Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

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.

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 …

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 …

Socialization Of Boys And Girls In Natural Contexts, Carolyn P. Edwards, Lisa Knoche, Asiye Kumru

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Socialization is the general process by which the members of a cultural community or society pass on their language, rules, roles, and customary ways of thinking and behaving to the next generation. Sex role socialization is one important aspect of this general process. The goals of earlier work were to understand how, why, and at what age girls and boys begin to vary behaviorally along such dimensions as "nurturance," "aggression," and "dependency," including determination of how sex-typical dispositions are influenced by cultural factors. This chapter presents a new approach seeking to answer such questions as the following. How are different …

Introduction To Endangered Peoples Of Africa And The Middle East : Struggles To Survive And Thrive, Robert K. Hitchcock, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Endangered Peoples of Africa and the Middle East: Struggles to Survive and Thrive is about human populations residing in Africa and the Middle East, a diverse region that is connected geographically, culturally, and historically. The African continent is vast and covers 11.7 million square miles, or an area slightly larger than the combined area of the United States and South America (Table 1). Today, the African continent is home to some 771 million people distributed within fifty-four separate countries. Of the world's continents, Africa is by far the most diverse culturally. In Sudan, for example, there are over 200 ethnic …

The Ogoni Of Nigeria, A. Olu Oyinlade, Jeffery M. Vincent

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Ogoni are a minority ethnic people who live in the Western Niger Delta Region of southern Nigeria. During the 1970s, Ogoniland, or the Ogoni Nation, became part of the Rivers State of Nigeria. There are approximately 500,000 Ogoni who represent less than 0.05 percent of Nigeria's 100 to 120 million people. The population density of this region equals 1,233 people per square mile, making it one of the most densely populated areas of Nigeria. Reliable information about the origin of the Ogoni is limited. Archaeological and oral historical evidence suggests that the Ogoni have inhabited the area for over …

Evolving Questions And Comparative Perspectives In Cultural/Historical Perspective: Lessons From Research In Ngecha, Kenya, Carolyn Pope Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In studying human development in cultural-historical context, we must integrate multiple levels of analysis and strive to identify culture’s imprint inside the contexts of socialization. Issues of methodology are complex. This paper argues that both comparative and historical-interpretive studies are valuable and indeed generative for each other, using as an example an international, collaborative research project focused on East African women and changing childrearing values. The site was Ngecha, a Gikuyu-speaking community in the Central Province of Kenya, during a period of rapid social change from an agrarian to a wage earning economy shortly after national independence (1968-1973). The experiences …

The Rwandese, Clea Msindo Koff, Ralph J. Hartley

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Rwandese are a set of peoples who live in the country of Rwanda in eastern central Africa who today number an estimated 7.9 million.2 Rwanda is a small country that has the highest population density (numbers of people per square-mile) in Africa. All Rwandese speak Rwanda (Kinyarwanda), and some speak French, Swahili, or English. Rwandese identify with three population groups called Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. Today, these labels are used as ethnic identifiers; however, in the past they designated an individual's occupation. It is not clear if the words Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa existed in ancient times when people …

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The 2002 Season, Nicholas Rauh, Luann Wandsnider, F. Sancar Ozaner, Michael Hoff, Rhys Townsend, Matthew Dillon, Mette Korsholm, Hulya Caner

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Project conducted archaeological and geoarchaeological research in the Gazipaşa area from July 20 through 1 September 2001. Several goals were met this season. Under the direction of Michael Hoff and Rhys Townsend, detailed plans were completed of monumental structures at the sites of Asar Tepe, Lamos, and Selinus. At Lamos, in particular, the team made a number of finds, including the discovery of an inscribed statue base of large size in a small podium complex on a hill above the so-called "stadium."

The Fort Clark Archeology Project, 2000-2001 Historical Archeological Investigations., William J. Hunt Jr.

