Anthropology Commons^™

Colonialism In Perspective: A Comparative Bioarchaeological Study Of Quality Of Life Before And During Roman Conquest, Meredith M. Amato

Student Publications

This paper analyzes the current bioarchaeological data that has been gathered from populations that lived before and in the midst of the Roman Empire. Case studies are taken from multiple areas within the boundaries of the empire, including Italy itself, Britain, Gaul (what is today known as France), Spain, North Africa, and the Near East. Geography and other factors make each individual’s experience of colonialism different, and the data that can be taken from human remains shows that colonialism was an unequal system that cannot be given a single, strict definition.

The Public Reckoning: Anti-Debt Futures After #Rickyrenuncia, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

This essay argues that the summer 2019 mobilizations in Puerto Rico and the renewed demand for a debt audit help to imagine anti-debt futures that disrupt the terms and temporalities of public debt and indebted lives. The essay discusses one form of debt resistance-a comprehensive citizen debt audit-as central to deepen the process of public reckoning marked by #RickyRenuncia and to build upon the landscapes of protest and solidarity emerging in its wake.

Searching For Galveztown: Employing Multiple Methodologies To Identify Features Of The Galveztown Settlement, Ashlee Taylor

LSU Master's Theses

Galveztown (1778-1806) was a Spanish fort and settlement located in southeastern Louisiana. This site was historically important as it provided protection for the city of New Orleans during a time of constantly shifting geopolitical environment. Today, this site is among the most important historical archaeological sites in Louisiana. Culturally, this site is significant as the descendants of the settlers still live within the Baton Rouge metropolitan area. Archaeologically, the site is significant due to the limited disturbance and lack of urban development at the location which has protected the archaeological record.

Galveztown is also one of the best documented Canary …

Commmunity, Ecology, And Modernity: Faunal Analysis Of Skútustaðir In Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, Megan Hicks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the archaeofaunal remains from Skútustaðir, a middle to high-status farm in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, to understand the experience of rural communities and their ecologies during Iceland’s transition from regulated colonial exchange to a capitalist economy during the 17^th through 19^th centuries. Archaeofaunal analysis is used to reconstruct changes in the ways that people herded, hunted, and fished, providing insights into how they managed their local environments for subsistence and novel contexts of exchange. In addition to archaeofaunal analysis, primary textual sources are explored to assess how the Skútustaðir household and its rural community mobilized long-term …

Oceania In The Plains: The Politics And Analytics Of Transindigenous Resurgence In Chuukese Voyaging Of Dakota Lands, Waters, And Skies In Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, Vicente M. Diaz

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Eat This In Remembrance: The Zooarchaeology Of Secular And Religious Sites In 17th-Century New Mexico, Ana C. Opishinski

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the faunal remains from LA 20,000, a 17th-century Spanish estancia near Santa Fe, New Mexico that was inhabited by a family of Spanish colonists and indigenous laborers. The data collected from these specimens are examined to better understand the diet of the site’s inhabitants, especially in conjunction with existing data on the plant portion of the diet at this site. Creating a more complete picture of the diet, the analysis covers Number of Identified Specimens (NISP), Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI), potential meat weight represented by the various species, bone modifications, and ageing and kill-off patterns. These …

Comales And Colonialism: An Analysis Of Cuisine And Ceramics On A 17th-Century New Mexican Estancia, Adam C. Brinkman

Graduate Masters Theses

The archaeological site of LA 20,000 is an early colonial Spanish estancia, or ranch, in New Mexico that was occupied between A.D. 1630 to 1680. Spanish estancias became the homes and work spaces for people with a wide range of cultural backgrounds. In this thesis, the author analyses the ceramics and ground stone assemblage of LA 20,000 to understand the daily practice of cuisine on this rural frontier. Cuisine has important symbolic components related to an individual’s identity. Through the practice of cuisine, inhabitants consumed foods that fit conceptions of acceptability, enacted preparation and cooking methods that were taught intergenerationally, …

