Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

Fish Weirs Et Alia: A Gis Based Use-Analysis Of Artificial, Pre-Columbian Earthworks In West Central Llanos De Mojos, Bolivia, Charlotte A. Robinson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study employed a GIS-based use-analysis on a network of recently mapped pre-Columbian earthworks lying on the west side of a Bolivian floodplain. This wetland region, called Llanos de Mojos, is home to many different types of artificial mounds that served different roles for the ancient communities who constructed them thousands of years ago. This new set of features, which was mapped by volunteers of the Proyecto Sistemas Informaticas Geograficas y Arqueologicas del Beni (ProSIGAB) was purported to be a network of fish weirs, linear earthworks built in rivers or floodplains that are designed to trap fish by exploiting seasonal …

Paleoethnobotanical Analysis Of Maya Ceramic Residues From Holtun, Guatemala, Kimberly Batres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

To the Maya, plant-based foods were not just important for sustenance but also had ritual meaning that was especially emphasized when placed in graves and caches. Food offered during ritual performances created a reciprocal relationship between living individuals, their ancestors, and the gods. The following thesis examines seven ceramic sherds associated with burial and cache offerings of individuals from the lowland Maya site of Holtun, Guatemala, that were found to have contained food offerings. Starch analysis, a method used to determine plant taxa on a microscopic level was performed on the ceramic vessels along with various experimental molecular spectroscopic procedures. …

The Kiwanis Site: A Multi-Method Geophysical Approach To Investigating Mound Features, Luke Burds

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Subtle mound-like landforms can be genetically ambiguous features within a landscape. A variety of geomorphological and anthropological processes can result in these equifinal forms being difficult to interpret. Being able to reliably and noninvasively differentiate them is important for legal as well as cultural and spiritual reasons. A suite of non-invasive geophysical methods were thus used on mounds at the Kiwanis site in western Wisconsin in order to determine if culturally diagnostic indicators could be recorded in geophysical data. Genesis of these mounds is ambiguous given the presence of aeolian landforms in immediate proximity. As a control, the same geophysical …

Augmented Reality As A Tool For Industrial Heritage Education And Interpretations, Garand A. Spikberg

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Combining Augmented Reality with spatially and temporally robust Historical Spatial Data Infrastructures may have the potential to provide users with interpretive and educational opportunities they otherwise would not have. Adapting research oriented historical GIS projects such as the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure to usage as interpretive material through the utilization of “off the shelf” augmented reality applications such as AuGeo has the potential to expand the utility and reach of that research data outside of the lab, while providing new interpretive opportunities by allowing users to see that data in its original spatial context and giving them the …

Ant-3700 - Introduction To Anthropology, Igor Pashkovskiy

Open Educational Resources

Movement away from the textbook model has potential to foster equitable access to course materials as well as reduce textbook costs for students. As such, transition to a zero cost/OER classroom included the curation of open access scholarly literature to cover the four-field approach presently taught in introductory anthropology courses.

Private Struggles In Public Spaces: Documenting Covid-19 Material Culture And Landscapes, Kelly Britt

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every facet of our world, including some of the most fundamental forms of human behavior and our conception of the social. Everyday activities now pose a risk to individuals and to society as a whole. This radical shift in how we live has produced a wide array of material responses across the globe. This photo essay seeks to open up dialogue and ask questions about the numerous forms of COVID-19 materiality and altered landscapes that the authors have chronicled, witnessed, documented and cataloged in their communities, using archaeological and ethnographic methods. This materiality includes …

Ancient Maya Rural Settlement Patterns, Household Cooperation, And Regional Subsistence Interdependency In The Río Bec Area: Contributions From G-Liht, Scott R. Hutson, Nicholas P. Dunning, Bruce Cook, Thomas Ruhl, Nicolas C. Barth, Daniel Conley

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Research on intensive agricultural features contributes to the social relations of farming, including the means by which farmers mobilize labor and the possible destination of surplus. Lidar provides high-resolution data on ancient houses and agricultural features at a regional scale. This paper uses lidar data from NASA’s G-LiHT airborne imager to derive insights about rural demography, interhousehold cooperation, and subsistence interdependency among the ancient Maya. We assess the differences in intensity of agricultural investment in rural and urban areas of the Río Bec region of southern Campeche and Quintana Roo, Mexico, leading to inferences about regional food exchange and complex …

Raw Material Usage And Stone Tool Manufacture In The Elwha River Valley, Zachary C. Allen

