Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons^™

Coastal Consumption: Diet And Social Organization At Four Postclassic Sites In The Yucatán Peninsula, Paramita Choudhury

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines Postclassic Maya food practices during CE 1200–1600 to understand how eating behaviors reflect systems of social hierarchy, political economy, and cultural identity. The investigation focuses on four archaeological sites in the northern Yucatán Peninsula—Tulum, El Rey, El Meco, and San Miguelito—to examine dietary behaviors through dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA), oral pathology, and stable isotope data within a biocultural framework. The research aims to identify whether elite and non-elite individuals exhibited notable variations in food texture consumption, access to resources, and nutritional health. High-resolution 3D surface metrology enabled DMTA to assess the mechanical properties of consumed foods, …

Will There Be A Pill For That? ‘Money Dysmorphia’ And The Medicalization Of Struggles For Subsistence, Bojan Savic

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article questions the rationality, operation, and effects of money dysmorphia as an emerging mental health diagnosis. It critiques the medicalization of financial angst amid the capitalist “polycrisis”, showing how the individuation and somatic pathologization of class subordination, socioeconomic precarity, and struggles for subsistence obscure capitalist inequalities, depoliticize them, and shield them from critique. I identify five concurrent strategies through which struggles for subsistence are medicalized: trivialization, reversal of social import, repetition, direct depoliticization, and the substitution of inequality with poverty. Furthermore, I show how the medicalizing discourse reifies money dysmorphia by constructing its social costs. The article concludes by …

Does Reliance On Kin Erode With Market Integration? A Social Network Perspective, Ruizhe Liu

Anthropology ETDs

Kinship has long shaped human societies. Yet globalization and market integration (MI) are reshaping social structures. This dissertation investigates how kinship-based networks persist, adapt, or erode amid rapid socioeconomic change. It draws on ethnographic and social network data from 229 Mosuo households in southwest China, a matrilineal society experiencing increasing MI, to examine shifts in everyday cooperation.

The first study analyzes fixed name-generator data and finds a general decline in kin support as MI increases, though with considerable variation. The second study uses count models to explore unbounded support networks, showing that kin ties remain central in reproductive contexts, while …

Physical Activity Mediates Age Differences In Cognition Among Tsimane Forager-Horticulturalists, Phoebe E. Imms, Nikhil N. Chaudhari, Daniel Cummings, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Giuseppe Barisano, Paul L. Hooper, M. Katherine Sayre, Edmond Seabright, Randall C. Thompson, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael Gurven, Jonathan Stieglitz, Caleb E. Finch, Hillard S. Kaplan, Wendy J. Mack, Margaret Gatz, Andrei Irimia

ESI Publications

Background: The Tsimane and Moseten of the Bolivian Amazon are highly physically active and exhibit low rates of cognitive impairment and brain atrophy.

Methods: We use structural equation modelling to examine how their physical activity levels mediate the relationship between (1) age and cognition, and (2) age and cognition via brain volume (BV).

Results: Tsimane males (n = 305, mean ± SD age = 59.94 ± 9.68) and Tsimane females (n = 265, mean ± SD age = 59.28 ± 9.79) exhibit significantly higher levels of physical activity than Moseten males (n = 106, mean ± SD …

Individual, Social, And Environmental Factors Associated With Patterns Of Parasitic Infection In Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus Imitator), Megan C. Henriquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parasites, and the infectious diseases they carry, are thought to have significantly impacted our evolutionary trajectory for millennia. Exploring how parasites are acquired and transmitted by their hosts in wild, natural populations is integral to understanding how similar processes may have shaped host-parasite co-evolutionary relationships over time. However, parasitological studies in humans and in non-human primates have produced inconsistent results, highlighting the dynamic, nuanced, and unique relationships individual parasites have with their hosts. These relationships are largely regulated by variation in factors at host, social, and environmental levels. Characteristics unique to the host (e.g., age and sex), factors pertaining to …

Decoding The Plant Metabolome: A Metabolomics Approach To Guereza (Colobus Guereza) Feeding Ecology In Kibale National Park, Uganda, Emma Grace Thurau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Plant metabolites, an elusive and diverse group of plant chemicals, represent a complex chemical interplay between plants and herbivores. Plants contain essential nutrients necessary for herbivore survival, yet herbivore consumption results in negative fitness consequences to a plant. This relationship has triggered a coevolutionary arms race in which plants have evolved chemical defenses to prevent herbivore consumption and herbivores, in response, have evolved their own counter-adaptations. This arms race has led to the diverse numbers of herbivores and plants observed today; therefore, these plant metabolites act as a signature of evolution through their influence on herbivore adaptations. Plant metabolites are …

Alloparenting And Male Infant Care Behaviors In Varecia Rubra (Red-Ruffed Lemur), Noelle Wilcox