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Historical archeological work during the summers of 2000 and 2001 has been directed toward development and installation of a series of interpretive panels relating to the history, archeology, and peoples living at Fort Clark. In anticipation of this, investigations in 2000 included small scale testing and large scale geophysical surveys at the village and both trading posts. Fieldwork in 2001 was more focused and utilized geophysical survey data from both years to guide a multi-university field school excavation at Fort Clark. Excavation goals were to clarify the structural history and evolution of the post, discern functional change in one portion …

Play Patterns And Gender, Carolyn P. Edwards, Lisa Knoche, Asiye Kumru

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This cross-cultural analysis examines the gendered patterns of play seen in children worldwide. Play is a culturally universal activity through which children explore themselves and their environment, test out and practice different social roles, and learn to interact with other children and adults. Early in life, children identify themselves as a “girl” or a “boy,” and this basic self-categorization lays a foundation for their developing beliefs about with whom, what, how, and where they will play. Children play an active role in their own and their peers’ “gender socialization” (the process by which they come to acquire the knowledge, values, …

Sandal Types And Archaic Prehistory On The Colorado Plateau, Phil R. Geib

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Perishable artifacts provide an alternative to projectile pointsfor examining spatial patterns in Archaic material culture between northern and southern portions of the Colorado Plateau of the North American Southwest. This is so because they possess a potential great variety of specific construction and design attributes and can be directly dated to establish independent chronolo- gies of development. The analysis and dating of a collection of warp-faced plain weave sandals from Chevelon Canyon, Ari- zona demonstrates the potential utility of perishable artifacts to our understanding of prehistory. The collection provides an importantfirst sample of early Archaicfootwearfor the southern Colorado Plateau. AMS …

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The Year 2000 Season, Nicholas K. Rauh, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

During the 2000 season the RCASP Survey Team surveyed approximately five square kilometers in the vicinity of Lamos and along the ridges surrounding the Adanda River valley in interior Rough Cilicia. Geoarchaeological inspection of beach, lagoon, and terrace deposits of the Hacimusa River was conducted by F. Sancar Ozaner and Hülya Caner. Together Ozaner and Caner identified the locations where geomorphological trenches would be excavated during the 2001 season. Caner also collected surface sediments from lagoonal deposits of the Hacimusa and Bickici Rivers for further analysis. Under the direction of Michael Hoff and Rhys Townsend, a preliminary architectural map was …

Who’S Buried In Custer’S Grave?, P. Willey, Douglas D. Scott

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

On 10 October 1877, the year after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, General George A. Custer’s coffin was transported from a temporary grave in Poughkeepsie, NY, by steamer and cortege to permanent interment in the U.S. Military Academy’s Post Cemetery. The ceremony included the appropriate military and funerary rituals. There were, nevertheless, reasons to believe that Custer’s skeleton may not have been in the coffin—thus, he may have missed his own funeral. Custer’s remains, or part of them, may have been overlooked during the exhumation and left on the battlefield, only to be recovered around 1940. These bones, as …

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The 1999 Season, Nicholas K. Rauh, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In 1999 the team turned attention to an area of mountainous rural hinterland behind Iotape and some 500 m above the valley of the Delice Çay and the village of Kahyalar.Employing coarse interval survey methodology we conducted a sweep of a network of ridges extending from a peak known locally as Nergis Tepesi to the village of Kahyalar below. When evidence of past human activity or disturbances was observed by the team, especially architectural remains or ceramics clusters of more than one sherd per square meter, the area became designated as a 'site', if only for purposes of recording. Once …

The Fact And Fiction Of Vikings In America, Karri L. Springer

Nebraska Anthropologist

Many people do not fully understand the stories, history, archaeology or evidence for Viking presence in North America. This paper evaluates the stories against the scientific evidence found to date. Archaeologists, although qualified to discuss all sides of the arguments, rarely do, because of the lack of career rewards for doing so. However, the problems associated with hoaxes should be important to all archaeologists interested in maintaining credibility with the public. Viking legends are well suited for such evaluation. The Kensington runestone hoax is emphasized in this evaluation while other Viking hoaxes are overviewed. Relevant evidence from archaeological sites in …

Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project: Report Of The 1998 Season, Michael Hoff, Nicholas K. Rauh, Rhys Townsend, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

During the 1998 season the Rough Cilicia Survey team shifted the focus of our research to the discovery and analysis of rural sites and rural field tracks in the southern coastal portion of the survey zone (between ancient Selinus, modern Gazipasha, and ancient Nephelion (modern Muzkent). To learn more about historic landscape use in the area, the field team surveyed 21 transects comprising more than 17 linear kilometers of survey terrain. To record our finds we employed GPS tracking devices to track our progress on 1:5000 topographical maps acquired from the Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlügü (all sites are identified …

Review Of The Prehistoric Pueblo World A.D. 1150-1350, Edited By Michael A. Adler. Tucson: The University Of Arizona Press, 1996. 279 Pages, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Excerpt:

