformity in skeletal age changes across populations is fundamental to all comparative work in skeletal biology. Whether an aging standard will work on target groups that differ in time, space, and background from the reference sample is essential for reliable, accurate age estimation. This research addressed whether a difference in skeletal senescence exists between older American documented collections and more recent ones. The pubic symphysis, auricular surface, sternal rib end, and suture obliteration were scored for a sample of American Blacks and Whites drawn from the Terry, Hamann-Todd, Bass Documented, Maxwell Museum, and Maricopa County Forensic Science …

The Human Skull: Definition By Integrationist And Modular Models, John Yard Anderson

Anthropology ETDs

The human mandible and cranium are parts of an integrated cranial complex. These regions are also major components of the modular system, which comprises multiple semi-autonomous areas within the body. Integration and modularity express structure and function across various hierarchical levels of organization in the body and are thus definable as two non-exclusive ways of viewing somatic structure. What is integrated at one level may be a separable, modular unit at another. This dissertation statistically examines the interface between integration and modularity as partitioned through various hierarchical levels in the human skull, including the mandible. This examination is framed as …

Recognizing Indians: Place, Identity, History, And The Federal Acknowledgment Of The Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, Philip Blair Laverty

Anthropology ETDs

Long considered extinct,' in 1992 the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation (OCEN) began its bid to achieve federal acknowledgment as an American Indian tribe. This dissertation is a study of the history of the Native peoples of the Monterey Bay region and the current recognition efforts of OCEN. Using ethnographic and ethnohistorical methodologies and the fieldnotes of John Peabody Harrington as a key archive, it focuses on social and cultural aspects of identity change and community persistence, particularly in relation to land and place. It explores contemporary understandings of precontact political organization as they presently affect the Esselen Nation in the context of …

Cerro Chepen And The Late Moche Collapse In The Jequetepeque Valley, North Coast Of Peru, Marco Rosas Rintel

Anthropology ETDs

In this dissertation, I investigate the socio-political processes that led to the collapse of the Late Moche political communities located in the Lower Jequetepeque Valley, North Coast of Peru. During the Late Moche phase (AD 600 to 850), the human populations of this valley evidenced an interesting case of political fragmentation and internal conflict. The Moche collapse in the Jequetepeque Valley is approached from the perspective of one of the largest power centers of the region: the fortified site of Cerro Chepén. This site occupies the upper and eastern slopes of a hill, located in a relatively central position within …

The Role Of Standardization In Specialization Of Ceramic Production At San Marcos Pueblo, New Mexico, Kari Lynn Schleher

Anthropology ETDs

In my dissertation research, I examine decorated pottery production at San Marcos Pueblo, in the Galisteo Basin of north central New Mexico. San Marcos Pueblo was occupied from A.D. 1250 until the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in 1680. In previous research, San Marcos Pueblo was suggested to be a production center for Northern Rio Grande Glaze Wares (Glaze Ware) (Warren 1976, 1979). I evaluate this claim by examining over 700 pottery sherds and whole vessels from the site and surrounding region. In addition, I examine how pottery production at San Marcos was organized and how this structure changed through …

Chanka Settlement Ecology: Hilltop Sites, Land Use And Warfare In Late Prehispanic Andahuaylas, Peru, Lucas C. Kellett

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation investigates Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1400) hilltop settlements of the central Andean highlands. Rather than a traditional warfare-centered political perspective, the research employs primarily an ecological model in which to evaluate the widespread settlement shift to high altitude ridge tops beginning ca. AD 1000. More specifically, the research investigates the multi-faceted role that climate change may have played in the establishment of LIP hilltop settlements. I examine the concomitant shifts in the local ecology and the economic organization of hilltop communities. Using a multi-scalar and methodologically diverse research design, incorporating ethnohistory, field survey, excavation and GIS, I examine …

Colono Wares In The Western Spanish Borderlands: A Ceramic Technological Study, Jennifer Boyd Dyer

Anthropology ETDs

The appearance of hybrid ceramics, also known as colono wares, signals Spanish contact across the Empire and materially represents syncretism between Native American and European traditions. Because colono wares are low-fired, locally produced ceramics that take on European shapes, they are used in this study to investigate how Pueblo groups in New Mexico responded to Spanish contact during the early colonial period, defined as initial contact to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. I build a model that compares colono wares to traditional forms using technological variables to determine if cultural resilience, disruption, or innovation best characterize early colonial period interactions …

Why Conical Pots? An Examination Of The Relationship Among Vessel Shape, Subsistence, And Mobility, Claire Kathleen Helton-Croll

