Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Carbon 14 Dates For Pvn And Pvc, Edward Schortman

Four Valleys Archive

No abstract provided.

The Elemental Analysis Of Groundstone Celts From Noble-Wieting Using The Pxrf: A Provenance Study, Julian A. Marvel

Theses and Dissertations

Groundstone axes, or celts, were prehistoric stone tools used for chopping, cutting, or woodworking. Made from hard stone like basalt or granite, it was shaped by grinding and polishing rather than flaking, giving it a smooth, durable surface. Celts typically have a tapered edge and were often hafted onto wooden handles or used by hand. They were common in Neolithic cultures around the world and served both practical and sometimes ceremonial purposes. In this thesis, I analyze celts from Noble-Wieting (11ML24), a 14th-century Langford tradition village in McLean County, Illinois.

Specifically, my research addresses the following questions about these groundstone …

Geographic Disparity And The Comparison Of Projectile Points In Central California, Robert Clark Newcomb

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The study of stone projectile point typology is not new. Many scholars have developed both similar and very different approaches to classifying various point types based on a wide variety of key morphological characteristics. The comparison of projectile point types and sizes from disparate regions, however, has not been widely examined. This research utilizes the classification systems of Noel Justice (Justice 2002a) and Brian Glenn (Glenn 1991) as a basis for comparing projectile point specimens from two disparate geographic regions. The first specimen collection comes from the Vandenberg Space Force Base region on the central coast of California and represents …

Migrations And Malthusian Demographics Amongst Two Pioneering Paleo-Inuit Traditions, Skyla Moyer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding the ways in which resource variability, environmental conditions, and cultural behavior impact population movements has been a central concern both within the subfield of arctic archeology and within anthropology as an overarching discipline. To provide insights into these questions in Greenlandic contexts, Saqqaq and Independence I occupation movements have been examined through an analysis of broad trends in the radiocarbon record throughout the duration of these two cultural traditions. While the ultimate goal of this analysis is to recognize patterns in occupational progressions as indicated by the radiocarbon record, the demographic and environmental forces of change involved in the …

Unveiling Legacies: Exploring And Analyzing Cultural Artifacts In The Higbee Collection, Samantha Staller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Anthropology and the Cummings Center to find ways to properly analyze an archaeological collection's artifacts to understand the overall significance of everything better. Before starting my research, I came up with the following questions: Can any artifacts be considered culturally affiliated? Is everything in the collection authentic? What is the overall background of the collection? Does this collection have any connection to Ohio history? Can anything in the collection be dated? Throughout the research, I will create an Excel inventory list to include qualitative and quantitative data from the artifacts to give insight into what is included in the Higbee …

Heritage And Archaeological Knowledge Dissemination Strategies: A Kurd Qaburstan Case Study, Myli R. Sangria

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis addresses the long-standing absence of community archaeology initiatives in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by designing and implementing a pilot public archaeology program at the site of Kurd Qaburstan, a large Middle Bronze Age city (ca. 1800 BCE) located on the Erbil Plain. In summer 2024, the author implemented a community archaeology activity designed as a first step toward sustained engagement with the village that partially overlaps the site. The program—a hands-on lesson in archaeological stratigraphy for K–5 students, followed by a guided site visit—was intentionally simple, affordable, and easy to carry out alongside ongoing fieldwork. The activity …

Role Of C4 Resources In Isotopic Variability In Diet Among Children From Kellis 2 Cemetery, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, Faith R. Hendrix

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Using stable carbon isotope analysis, this study investigates dietary diversity in children buried at the Kellis 2 Cemetery (c. AD 50–450) in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis. From the analysis of δ¹³C isotope values in hair keratin and bone collagen, the study reconstructs short-term and long-term dietary signals in juvenile and adult subjects. The aim is to clarify the role of C₄ plants—particularly millet—in weaning and childhood diets in a Romano-Christian Egyptian village context. A total of 631 segmented hair and 54 bone collagen samples were analyzed from 127 juveniles and 97 adults. Juvenile individuals (i.e., under 15 years biological age) showed …

Archaeoparasitology Of The Colorado Plateau, Karl J. Reinhard, Morgana Caacho

Karl Reinhard Publications

Archaeoparasitology has been conducted in the Southwest for 57 years. In the first decade of the period, two pictures of parasitism emerged. Analysis of compressed organic sediments from a latrine at Elden Pueblo presented a spectrum of geohelminths not different from medieval Europe. These findings contrast pronouncedly with an analysis of coprolites from all other studies that show consistent pinworm parasitism at other sites in the Southwest. We summarize the paleoepidemiological bases for these contrasting phenomena.