All Master's Theses

Archaeological investigations stemming from the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams of the Elwha River Valley in 2014 resulted in the identification of nine archaeological sites and collection of 6,870 pre-contact lithic artifacts, primarily composed of fine-grained volcanic stone. Regional models of this raw material usage and site location within a glacially-carved riverine environment place these sites within the Old Cordilleran/Olcott cultural tradition that has been widely observed in the Salish Sea. This study is focused on the variation in raw materials used in the production of stone tools in the Elwha River Valley to understand if similar …

Evaluating The Analytical Contribution Of 1/8-Inch (0.32 Centimeter) Lithic Debitage At The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45pi408), David R. Davis

All Master's Theses

Due to a relatively recent trend toward universal use of screens with ⅛-inch (0.32 cm) mesh-sized openings, archaeologists in the Pacific Northwest have expressed concerns regarding the overall utility of collection and analysis of 0.32 cm (⅛-inch) mesh-sized lithic debitage. Recovering and analyzing these small-sized artifacts is a time-intensive endeavor that adds costs to fieldwork and laboratory tasks. The information potential from attribute analysis of 0.32 cm (⅛-inch) mesh-sized lithic debitage when a site’s lithic assemblage consists of mainly debitage is largely missing from the programmatic literature. The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45PI408), located on the slopes of Mount …

The Tijeras Pueblo (La 581) Archaeofaunal Project, Emily Lena Jones, Scott Kirk, Caitlin S. Ainsworth, Asia Alsgaard, Jana Valesca Meyer, Cyler Conrad

Anthropology Datasets

These files contain data generated by the Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581) Archaeofaunal Project, a project of the University of New Mexico Department of Anthropology Zooarchaeology Laboratory between 2011 and the present. This project has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1732622 and by a grant from the Research Allocations Committee of the University of New Mexico.

These data are the basis of the analyses presented in the following publication:

Jones, Emily Lena, Scott Kirk, Caitlin S. Ainsworth, Asia Alsgaard, Jana Valesca Meyer, and Cyler Conrad. 2021. The Community at the Crossroads: Artiodactyl Exploitation and …

Ceramic Analysis Of The 2019 Excavations Of Ely (44le12) Mound Site, Lee County, Virginia, Shannon Medah Wooten

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Mississippian frontier in southwestern Virginia is a relatively unexplored area. This area was occupied by Mississippian and Radford locals, creating a crossroads between the two groups. The Ely Mound site is a Mississippian frontier site that can help understand the influence of Mississippian and Radford cultures on the development of chiefdoms. This thesis will analyze the ceramics from the mound test unit and shovel test survey of the 2019 excavation at Ely located in Lee County, Virginia. The temper patterns were used to understand the date and use of the site. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze …

The Rise And Fall Of Wiñaymarka: Rethinking Cultural And Environmental Interactions In The Southern Basin Of Lake Titicaca, Maria C. Bruno, José M. Capriles, Christine A. Hastorf, Sherilyn C. Fritz, D. Marie Weide, Alejandra I. Domic, Paul A. Baker

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Investigations of how past human societies managed during times of major climate change can inform our understanding of potential human responses to ongoing environmental change. In this study, we evaluate the impact of environmental variation on human communities over the last four millennia in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of the Andes, known as Lake Wiñaymarka. Refined paleoenvironmental reconstructions from new diatom-based reconstructions of lake level together with archaeological evidence of animal and plant resource use from sites on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia, reveal frequent climate and lake-level changes within major cultural phases. We posit that climate fluctuations alone do …

Time And Place At Prospect Hill: A Phase-One Survey Of A Historic Plantation, William Bryce Krumcke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal for this thesis was to conduct the first archaeological research at Prospect Hill plantation and to create a baseline that can be used to understand the spatial layout of the plantation and provide archaeological evidence of the enslaved people who lived there. Prospect Hill is located in southwest Mississippi and was founded in 1808 by Captain Isaac Ross. The archaeological work done at Prospect Hill was a survey of approximately 10 acres that surrounds the main house. After this survey, the artifacts were classified into two categories: chronological and functional. From this analysis, a series of patterns were …

‘Owing To The Backwardness Of The Season’: Assessing The Exploratory Mining Process On Isle Royale Redacted Version, Andrew Anklam

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Isle Royale, located in Lake Superior, was one center of the nation’s first copper rush. High quality copper veins drew mid-19th century miners looking to stake a claim. By the mid-1850s these initial attempts at lode mining failed as the remote location and logistical hurdles made extracting copper from Isle Royale a costly business. Despite the short-lived nature of these exploratory mines, they played a vital role in defining the nature and profitability of copper lodes in the Lake Superior Basin and serve as an example for how mineral rushes on the western frontier of North America play out. The …

