Anthropology Commons^™

Drawn To Africa: In Anthropology, Katy Lindquist '14 Finds Her Footing

Colby Magazine

Katy Lindquist ’14 is a Presidential Scholar from Woodland Park, Colo., who majored in anthropology and won the award for outstanding performance in anthropology and the Oak Human Rights Champion prize. Her Colby career included two Jan Plans in southern India with Oak Fellow Fatima Burnad, a summer in Tanzania helping a community organization build a secondary school, another summer in Ethiopia working for a community development organization, and a semester abroad studying post-genocide reconstruction and peace building in Rwanda. She sat down for a Q&A before graduation in May.

Hla Class Ii Alleles In The Otomi Population Of The Mezquital Valley. A Genetic Approach To The History Of Interethnic Migrations In The Mexican Central Plateau, Ana Itzel Juárez-Martín, Blanca Zoila González-Sobrino, Ángel Eduardo Camarena Olvera, Ramcés Falfán-Valencia

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

From a historic and genetic point of view, the Otomi of the Mezquital Valley are a frontier people that have played an important role in the making of the population dynamics of the Mexican Central Plateau. Due to their antiquity in the area, the Otomi may be bearers of ancient genetic variability, shared mainly today with other groups belonging to the Otomanguean linguistic family and with the Nahua.

This study analyzes the HLA class II allele frequencies reported in Mexican indigenous populations, in order to provide an intra-regional level historical perspective of the genetic relationships between the Otomi of the …

Wash's Motorcycle Project (Fa 678), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives project 678. This collection features informationa nd documentation of Wash's Cycles motorcycle shop in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky and their connection with the Man O' War division of The Harley Owners Group located in Lexington, Kentucky.

Toward A New Theory Of Waste: From "Matter Out Of Place" To Signs Of Life , Joshua Reno

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a counterpoint to the prevailing account of waste in the human sciences. This account identifies waste, firstly, as the anomalous product of arbitrary social categorizations, or ‘matter out of place’, and, secondly, as a distinctly human way of leaving behind and interpreting traces, or a mirror of culture. Together, these positions reflect a more or less constructivist and anthropocentric approach. Most commonly, waste is placed within a framework that privileges considerations of meaning over materiality and the threat of death over the perpetuity of life processes. For an alternative I turn to bio-semiotics and cross-species scholarship around …

Population Genetic Structure Of Traditional Populations In The Peruvian Central Andes And Implications For South American Population History, Graciela S. Cabana, Cecil M. Lewis, Jr., Raúl Y. Tito, R. Alan Covey, Angela M. Cáceres, C. Leslie Castillo Pampas, Augusto F. De La Cruz, Diana Durand, Genevieve Housman, Brannon I. Hulsey, Gian Carlo Iannacone, Paul W. Lopez, Rolando Martínez, Ángel Medina, Olimpio Ortega Dávila, Karla Paloma Osorio Pinto, Susan I. Polo Santillán, Percy Rojas Domínguez, Meagan Rubel, Heather F. Smith, Silvia E. Smith, Verónica Rubín De Celis, Beatriz Lizárraga, Anne C. Stone

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Molecular-based characterizations of Andean peoples are traditionally conducted in the service of elucidating continental-level evolutionary processes in South America. Consequently, “western” Andean population genetic variation is often represented in relation to “eastern” variation among Amazon and Orinoco River Basin populations. This west-east contrast in patterns of population genetic variation is typically attributed to large-scale phenomena, such as dual founder colonization events and/or differing long-term microevolutionary histories. However, alternative explanations that consider the nature and causes of population genetic diversity within the Andean region remain underexplored.

Here we examine population genetic diversity in the Peruvian Central Andes using mtDNA HVI and …

We Were Alway United, Except When We Were Not: Bivocal Memory And Georgia's Geopolitical Dilemma, Nino Batiashvili

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This study examines two distinct but mutually constitutive discursive genres on Georgian identity: one based in the voice of self-idealization and the other in self-condemnation. These two genres are embedded in historical conceptions and enact public debate on the country's geopolitical challenges. The ethnographic material I examine, unveils politically strained discursive terrain that unfolds as a "game of memory" between two visions of Georgian history, Georgian identity and Georgian geopolitics.

