Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Recovery Method For Mites Discovered In Mummified Human Tissue, Jessica Smith

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Much like other arthropods, mites have been discovered in a wide variety of forensic and archaeological contexts featuring mummified remains. Their accurate identification has assisted forensic scientists and archaeologists in determining environmental, depositional, and taphonomic conditions that surrounded the mummified remains after death. Consequently, their close association with cadavers has led some researchers to intermittently advocate for the inclusion of mites in archaeological site analyses and forensic case studies. However, despite their potential value, mites have been underutilized with a variety of reasons for the lack of inclusion of mites in archaeological and forensic analyses. Chief amongst these reasons is …

Identifying Opportunities For Collective Curation During Archaeological Excavations, Anne Austin, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, Eric Kansa, Jennifer Jacobs, Phoebe France

History Faculty Works

Archaeological excavations are comprised of interdisciplinary teams that create, manage, and share data as they unearth and analyse material culture. These team-based settings are ripe for collective curation during these data lifecycle stages. However, findings from four excavation sites show that the data interdisciplinary teams create are not well integrated. Knowing this, we recommended opportunities for collective curation to improve use and reuse of the data within and outside of the team.

Bacteria, Guano And Soot: Source Assessment Of Organic Matter Preserved In Black Laminae In Stalagmites From Caves Of The Sierra De Atapuerca (N Spain), Joeri Kaal, Virginia Martínez-Pillado, Antonio Martínez Cortizas, Jorge Sanjurjo Sánchez, Arantza Aranburu, Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Eneko Iriarte

International Journal of Speleology

Speleothems are a recognized source of paleoclimatic information, but their value as a source of signals from human activities in caves with an archaeological record has rarely been explored. Previous studies of speleothems in the Sierra de Atapuerca karst system (Burgos, northern Spain) revealed an important human fossil record, provided information about human activities in and around these caves, and the impacts on their natural environment. The present study reports the results of molecular characterization of dark-colored laminae from the stalagmites Ilargi (Galería de las Estatuas) and GS1, GS2, and GS3 (Galería del Silo), by pyrolysis-GC-MS (Py-GC-MS) and …

Modesty And Security: Attributes Associated With Comfort And Willingness To Engage In Telelactation, Adetola F. Louis-Jacques, Ellen J. Schafer, Taylor A. Livingston, Rachel G. Logan, Stephanie L. Marhefka

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The objectives were to identify conditions under which mothers may be willing to use telelactation and explore associations between participant characteristics, willingness, and beliefs regarding telelactation use. Mothers 2–8 weeks postpartum were recruited from two Florida maternal care sites and surveyed to assess demographics, breastfeeding initiation, and potential telelactation use. Analyses included descriptive statistics and logistic regression models. Of the 88 participants, most were white, married, earned less than USD 50,000 per year, had access to technology, and were willing to use telelactation if it was free (80.7%) or over a secure server (63.6%). Fifty-six percent were willing to use …

Book Review Of The Money Museum Of The Deutsche Bundesbank By Sylvia Obst, Marshall Joseph Becker

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Chemical Mapping To Evaluate Post-Depositional Diagenesis Among The Earliest Ceramics In The Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico, Wesley D. Stoner, Barry J. Shaulis

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Chemical and mineral sourcing techniques are commonly employed in archaeology to reconstruct patterns of ceramic exchange and raw material procurement practices for the past, but the effects of post-depositional diagenesis are still often ignored despite a number of key studies warning that the composition of ceramics from archaeological deposits often diverges greatly from their original composition at the time of production. This current study on diagenesis derives from a large chemical and petrographic analysis of some of the earliest ceramics (1500-100 cal Before Common Era [BCE]) in the Basin of Mexico at a time when the development of ceramic trade …

An Analysis Of Ceramic Vessel Form And Function At The Pockoy Island Shell Rings, Catherine Garcia