Set In Stone: Recontextualizing The Lithic Assemblage Of A Seventeenth-Century Storage Cellar In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Anna M. Greco

Graduate Masters Theses

Feature 43 is a domestic structure that belonged to the wealthy seventeenth-century merchant community of Charlestown, Massachusetts, and was excavated in the early 1980s as part of the Maudlin Archaeological District. The extant collection has remained in storage for the last thirty years, demanding a recontextualization of the site, both in provenience and in historical context. Primary sources portray an image of a predominantly European settler household; however, a counter-narrative emerges from lithics found within the assemblage. While the ultimate goal is to analyze the patterns of lithic sourcing and production in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the findings hinge on …

In The Name Of Profit: Canada’S Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve As Economic Development And Colonial Placemaking, Richard M. Hutchings, Marina La Salle

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Taking a critical heritage approach to late modern naming and placemaking, we discuss how the power to name reflects the power to control people, their land, their past, and ultimately their future. Our case study is the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve (MABR), a recently invented place on Vancouver Island, located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Through analysis of representations and landscape, we explore MABR as state-sanctioned branding, where a dehumanized nature is packaged for and marketed to wealthy ecotourists. Greenwashed by a feel-good “sustainability” discourse, MABR constitutes colonial placemaking and economic development, representing no break with past practices.

Between Hagiography And Wounded Attachment: Raphaël Lemkin And The Study Of Genocide, Benjamin Meiches, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we outline the significance of the special issue on the scholarship of Raphaël Lemkin. We argue that genocide scholars tend to identify with one of three different types of Lemkin scholarship. Each of the articles for the special issue challenges these genres in an effort to extend the study of genocide in new directions. Moreover, we contend that this work suggests that genocide scholars should endeavor to extend the study of genocide beyond Lemkin's vision and writings.

Authenticating Loss And Contesting Recovery: Fema And The Politics Of Colonial Disaster Management, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

The chapter discusses how institutional regulators of disaster recovery "authenticate" loss and contribute to the process of disciplining disaster subjects. Drawing on ethnographic research after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the chapter suggests that alternative grassroots approaches to disaster recovery point to a reimagining of "recovery" organized around a framework of support and affective relations.

Returns Unraveled: Reflections On Appropriate Destinies For Museum Objects With Questionable Pasts, Jos Van Buerden, Kathleen M. Adams, Paul Catteeuw

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Tools Of Teaching: Metal At Magunkaquog, Nadia E. Waski

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis provides the results of a comprehensive analysis of the metal artifact assemblage from Magunkaquog, a mid-17th- to early-18th-century “Praying Indian” community located in present-day Ashland, Massachusetts. Magunkaquog was the seventh of fourteen “Praying Indian” settlements Puritan missionary John Eliot helped in gathering between the years of 1651-1674 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s attempts to convert local Native American populations to Christianity. Originally the site was discovered during a cultural resource management survey conducted by the Public Archaeological Lab (PAL), and further investigated by the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research (then known as the Center for Cultural …

The Colonized Masculinity And Cultural Politics Of Seediq Bale, Chin-Ju Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “The Colonized Masculinity and Cultural Politics of Seediq Bale,” Chin-ju Lin discusses a Taiwanese blockbuster movie, a postcolonial historiography and a form of life-writing, which delineates the last Indigenous insurrection against Japanese colonialism. This article explores the cultural representations in Seediq Bale. Fighting back as a colonized man for pride and dignity is portrayed as means to restore their masculine identity. The headhunting tradition is remembered, romanticized, praised highly as heroic and even strengthened in an inaccurate way to promote individualistic masculinity and to forge a new national identity in postcolonial Taiwan. Nevertheless, the stereotypical …

Voices Of Liberation: Indigenous Political Writings In Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, And Vanuatu During The Decolonization Era, David Chappell