People Of The Ogeechee: Subsistence And Landscape Use In The Late Archaic Ogeechee River Valley, Caleb R. Jeck

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Precontact life in the Ogeechee River valley of Georgia’s Coastal Plain is significantly understudied in contrast to the adjacent Savannah River valley and the coast of Georgia. Research in these regions has provided a substantial amount of archaeological data that has helped us to understand Late Archaic period dynamics and the settlement patterns of precontact people, primarily those associated with Stallings culture. The Ogeechee River valley figured prominently during the Late Archaic period, especially during Classic Stallings times, yet the region’s archaeological record is largely unexamined. Settlement patterns for coastal Georgia and the middle Savannah River valley have been proposed …

Evaluating The Accuracy Of Stature Estimation From Tibial Radiographs Using Known And Newly Developed Regression Formulas, Atlantis Kae Baron

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study assesses the accuracy of stature estimation from tibial radiographs using digital measurements as an alternative to traditional osteometric tools. Stature estimation is crucial in forensic anthropology for identifying individuals, especially cases involving skeletal remains. Traditional methods rely on physical measurements and established regression formulas, such as those by Trotter & Gleser (1958).

This research analyzed tibial radiographs from the Forensic Anthropology Skeletal Trauma (FAST) database with ImageJ software to measure tibial lengths digitally. The sample included 59 tibiae, with measurements compared against three regression formulas; Trotter & Gleser (1958), Simon et al. (2023), and a new regression formula …

Workable Seams, Jackson Mills Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In Jackson Mills Smith’s Workable Seams, readers encounter the stories, landscapes, and lives of rural Knox County, Indiana, from the oscillating vantage of a Hoosier boy raised with a Cajun sensibility. After relocating from Louisiana to the river bottoms of the crossroad state at a young age, the speaker gradually uncovers a local history only previously understood in fragmentary shards and fading glimpses.

Alternating between semi-lyrical embodied experiences and memories, documentary pieces in conversation with the state’s historical archive, and the retelling of exaggerated local yarns, poetry is a means of inquiry in Workable Seams. Topics range from …

Organization Of Lithic Technology At 48ye240 Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: Bifaces As Indicators Of Environmental Predictability, Hunter Alan Watry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

48YE240 within the Hayden Valley of Yellowstone National Park is a pre-contact hunter-gatherer site recorded on two separate terraces along the Yellowstone River. This site and the two terraces are divided by the Grand Loop Road. The higher terrace is west of the road, while the lower terrace is east of the road, adjacent to the Yellowstone River. The lower terrace was excavated in 1999 and included a hearth feature dating to the Middle Archaic. The higher terrace was excavated in 2020 and contained intact cultural deposits. This thesis presents a lithic analysis of the assemblage recovered from the higher …

Pathways And Places: Mobility And Lithic Use At 48ye238 In The Late Archaic And Late Prehistoric Yellowstone, Jacob Q. Wilmoth

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through the lens of Central Place Foraging Theory, an analysis of lithic remains from 48YE238, a medium to high-density archaeological site in the Hayden Valley of Yellowstone National Park, has provided insight into both material value and decision-making among Late Archaic and Late Prehistoric hunter-gatherers of the Hayden Valley. First, an examination of lithic materials and the stages of bifacial reduction, in relation to sourced lithic materials, offers insight into changing ideas of material value between these two periods. This is especially evident when considering the cultural and societal changes that influenced regional residence during the Late Prehistoric period, compared …

Diet And Migration In The Prehistoric Populations In The Greater Nicoya Region Of Nicaragua, Ashley Nichols Whitten

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

The goal of this three-paper dissertation was to engage with the archaeological hypotheses of prehistoric migration from Mesoamerica into the Greater Nicoya Region of Nicaragua. To that aim, this dissertation contains a discussion on the current information supporting and refuting the migratory hypotheses. New data is also presented in the form of stable isotope analysis and bioarcheological analysis of dentition from prehistoric archaeological sites in Pacific Nicaragua.

