Anthropology Commons^™

Prospecting For New Questions: Integrating Geophysics To Define Anthropological Research Objectives And Inform Excavation Strategies At Monumental Sites, Timothy J. Horsley, Alice P. Wright, Casey R. Barrier

Anthropology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Geophysical data have the potential to significantly contribute to archaeological research projects when effectively integrated with more traditional methods. Although pre-existing archaeological questions about a site may be answered using geophysical methods, beginning an investigation with an extensive geophysical survey can assist in understanding the function and archaeological potential of a site, and may even transform preconceptions about the type and spatial organisation of features that are present. In this way, these prospection tools not only accurately locate and map features to allow recovery of cultural material for identification and dating, we argue that they can go much further, allowing …

Review: Moving Matters: Paths Of Serial Migration. Susan Ossman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013., Susanna Fioratta

Anthropology Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

(Review) Jones, Christine A. And Jennifer Schacker, Eds., Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology Of Fairy Tales And Contemporary Critical Perspectives And Raynard, Sophie, Ed., The Teller’S Tale: Lives Of The Classic Fairy Tale Writers, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Jeana Jorgensen's review of:

Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Ed. Christine A. Jones and Jennifer Schacker. (Peterborough, ON : Broadview Press, 2013. Pp. 580, introduction, notes on contributors, sources.)

The Teller’s Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers. Ed. Sophie Raynard. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Pp. vi + 183, introduction, list of contributors, index.)

Quantifying The Grimm Corpus: Transgressive And Transformative Bodies In The Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

What do bodies mean in fairy tales? Donald Haase’s engagement with the Grimms’ fairy tales has offered some hints, ranging from his attention to feminist scholarship on the Grimms to his multifaceted review of recent Grimm scholarship that addresses various meanings of bodies in the language and translation of their tales. Inspired by Haase’s work and encouragement, I created a database that lists every mention or description of a body in the Grimms’ tales and in five other European tale collections. I detailed the results of this quantitative investigation in my dissertation, generally treating all the tale collections as part …

Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …

Fields Of Individuals And Neoliberal Logics: Japanese Soccer Ideals And The 1990s Economic Crisis, Elise M. Edwards

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This article explores the relationship between popular representations of soccer and the rise of neoliberal discourse celebrating a new individualism in Japan at the turn of the millennium, a time when the country experienced sharp economic decline and consequent economic restructuring. Examining dominant vocabularies and practices present in coaching discourse, on soccer fields, and in media portrayals of Japanese men’s and women’s professional leagues, the author argues that rather than a coincidental, coeval mirroring between two seemingly unrelated realms—sports and economic transformations—these relationships point to the positioning of soccer over the past 20 years in Japan as a site to …

Communing With Nature, The Ancestors And The Neighbors: Ancient Ceramic Musical Instruments From Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico, Guy David Hepp, Sarah B. Barber, Arthur A. Joyce

Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Mesoamerican Formative period (1600 BCE–CE 250) saw the establishment of sedentism, dietary transformations and the development of ceramic technologies for subsistence, artistic representation and the region’s earliest preserved musical instruments. These instruments include aerophones such as whistles, ocarinas and flutes. In this paper, we describe sixty-three ceramic aerophones from mostly Formative period contexts in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. We situate our analysis in the broader contexts of research on music and iconography in Mesoamerican archaeology, as well as of the anthropology of sensory perception. Through a consideration of archaeological context, artifact form and technical properties, we conclude that music was …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

Manjako Literacy And Issues In Language Of Instruction, Miles Avery Pearson

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Students in Caio, Guinea-Bissau cannot read. This is due largely to the mismatch between the language at home and the language of instruction in schools. Students in Caio speak Manjako, but classes are taught in Portuguese, the official language, which students do not understand. This makes it more difficult for students to develop literacy skills and succeed in school. Literature shows that literacy is achieved best when it is taught to students in their mother tongue. This project involved creating and testing Manjako literacy materials and concludes with recommendations for implementing a Manjako literacy program. The materials included flashcards, sample …

Historical Archaeology: Methods, Meanings And Ambiguities, Christopher R. Decorse

Anthropology - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Sharing Economy: Exploring The Intersection Of Collaborative Consumption And Capitalism, Ellyn E. Erving

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the sharing economy in America combines Collaborative Consumption ideas and social values with capitalist business models to make a profit. I discuss definitions of terms associated with the sharing economy, economic anthropological theories and case studies, as well as company and consumer motivations in sharing economy companies.

Modeling Collapse: Analysis Of The Bronze Age-Iron Age Transition At Two Near Eastern Sites, William Nutt

Sociology & Anthropology Theses - Archive

This project tests a three-step model for archaeological collapse, by analyzing assemblages from two museum collections, Alisar Hüyük and Tell el Fakhariyah. Focusing on three categories of artifacts, namely biological remains, tools and weapons, and objects of personal adornment, the model evaluates change over a brief time in order to investigate the transitional period during a collapse. As the sites used for this research were excavated during the first half of the twentieth century, the project assesses the possible utility of old museum collections in light of probable biases.

