Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Introduction To Perspectives On Archaeological Resources Management In The "Great Plains", Alan J. Osborn, Robert C. Hassler

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The past two decades of archaeological investigations in the United States have been shaped significantly by cultural resource management (CRM) legislation. Although federal laws designed to protect the nation's archaeological record can be traced to the late 1800s, necessary funding was not made available for extensive work until 1974 with passage of the Moss-Bennett Bill (Judge 1982). The availability of federal monies for archaeological investigations at this time was unprecedented. Marked changes occurred in the discipline of archaeology that involved disruption of the traditional ties linking academic institutions and archaeological research throughout the country (Fowler 1982; Brose 1985).

Scientific Research Programmes: Toward A Synthesis And Evaluation Of Crm Archaeology, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeologists involved in conservation archaeology and/or cultural resource management have frequently been confronted with the dilemma described by Fowler (1982). Cultural resource management projects most generally have to be conducted within a restricted geographical area within a specified period of time. Many archaeologists have chosen to deal with the resource management dilemma in one of three ways. First, there are those that have chosen to view cultural resource management primarily as a professional service. Practitioners of "service" archaeology conduct archaeological surveys and excavations in order to determine the frequency, location, and extent of cultural remains within a specified area. Investigations …

Distribution Archaeology: Survey, Mapping, And Analysis Of Surface Archaeological Materials In The Green River Basin, Wyoming, James I. Ebert, Signa Larralde, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeology in America today is in a quandary. This is especially true for that portion of the profession responsible for investigating and managing the surface archaeology of large tracts of land. The quandary concerns how to maximize the amount of information about the archaeology of an area given finite budgets. Predictive modeling, a technique for projecting knowledge derived from a sample to its universe, has been proposed as one response to this dilemma. We shall present another response, distributional archaeology, which is designed to collect quality information about the archaeological record and is consistent with the formation and structure of …

"Preface" To Perspectives On Archaeological Resources Management In The "Great Plains", Alan J. Osborn, Robert C. Hassler

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

When faced with compiling an edited volume addressing cultural resources management the overriding problem is to maintain some resemblance of contemporanity with the current status of the field. Major changes have occurred over the last decade within "contract", "salvage" or "conservation" archaeology, now commonly referred to as cultural resources management. Some of these changes are due to additional state, provincial and federal rules, regulations and statutes requiring consideration of cultural materials to be affected by public "undertakings" in North America. Other changes are resultant of the boom and bust cycle of public-licensed private developments. The constant state of flux in …

Archaeological Conservation As Process And Product: A Federal Perspective, Ronald D. Anzalone

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Countless books and articles have either explored in some depth, or at least touched upon, the conservation of our cultural heritage. For the purposes of this volume, it would be an exercise in futility to attempt to detail current procedural requirements for historic preservation through various federal statutes and regulations. A number of sources have attacked this task in the past (e.g., Scovill, Gordon and Anderson 1977; King, Hickman, and Berg 1977). None has managed to provide completely up-to-date information on even the regulatory oscillations current that year, and there have been a myriad of changes since 1977. If there …

Knife River Indian Villages Archaeological Program: An Overview, F. A. Calabrese

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Knife River Indian Villages are located in North Dakota near the confluence of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, just north of the contemporary town of Stanton, North Dakota. They lie within the area between the Garrison Dam to the north and the Oahe Reservoir to the south, the last remaining unflooded segment of the Missouri River valley in the Dakotas. Within the area are river floodplains, terraces, dissected breaks and upland rolling terrain. Forests occur on the floodplain and lower terraces with a variety of native and exotic grasses found on the breaks and uplands. A number of relatively …

Another Style Of Competence: The Caregiving Child, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This chapter discusses child and sibling caregiving as an opportunity for the learning of nurturance and responsibility. The argument is based on case examples from ethnographic material, that children in multiage dyads or groupings negotiate constantly with one another and thereby reveal their reasoning about rational and conventional moral rules. The observational material is drawn from the work of Carol R. Ember (1970, 1973) who studied children in a Luo community of about 250 people in the South Nyanza district of Kenya. This community, referred to as Oyugis (actually the name of the market town 2.5 miles away, is one …

Sex Differences In The Recognition Of Infant Facial Expressions Of Emotion: The Primary Caretaker Hypothesis, Raymond B. Hames, Wayne A. Babchuk

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Although much research has been devoted to studying sex differences In functioning (e.g., Maccoby and Jacklin 1974), most efforts have been directed toward documenting or elucidating the proximate causes of sex differences. Few attempts have been made, however, to explain the ultimate causes of these differences or the selective pressures that have led to the development or psychological differences between males and females [for exception see Symons (1979) and Daly and Wilson (1983)]. Toward this end of blending psychology with evolutionary theory we develop what we call the " primary caretaker hypothesis," which predicts that the sex that through evolutionary …

Beating A Dead Horse: Reply To Levy’S Comments, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The author reponds with a rebuttal to comments made by Jerrold E. Levy concerning his paper "Ecological Aspcets of Equestrian Adaptations in Aboriginal North America" which was published in American Anthropologist, volume 85, pages 562-591.