The first paper titled “Prehistoric Foodways and Migration Hypotheses in the Greater Nicoya Region of Nicaragua” outlines the current available research concerning migration out of Mesoamerica into Pacific Nicaragua. The potential migration is …

Regional Authority And Economic Interaction In The Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin, Veracruz, Mexico, Shayna Skye Lindquist

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation examines various networks of interaction underlying political and economic organization through a series of three papers that investigate the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB), Veracruz, Mexico. The three papers are linked through their shared concern with a reliance on models of political economies that fall short in capturing the diverse and nuanced ways individuals and groups cooperated. While my primary focus is on the Early Classic period (AD 300-600), I engaged diverse datasets that provide context from which the ELPB’s Classic period societies emerged. The first two papers present the results of technological and geochemical analyses of obsidian …

The Maritime Archaic Occupation Of The Stock Cove Site (Ckal-3), Newfoundland, Canada, Dana M. Keil

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Stock Cove site (CkAL-3), located on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, is an archaeologically rich multi-component site. The Maritime Archaic (ca. 8,000-3,200 BP) culture was the earliest people to inhabit the island of Newfoundland and the Stock Cove site, settling the island by at least 6,400 years ago. Their ability to maintain lithic traditions was key to their success. Finding new sources of lithic material would have been necessary and that process would have varied greatly across the island. In southeastern Newfoundland, far away from key lithic sources on the mainland, this would have been even more important as …

"An Ancient Vanished Race:" Industrial Mythistory And The Alternative Archaeology Of Lake Superior Copper, Donovan C. Murphy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis explores how the perspectives, biases, and values of Euro-Americans regarding the copper mining industry have shaped a mythology which centers Lake Superior copper in an imagined pre-Columbian global trade network. Notably, many iterations of this mythology are rooted in a rejection of Indigenous agency in the creation of these sites, ascribing them instead to a ‘vanished race’ which had surely once occupied the region. The core of this thesis is formed around a set of semi-structured interviews with representatives of regional heritage institutions and avocationalists which were conducted with the goal of identifying how and why these stories …

From Riches To Ruin: An Exploration Of The Conglomerate Mining Company's Compressor House, Jill T. Muraski

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This archaeological investigation revealed new insights about the story of the Lake District Copper Mining Industry through the Conglomerate Mining Company’s compressor house building. This structure once housed the air compressor powering the mine’s rock drills. Combining archaeological and historical data, this research is one of the first investigations into a compressor house at a mine location. Excavations were undertaken in order to investigate the physical structure and remains of the building. This thesis integrates fieldwork and historical data to understand the changes to the social and working landscape of the Keweenaw, such as the change in ethnic groups, and …

Territory And Border Dynamics Among Small Pre-Hispanic Polities In Western Chiapas, Mexico, Antonio Martinez Tunon

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines the concept of territory in premodern polities, challenging modern assumptions that territory is a static or obsolete notion in the face of globalization. It critiques the conventional Westphalian model of state sovereignty, emphasizing that premodern political entities often exhibited flexible, overlapping territorial arrangements rather than fixed, linear boundaries. By analyzing territorial organization in premodern societies, this research explores the historical evolution of territoriality, identifying continuities and transformations over time.

Drawing from archaeology, anthropology, and historical geography, the research investigates how different societies have defined and maintained territorial control based on factors such as political authority, economic resources, …

Household Archaeology Of An Eighteenth Century Settlement In Vermont, Usa, Stephen D. Butz

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The rediscovery of ruins in the mountains of Vermont may shine light on the theory and practice of household archaeology and its potential to reveal the social and economic status of the people who once resided there. To this date, there are the remains of twelve structures identified as potential dwellings located on Egg Mountain in Sandgate, Vermont, which local folklore claim were the homes for the refugees who fled from Massachusetts during Shays’ Rebellion in 1787. Shay’s Rebellion was an uprising that took place in Massachusetts led by Captain Daniel Shays in response to the unfair treatment of veterans …