Anthropology Commons^™

Review Of Bones: Structure And Mechanics, Alexander Curry

Nebraska Anthropologist

Review of Bones: Structure and Mechanics (2002) by John D. Currey.

A Semiotic Analysis Of German-American Cultural Suppression In The Lincoln Freie Presse From 1914 To 1918, Elle Ward

Nebraska Anthropologist

This study performs a historical semiotic content analysis of the Lincoln Freie Presse to document the processes of cultural coercion and resultant identity erasure within the German- American press of Nebraska during the critical period of January 1914 to December 1918. The research establishes a semiotic baseline (1914–1916) characterized by high linguistic and content autonomy and then tracks the immediate, stark shifts following the U.S. entry into World War I (the coercion period) and the succeeding mass anti-German hysteria (1917–1918). Quantitative findings convey a rapid and overwhelming visual conquest of the newspaper’s spatio-textual landscape: patriotic symbolism surged from zero to …

Listening To The Cemí: An Exploration Of Taíno Spirituality Culture Through Artifact Analysis And Digital Archives, Jordan G. Richardson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

My research explores the evolution and continuity of Taíno spirituality culture across five centuries through artifact analysis and digital archives. While Spanish imperialism in the 15th century devastated Taíno populations and traditional craft production, I find that Taíno spirituality was not eradicated but rather adapted its mode of expression. The shift in medium from primarily pre- and peri- physical cemí artifacts (carved from wood and stone) to contemporary digital representations (online archives, blog posts, YouTube videos) illustrates two things: a) strategic integration of Taíno technological use to preserve spiritual practices while reestablishing cultural connectivity through education, community, and resistance movements, …

A Quest For Food In Bedford-Stuyvesant And Brooklyn Heights: Residential Interactions With Neighborhood Food Resources, Aidan Carroll , ‘26

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

This thesis examines urban inequalities situated across Brooklyn, New York by speculating residential interactions with food resources in their neighborhood such as gardens, grocery stores, restaurants, and food pantries. With a specific focus on the areas Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Heights of Brooklyn, New York, the study utilized qualitative data such as interviews and dietary food logs during ethnographic fieldwork in order to assess the ways in which experiences with accessing food can reveal a deeper message about systemic inequalities along the lines of racism and class if we are to consider food apartheid. That said, I found that food apartheid …

Beyond Judicial Intent: The Agency Of The Defense Counsel In Ozawa’S And Thind’S Supreme Court Cases, Bret K. Luchs

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis seeks to examine how specific legal strategies by the defense counsel in Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), compelled the Supreme Court of the United States into a reactive and contradictory position. A re-examination of Ozawa and Thind delves deeper into the legal briefs and arguments made by Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, alongside their legal teams. These briefs, opinions of the court, past lower court cases, and personal statements by Ozawa and Thind demonstrate how they did not surrender to the confines of …

Geospatial Investigations Of Big Buckhead Cemetery, Millen, Ga, Audrey E. Popard

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Geospatial investigations of burials are increasingly recognized as the most efficient and ethical means of determining grave locations in forensic and bioarchaeological research. A methodology of multi-tiered geospatial investigation has been applied to the Big Buckhead Baptist Church cemetery in Millen, GA. Using the systematic layering of geospatial technologies, the present study seeks to identify ground surface anomalies, with the objective of delineating known and potential unknown burial locations. It is hypothesized that the layered use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), will allow for the most efficient and accurate demarcation …

New Game Start: Playing With Power, Community And Change In Video Gaming Culture, Jonathan D. Muller

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Video gaming culture has long been a site associated with norms and values of whiteness, masculinity, and neoliberalism, with games, players, and developers all reinforcing these. Recently though, gaming culture has been directly involved with social movements and forms of resistance that are contrary to these norms and values. The typical gamer is no longer a white man, and gaming culture is now acknowledged to include race and gender dynamics that are close to that of the broader population. These communal shifts have both challenged and reinforced existing power structures. This research addresses these shifts and struggles by analyzing how …

A Glimpse Of Early Ellensburg, Washington From The 1980'S Excavations At 45kt800, Leah M. Shenyer