Pacific Studies

Historians of post-1945 decolonization in Oceania often say that British “administrations were pushing for independence more than the islanders” (Thompson 1994, 153), and a literature scholar criticized indigenous political writings for their “absence of a truly revolutionary heritage [or] utopian schemes” (Subramani 1992: 18–20). Yet, considering the arbitrary colonial bordering in linguistically diverse Melanesia, “national” political consciousness was still under construction. Islanders had governed themselves in local village councils for millennia and had very limited access to colonial education, so grassroots movements for self-empowerment rarely embraced the entire colonial territory. The foreign-derived names of Melanesian countries typified their nation-building challenges: …

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Climate Change, Colonialism, And Second-Class Citizenry: A Case Study Of The Impacts Of Hurricane María In Puerto Rico, Aislyne Calianos

Senior Honors Projects

The hurricane season of 2017 was a historic one, with mammoth storms making landfall one after another, in what seemed like an unrelenting assault on our coastal cities and communities. Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston, Irma plowed through Florida, and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, but one of these storms was unlike the others. Why is it that the American citizens of our southern states were able to recover so much more quickly than our citizens in Puerto Rico? In the era of climate change, we will be forced to reckon with the modern legacy of colonialism, as vulnerable communities must face …

Everyday Violence And Women's Lives In Zambia: An Autoethnography, Amina Shikupilwa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gender inequality has been a prominent feature of human societies for the longest time. Zambia, like most countries in Africa, is very conservative and patriarchal in nature. In a typical Zambian household, the male is the head of the family. I am going to talk about my experiences as a female growing in a culture that was highly patriarchal and traditional, and how those experiences have shaped me into the person that I am today. Central to my experiences, is the issue of violence in our home which I experienced from a young age. Domestic Violence is prevalent in most …

The Elephant (Head) In The Room: A Critical Look At Trophy Hunting, Chelsea Batavia, Michael Paul Nelson, Chris T. Darimont, Paul C. Paquet, William J. Ripple, Arian D. Wallach

Big-Game and Trophy Hunting Collection

Trophy hunting has occupied a prominent position in recent scholarly literature and popular media. In the scientific conservation literature, researchers are generally supportive of or sympathetic to its usage as a source of monetary support for conservation. Although authors at times acknowledge that trophy hunting faces strong opposition from many members of the public, often for unspecified reasons associated with ethics, neither the nature nor the implications of these ethical concerns have been substantively addressed. We identify the central act of wildlife “trophy” taking as a potential source of ethical discomfort and public opposition. We highlight that trophy hunting entails …

Understanding Violence Against Foreigners In Cape Town: Conceptions Of Autochthony And Xenophobia In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Mary L. Casey

Student Publications

Examining the correlation between the history of colonialism and structures of Apartheid in South Africa and the current xenophobic violence experienced by Black African immigrants settling in Cape Town. This thesis explores theories of autochthony and belonging in the context of Cape Town, Black South African relationships and ownership of land, access to resources and opportunities for employment, and the continued disenfranchisement of Black South Africans in the wake of Apartheid. These components of the issue of xenophobia in Cape Town are factored into an analysis of how and why violence persists against immigrants in the city.

African Environmental Change From The Pleistocene To The Anthropocene, Colin Hoag, Jens-Christian Svenning

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This review explores what past environmental change in Africa—and African people's response to it—can teach us about how to cope with life in the Anthropocene. Organized around four drivers of change—climate; agriculture and pastoralism; megafauna; and imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism (ICC)—our review zooms in on key regions and debates, including desertification; rangeland degradation; megafauna loss; and land grabbing. Multiscale climate change is a recurring theme in the continent's history, interacting with increasingly intense human activities from several million years onward, leading to oscillating, contingent environmental changes and societally adaptive responses. With high levels of poverty, fast population growth, and potentially …

Heads Or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces From Colonial California, Lee M. Panich, Emilie Lederer, Ryan Phillip, Emily Dylla