University Honors Theses

Nonhuman primates are known for their complex social structures that sometimes includes cooperative breeding strategies. In recent years there has been an increase in investigating alloparenting (infant care provided by an adult or subadult that is not a genetic parent) and male infant care, and how such behaviors contribute to the overall assistance to the extreme energetic investment and costs of the mother for the rearing of offspring. There is also debate to how male care has evolved in the primate clade, be it through the theory of kin selection or theory of mutualism. However, there is not enough research …

The Sound Of Music: Why Do Humans Find Enrichment In Music While Non-Human Primates Do Not?, Sonetta Im Ty

Honors Projects

Music has been observed as an effective enrichment for captive animals across multiple species. However, studies have shown that it is ineffective for promoting welfare in non-human primates (Suborder Haplorhini). These findings were unexpected, given the evolutionary roots shared between humans and non-human primates. This paper addresses several possibilities for this observation, including differences in ear anatomy, brain structure, and music perception between humans and non-human primates.

Atrapado En Limbo: Fronteras, Anthropologists, And Translation In Contexts Of The Missing And Unidentified At The México-Us Border, Aliya M. Godoy

LSU Master's Theses

The Missing Migrants Project reports that in the past 11 years, 11,138 missing migrants have been recorded in the Americas, with 6,512 of those migrants situated at the México-United States (US) border (Migration Within the Americas, n.d.). The crisis of missing and unidentified migrants at the México-US border is a topic of great discussion in the field of anthropology, and specifically in discourses of humanitarian forensic anthropological work. This research addresses the crisis at the border, expanding on the scholarship of family agency and language barriers between Spanish-speaking communities and medicolegal actors by investigating the role of anthropologists …

Cost-Effective Solutions For High-Throughput Enzymatic Dna Methylation Sequencing, Amy Longtin, Marina M. Watowich, Baptiste Sadoughi, Rachel M. Petersen, Sarah F. Brosnan, Kenneth Buetow, Qiuyin Cai, Cayo Biobank Research Unit, Vanderbilt University, Michael D. Gurven, James P. Higham, Heather M. Highland, Yi-Ting Huang, Hillard Kaplan, Thomas S. Kraft, Yvonne A. L. Lim, Jirong Long, Amanda D. Melin, Michael J. Montagne, Jamie Roberson, Kee Seong Ng, Michael L. Platt, India A. Schneider-Crease, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Vivek Venkataraman, Ian J. Wallace, Jie Wu, Noah Snyder-Mackler, Angela Jones, Alexander G. Bick, Amanda J. Lea

ESI Publications

Characterizing DNA methylation patterns is important for addressing key questions in evolutionary biology, development, geroscience, and medical genomics. While costs are decreasing, whole-genome DNA methylation profiling remains prohibitively expensive for most population-scale studies, creating a need for cost-effective, reduced representation approaches (i.e., assays that rely on microarrays, enzyme digests, or sequence capture to target a subset of the genome). Most common whole genome and reduced representation techniques rely on bisulfite conversion, which can damage DNA resulting in DNA loss and sequencing biases. Enzymatic methyl sequencing (EM-seq) was recently proposed to overcome these issues, but thorough benchmarking of EM-seq combined with …

Reason And All My Senses: Surveying The Post Enlightenment Frame Of Reason Through Contemporary Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology, And Cognitive Linguistics, Joshua T. Lowe Rev. Dr.

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

This dissertation argues that Christian theology and practice are aided and enriched by a more complete understanding of reason by surveying recent studies and views in theology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive linguistics. Since the Enlightenment, Christian theology has assumed widely the Enlightenment model of human reason as ideally acontextual, that is, free from constraints of contexts, and therefore universal, that is, applicable in all contexts. Recent developments from a variety of perspectives challenge this model of rationality. Some challenge the acontextualism of the Enlightenment understanding by showing how it arose from and depends on a context, and that context …

Functional Morphology Of The Primate Knee And Its Implications For Hominin Bipedal Mechanics, Catherine K. Miller

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Bipedal locomotion is central to the human condition, having shaped our evolutionary trajectory since its early emergence in the hominin lineage. Despite its importance, key questions remain about its origins and evolutionary trajectory. While many studies have focused on locomotor-related anatomies, comparatively less attention has been paid to the knee joint – a structure critical to the primate locomotor repertoire. This dissertation aims to clarify the form-function relationship of the knee in extant primates to better infer the locomotor behaviors of Miocene hominoids and Plio-Pleistocene hominins. To address these questions, this research employs a multifaceted analytical approach, integrating linear measurements, …

Heat Induced Diagenesis And Osteometrics: An Experimental Approach To Assessing Thermal Alterations To Forensic Anthropological Data On Dry Bone, Audrey Holbeck

