Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Urban Consumption In Late 19th-Century Dorchester, Jennifer Poulsen

Anthropology, Historical Archaeology Masters Theses Collection

This thesis examines the bottles recovered from an 1895 fill deposit at the Blake House site in Dorchester, MA, to determine what inconspicuous consumption reveals about the anonymous consumers of Dorchester in the late 19th century. The assemblage is composed of 1,892 pieces of bottle glass, representing food, alcohol, medicine, and household products, 73 with original paper labels. The analysis presented here demonstrates the consumers were from several households and included men, women and children from immigrant populations. Despite evidence for intensive recycling of bottles, indicating that these individuals were under economic stress, they had some amount of discretionary money …

Ghost Dancing And The Iron Horse: Surving Through Tradition And Technology, Alex K. Ruuska

Publication

This article explores how railroad technologies, so critical in constructing the imagined nation of the nineteenth-century United States, were simultaneously shaped by multiple social groups including the native communities of North America. This analysis demonstrates how Native Americans’ resistance to and use of railroad technologies contributed to the revitalization and construction of ritual practices and pan-Indian identities associated with the 1890s Ghost Dance. Using case studies of the Northern Paiutes of western Nevada and the Sioux nations of South Dakota, Native Americans’ utilization of railroad technologies are examined during two periods of encroachment, revealing shifting attitudes and practices towards Euroamerican …

Informe Técnico Final Del Trabajo De Campo Del Proyecto De Investigación Arqueológica Caylán (Temporada 2010), David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Cultural Site Stewardship Program – Program Expansion And Steward Retention: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending June 30, 2011, Margaret N. Rees

Cultural Site Stewardship Program

• One cultural site steward class was held this quarter adding 17 volunteers.
• Team focus is upon plan to transition project to state stewardship program

Recent Investigations Of Mission Period Activity On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Richard W. Jeffries, Christopher R. Moore

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Prior to their retreat to Florida in 1684, Muskogean-speaking Guale Indians inhabited much of what is now the Georgia coast. The arrival of Spanish missionaries in Florida and Georgia in the mid-1500s began what is known archaeologically as the mission period (1568-1684), a time of sustained interaction between the Spanish and the Guale people. Over time, population loss due to European-introduced diseases and conflict with English-backed Native American slave raiders resulted in a drastic reconfiguration of Guale society and the abandonment of the Guale's ancestral homeland (Worth 2007).

Sapelo Island (Figure 6.1) is the site of at least one Spanish …

The San Pedro Mission Village On Cumberland Island, Georgia, Carolyn Brock

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The San Pedro de Mocama mission, located on Cumberland Island, Georgia, was the principal Spanish mission of the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians from 1587 to the early 1660s. This paper describes some of the results of archaeological fieldwork and research (Rock 2006) completed at the mission village site, technically known as the Dungeness WharfSite (9CM14). (Figure 7.1).

Archaeologically, most mission studies have focused on the missions themselves, particularly on their churches, conventos, and kitchens. At the San Pedro mission village site, however, the church complex has not been located and may have been lost to erosion. Therefore, in the course of …

Backroom Treasures: Ct Scanning Of Two Ibis Mummies From The Peabody Museum Collection, Andrew D. Wade, Salima Ikram, Gerald Conlogue, Ronald Beckett, Andrew J. Nelson, Roger Colten

Anthropology Presentations

Museum collections of Egyptian human and animal mummies have great potential for research and museums often curate larger collections than those on exhibit. Scheduling access for medical imaging projects is often complicated for mummies on display because of the important environmental controls under which they are kept. Consequently, collections in storage are often more numerous and more readily available, in terms of time and physical access, than those on exhibit.

Application of computed tomography (CT) to the study of mummified remains allows for detailed three-dimensional evaluations, without the difficulties of superimposition that characterise plain film radiographs. Three-dimensional visualisation, multi-planar reformats …

Geographic Information Systems Correlation Modeling As A Management Tool In The Study Effects Of Environmental Variables’ Effects On Cultural Resources, Brian Wallace

Anthropology Graduate Projects and Theses

Utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offers the field of Cultural Resource Management greater capacity in managing resources. New regression analysis tools recently released in ESRI ArcGIS software offer potential for determining more accurate statistical analyses of the relationships between cultural material and environmental variables. The contemporary trend of federal cultural resource managers and GIS analysts working with smaller budgets is to allocate fiscal resources for tools which will enable them to continue successfully managing their resource. ArcGIS software continues to be the industry standard in managing spatial data to accurately represent the existence, condition, and location of cultural material. With …

Recent Archaeological Survey And Excavation Around The Greater Kalokol Area, West Side Of Lake Turkana: Preliminary Findings, Amanuel Beyin

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

After the long period of arid conditions in the terminal Pleistocene, the global climate turned to wet and humid at the onset of the Holocene Interglacial ~10 ka BP (Gasse 2000; Hassan 1997). Under the wet and intermittently dry conditions of the early Holocene (10-6 ka BP), lakeshores, seashores and rivers became attractive for human exploitation in many parts of the world (Erlandson 2001). In Africa, sites associated with aquatic intensification have been reported in the Sahelian-Saharan belt, dating roughly from 9500-5000 years BP (Holl 2005). The Turkana Basin in northern Kenya became a mega-lake in the early Holocene, with …