Anthropology ETDs

This study examines the functional relationship between ceramic cooking vessel shape and subsistence and mobility using vessels from Navajo and Towa-speaking Puebloan groups from the Protohistoric period (A.D. 1450-1700) in the southwestern United States. Conical shape vessels are found in association with mobile foragers throughout the past. Navajo peoples produced Dinetah and Navajo Gray wares, both of which have conical bases. Towa-speaking Puebloan peoples from the Jemez and Pecos areas produced rounded-base cooking vessels. The Navajo and Towa-speaking Puebloans practice different subsistence and mobility strategies. The primary goal of this research was to determine if variation in cooking vessel form …

Taxonomic Implications Of Basicranial Variation In Australopithecus Africanus, Timothy R. Petersen

Anthropology ETDs

Although it was discovered 85 years ago, Australopithecus africanus remains a source of contention among paleoanthropologists. Uncertainty about the fossils taxonomic unity has resulted in controversy about their place in hominin phylogeny. This work addresses their taxonomy through application of three-dimensional morphometrics followed by analysis of their patterns of variation in traditional morphological characters. This sequential approach lends more support to the conclusions than would either technique alone. The cranial base was selected as the focus of the analyses because it preserves well and is likely to capture taxonomically-important variation. This inference is supported by the finding herein that the …

Exploring Social Interaction At The Ancient Maya City Of Copan, Honduras: A Multi-Scalar Geographic Information Systems (Gis) Analysis Of Access And Visibility, Heather M. Richards-Rissetto

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation investigates late eighth and early ninth century social interaction at the archaeological site of Copán, Honduras. Two main research questions are addressed: (1) Did people of different social classes experience different degrees of social connectivity? and (2) Did people living in different parts of the city experience different degrees of social connectivity? A Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to quantify social connectivity, that is, degree of social integration or social segregation, using access and visibility as proxy measures for social interaction, and to examine whether Copáns inhabitants influenced social interaction by configuring their city to facilitate or …

The Prevalence Of Osteoarthritis In Wild Vs Captive Great Ape Skeletons, Demelza J. Poe

Anthropology ETDs

This research examined whether the prevalence and skeletal distribution of osteoarthritis (OA) differed between wild and captive great ape skeletons. A secondary, but important, aspect of this research focused on the development of improved aging techniques based on methods commonly used on human osteological samples. Tests were conducted pertaining to the effect that wild versus captive status, sex, and species has on vertebral body lipping, marginal lipping, and eburnation. Age was considered a co-factor. Of the aging methods examined, use of the basilar suture to distinguish between adult and old adult specimens proved to be very imprecise. The ribs and …

Nuclear Family Conflict And Cooperation Among Tsimane' Forager-Horticulturalists Of Bolivia, Jonathan Stieglitz

Anthropology ETDs

Household production is the result of inputs from a variety of members, each of whom contains overlapping but non-identical interests. This dissertation explores the conditions under which the division of labor and the allocation of household resources precipitates parent-offspring and spousal conflict. This broad goal is addressed through three specific goals: 1) to identify factors affecting variation in the likelihood of task delegation to children and resistance toward performing delegated tasks; 2) to understand how variation in household labor demand influences childrens time allocation, considering ways in which behavioral manipulation might compromise the child's future prospects; and 3) to understand …

Choice Ideology And The Parameters Of Its Practice: Alternative Abortion Narratives In New Mexico, Abigail Rae Adams

Anthropology ETDs

The ideology of choice, embedded in the pro-choice, anti-abortion debate in the United States, is founded on Enlightenment notions that take the autonomous individual with perfect knowledge and rationality as the unit of analysis. The basic premise is that each woman 'chooses' from a variety of equally accessible options. Hidden in the political language of choice are the constraints all women face as they attempt to negotiate reproduction, especially if they wish to end a pregnancy. 'Choice' does not exist as an abstract freedom, but is situated within the realities of power and agency. This paper examines the ability of …

The Women Potters Of Mata Ortiz: Growing Empowerment Through Artistic Work, Kiara Maureen Hughes

Anthropology ETDs

The contemporary production of pottery for global ethnic art markets set in motion a series of economic and social transformations that completely changed the Chihuahuan community of Mata Ortíz. This dynamic art form has included women and men since its initial stages over thirty-five years ago. Today, there are women of talent and expertise represented at every level of pottery execution and quality along the market continuum. Individual creativity and market recognition work together to create a context in which both men and women are able to capacitate themselves by acquiring the skills and competence needed to gain control over …

"Aquí­ No Pasó Nada": Terror, Remembrance And Healing In A Guatemalan "Green Zone", William G. Wagner

Anthropology ETDs

This research focuses on the experiences of survivors of political violence and their healers in Momostenango, Totonicapán. The majority population of Momostenango is Kiche' Maya. During Guatemala's civil war (1960-1996), the state used terror to silence popular resistance and to neutralize the threat of insurgent guerilla forces that drew wide support from Maya communities. From 1981 to 1983 state army and paramilitary forces resorted to scorched earth tactics that two different truth commissions subsequently characterized as genocidal. During the war, the military designated the town as a 'green zone' (a region sympathetic to and supportive of the military's counterinsurgency project). …