Monoculture, Polyculture, And Polyvariety In Tropical Forest Swidden Cultivation, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

A number of researchers have suggested that polyculture is characteristic of native tropical forest swiddens and have adduced theory from community ecology to account for its adaptiveness. Ye’kwana and Yąnomamö swidden cultivation is examined, and it is shown that polyculture is not practiced to any significant degree. Instead, the concept of polyvariety is introduced along with a number of other cultivation practices that more simply account for the adaptiveness of Ye’kwana and Yąnomamö gardening. In addition, comparative data from other parts of the tropical world indicate that polyculture is no more common than monoculture and recent advances in ecological research …

Manioc And Fish: A "Methiononian" Compromise In Amazonia?, Tom Langdon

Nebraska Anthropologist

Protein as a limiting factor in Amazonian diet has met with considerable discussion and argument (e.g., Beckerman 1979; Chagnon and Hames 1979; Johnson 1982; Gross 1975, 1982; Spath 1978, 1981; Werner et al. 1979). The intent of this paper is to continue the discussion of protein as a limiting factor in Amazonia with respect to two dietary staples, manioc and fish. More specifically, does bitter manioc become a factor in determining aquatic resource utilization in Amazonia?

Frontier Subsistence: An Example Of Nineteenth Century Fur Trade Food Procurement, Leslie A. Perry

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

The area of Frontier subsistence strategies holds considerable potential for explaining Euroamerican adaptation in North America between A.D. 1500 and 1900. This thesis examines the interrelationships between food procurement activities of a nineteenth century northern Plains fur trade post, Fort Union, and its environmental and economic settings. The subsistence strategy identified from ethnohistorical, archival, and archeological data illustrates the way in which inhabitants of the fort coped with a variable local environment and the demands of the fur trade. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the post's subsistence strategy indicates that both the subsistence strategy and the economic base of the …

Cultural Ecology: A Brief Overview, Michael C. Gunn

Nebraska Anthropologist

Cultural ecology is based on the interaction of culture, man and environment. To the understanding of this relationship the present paper discusses the origin and development of cultural ecology, the various applications and techniques of cultural ecology by the anthropological discipline, and finally, criticisms and future goals of an ecological anthropology.

Ecology is not an anthropological subdiscipline, nor is it even a standardized approach in anthropology. Ecology may be defined as the science dealing with the study of entire assemblages of living organisms and their physical milieus, which together constitute integrated systems. More simply, ecology is the study of the …

Aboriginal Exploitation Of Marine Food Resources, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Anthropological interest in human exploitation of resources has increased considerably during the last decade. Archaeological and ethnological literature concerning man's utilization of the world's oceans is relatively abundant and there are now several on-going anthropological research programs, e.g., Aleutian Islands, Pacific Northwest Coast, California, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Southern Africa which focus primarily on maritime adaptations. The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to suggest that anthropological assumptions regarding marine food resources and their use are inadequate; (2) to examine marine ecosystems with respect to structure and dynamics, primary productivity, ecological efficiencies, distributional and quantitative …

Ye'kwana Basketry: Its Cultural Context, Raymond B. Hames, Ilene Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The aim of this article is to describe an aspect of Ye'kwana (Makiritare) technology, basketry, in its overall cultural context. We will not only describe basketry as technology per se but the role it plays in Ye'kwana symbolism, ecology, economy and social organization. Also, we will discuss its role in inter-village and inter-ethnic trade and how this role has implications for understanding socio-cultural change in the immediate area of the Padamo River Basin, Territorio Federal Amazonas, Venezuela.

Societal Complexity And Moral Development: A Kenyan Study., Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This study examines the moral judgment levels (as measured by Kohlberg’s 6-stage moral judgment interview) for two Kenyan samples. The first sample includes a culturally and racially group of 35 young men and 17 women studying at the University of Nairobi, while the second sample consists of 44 males and 14 females living in seven communities in the Central and Western Provinces of Kenya who were interviewed by a cadre of trained University students on their school vacation. The moral judgment interview included four hypothetical moral dilemmas and a standard set of probing questions. Three of the dilemmas were standard …

Socialization Of Children, Linda Davis

Nebraska Anthropologist

The children of a culture represent its greatest asset and responsibility. They insure the survival of a culture if its members can accomplish the formidable task of socialization. Americans are acutely aware of this responsibility. This concern is reflected in the tremendous amount of literature about children. For this reason, I used a familiar type of American literature, the comic strip, for an analysis of socialization in the United States. I chose to study "Dennis the Menace" and "Peanuts" because they deal specifically with children from a white, middle class neighborhood.

Socialization, as defined by Hartley and Hartley (In HSU …

The Direct-Historical Approach In Pawnee Archeology (With Six Plates), Waldo R. Wedel, Jade Robison , Depositor

Nebraska State Historical Society: Transactions and Reports

The direct-historical approach in archaeology assumes the existence of an analogous relationship between historic accounts and prehistoric data, serving to establish cultural identity under the basis of cultural continuity. In this article, Dr. Waldo Wedel uses the direct-historical approach to review some preliminary findings of archaeological investigations undertaken as part of an early effort to study the Pawnee culture of eastern Nebraska. The University of Nebraska Archeological Survey was established in 1929, led by Dr. W. D. Strong, in an attempt to better understand prehistoric Pawnee culture. Previous evidence existed in the form of A. T. Hill’s artifact collection and …

Report Of Department Of Archeology, Nebraska State Historical Society, Elmer Ellsworth Blackman, Jade Robison , Depositor

Nebraska State Historical Society: Transactions and Reports

In this report, State Archeologist E. Blackman wrote to the Nebraska State Historical Society about recently completed archeology fieldwork during 1901. Blackman first reports on recent additions to the Museum and details some of his explorations of 18 Indian village sites. Fieldwork emphasized an investigation of Pawnee sites, including the Wright Site and Burkett Site, both near Genoa. Blackman provides a month-by-month summary of his work, reporting on numerous topics including his travels, publications, and expenses. A broad overview of the archeology of Nebraska is also presented as it was known to that point. At the conclusion of Blackman’s report, …