Anthropology Commons^™

Making The Rollins College Archaeology Lab Accessible Through Digital Technologies, Ellie Minette

Honors Program Theses

From classrooms to museums, and even private collections, 3D digital models of artifacts can pave the way for a more inclusive and accessible future for archaeology. This thesis looks specifically at how photogrammetry and digital modeling can increase the accessibility and utility of artifact collections housed at the Rollins College Archaeology Lab. It focuses on how we can best preserve these collections while also increasing access to academics, researchers, and the general public alike. By digitizing over 50 models, I created an online repository for these artifacts on Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/rollins_archaeology), as well as a step-by-step guide to photogrammetry. Through interviews …

National Barriers Impeding The Implementation Of Nagpra: Suggestions From A Small Institution, Zoe Milburn

Honors Program Theses

This thesis focuses on the impact and unrealized potentials of NAGPRA for Indigenous Americans and professional archaeologists following the first thirty years of the law’s existence. After providing some necessary background on the NAGPRA legislation and the context of the law’s passage, I examine these issues through three distinct methods. The first method focuses on a review of published Indigenous and archaeological literature to identify changes in sentiment around the law as well as to identify known hurdles within the process. The second revolves around my experience preparing a NAGPRA inventory for the Rollins College Archaeology Lab. Specifically, I reflect …

Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

Industry And Malady: Entanglements Of Power, Culture, And Disease Afflicting Breast Cancer Patients In The Bay Area, Brieann N. Deornellas

Master's Theses

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States and, apart from some forms of skin cancer, is the most common cancer diagnosis for women. In 2021, the U.S Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results reported that approximately 281,550 women were diagnosed with, and 43,600 died of the breast cancer. Despite advancements in testing and treatments, about one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, and breast cancer has the highest cancer death rate for women, excluding lung cancer.Studies have also shown that breast cancer prognosis and mortality is not uniform, and is statistically …

“I’Ve Never Met Another Person With This Identity”: The Experiences Of Abrosexual Individuals On Tiktok, Eleanor Doughton

Capstone Showcase

Abrosexuality can be defined by an individual experiences changes in their perception of their sexuality; for instance, an abrosexual person could find themselves to be exclusively attracted to women for a time, and then experiences no sexual attraction months later. Unlike sexual identities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, abrosexuality has not been previously studied. Previous research shows that social media and online sites provide spaces for positive identity development and support for gender and sexual minority individuals. Since abrosexuality had not been previously studied, it is important to ask about the experiences of abrosexual individuals on social media. …

Analysis Of Artifacts And Storage Organization: Clinton Lock 2, Hannah Curtis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For this project, we are hoping to address the potential problems and help refine future work between the storage in the Cummings Center and the Anthropology Department. Some of the research questions that we have are: What is in the Cummings Center from the Anthropology Department? What type of techniques is the most beneficial in storing archaeological material? How are the items stored in the Cummings Center? Is this method of storage going to protect or damage the artifact? Do we still need to keep this material, returned to its original owner, or can it be deaccessioned? We plan to …

Storage Organization And Analysis Of Artifacts, Rebecca Glatz

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I worked with the Institute for Human Science and Culture at the Drs. Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology and Department of Anthropology at the University of Akron to help create an inventory of the collections that are being stored in the storage of the Cummings Center. After I finished the general inventory, I selected a collection of interest to do further research on an item level. The collection was processed and photographed and this paper is a report of what I learned about the collection and a guide of how to process a collection for …

He, She, They, Other: An Examination Of Gender Associations With The Chatelaine In The Anglo-Saxon Culture, Dane A. Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this paper is to study the chatelaine as a marker of gender attribution and overall usage within the Anglo-Saxon culture. Chatelaines are artifacts used to suspend multiple items to be employed for such purposes as grooming, tools, or keys and have been used widely from the Roman occupation of England during which it was used by all genders, to the Ninth Century when it was primarily used by women. As such, it is asserted that a single artifact should not to be solely relied upon to assign a gender identity to a burial, that these should be …

Utilizing Geographic Information Systems To Explore The Mortuary Landscape At Kuelap, Peru, Hannah Haynes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The placement of the dead is important for considering social memory, a source of collective knowledge and experiences that shapes social group identity. Mortuary placement is one form of ritual action that communities undertake to remember the dead. This allows anthropologists to ask questions about how humans engaged socially with each other and the landscape. This thesis utilizes an innovative methodological approach combining geographic information systems (GIS) and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to investigate mortuary variation and social identity within the Late Intermediate Period site (A.D. 800 – 1535) Kuelap in the northern Peruvian Andes. Spatial, demographic, and …

Morphometric Ancestral Analysis Of Infraorbital Foramen And Maxillo-Facial Landmarks Of Adult North American Skulls Using X-Ray And Computed Tomography Scans, Anna-Marie Lynn David

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Skeletal remains provide a variety of information about a species population and the sub populations within that species. The infraorbital foramen has previously been used to understand dietary niches, paleoecology, the nervous system, and the effect of the nervous system on other bone functions in the facial region in humans and other mammals. In medicine, the precise location of the infraorbital foramen has been studied to aid and guide maxillo-facial procedures and surgeries. In this research project, the null hypothesis states that the placement and location of the infraorbital foramen in relation to other facial landmarks were the same between …

Wattpad As An Online Medium For Contemporary Folklore, Alisha Tess Helton

Online Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses its discussion within the discipline of folklore by identifying Wattpad.com as a contemporary medium of online folkloric content. Wattpad provides its users with a text-based—and sometimes multimodal—means of communication via its interface that mimics traditional communication as we know it—a means founded in orality, literacy, and the archive. Wattpad users are creating new folktales that are nuanced with elements from Wattpad’s archive, which characterizes contemporary online folklore in a way that has not been fully explored. This project serves to identify the past and present discourses that inform such a discussion while also explaining the intricacies of …