The Biological Evidence Of The San-Pau-Chu People And Their Affinities, Hsiu-Man Lin

Anthropology ETDs

Austronesian is one of the major language groups spoken. It is believed that Taiwan, Indonesian (east of Wallace line), or Bismarck Archipelago is the starting point for Austronesian migrations. It is also suggested that prehistoric cultures of Taiwan were established by the ancestors of the modern Taiwanese indigenous populations, who are also Austronesian speakers. The goals of this project are to estimate biological relationships of the San-Pau-Chu (SPC) to other Asian populations (especially Polynesians) and to evaluate if Taiwan indeed plays a major role in the history of Austronesian migrations by using both dental morphological data (metric and nonmetric dental …

Ecological Constraints And Life History Tradeoffs Among Human Foragers And Their Prey, Oskar Burger

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation attempts to identify ecological relationships useful for understanding large-scale patterns in human-environment interaction that can be applied to archaeological studies. It uses three established bodies of theory to understand ecological constraints and life history tradeoffs, applying the same basic framework to human adaptations and the demographic trends of other mammals. First, a model from optimal foraging theory (the marginal value theorem), which posits a tradeoff between resource availability and resource processing, is applied to zooarchaeology to understand human butchery patterns. Humans tend to butcher prey according to the predictions of the model in both ethnographic and archaeological settings: …

Of Muslim Persuasion: The Politics Of Convivencia In Ceuta, Spain, Gabriel Alejandro Torres Colón

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines everyday interactions and political struggles between self-identified Christians and Muslims in the North African Spanish exclave of Ceuta. I explore how each group envisions themselves as part of a local and national community, and then I consider how such visions affect local political processes in everyday life and institutional politics. This dissertation brings a political anthropological perspective to the study of multiculturalism and presents a theoretical perspective for the study of difference in various political contexts.

Ways Of Knowing About Weapons: The Cold War's End At The Los Alamos National Laboratory, Laura Agnes Mcnamara

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation addresses questions of knowledge, identity, scientific activity and social reproduction among nuclear weapons experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Throughout the Cold War, the laboratory's weapons community produced an enormous body of knowledge about nuclear weapons through engaging iteratively in an experimental cycle that consisted of designing, building and testing experimental nuclear explosives. This design and test cycle also fulfilled critical social functions. providing a site for the reproduction of skills and understandings in novice weaponeers as well as an engine for the ongoing integration of the many "ways of knowing" that existed in the laboratory. However, …

Hispanic Pottery As Evidence Of Craft Specialization In Late Colonial New Mexico, 1790-1890, Charles M. Carrillo

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation argues that some Hispanic villagers living in the frontier colony of New Mexico in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were engaged in pottery manufacture. Population growth and economic changes brought about conditions in which many Hispanics, when disenfranchised from productive farming and ranching, turned first to ceramic manufacture as an alternative strategy and eventually to ceramic craft specialization.

Archaeologists working with Spanish colonial, Mexican Republic, and territorial period sites in New Mexico and southern Colorado normally assume that the ceramics recovered from these sites were produced by Native Americans and acquired by trade. While this is true in …

Siblingship In Afro-Caribbean Kinship: The Garifuna Of Belize, Kenneth M. Robey

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines siblingship in the Garifuna village of Hopkins, an Afro-Amerindian community in southern Belize. It is based on intensive interviews with individual informants and comprehensive genealogical and demographic data that I collected during fieldwork there in 1987-89. In this study, I describe variations of Garifuna siblingship and changes in siblingship over time. I consider relationships between individual siblings and investigate sibling groups acting in solidarity or disunion towards other Garifuna social units and the outside world. I evaluate sibling interdependencies from childhood to old age in ordinary affairs and at times of crisis. In addition to looking at …

"Vayamos Allá Donde Está Nuestra Madre": Peasant Recruitment To A Mexican Millenarian Colony, Miguel C. Leatham

Anthropology ETDs

The worldwide Catholic Traditionalist sectarian movement has nurtured various independent colonies of prophetic origin emphasizing Marian apocalypticism and ongoing charismatic revelation. This study presents findings from ethnological research focusing on the recruitment paths of peasants into a charismatic-led, Marian millenarian colony of Catholic Traditionalist origin, Nueva Jerusalén, in rural west Mexico. A microsociological framework emphasizing cognitive variables, and rooted in the work of cultural anthropologists and sociologists of new religious movement, is employed in order to study religious decision making. Life history data from Mexican peasant recruits and peasant control cases are analyzed chiefly in terms of the experiential dimensions …