All Master's Theses

The Robber’s Roost site, located in the town of Ellensburg, Washington, was excavated in a partnership between Central Washington Archaeological Survey and Kittitas County Youth Services in the summers of 1986 and 1988. In 2023, the collection consisted of 110 boxes of artifacts including bottle glass, ceramics, leather, and faunal remains, with no significant prior analysis and little information on the dig itself. The purpose of this thesis is to document this poorly-known excavation project and gain a better understanding of Ellensburg’s history through analysis of the artifacts recovered. I compiled all the available paper records and communicated  with past …

Chapter 2: Rhombus Textile Motifs And Patterns And Their Significance In Mesoamerica, Billie J. A. Follensbee, Lois Martin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Presents the rhombus textile motifs and patterns in Mesoamerica and their significance.

Chapter 6: Snakeskin And Corn Markings: The Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern In The U.S. Southwest, Laurie D. Webster, Kelley A. Hays-Gilpin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses Southwestern tie-dye and its Mesoamerican and Andean connections.

Plant Practices And Community At The Heart Of Hopewell: Paleoethnobotany At The Overly Site And Beyond, Abigail Deewaard

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Paleoethnobotanical analyses of Ohio Hopewell habitation sites in past decades have shed light on the subsistence practices, settlement patterns, and environmental management of Indigenous peoples engaged in what archaeologists describe as the Hopewell phenomenon. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the social dimensions of plant use, particularly at habitation sites in the Scioto Hopewell region. Hopewell is an archaeological term that refers to the Middle Woodland (ca. 100 BCE–400 CE) network of interregional relationships across eastern North America characterized by long-distance exchange, monumental earthwork construction, and ceremonial practices including the honoring of ancestors. This thesis applies a social …

East To West: Cultural Attitudes And The Perceptions Of Death, Hannah F. Ahmed

UROP Posters

Death is a universal human experience, but cultures teach people to interpret it in different ways. These interpretations influence how individuals understand dying, how they cope with loss, what support looks like, and what meaning death makes in their lives. Eastern, spiritual, and religious traditions emphasize death as a natural transition or return to divinity rather than an endpoint, and as something one must prepare for. In these contexts, people often grow up hearing stories, prayers, and teachings that situate death within a broader journey. Because of this, death becomes something familiar and speakable rather than distant or frightening (Naderi-Afif …

Korean Wedding Hanbok In The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Odette Collins

Department of Anthropology

This report examines a men’s ceremonial hanbok from the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, attributed to South Korea in the mid-twentieth century. It discusses the garment’s materials, construction, and decorative techniques, as well as its function as wedding attire. The report situates the object within the historical context of Joseon dynasty court dress, particularly dallyeong robes, and analyzes its symbolic motifs, including crane rank badges. It also considers issues of attribution, provenance, and the broader cultural significance of hanbok in relation to class, tradition, and modern production.

Skeletal Markers: Interpreting Trauma, Healing, And Survival Through Osteological Remains From Medieval Pomerania, Michael Mulliner-Szyndler

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Traditionally, studies in bioarcheology have cited the presence of individuals with evidence of healed traumatic injuries and certain pathologies as an indication of social care either at the time of the trauma or throughout the individual’s lifetime. Here, I present three case studies of individuals who present with signs of having survived traumatic injuries and related pathologies. These individuals are from a late medieval cemetery in Żelewo, in the historical region of Pomerania in present-day northwestern Poland. The site is associated with the nearby town of Kołbacz, which is home to the oldest Cistercian monastery in Pomerania. This study aims …

Do You See What I Hear?: The Effects Of Musical Harmony On Cultural Perception And Recognition, Marvin Martin Williams

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explores whether listeners can identify the differences in harmonic progressions in a musical composition, and, if so, whether those differences can elicit a cultural or social perception of the origins of the music. By investigating how audiences respond to variations in harmony, specifically traditional versus altered harmonic treatments, the research offers a framework for music producers, educators, healthcare providers, and other cultural gatekeepers to better understand and engage with audiences on an empathetic and meaningful level. The underlying hypothesis posits that harmony in music does more than evoke emotion but may inform a cultural interpretation, thus presenting an …

(Dis)Orientations: Finding Rhythm Within Queer Nightlife In Los Angeles, Frances Bright Currie