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Fire appears in forensic casework in instances of arson, vehicle fire, house fire, to conceal evidence, or, in increasing contemporary frequency, wildfire, as a result of climate change. Thermal alteration is a destructive process to osseous material and can impact the accuracy of identification methods and trauma analysis by alteration of the structure, appearance, and morphology of human remains. This study seeks to validate previous research on the metric and morphological changes bone undergoes when exposed to extreme heat, and how that may impede estimation of metric features such as stature. Three long bones, a humerus, femur, and tibia, from …

Comparative Analysis Of Gunshot Trauma And Decomposition In Southeast Nebraska, Alexandra C. Tieken

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Accurately identifying gunshot trauma (GST) in forensic anthropology remains a significant challenge, particularly in distinguishing the effects it has on decomposition. This study investigates how different types of gunshot trauma influence the rate and characteristics of decomposition in a humid continental climate, specifically southeastern Nebraska. Utilizing Sus scrofa domesticus (domestic pigs) as human proxies, four pigs were euthanized by professionals and subjected to controlled conditions at the Reller Prairie Field Station. Three pigs were inflicted postmortem with close-range gunshot trauma using a 9mm handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 rifle, while a fourth served as a trauma-free control. For …

Wildfire And Decomposition: A Taphonomic Analysis Of Thermal Alterations And Decomposition, Ashley Novak

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Within the field of forensic anthropology, practitioners may be faced with remains that have been thermally altered by thermal alterations caused by wildfire. Within the field, very little research has been conducted examining how these thermal events impact rates of decomposition. While research has been conducted generally on the effects of thermal alteration on decomposition, these studies do not look through this lens and provide answers to the question of how do thermal alterations caused by wildfires affect rates of decomposition? This research examines the effects of thermal alteration caused by wildfire on the rate of decomposition. A decompositional study …

Firearm Trauma Across Time: Investigating Civil War Gunshot Trauma And Their Impact On Modern Forensic Analysis, Morgan K. Reeder

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

This thesis will examine the ballistic trauma caused by Civil War-era firearms and ammunition. These weapons, each with distinct characteristics, had a profound impact on the nature of combat and the resulting injuries. By investigating how these firearms’ ammunition interacted with human bone structure, this research will offer a detailed analysis of the trauma these weapons produced.

This research intends to answer several key research questions. First, how did the different types of Civil War firearms affect skeletal remains? Second, what are the key characteristics of gunshot trauma caused by these firearms in terms of bone fracturing and fragmentation, and …

Trends In Dna Aanalysis To Determine Postmortem Interval: A Systematic Lilterature Review, Victoria S. Kashkin

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Forensic taphonomy is a recently popular field within forensic anthropology with limited research in the Central Great Plains. Given decomposition varies by region, more studies must be done to understand aspects of decomposition in this region. However, it is one of the most important subfields of forensic anthropology since determining postmortem interval (PMI) is extremely important to successfully identifying a missing individual if other indications of who the individual is are nonexistent. In this study, a systematic literature review was conducted to answer what trends are seen in research being done for using DNA to determine PMI, and what methods …

Who Was Skull #0025336? A Forensic Anthropological Analysis Of Human Remains, Evelyn R. Wendland

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Biological anthropology identifies human remains to learn more about the individual or the ancient community from which they originate. Two subdisciplines of biological Anthropology that focus on osteology—the study of bones— are Forensic Anthropology and Biorchaeology. Forensic anthropology is the study of human remains associated with the legal process. They specifically analyze remains from post-1950. Biorchaeology also looks at human remains but in a historical and/or archaeological context. As osteologists analyze human remains, they typically try to create a biological profile. The biological profile includes classifications of ethnicity (ancestry), age, sex, and stature, as well as aspects of pathology and …

Human Evolution: A Musical Portrait, Chloe S. Roper

Senior Honors Projects

The story of human evolution has been an elaborate progression entrenched in metamorphic processes and associated trial and error to create the species we are today. While these milestones are primarily explored through an academic lens, intellectual ideas are less often conveyed through a creative or abstract approach, such as through music or other art forms. Similarly, while music is often employed to evoke emotion, inspire reflection, or symbolize experiences, it is underutilized in conveying intellectual ideas. This project explores the juxtaposition of benchmark concepts of what makes our species distinctly human with instrumental musical expression in order to design …

Ecological Interactions Of Large Mammals In Luangwa, Zambia, Jahzara Osborne

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The connection between mammalian behavior in national parks and human-driven environmental change outside national parks is tenuous. National parks are often considered the last vestiges of natural space, yet they are created and maintained by humans. South Luangwa National Park (SLNP) at the southern end of the East African Rift System (EARS) is a microcosm of this global problem. EARS is a biodiverse region made up of numerous smaller branches. In the Luangwa Valley, this biodiversity has been protected through conservation historically, but dynamic geopolitical forces have affected the relationship between large mammals and humans by extracting humans to create …