Faculty Publications

Modified ceramic disks have been recovered from historic-era sites across the Americas. Small unperforated disks are commonly interpreted as gaming pieces and larger perforated disks are often classified as spindle whorls. Here, we examine these interpretations in light of collections from three colonial-era sites in central California: Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San José, and the Rancho San Andrés Castro Adobe. We argue that the small unperforated disks from our study sites were two-sided dice. These gaming pieces facilitated the social cohesion of Native people living in the large, multiethnic Indigenous communities that formed around Spanish colonial missions and …

“We Like Mexican Laborers Better”: Citizenship And Immigration Policies In The Formation Of Puerto Rican Farm Labor In The United States, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

This paper examines how colonialism and immigration policies define the citizenship of Puerto Rican farmworkers in relation to the immigration policies of guestwork. The Jones Act created in practice an ambiguous status for Puerto Rican migrants by granting U.S. citizenship to colonial subjects in a time when citizenship still meant being White and Anglophone. In addition, the importation of Mexican braceros tended to shape people’s perceptions of farmworkers as “foreign.” Puerto Ricans were and are constantly asked, challenged, and suspected by mainstream society of being “illegal aliens.” These perceptions had a lasting effect through World War II, the H-2 Program, …

Skeptics And “The White Stuff” : Promotion Of Cows’ Milk And Other Nonhuman Animal Products In The Skeptic Community As Normative Whiteness, Corey Lee Wrenn

Dietary Choice and Foods of Animal Origin Collection

This article discusses a dairy advertising campaign featuring skeptic Derren Brown. I explore the various health claims made in the ads as well as a report Brown featured on his website that claimed consumption of cow’s milk is linked to longevity. I discuss how dairy consumption is largely linked to race and ethnicity. It is a practice enjoyed primarily by European whites as most nonwhites are lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance is a normal biological process associated with weaning, but it is medicalized and made deviant because it is not part of the white experience. I also mention comments made by …

Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

Sidney Mintz’s field journal for The People of Puerto Rico, published in 1956, is a valuable source for historical anthropological work. Until now, however, it has remained a hidden treasure for the anthropology of migration. By the late 1940s and 1950s, migration was central to the lives of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers and their families, and Mintz recorded important details of it. His journal shows how people maneuvered within fields of power that were full of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to make a living by migrating. Thanks to Mintz, anthropologists can learn about working-class Puerto Ricans’ experiences, lives, …

You Can’T Walk Where There Is No Ground, Paul Stoller

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hyphenated Japan: Cross-Examining The Self/Other Dichotomy In Ainu-Japanese Material Culture, Jonathan Chira Shapiro

Honors Papers

This is a historical ethnography that examines how shifts Japanese national identity and values of homogeneity have affected Japan’s minority Ainu population. I argue that the symbolic position of Ainu culture has historically been rearranged to suit prevailing ideas about Japanese nationality and culture without input from Ainu. Using theoretical understandings of Self-Other dichotomies, I examine the particular way these practices manifested in Meiji Japan to create modern Japanese national identity, and how these functioned both against the West and people colonized by Japan. From there, I look at how cultural nationalism was objectified as present from time immemorial in …

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Environmental Dimensions Of Colonial Settlement: A Palynological Investigation Of La Cienega, New Mexico, Kyle W. Edwards

Graduate Masters Theses

Using palynological data, this project explores how changing land use practices associated with successive waves of colonial settlement shaped local environments in La Cienega, New Mexico. This is accomplished by linking collected pollen data to known historic occupations beginning with pre-colonial Puebloan populations and continuing through the present day, encompassing both Hispanic and Anglo-American colonial occupations. The data were collected from a single sediment core taken at a small pond located within La Cienega. Pollen from 12 samples was analyzed, providing a 600-year record of changes within local plant communities. The collected data are interpreted in relation to known archaeological …

An Inquiry Into The Harshness Of German Colonialism In Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, Jessica Rohr

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis investigates German colonialism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It discusses the pressure and competition Germany experienced as neighboring countries also aggressively expanded and as Europe underwent massive and rapid industrial growth. It also analyzes the harshness Germany employed in colonizing foreign lands and the reasons for such measures, such as perceived racial and social superiority and economic need.