Molecular Identification Of Parasites In An Intestinal Coprolite From A Mummified Religious Dignitary Of The Piraino Mother Church Crypt, Sicily, Amanda Rollins, Krystiana Krupa, Georgia Millward, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Karl Reinhard, Frederika Kaestle

Karl Reinhard Publications

Intestinal contents were sampled from a spontaneously enhanced mummy from the Sepulcher of the Priests of the Piraino Mother Church in the Province of Messina, Sicily. This adult male mummy, Piraino 1, is an unidentified religious dignitary dating from the late-18th to mid-19th centuries. Immunological and molecular diagnostics were used to test for common and clinically significant parasites. A morphological diagnosis of Trichuris trichiura (whipworm) was confirmed genetically. A previously undetected Enterobius vermicularis (pinworm) infection was also identified genetically. These data indicate that the Piraino 1 individual was simultaneously infected with multiple intestinal parasite species indicative of poor hygiene. This …

An Analysis Of Tachylyte And Other Volcanic Glasses In Washington Archaeology, Mallory M. Triplett

All Master's Theses

Within archaeological literature, a discussion of volcanic toolstones from Washington State is uncommon. Washington’s volcanic glass landscape is relatively sparse, with low-quality sources scattered within and on the east side of the Cascades, including tachylyte, obsidian, and vitrophyric obsidian. Tachylyte is a volcanic glass that forms within low-silica, basalt flows while obsidian comes from high-silica, usually rhyolitic, eruptions. Vitrophyric is a textural term used to describe an igneous rock that has a glassy groundmass with conspicuously large crystals. The low-quality and dispersed nature of these toolstones are reflected in Washington’s archaeological record by the more common occurrence of out-of-state volcanic …

Ragam Budaya Penggunaan Piranti Sumpit Masyarakat Bandung, Selvia Selvia

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Food is an inseparable part of a culture and serves as one of the characteristic markers of a culture or ethnic groups. The arrival and presence of the Chinese ethnic group has contributed to the diversity of the Indonesian culture in general. One of Chinese dishes that have become a favorite delicacy in Bandung is noodles, a wide variety of which is sold in various areas around the city. Noodles are considered as a substitute for daily staple food and have become part of Indonesian identity in general. This field study used the descriptive qualitative method. Data collection was carried …

Jalan Gender, Jalan Spiritual: Menggali Pembentukan Gender Project Dalam Konteks Pengalaman Keberagamaan Perempuan, Katrin Bandel, Anne Shakka, Gusnita Linda, Yustina Devi Ardhiani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Using the method of collaborative autoethnography, this study critically reflects on the life stories of three women from different backgrounds by focusing on gender and religion. One of the main aspects that we examined is gender projects, i.e. the projections people make when imagining their future gender roles and identities. As a result of our (self-) observations, we found that, while at first the gender project of those women was formed by the patriarchal gender order of their society, as time progresses, after living through and evaluating a variety of often traumatic experiences, they developed their own gender projects more …

Peran Perempuan Dalam Tradisi Sedekah Gunung Di Desa Pelangas, Kecamatan Simpang Teritip, Kabupaten Bangka Barat, Putra Pratama Saputra, Tiara Ramadhani, Michael Jefri Sinabutar

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Women have a role in a particular culture, and this can serve as a way to express their freedom and to be on an equal footing with their male counterparts. The Jering ethnic group in Palangas Village, Bangka Island, has a traditional ritual that is still carried out by the community, namely sedekah gunung. This ritual is carried out once a year, coinciding with the 14th night of the full moon. This ritual serves as an expression of gratitude for the good harvest that occurred for the entire year. This study used the descriptive qualitative method, while data collection techniques …

Pengaruh Profesi Tukang Cukur Dalam Transformasi Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi, Garut, Hilyatun Nishlah, Dhita Hapsarani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Being professional barbers from Garut—known as ASGAR, short for Asli Garut, which means ‘of Garut origin’—has been the main source of income for most men residing in Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi Village, Garut Regency, West Java. The profession is considered so successful in providing financial welfare for the villagers and improving their social status that many of the residents decide to leave the village to expand their business elsewhere, especially in Jakarta and other big cities in West Java. This phenomenon has intensified since the 2000s until the residents finally dub Kampung Peundeuy as a “barber village” in West Java. In …