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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Reconsidering The Auricular Surface As An Indicator Of Age At Death, Daniel L. Osborne, Tal L. Simmons, Stephen P. Nawrocki
Reconsidering The Auricular Surface As An Indicator Of Age At Death, Daniel L. Osborne, Tal L. Simmons, Stephen P. Nawrocki
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Using standards established by Lovejoy et al. (1) to estimate age at death from auricular surface morphology, 266 individuals of documented age, sex, and ancestry from the Terry and Bass Donated Collections were scored. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicates that for the factors that could be controlled, age is the sole influence on auricular surface morphology. Ancestry and sex had no significant effect on auricular phase expression. No evidence of secular changes was detected when comparing the Terry Collection (early 20th century) to the Bass Collection (later 20th century). Pearson correlations reveal that several of the subcomponents of the auricular …
Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology Past And Present, Effie F. Athanassopoulos, Luann Wandsnider
Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology Past And Present, Effie F. Athanassopoulos, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Recent studies of Mediterranean landscapes have emphasized their diversity, their fragmentation, and the high degree of contact between their diverse areas, that is, their connectivity (Horden and Purcell 2000). Moreover, the Mediterranean landscape record is recognized for its length and richness and the opportunity it offers to study long-term interaction between humans and their landscape, however landscape is defined. At the same time, the particular histories of archaeological perspectives that have dominated fieldwork in the region make it difficult to compare with other areas, for example, the New World. Thus, with this volume, our intent is to address issues of …
Artifact, Landscape, And Temporality In Eastern Mediterranean Archaeological Landscape Studies, Luann Wandsnider
Artifact, Landscape, And Temporality In Eastern Mediterranean Archaeological Landscape Studies, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Intensive survey over the last several decades has detailed an archaeological surface record in the Mediterranean that Cherry (1983:395, emphasis in original) describes as "likely to consist of a virtually continuous spatial distribution of material over the landscape, but a distribution extremely variable in density." In addition, geoarchaeological work, often coupled with survey, has demonstrated just how dynamic Mediterranean surfaces have been. Both of these field practices, intensive survey and geoarchaeology, were carried out in part to enable regional settlement pattern studies, to collect accurate, reliable, and precise data about past settlements and their location with respect to each other …
Adaptive Responses Of Paleoindians To Cold Stress On The Periglacial Northern Great Plains, Alan J. Osborn
Adaptive Responses Of Paleoindians To Cold Stress On The Periglacial Northern Great Plains, Alan J. Osborn
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Archaeologists' cumulative knowledge about Paleoindians has grown substantially during the past two decades, and accomplishments have been impressive. I find, however, that much of the research regarding the archaeology of the Paleoindian period is primarily descriptive and highly particularistic. In this essay, I propose that our understanding of Paleoindian artifact assemblages, associated ecofactual materials, and human remains can be more meaningful within a broader biophysical context. We must ask how the archaeological record of the Late Glacial period might provide paleoanthropologists with greater insights into early hunter-gatherer anatomy, physiology, diet, health, and behavior. I propose that our understanding of hunter-gatherer …
Hunter-Gatherers In Jackson Hole, Wyoming: Testing Assumptions About Site Function, Kenneth P. Cannon, Dawn R. Bringelson, Molly Boeka Cannon
Hunter-Gatherers In Jackson Hole, Wyoming: Testing Assumptions About Site Function, Kenneth P. Cannon, Dawn R. Bringelson, Molly Boeka Cannon
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
The settlement-subsistence pattern of hunter-gatherers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has been viewed historically as an economic system organized around the altitudinal distribution of seasonally ripening food crops and has come to be known as high country adaptation (HCA). Although this study does not take issue with the basic tenet of the modelhunter- gatherer movement through altitudinal zones for the exploitation of seasonally available resources-we critically assess the normative functional interpretations presented by previous investigators. We examine artifacts in three lithic assemblages from southern Jackson Hole in terms of the organization of technology as a means to investigate each locale's function …
Poison Hunting Strategies And The Organization Of Technology In The Circumpolar Region, Alan J. Osborn
Poison Hunting Strategies And The Organization Of Technology In The Circumpolar Region, Alan J. Osborn
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
INUPIAT ESKIMO WHALERS are allowed to kill up to 50 bowhead whales every year in the arctic waters off Barrow, Alaska. Some of the older bowheads are more than 20 m in length and weigh more than 50 tons. Since 1981 the Inupiat have found at least six lance and harpoon end blades embedded within the thick blubber that insulates these magnificent mammals (Raloff 2(00). These archaeological weapon points included projectiles fashioned from chipped stone, ground slate, ivory, and iron. Wildlife biologists have suspected that whales may live to be quite old. One can only imagine their surprise, however, once …
Niche: A Productive Guide For Use In The Analysis Of Cultural Complexity, Lewis R. Binford
Niche: A Productive Guide For Use In The Analysis Of Cultural Complexity, Lewis R. Binford
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
THIS CHAPTER EXPLORES some of the interpretative implications of a failure to consider the potential causes for organized variability among cultural systems. The niche concept is considered useful when exploring organizational similarities and differences among cultural systems and central to a productive discussion regarding the differences between living systems that are biologically as opposed to culturally organized. Some interesting issues regarding systems complexity are focused upon through a discussion of mutualism and what is implied by the term when students of cultural systems use the idea.