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how queer individuals in Los Angeles perceive, inhabit, and reshape their experiences in queer cultural spaces. Through this project, I trace the evolution of queer nightlife in Los Angeles (from early gay counterspaces, through the collectivist politics of the Queer Nation, to post-gay assimilation and contemporary “inclusive” queer nightlife) in order to examine how queer space has been shaped and reshaped by a recurring tension between the utopian promise of universality and inclusion and the material realities of exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, queer theory, and approaches to memory and the archive, I argue that queer nightlife …

Book Review: Macarthur As Spirit: A Review Of Spirit Power: Politics And Religion In Korea’S American Century, Jieon Yoo

Asia Pacific Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Governing By Fragments: Soviet Ruins And The Architecture Of Unaccountability In Kazakhstan, Robert A. Kopack, Magdalena E. Stawkoski

Faculty Publications

This article examines two case studies in Kazakhstan with research into how Soviet institutional legacies underwrite extractive economies that render toxic costs invisible in post-Soviet setting. Through ethnographic work in Stepnogorsk (uranium processing) and the Semipalatinsk Test Site (nuclear weapons testing), we extend Gabrielle Hecht’s residual governance framework to demonstrate how inherited bureaucratic compartmentalization now serves market rather than state interests. We introduce the concept of functional nonreform to describe how distributed actors maintain Soviet-era boundaries that prevent accountability: Agencies monitor but don’t enforce, health authorities lack jurisdiction over contaminated sites, and environmental agencies measure radiation but cannot restrict land …

Missionary Body Politics: Physical Education In West China, 1905-1950, Cory Willmott

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Republican Era China saw a radical transformation in Chinese physical culture as it aimed to compete in the global geopolitics of nation-states. Employing an historical ethnographic approach, this paper outlines how the unique conditions of Sichuanese warlordism and secret societies affected missionary relations with the Guomindang (GMD) as they implemented increasingly militarized physical education programs. Before the 1928 GMD consolidation of power, missionaries and GMD educators aligned with the YM/ WCA in physical education programs. After the GMD moved their headquarters to Chongqing in 1938, relations soured between the GMD and the Sichuan missionaries. Although the latter had been the …

Reclaiming Presence: An Anthropological Study Of Digital Disconnection And Meaning-Making, Leslie De Paz

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Human attention is increasingly at risk in an unregulated digital ecosystem where overconsumption shapes neurological function, social interaction, and the ways people make meaning of everyday life. Dominant discourse around digital overuse tends to medicalize the problem, framing it as individual addiction or clinical dysfunction. In this thesis, I argue that such framing obscures what a cultural phenomenon is fundamentally, one in which people are actively questioning their relationship with technology, building awareness, and developing practices that help them slow down and reclaim agency within algorithmically mediated environments. This study draws on 22 semi-structured interviews with Gen Z and millennial …

Endocranial Lesions: A Paleopathological Study Of Late Medieval Skeletal Remains From Żelewo Poland, Francesca Aleen Meyer

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The site of Żelewo is located in a rural area of northwestern Poland, a region historically known as Pomerania. Skeletal remains from the cemetery associated with the archaeological site Żelewo 1-3, dating mostly to the 13th-15th centuries, are likely associated with a nearby Cistercian monastery. Numerous individuals from this site show evidence of endocranial lesions. To evaluate potential factors associated with the lesions, a differential diagnosis was performed based on macroscopic observations of endocranial lesion morphology and distribution. This study takes into account estimated age at death, biological sex, and other signs of pathology in the body. Potential confounding factors, …

The Battle Of Eden Station: Locating The Linchpin In Sherman’S Savannah Campaign, Roberto J. Jorge Jr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In December 1864, General William T. Sherman’s Union army approached Savannah, Georgia, towards the end of his “March to the Sea.” The Fifteenth Army Corps, part of Sherman’s Right Wing and commanded by General P. J. Osterhaus, crossed the Ogeechee River at Jencks and Wright’s Bridges, and advanced towards Station No.2 on the Central of Georgia Railway and the crossroads at Eden Station, located in Effingham County, Georgia. Three companies of the Tenth Battalion, North Carolina Heavy Artillery contested the crossing, falling back to multiple defensive positions before escaping by train in an effort to delay Sherman’s inevitable advance on …

Review Of The Red Market: On The Trail Of The World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, And Child Traffickers, Christine Parker

Nebraska Anthropologist

Review of The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers (2011) by Scott Carney.