Social Complexity And Water Management Strategies At Holtun, Guatemala, Melvin Rodrigo Guzman Piedrasanta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Water management strategies are intrinsically associated with the development of complex societies. Traditional approaches have often characterized these strategies as homogenous and monolithic. Recent studies have shown that water management among the ancient Maya was a significant source of power, but the strategies implemented, and the outcomes are highly variable and dependent on the landscape. The case of Holtun, a modest-sized site, adds to the growing body of water management research in ancient Maya archaeology as most water management systems are investigated in large primary centers. Although water resources at Holtun are relatively small, they supported large communities during the …

A Reanalysis Of Population Dynamics In The Casas Grandes Region Of Northern Mexico Using Mitochondrial Dna, Meradeth Snow, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

The Casas Grades region in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, is ideally situated to explore the notion of contact between the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica, as it lies geographically in the borderlands where traditions of both culture areas were practiced. In order to explain these ties, past researchers have suggested the flourishing Casas Grandes population in the thirteenth century AD was caused by migrants from Mesoamerica, as first suggested by Di Peso in his pochteca hypothesis. Others, such as Lekson and his Chaco Meridian hypothesis, suggest migration from the north. Mitochondrial genetic data from earlier and later time periods provides the ability to …

Invited Perspective - Engaging Aspirations To Nurture Communities, Kentaro Toyama

Subsistence Marketplaces

For subsistence communities, the question is whether aspirations can be applied to motivate behavior that is, on the one hand consistent with people’s aspirations, but which might otherwise be difficult to elicit. Could poorer households be encouraged to save, to spend more on their children’s education, or to act against unhealthy social norms? A couple of examples suggest this is not only possible, but highly successful in contexts where other appeals fail.

Bajo Condiciones Impuestas: Los Indios Guaymíes Y Las Multinacionales Mineras En Panamá, Chris N. Gjording, Milton Machuca-Galvez

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Esta es la traducción al castellano del libro “Conditions Not of Their Choosing: The Guaymí Indians and Mining Multinationals in Panama” de Chris N. Gjording, publicado en 1991 por Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C. Traductor: Milton Machuca-Galvez.

A finales de la década de los 70 y principios de los 80, Gjording (1932-1993), antropólogo y sacerdote jesuita estadounidense, hizo trabajo de campo con el pueblo guaymí del oeste de Panamá. Este trabajo fue el tema de su tesis doctoral, que luego se transformaría en libro.

El volumen trata los conflictos en torno al proyecto minero de cobre Cerro Colorado en Panamá …

Death Scene Insect Succession In Nebraska: A Guidebook, Erin Bauer, Larry Barksdale, Emma Sidel, Justine Laviolette

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

Insect behavior can be helpful to law enforcement in determining time of death, manner of death, location, and environment related to human or other animal victims found at a death scene. They may also provide clues about other aspects associated with an investigation (i.e., fly specks, suspect DNA). The study of how insects and related arthropods can aid in legal investigations is known as forensic entomology. Although this includes both civil applications, such as urban (i.e., maggots in mortuaries or insect structural damage) or stored product (i.e., illness from food contamination) entomology, this manual focuses on criminal applications, such as …

Preliminary Study In More Effective Utilization Of 87sr/86sr Analysis In The Field Of Forensic Anthropology, Samantha Powers

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Isotopic analyses are gaining attention in the field of anthropology. The current utilization of strontium isotopes primarily focuses on residence and migration patterns of past populations extracting data from tooth enamel to indicate early-life residence This study aims to identify a skeletal feature to be set as a field standard in strontium analysis of modern remains when seeking end-of-life residence, the impact of diagenesis on modern remains, and to test the accuracy of the petrous as an alternative to tooth enamel.

The results of this research were unable to suggest such a standard but gathered helpful data to be used …

Writing Others’ Stories: Autoethnographic Reflections On Historical Research, Representation, And Bakhtin, Jennifer L. Adams

Communication & Theatre Faculty Publications

I use autoethnographic reflection to explore the personal and professional ethical challenges that have emerged over twenty years working with a set of one hundred historic love letters found discarded in an attic. Concerns of representation, narration, and authorship of the Other(s) by historic researchers are explored. Bakhtin’s concept of answerability is then elucidated as a means of reflecting upon choices writers make in researching of the lived experience of everyday people from the past. Issues including authorial responsibility, heteroglossia, polyphony, and the chronotope are explored.

Colonial Prehistories Of Indigenous North America, Mark A. Mattes

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

One of the most common inquiries received by Filson Historical Society librarians concerns the myth of Prince Madoc and the Welsh Indians. Of the myth’s many versions, the one most familiar to Ohio Valley History readers goes like this: Madoc, a Welsh prince escaping an internecine conflict over political rule at home, supposedly sailed to North America in the twelfth century. His force either landed at the Falls of the Ohio or made it there after landing further south and being driven north by hostile locals, possibly Cherokee people. Madoc and his contingent intermixed with Indigenous populations, whose fair-haired, blue-eyed, …

Estimating The Sex Of A Skeleton Using Measurements Of The Femur: Assessing Accuracy Among People Of Different Ancestry And Historic Periods, Hannah Decker

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Two of the most common elements used for sex estimation in humans are the pelvis and the skull, as measurements of these two regions can provide highly accurate results. However, in some forensic cases and archaeological sites, the skull and pelvis may be damaged or missing. As a result, it is important to develop methods for estimating the sex of an individual from other bones of the body. In this study, I specifically examined the femur and determined classification accuracy rates for six femoral measurements: the supero-inferior neck diameter, epicondylar breadth, vertical head diameter, transverse femoral head diameter, femoral shaft …