Solving Meno's Puzzle, Defeating Merlin's Subterfuge: Bodies Of Reference Knowledge And Archaeological Inference, Luann Wandsnider
Solving Meno's Puzzle, Defeating Merlin's Subterfuge: Bodies Of Reference Knowledge And Archaeological Inference, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
THE MIND OF Lewis Binford is nimble and constantly evolving. In part, one can map Binford's prodigious intellectual growth by looking at the research trajectories of his students, who often continue on paths they began under his tutelage. In my case, certainly, this is very true. When I arrived at the University of New Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Binford was exploring the nature of the archaeological record: how to understand past human organization at a supra-ethnographic scale, what we might learn from bones and site structure, and how to reliably give meaning to the archaeological record. …
Mobility, Sedentism, And Intensification: Organizational Responses To Environmental And Social Change Among The San Of Southern Africa, Robert K. Hitchcock
Mobility, Sedentism, And Intensification: Organizational Responses To Environmental And Social Change Among The San Of Southern Africa, Robert K. Hitchcock
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
HUNTER-GATHERER ADAPTATIONS included mobility strategies that were geared toward mapping people on to both resources and other people. There are factors that condition the ways in which people position themselves on the landscape and move over it. Mobility strategies are organizational responses to the structural properties of the natural and social environments (Binford 1980, 2001). The logistical component of a settlement system, in which task-specific groups range out from residential locations for purposes of obtaining food, raw materials, or information, is related to the organization of production of a society as well as to the distribution of critical resources in …
Department Of Anthropology And Geography Self-Study Report To The Academic Planning Committee, Department Of Anthropology And Geography
Department Of Anthropology And Geography Self-Study Report To The Academic Planning Committee, Department Of Anthropology And Geography
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
In January of 2001 the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Geography became the Department of Anthropology and Geography. This merger was not requested by members of either unit: it was imposed administratively. Under ideal circumstance, such mergers evolve organically through a history of collaborations from the bottom up. Nevertheless, faculty of each unit had collaborated in a variety of contexts so there was some basis for integration. As one may imagine, one of the first things we set out to accomplish as a newly formed unit was the establishment of a common set of by-laws. After about six …
Women’S Work, Child Care, And Helpers-At-The-Nest In A Hunter-Gatherer Society, Raymond Hames, Patricia Draper
Women’S Work, Child Care, And Helpers-At-The-Nest In A Hunter-Gatherer Society, Raymond Hames, Patricia Draper
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Considerable research on helpers-at-the-nest demonstrates the positive effects of firstborn daughters on a mother’s reproductive success and the survival of her children compared with women who have firstborn sons. This research is largely restricted to agricultural settings. In the present study we ask: “Does ‘daughter first’ improve mothers’ reproductive success in a hunting and gathering context?” Through an analysis of 84 postreproductive women in this population we find that the sex of the first- or second-born child has no effect on a mother’s fertility or the survival of her offspring. We conclude that specific environmental and economic factors underlay the …
Solving Meno’S Puzzle, Defeating Merlin’S Subterfuge: Bodies Of Reference Knowledge And Archaeological Inference, Luann Wandsnider
Solving Meno’S Puzzle, Defeating Merlin’S Subterfuge: Bodies Of Reference Knowledge And Archaeological Inference, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
THE MIND OF Lewis Binford is nimble and constantly evolving. In part, one can map Binford's prodigious intellectual growth by looking at the research trajectories of his students, who often continue on paths they began under his tutelage. In my case, certainly, this is very true. When I arrived at the University of New Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Binford was exploring the nature of the archaeological record: how to understand past human organization at a supra-ethnographic scale, what we might learn from bones and site structure, and how to reliably give meaning to the archaeological record. …
Solving The Puzzle Of The Archaeological Labyrinth: Time Perspectivism In Mediterranean Surface Archaeology, Luann Wandsnider
Solving The Puzzle Of The Archaeological Labyrinth: Time Perspectivism In Mediterranean Surface Archaeology, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
This chapter critiques the currently embraced paradigm in Mediterranean surface archaeology of regional/settlement pattern studies – seated in flat-time functional metaphysic. As shown by Mediterranean archaeologists, that chronotype does not deal well with either complexity or history. And, attending methods, also as demonstrated by Mediterranean archaeologists, do not consistently accommodate or satisfactorily assign meaning to the varied archaeological landscape. But another formational metaphysic exists and seems better to comprehend the complex, historical world and to acknowledge landscape variation.This chapter argues for approaches to the Mediterranean landscape that accept and embrace a time perspectivism.