Doctoral Dissertations in Anthropology

Author: Timothy James Abel

Title: The Clayton Cluster: Cultural dynamics of a Late Prehistoric village sequence in the upper St. Lawrence Valley (New York)

Year: 2001

Abstract: In the extreme northwestern portion of New York, an area locally dubbed “The North Country” bordering Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, lie a group of seven Late Prehistoric (A.D. 1350–1550) aboriginal archaeological sites which, based on their proximity to Clayton, New York, have been collectively referred to as “The Clayton Cluster”. At least four of these archaeological sites are known to represent consecutive village occupations of a local group of native inhabitants known collectively as “St. Lawrence Iroquoians”. The village sites are interior stream-oriented and span the time period between A.D. 1450 and 1525. The remainder of the sites are lacustrine or interior-oriented and are believed to represent special purpose camps or hamlets of this local group. This dissertation seeks to further define and contextualize the Clayton Cluster by describing their material culture, settlement patterns, burial patterns, and relationships with neighboring population groups, namely other “St. Lawrence Iroquoians” and the Huron. The regional comparison of these cultural aspects in the North Country has produced new insight into both the origins and disappearance of the Clayton Cluster and other local “St. Lawrence Iroquoians” in northern New York and southeastern Ontario.

Author: Miguel Astor Aguilera

Title: Unshrouding the communicating cross: The iconology of a Maya quadripartite symbol (Mexico)

Year: 2004

Abstract: The cross idol tradition of the Yucatec-Maya is one of the most important transformed continuities from the pre-Columbian period to the present. The cross has been utilized to rally ethnic affirmation against Spanish colonial and Mexican state institutional structure, and in claiming this extant icon as ancestral, in order to mediate their position with the modern world, the Yucatec-Maya are seeking to control their history. While communicating crosses are given salience in villages, their symbols and meanings extend beyond the individual communities. The purpose, goal, and objective of my dissertation thesis is to analyze how the Maya cross serves as a vehicle for political discourse that articulates between the past and present, and functions as an ethnic negotiation marker in response to the phenomenon of globalization. The newest iteration of the 1850 Caste War revitalization movement is taking place right now, during a national level reassessment of Mexican political culture and ethnic policies, in the wake of the post-Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. My data collection methods emphasized interviews with ritual organizers, shaman-priests, and shrine keepers in order to record the schedule of cross rituals, identity of ritual participants, and variation in cross and shrine attributes, such as: facility structure and orientation, decoration, and offerings. My dissertation documents, through ethnography of communicating cross reverence, why and how the Maya relate, give meaning to, and venerate crosses, and why they expend time, money, and energy to enact rituals in their honor, and what they expect to receive in return. My thesis focuses on the historical process of Maya religious change and continuity and seeks to answer how the Communicating Cross cult is faring, at this late stage of Maya history, and through analogy how similar revitalization movements may also progress spatially and temporally.

Author: Linda Asturias de Barrios

Title: Mano de mujer, mano de hombre: Produccion artesanal testil en comalapa, Guatemal

Year: 1994

Abstract: Using an integrative and cultural approach, this dissertation focuses on textile artisan production in Comalapa, a Kaqchikel-Mayan community in highland Guatemala. Production as practice is conceptualized in a dialectical relationship with ideology. The total spectrum of weaving production in both backstrap and treadle looms is studied by means of a proposed typology of eight forms of artisan production. Based on criteria such as ownership of means of production, circulation of capital, functional division of labor, work site, family/wage composition of labor, textile technology, and gender division of labor, the typology comprises the following forms: household production for self consumption, household production for exchange, commissioned production, family workshop, family workshop with hired workers, putting-out- system, capitalist workshop, and manufactory. The ideological components examined encompass economic conceptualizations, ethnoaesthetics, and ethnic and gender identities expressed through weavings and the representation of weaving in popular paintings. The interaction between production and ideology is investigated in three domains: the local history of weaving, the daily organization of production in different cases of non- capitalist and capitalist production, and painting in three locally defined styles.

Supported by historical, economic, cultural and gender reasons, the distinction between backstrap-loom and treadle-loom weaving is fundamental to this research, which was carried out from June 1990 to December 1991. Methodology included participant observation, interviewing, case studies, a survey of 300 households and analysis of 400 paintings.