This volume provides the reader with very useful summaries and overviews of the archaeological record for the prehistoric Pueblo III period. It also introduces the reader to a broad range of research topics-models of demographic change, population aggregation, local and regional “abandonment,” architectural variation, settlement layout(s), living space, aspects of community integration, ceramic assemblages, land-use practices, carrying capacity, conflict, exchange, and macro regional interaction-that have been addressed recently in this area. In addition, this volume contains data about settlement numbers, sizes, and distributions for seventy-the districts within twelve regions. Districts were delineated on the basis of archeological patterns, established …

Review Of Sanumá Memories: Yanomami Ethnography In A Time Of Crisis. Alcida Rita Ramos. Madison: University Of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Xx, 346 Pp. (Paper)., Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

As I have done considerable research among the Yanomamö,1 it was with anticipation that I received notice of Alcida Ramos' publication of Sanumá Memories. This work is a useful contribution to the large and still expanding research on the Yanomamö, an Amazonian people who have become a classic case study for anthropology and the social sciences. They are probably the most widely read about tribal people in the world, largely a consequence of Napoleon Chagnon's immensely popular ethnography Yanomamö: The Fierce People (first published in 1968 and the most recent edition in 1992).

The Yanomamö have become a focal point …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Behavioral Sex Differences In Children Of Diverse Cultures: The Case Of Nurturance To Infants, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This chapter draws on the data from the Children of Different Worlds study (Whiting & Edwards, 1988) to consider the origin of sex differences in children’s behavior worldwide, in particular: (1) how different kinds of social behavior are elicited by different contexts of socialization (defined by the sex, age, status, and kinship of social interactants, ongoing activities, and other potent dimensions of setting); (2) how these contexts of socialization are distributed across cultures and associated with various adult subsistence strategies, family structures, household patterns, and forms of social networks; and (3) how boys and girls of each age in diverse …

An Isolated Storage Vessel At Site 42sa20779 In Glen Canyon National Recreation Area: Adaptive Storage And Caching Behavior In The Prehistoric Southwest, Anne M. Wolley, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report documents the excavation and analysis of a large, isolated ceramic vessel discovered in the spring of 1988 in the Hite Marina area of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah Project #89-NA-051N. Several college students from Western State College in Colorado (Dean Brian, Matt How, Cathy Arvey, and Mike Donaldson) were hiking in the area when Dean Brian discovered the pot. Aware of the possible significance of such a find, Matt How immediately contacted Park Archaeologist Kris Kincaid and informed her of the vessel's location. Matt later returned with his family, Micky and JoNell How, when archaeologists Kincaid and …

Review Of Early Prehistoric Agriculture In The American Southwest, By W. H. Wills. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School Of American Research Press, 1988. 196 Pages., Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Last paragraph:

Wills's book provides archeologists with an innovative account of why and how past hunter-gatherers initially expanded their food-getting activities to include the cultivation of domesticated crops. His study makes use of a variety of subjects including r- and K-selection, density-dependent responses, risk minimization, the forager-collector continuum, maize phenology, Holocene environments, technological change, stylistic variation, social boundaries, and mating networks. Wills also offers new information and reassessments of the archeological record at Bat, Tularosa, Cordova, and Cienega Creek caves in the Mogollon highlands. He approaches the archeological literature for the American Southwest with healthy skepticism. And he challenges many …

The Transition From Infancy To Early Childhood: A Difficult Transition, And A Difficult Theory, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The transition from infancy to early childhood was observed in households in rural Zinacanteco households in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, in 1968-1969, and found to be a fairly lengthy period of upset, disturbance, listlessness, and apathy for the children, leading eventually to their accepting a new position in the family. The transition involved three abrupt and harsh changes: (1) abrupt weaning from the mother’s breast; (2) simultaneous change in sleeping arrangements from lying next to the mother to sleeping with siblings; and (3) more gradual transfer of the child’s primary care from the mother to older siblings or courtyard …

The Allocation Of Parental Care Among The Ye'kwana, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

It is well known that human children require more care or parental investment than any other primate species (Lancaster and Lancaster 1983). While this dimension of human behavior is well documented in the psychological literature for Euroamerican populations (Babchuck et al. 1985), it has received scant, quantitative attention by anthropologists working among tribal populations (for exceptions see Whiting and Whiting 1975, Katz and Konner 1981, Hurtado et al. 1985, Hewlett, this volume (Chapter 16), Turke, this volume (Chapter 10)). The role of alloparental care (care of non-offspring children) has received even less quantitative attention by social scientists (for a review …