Throughout this study I examine how these two voices unfold through debates on historical memory and how they shape forms of political reasoning. On the basis of diverse textual and …

Disturbed But Not Destroyed: New Perspectives On Urban Archaeology And Class In 19th Century Lowell, Massachusetts, Katelyn M. Coughlan

Graduate Masters Theses

Through the artifacts from the Jackson Appleton Middlesex Urban Revitalization and Devolvement Project (hereafter JAM) located in Lowell, MA, this research explores social class in nineteenth-century boardinghouses. This thesis is a two-part study. First, through statistical analysis, research recovers interpretable data from urban archaeological contexts subject to disturbance. Pinpointing intra-site similarities between artifacts recovered from intact and disturbed contexts, data show that artifacts recovered from disturbed and intact contexts in urban environments are not as dissimilar as previously believed. In the second phase using both intact and disturbed JAM contexts, the analysis of four boardinghouse features highlights two distinct patterns …

From Horse To Electric Power At The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: Archaeology And The Narrative Of Technological Change, Miles Shugar

Graduate Masters Theses

The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, was first excavated in the late 1970s by staff of the Museum of Afro American History. Researchers recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts related to the site's life as a horsecar street railway station and carriage manufacturer from 1860 to 1891, its subsequent conversion into an electric street railway until around 1920, and finally its modern use as an automobile garage. Using the framework of behavioral archaeology, this project uses GIS-based spatial methods and newly collected documentary evidence to reexamine the site's assemblage of horse accoutrements and carriage manufacturing byproducts. Artifact distribution maps …

Final Rest At The Hilltop Sanctuary: The Community Of Mount Gilead Ame Church, Meagan M. Ratini

Graduate Masters Theses

The Mount Gilead AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, perched on a mountain in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, has been a focal point of African American heritage in the area for over a hundred and seventy-five years. Though the second church building, dated to 1852, is still standing with its cemetery beside it, very little about its history has been thoroughly explored. Oral histories link the church with the Underground Railroad, a highly clandestine operation--yet the church itself was built of stone and advertised its location during the height of the movement of self-emancipated people out of the South. While it is said …

Altered Lives, Altered Environments: Creating Home At Manzanar Relocation Center, 1942-1945, Laura W. Ng

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to understand how individuals exiled from their homes due to racial prejudice cope with institutional confinement. Specifically, this study focuses on the World War II mass incarceration of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States after Japan's attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbor. Under the guise of national security and without due process, the United States government forcibly removed over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and imprisoned them in camps spread throughout the country. This thesis examines institutional confinement at one Japanese American carceral site: an incarceration camp …

Feasting On Broken Glass: Making A Meal Of Seeds, Bones, And Sherds, Mary C. Beaudry

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Drawing on various lines of evidence that provide insight into late 18th- and early 19th-century episodes of dining at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, I explore ways in which historical archaeologists can move from discussions of food and foodstuffs to explore menus, meals, and dining. I argue that by drawing together many lines of evidence—food remains such as bones, seeds, and shells; documentary sources; and ceramics, glassware, and utensils—archaeologists are able to “feast” upon the evidence and to go beyond merely reporting on what people ate in the past. They do so by exploring ways of interpreting food on …

Modeling Communities Through Food: Connecting The Daily Meal To The Construction Of Place And Identity, Karen Bescherer Metheny

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Foodways are an aspect of community building that find expression in the physical and cultural landscape. Using family reconstitution, food maps, and other archaeological and anthropological approaches to study foodways and commensality in the mining town of Helvetia, Pennsylvania (ca. 1891–1947), I lay out a program to reconstruct the spatial relationships associated with food procurement, preparation, and consumption in historic-period communities. Particular emphasis is placed on food sharing and shared food activities in the context of the daily meal. These reconstructed relationships or food connections reflect the varied networks and boundaries within the community, based on ethnicity, gender, age, sex, …

Applying Concepts From Historical Archaeology To New England's Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks, Anne Yentsch