Growing Community By Growing Food: A Comparative Study Of Two Community Gardens In North Texas, Rebekah Rupel

Sociology & Anthropology Theses - Archive

Community Gardens are a burgeoning trend in the U.S., blooming in many different cities and for different reasons including social activism, sustainability, health, education, ecology, and community. Their popularity also reflects a current trend where people are more attentive to their relationship with food and concerned about where it comes from. This thesis examines two community gardens in North Texas, University of Texas at Arlington Community Garden in Arlington and Deep Ellum Urban Garden in Dallas. Despite community gardens' popularity, no studies on community gardens have been done in Texas. However, North Texas is home to the 4th largest metropolitan …

Motivating Martial Artists: An Examination Of The Drives And Lessons Learned Among Taekwondo Students, Gordon M. Block

Sociology & Anthropology Theses - Archive

There are a large number of martial art schools operating in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, teaching a variety of martial arts. Of all of those schools the students at the Texas Black Belt Academy chose their school, despite a lengthy travel time for some of the students. In an effort to find out why the students chose this particular school, I joined and investigated the Texas Black Belt Academy, investigating what the students were getting out of both the lessons and environment of the school. I found that the students came most often to learn self-defense, however they stayed for …

Sharing, Subsistence, And Social Norms In Northern Siberia, John Ziker

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The majority of families in Ust’-Avam in northern Siberia are dependent on subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping and have been part of a vertically integrated industrial economy in a remote area of the former Soviet Union. Thus, the results from behavioral games conducted there in 2003—the dictator game (DG), the ultimatum game (UG), and the third-party punishment game (TPG)—lend themselves to comparison with other indigenous hunter-gatherers, as well as with working communities in other nation-states.

The “Female Fertility–Social Stratification–Hypergyny” Hypothesis Of Male Homosexual Preference: Factual, Conceptual And Methodological Errors In Barthes Et Al. [Commentary], Doug P. Vanderlaan, Zachary H. Garfield, Melissa J. Garfield, Jean-Baptiste Leca, Paul L. Vasey, Raymond B. Hames

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Barthes, Godelle, and Raymond (2013, Evolution and Human Behavior, 34, 155–163) proposed a hypothesis to (1) identify the process by which genes influencing male homosexual preference (MHP) are passed on over evolutionary time, and (2) account for why life-course persistent MHP is restricted to humans. According to their hypothesis, certain genes lower reproductive success in male carriers by causing MHP, but these same genes promote fertility in female carriers (i.e., sexual antagonism). Barthes et al. proposed that the female carriers of genes for MHP have physical cues of fertility (i.e., beauty) that help them marry up the social class …

Movement As A Means Of Social (Re)Production: Using Gis To Measure Social Integration Across Urban Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the archaeological study of movement in urban environments where built forms and natural features worked together to play a key role in structuring human mobility.We propose an analytical method using least cost analysis in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to empirically measure social integration. The method defines mobility as the potential for pedestrian movement, and identifies locations where people were most likely to walk to or through in a landscape. The calculated mobility data are then employed to identify with whom people were most likely to interact and the degree to which they were socially connected …

Gene Expression Of Components Of The Insulin/Insulin-Like Signaling Pathway In Response To Heat Stress In The Garter Snake, Thamnophis Elegans, Tonia S. Schwartz, Anne M. Bronikowski

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

The insulin/insulin-like signaling (IIS) pathway is an evolutionary conserved molecular signaling pathway that regulates growth, reproduction, stress resistance, and longevity in response to nutrition and external stress. While the constituents of this pathway and their functions are relatively well understood in laboratory model animals, they have not been explored in many other organisms, with notable exceptions in the fisheries literature. We tested for the gene expression of four key components of this pathway in the garter snake (Thamnophis elegans) liver, and determine how the transcription of these components responds to heat stress. We found that the two insulin-like …

Synchronous Rotation In The Eclipsing Binary 68 Herculis Inferred From Doppler Shifts In Its Spectrum And Light Curve Modeling, Kenneth W. Mclaughlin, Janak Panthi

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Our differential photometry of the eclipsing binary 68 Herculis through V- and R-filters shows periodic minima consistent with a previously established period. As a function of its orbital motion, we report spectra over a limited wavelength range encompassing H-alpha 656.3 nm and helium 667.8 nm lines. Doppler shifts of both stars were resolved in H-alpha, while only the more massive star rendered the helium line with Doppler shifts that agree with the radial velocity we derive for it from the H-alpha profile. Sinusoidal curve-fits to the orbital dependence of the radial velocities imply circular orbits for both components, with amplitudes …

Improved Functional Prediction Of Hypothetical Proteins From Listeria Monocytogenes 08-5578, Michael J. Lagier, Brittany Bowman, Kelsey Brend, Katherine Hobbs, Michael Foggia, Mark Mcdaniel

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne human pathogen responsible for listerosis. The genomes of several L. monocytogenes strains have been recently sequenced. The genome of L. monocytogenes 08-5578, which was in part responsible for a significant listerosis outbreak in 2008, contains an unexpectedly high percentage of protein-encoding genes (1,927 out of 3,161; 60.96%) autonomously annotated as hypothetical proteins. The aim of this study was to test whether a manual annotation strategy could be used to assign more meaningful functional names to the hypothetical proteins of 08-5578. A holistic, manual gene annotation strategy that utilized sequence homology, cellular localization predictions, structure-based evidence, …