Breasts Are For Feeding: An Anthropological, Archaeological Examination Of Breastfeeding, Blaize A. Uva

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

A Viking Age Political Economy From Soil Core Tephrochronology, Kathryn Anne Catlin

Graduate Masters Theses

Saga accounts describe Viking Age Iceland as an egalitarian society of independent household farms. By the medieval period, the stateless, agriculturally marginal society had become highly stratified in exploitative landlord-tenant relationships. Classical economists place the origin of differential wealth in unequal access to resources that are unevenly distributed across the landscape. This irregularity is manifested archaeologically as spatial variations in buried soil horizons, which are addressed through thousands of soil cores recorded across Langholt in support of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey. Soil accumulation rates, a proxy for land quality, are derived from tephrochronology and correlated with archaeological and historical …

Farmstead And Household Archaeology At The Barrett Farm, Concord, Massachusetts, Thomas P. Mailhot

Graduate Masters Theses

Changes in the landscape across the Barrett farmstead in Concord, Massachusetts, are examined and related to changes in the household during the 1850s and 1860s. Although the Barrett family had a long and prosperous tradition of farming in Concord, this changed at the end of the 19th-century, as the farm was reduced in size and the operation reduced in scale. The majority of artifacts and data recovered from an excavation in 2007 by UMass Boston dealt with the 19th-century occupation of the farmstead. Changes in the household and across the farmstead in the 19th-century can be seen archaeologically through the …

Flint At The Fort: Investigating Raw Material Scarcity And Locations Of Lithic Activity At Monhantic Fort, John M. Kelly

Graduate Masters Theses

The Monhantic Fort site on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in southeastern Connecticut has yielded many insights into Pequot life in the late 17th century. This fortified village, occupied during King Philip's War, has given archaeologists a glimpse of the domestic practices and organization of the people who lived within as well as details about how they engaged with military expeditions. In this thesis, I examine the lithic assemblage from Monhantic Fort. This assemblage, comprised of European flint employed to create tools like gunflints and strike-a-lights, can be used to investigate how the Pequots utilized new stone tool technologies and negotiated …

Factors Controlling Pre-Columbian And Early Historic Maize Productivity In The American Southwest, Part 2: The Chaco Halo, Mesa Verde, Pajarito Plateau/ Bandelier, And Zuni Archaeological Regions, Larry Benson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Chemical and nutrient analyses of 471 soil samples from 161 sites within four archaeological regions (Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, Zuni, Mesa Verde, and the Chaco Halo) were combined with historical climate data in order to evaluate the agricultural productivity of each region. In addition, maize productivity and field-life calculations were performed using organic-nitrogen (N) values from the upper 50 cm of soil in each region and a range (1–3%/year) of N-mineralization rates. The endmember values of this range were assumed representative of dry and wet climate states. With respect to precipitation and heat, the Pajarito Plateau area has excellent agricultural potential; the …

Nutrition And Stature: The Residents Of The Island Of Gotland, Sweden Killed In The Battle Of Wisby, 1361, Michelle A. Miller

Masters Theses

This research examines stature in order to assess the socio-economic status of Gotland, an island (and municipality) off the coast of Sweden, before the 1360's. Gotland was known as a wealthy and autonomous peasant republic although it was loosely ruled by the Swedish Crown. In 1361, the Danish Army laid siege on the seaport city of Wisby to obtain its riches. Three days after the battle, the approximately 1800 dead Gotlanders were tossed haphazardly into five common graves. Archaeological excavations took place from 1905-1930 by Bendt Thordeman, among others. The human remains were analyzed in 1937. Osteological analysis in the …

Cacao Use And The San Lorenzo Olmec, Terry G. Powis, Ann Cyphers, Nilesh W. Gaikwad, Louis Grivetti, Kong Cheong

Faculty Articles

Mesoamerican peoples had a long history of cacao use—spanning more than 34 centuries—as confirmed by previous identification of cacao residues on archaeological pottery from Paso de la Amada on the Pacific Coast and the Olmec site of El Manatí on the Gulf Coast. Until now, comparable evidence from San Lorenzo, the premier Olmec capital, was lacking. The present study of theobromine residues confirms the continuous presence and use of cacao products at San Lorenzo between 1800 and 1000 BCE, and documents assorted vessels forms used in its preparation and consumption. One elite context reveals cacao use as part of a …

Book Review Of "The Archaeology Of North American Farmsteads" By Mark Groover, Louann Wurst, Dustin Conklin

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of "The Archaeology Of Institutional Confinement" By Eleanor Conlin Casella, Sherene Baugher

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of "The Archaeology Of Race And Racialization In Historic America" By Charles E. Orser, Paul A. Shackel

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of "Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering With Museum Curators, Teachers, And Community Groups" Edited By John H. Jameson, Jr. And Sherene Baugher, Lynn Evans

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.