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This article describes a study of New England cookbooks as a data source for historical archaeologists. The database for this research consisted of single-authored, first-edition cookbooks written by New England women between 1800 and 1900, together with a small set of community cookbooks and newspaper advertisements. The study was based on the belief that recipes are equivalent to artifact assemblages and can be analyzed using the archaeological methods of seriation, presence/absence, and chaîne opératoire. The goal was to see whether change through time could be traced within a region, and why change occurred; whether it was an archetypal shift in …

Decline In The Use And Production Of Red-Earthenware Cooking Vessels In The Northeast, 1780-1880, Meta F. Janowitz

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Ceramic collections from archaeological sites dating to and before the early 19th century are often dominated by red-earthenware vessels used in the foodways complex. By the late 19th century, redware vessels are much less common in New England and the Middle Atlantic region. This decline in the use and production of red earthenwares has many causes, including decreased costs of alternative materials (stoneware, refined earthenware, metal, and glass) and an awareness of the harmful effects of lead glazes, but the most important factor is the change in food-preparation technology from open-hearth to stove cooking.

Op-Ed: The Influence Of New Technologies, Foods, And Print Media On Local Material Culture Remains In Nineteenth-Century America, Marie-Lorraine Pipes, Meta F. Janowitz

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This opinion piece is a brief discussion of documentary and graphic sources, such as cookbooks, works of fiction, advertisements, and genre paintings, available to archaeologists for use in interpreting food-related artifacts and faunal materials from 19th-century domestic deposits. At that time American society experienced a surge in print and visual media that shaped the consumption and preparation of new foods. The scale of influence a particular form of media has on consumers varies in relation to the time sensitivity of the media.This article considers the range of sources that exist and suggest a comprehensive approach to the analysis of archaeological …

Consumerism And Control: Archaeological Perspectives On The Harvard College Buttery, Christina J. Hodge

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers a unique setting through which to explore cultural changes within 17th- and 18th-century America, including shifting foodways and consumerisms. Harvard’s early leaders constructed their collegiate community by controlling many aspects of scholars’ lives, including their eating, drinking, and purchasing practices. Between 1650 and 1800, the college operated the “Buttery,” a commissary where students supplemented meager institutional meals by purchasing snacks and sundries. As a marketplace, the buttery organized material practices of buying and selling as people and things flowed through it. Archaeological and documentary evidence reveals how college officials attempted to regulate, but lagged …

Historic Philadelphia Foodways: A Consideration Of Catfish Cookery, Teagan Schweitzer

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This article explores the consumption of catfish in the Philadelphia area during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Although not extremley popular in the region today, in the past this fish was an important part of the culinary landscape, in particular as part of a meal referred to as "catfish and waffles." Evidence from zooarchaeological and documentary research is used to justify this claim.

Dining With John And Catharine Butler Before The Close Of The Eighteenth Century, Eva Macdonald, Suzanne Needs-Howarth

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The partial excavation of the homestead of Colonel John Butler in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake has afforded the opportunity to explore the daily activities of one Loyalist family after the establishment of the British colony of Upper Canada in the 1780s. In particular, the large collection of zooarchaeological material (over 14,5000 specimens) can provide information about the availability of wild animal species, as well as the types of domestic animals that the Butlers kept on their farm. Butchering marks provide further insight into the types of meat cuts used in cooking meals for the family and guests. These are compared …

The Power Of Choice: Reflections Of Economic Ability, Status, And Ethnicity In The Foodways Of A Free African American Family In Northwestern New Jersey, Megan E. Springate, Amy Raes

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The choices people make concerning food involve decisions well beyond biological sustenance. Food procurement and consumption, as well as the way in which a dish is served, are choices that are embedded with both overt and less obvious implications of social aspirations and validations (McKee 1999; Reitz, Ruff, and Zierden 2006). Food and the means by which it is prepared and consumed embody and communicate cultural traditions, as well as factors such as social identity, ethnicity, status, class, and consumer choice. In this article, we examine the faunal remains, tablewares, and food-preparation vessels recovered during excavations within a free African …

Introduction: Bringing More To The Table, Karen Bescherer Metheny

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Introduction to the special volume on foodways.