"We All Came Back For Them. We Remembered": A Review Of Erin Kimmerle's We Carry Their Bones: The Search For Justice At The Dozier School For Boys, Molly Nowak

Nebraska Anthropologist

Review of We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys (2022) by Erin Kimmerle.

Unsettling The West: Migration Routes And Homesteading Through Oral Histories, Sidney Wickham

Nebraska Anthropologist

Westward expansion in the nineteenth-century United States has long been framed through settler-centered historical narratives that emphasize progress and national development. This article employs oral history as an ethnographic method to examine migration routes and homesteading experiences in Nebraska and the broader Midwest, foregrounding how memory, storytelling, and lived experience function as cultural practices. Drawing on interviews with descendants of homesteaders, community members, and museum professionals, alongside diaries, newspapers, and archival materials, this study analyzes how migration was remembered, narrated, and transmitted across generations. Rather than treating overland trails and homesteads as singular pathways of movement, this research situates them …

North Korean Archaeology And Archaeological Interpretation In The Twentieth Century, Gabrielle E. Stoddard

Nebraska Anthropologist

This paper examines how political unrest in North Korea during the twentieth century affected Korean Archaeology. During the occupation of the Korean peninsula by the Empire of Japan during 1910–1945, Japanese scholars embarked on the study of archaeology in Korea. Japanese archaeologists used Korean archaeological data and materials to push a colonial viewpoint that Korea was a weak state that could not advance without oversight from a conquering nation. After Korea was liberated by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1945, it was divided into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) and the Republic of Korea (South). …

Review Of From Here To Eternity: Traveling The World To Find The Good Death, Piper Sacco

Nebraska Anthropologist

Review of From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2018) by Caitlin Doughty.

Smudging And Polishing To Create A Non-Stick Surface For Ceramic Cookware: An Experimental Study, Galazie Pendleton

Nebraska Anthropologist

This paper examines whether smudging and polishing the interior of a ceramic cooking vessel will result in a non-stick cooking surface. The experimental study displayed in this paper is inspired by the prehistoric Southwestern practice of smudging and polishing ceramic bowls in the Mogollon region. Many scholars have assumed that smudged and polished cooking surfaces result in non-stick cooking surfaces, but no experimental studies have been conducted to test this. This paper aims to restart the conversation around the non-stick nature of smudged and polished bowls by recording the cleaning process after cooking. To create a holistic approach to this …

Tooth Ablation And The Jōmon - Yayoi Transition In Japan, Laura R. Erickson

Theses and Dissertations

The Jōmon – Yayoi period transition in Japan is marked by many migrants coming through the Korean Peninsula into Kyushu, sparking changes such as the introduction of wet-rice agriculture to the native hunter-gatherer-fisher Jōmon population and decreases in tooth ablation patterns and percentages. Ritual tooth ablation, or the removal of healthy front teeth, is typically seen as a coming-of-age practice, with the Jōmon having a diverse amount of ablation patterns. In this study, I explored how the rates and variation of tooth ablation changed throughout Japan after the arrival of Yayoi migrants from the continent. After calculating ablation rates per …

Digital Truth Making, Creative Resistance, And Power Negotiation Through Social Media: A Digital Ethnography Of The 2024 Gen Z Uprising In Bangladesh, Mustafizurrrahman Rahat

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates how social media shaped political participation during the 2024 July Uprising in Bangladesh, focusing on the production and negotiation of political truth, legitimacy, and resistance through everyday digital practices. Rather than conceptualizing social media solely as a communication tool, the study analyzes digital platforms as contested spaces where activists, state-aligned actors, and other participants constructed, circulated, and challenged competing political narratives throughout the uprising.

Drawing on digital ethnography, this study integrates netnographic observation of Facebook groups, pages, hashtags, memes, and protest-related visual content with content analysis, reflexive participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with Generation Z participants. The …