Senior Theses

Four thousand years ago, Late Archaic peoples along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia accumulated mollusk shells into enormous, circular structures known as shell rings. The purpose of these rings has been a subject of archaeological debate for decades, with no clear consensus as to whether they are accidental accumulations of domestic refuse, or intentionally constructed landscape markers with ceremonial or symbolic meaning. This paper presents the results of a morphological and functional analysis of ceramic vessels excavated from the Pockoy Island Shell Rings, a double shell ring site located on the shore of Edisto Island, South Carolina, in …

Sea-Level Rise And Settlement At Ta’Ab Nuk Na, Belize: Analyses Of Marine Sediment From The I-Line, 4m Transect, Conner B. Flynt

LSU Master's Theses

The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica created a culture with writing, religion, and vast trade networks. These trade networks are evident on the southern coast of Belize, where archaeologists have found sites dedicated to salt making. One of these sites, Ta’ab Nuk Na, was the subject of this thesis. Sediment and charcoal samples were collected from this site by the Underwater Maya Research Group led by Heather McKillop and E. Cory Sills. For my thesis research, I subjected these samples and components within them to loss-on ignition, radiometric dating, and microscopic analysis. Loss-on ignition was used to ascertain organic material percentage …

The Bioarchaeology Of The Lake St. Agnes Mound (16av26) Site: Exploring Diet From Fragmentary Remains, Kenneth Tremblay

LSU Master's Theses

The Lake St. Agnes Mound (16AV26) site, located in central Louisiana, is composed of two, temporally distinct burial components; one, a Coles Creek period component, at the base of the mound (~780-880 CE), and the other, a Plaquemine subperiod component, at its apex (~1400 CE). These burials, though heavily fragmented, commingled, and representing small sample sizes, are valuable for studying the transition to agriculture in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. It is now clear that for the Coles Creek period, maize was likely only a ceremonial crop rather than a staple food source (Kidder, 1993; Listi, 2011). The reliance on …

Understanding Technology Fit Among People With Hiv Based On Intersections Of Race, Sex, And Sexual Behavior: An Equitable Approach To Analyzing Differences Across Multiple Social Identities, Elizabeth Lockhart, Deanne Turner, Joseph Ficek, Taylor A. Livingston, Rachel G. Logan, Stephanie L. Marhefka

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

HIV disproportionately impacts individuals based on intersecting categories (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, behavior), with groups most at-risk deemed priority populations. Using weighted effects coding to account for differential group sizes, this study used multilevel mixed logistic models to investigate differences in eHealth use and willingness to use eHealth for HIVrelated information among priority populations. Compared to the sample average, Black men who had sex with women were less likely to use all technologies except cellphones with text-messaging and less likely to be willing to use computers and tablets. White and Hispanic men who had sex with men were more likely to …

Geochemical Sourcing Of Obsidian Artifacts From Archaeological Surveys In The Taos Area, New Mexico, Report #1: The Helen Blumenschein Collection; The Little Rio Grande Survey; Vickery’S Excavations At Ta-26; And, The Herold And Luebben Survey, Matthew Boulanger

Anthropology Research

No abstract provided.

Health Disparities Between Women And Men In Medieval Europe: A Bioarcheological Study Of Gender Roles, Ella Uren

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Earliest Palaeocene Purgatoriids And The Initial Radiation Of Stem Primates, Gregory P. Wilson Mantilla, Stephen B. Chester, William A. Clemens, Jason R. Moore, Courtney J. Sprain, Brody T. Hovatter, William S. Mitchell, Wade W. Mans, Roland Mundil, Paul R. Renne

Publications and Research

Plesiadapiform mammals, as stem primates, are key to understanding the evolutionary and ecological origins of Pan-Primates and Euarchonta. The Purgatoriidae, as the geologically oldest and most primitive known plesiadapiforms and one of the oldest known placental groups, are also central to the evolutionary radiation of placentals and the Cretaceous-Palaeogene biotic recovery on land. Here, we report new dental fossils of Purgatorius from early Palaeocene (early Puercan) age deposits in northeastern Montana that represent the earliest dated occurrences of plesiadapiforms. We constrain the age of these earliest purgatoriids to magnetochron C29R and most likely to within 105–139 thousand years post- K/Pg …

Geophysical Survey Of North Kakalin Village On Wisconsin Site Ou-0115, Kaukauna, Peter N. Peregrine

Archaeological Reports

Between September and November 2020 Lawrence University conducted a geophysical survey in the area immediately northwest of the historic Grignon Mansion. The survey was undertaken to follow up on a previous geophysical survey, conducted in 2018, that identified possible prehistoric structures in that area. A combination of high-resolution magnetic, soil resistivity, and ground penetrating radar surveys were conducted over a 40 meter by 40 meter area in anticipation of better resolving these structures. The survey identified a number of features that appear to support the results of the 2018 survey, thus strengthening the case for the presence of undisturbed prehistoric …

Marine Resource Specialization In Viking Age Iceland: Exploitation Of Seabirds And Fish On Hegranes In Skagafjörður, Grace M. Cesario

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the zooarchaeology of four Viking Age sites on Hegranes, located in Skagafjörður, north Iceland, in order to understand the early economy of the region and place it in a broader context with other settlement sites across the island. This research helps to understand the ways the earliest people in Iceland provided for themselves through niche construction activities that included landscape domestication, animal husbandry, bird hunting, and fishing. It also looks at the zooarchaeological indicators of household autonomy to understand the early social and political landscape in Skagafjörður. At these sites, there is evidence for a specialized …

Mobile Practices And The Production And Curation Of Pottery: A View From The Ancient Southern Russian Steppe Using Portable Methods Of Investigation, Nicole A. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern Russian steppe is located in an intermediary position between the Caucasus, Lower Don and Lower Volga steppe, between which peoples, goods, and technologies often moved throughout prehistory, likely facilitated by small scale seasonal movements and occasional migrations by mobile pastoralists. Conducted in collaboration with the Steppe Archaeological Expedition of the State Historical Museum’s unfolding research on temporary pastoral camps in the Sal-Manych region of the Rostov oblast and Republic of Kalmykia, this dissertation focused on the production and curation of pottery in contexts associated with the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism from the late fifth millennium …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

Handbook For The Deceased: Re-Evaluating Literature And Folklore In Icelandic Archaeology, Brenda Nicole Prehal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rich medieval Icelandic literary record, comprised of mythology, sagas, poetry, law codes and post-medieval folklore, has provided invaluable source material for previous generations of scholars attempting to reconstruct a pagan Scandinavian Viking Age worldview. In modern Icelandic archaeology, however, the Icelandic literary record, apart from official documents such as censuses, has not been considered a viable source for interpretation since the early 20th century. Although the Icelandic corpus is problematic in several ways, it is a source that should be used in Icelandic archaeological interpretation, if used properly with source criticism.

This dissertation aims to advance Icelandic archaeological theory …

Heritage Politics And Museums During Japanese Occupation Period, 1942-1945, Ajeng Ayu Arainikasih

International Review of Humanities Studies

Before the World War II, approximately 25 museums were already established in colonial Indonesia. At that time, most of the museums were built by the Europeans to serve their interests. However, when the Dutch capitulated to the Japanese military government, what had happened to the existing museums in Indonesia were slightly known. Therefore, this research examines the history of the museum development during the Japanese occupation period in Indonesia in 1942-1945. The data gathered for this archival study are through magazine and newspaper articles published during the Japanese occupation period as well as through the archives of Arsip Nasional Indonesia, …

Indonesia’S Own ‘Pyramid’: The Imagined Past And Nationalism Of Gunung Padang, Dian Sulistyowati, Aldo W. Foe

International Review of Humanities Studies

A narrative commonly found within the discourse of nationalist archaeology is the polemic of ideology at the expense of empiricism. There are many examples of the manipulation of archaeological data in the service of the state’s nationalist or imperialist ideology, and such efforts produce narratives in which archaeology is treated as inherently apolitical. This paper explores the interactions between and within multiple stakeholders –the state, archaeologists, and the media – and their roles in the construction of national myths, and their consequences for local populations. It highlights recent controversies surrounding the re-interpretation of the megalithic site of Gunung Padang in …