The local development of weaving in terms of technology, forms of production, marketing and gender relationships is reconstructed. The persistence of backstrap-loom weaving despite the competition of treadle-loom weaving is explained. An emergent process of class and economic level differentiation is revealed through the comparative analysis of households engaged in non-capitalist and capitalist forms of production. The explanation of capitalist accumulation within the context of contending traditional and modern ideologies is examined. The polysemous meaning of weaving is presented in dialectical relation to the material basis of existence. The role of weaving is expressing ethnic (local, indigenous, pan-Mayan) and gender identities in paintings is analyzed as part of the confrontation between social life and its pictorial representation.

Author: Susan E. Bamann

Title: Settlement nucleation in Mohawk Iroquois prehistory: An analysis of a site sequence in the lower Otsquago drainage of the Mohawk Valley

Year: 1993

Abstract: Settlement change in the form of increasing site size and defensive positioning through rapid village relocation and settlement nucleation occurred throughout New York, Pennsylvania, southern Ontario, and Quebec, the territory of the Northern Iroquoians, beginning as early as AD 1300. Iroquoian archaeologists have become increasingly concerned with the process of settlement nucleation and have emphasized the analysis of local sequences as a baseline for addressing broader theoretical issues. In this dissertation, a single cluster of prehistoric Mohawk sites in the lower Otsquago Creek drainage is analyzed. Questions regarding the chronological sequence, variation in site function, site contemporaneity, changing locational strategies, demographic change, and settlement nucleation are addressed. Chronology for the site cluster and contemporary Mohawk sites is resolved through seriation and similarity analysis based on ceramic rimsherd types and attributes. Interpretations of variation in site function also result. The sequence is closely examined to determine whether population growth within a single community or settlement nucleation appropriately describes observed settlement change. Through population estimation and analysis of increasing diversity in ceramic decorative elements, a model of lower Otsquago settlement nucleation is confirmed. Settlement nucleation in the lower Otsquago drainage entailed a complex process that most likely involved populations from outside the immediate drainage and possibly an alternating process of fission and fusion of participating social units. Adaptation to evolving horticultural subsistence patterns and environmental uncertainty due to climatic cooling is discussed as a possible alternative to models of settlement change based on aggressive interaction.

Author: Ruth E. Baum

Title: The ethnohistory of law: The Hutterite case

Year: 1977

Abstract: My dissertation deals with Hutterite law from an ethno-historical perspective. The Hutterites are a communal religious isolate based on large-scale agriculture on the North American plains. Their internal legal system has been an important factor in maintaining their boundaries and their sectarian character since their origin in 1528. They are unusual in being a status society whose non-administrative substantive law is solely criminal. The reasons lie in their religion and in their historical period of origin. Because their legal bases differ from the larger society's, the latter's courts sometimes have problems in dealing with them.

Author: Susan J. Bender

Title: Hunter-Gatherer subsistence and settlement in a mountainous environment: The prehistory of the northern Tetons

Year: 1983

Abstract: Systematic survey of the northern Teton Mountains of northwestern Wyoming has recovered 78 archaeological sites distributed throughout this rugged upland area. The number of sites recovered, together with variation in their relative sizes and constituent artifact inventories suggest that these sites are the archaeological result of a consistent, seasonal re-occupation of these mountains by aboriginal populations. The purpose of the present work is to reconstruct the pre-historic subsistence and settlement behavior that generated the northern Tetons' archaeological record. This research derives special value from the fact that, to date, no other similarly intensive investigations of the prehistoric High Plains dwellers' adaptation to the mountains have been published.

The approach to reconstruction followed here is one of modeling and validation. A plausible model of northern Teton subsistence and settlement behavior is specified on the basis of (1) information about the nature and distribution of the area's natural resources, (2) specific understandings about the distinctive lifeway operative on the High Plains throughout prehistory, (3) generalized understandings about the structure of hunter-gatherer behavior. Beginning with the assumption of a full-scale seasonal occupation of the area by an aboriginal population following a broad spectrum foraging strategy, basic patterns of behavior are specified in light of the specific mountainous setting. The archaeological results of the these behaviors, focusing on aspects of inter-site variability, are predicted and then compared to the actual archaeological record.

Several measured of size and functional diversity all display patterns of inter-site variability that are consistent with the model. Base camps and satellite sites reflecting related domestic and procurement activities are all clearly present in the northern Tetons' archaeological record. Hence the area was certainly occupied, and not just sporadically utilized, by aboriginal populations. Moreover, demonstrable differences in the location strategies associated with these sites, as well as relative differences in the functional diversity of their artifact inventories, reflect a myriad of procurement activities undertaken at these site. Broad spectrum foraging is thus a likely subsistence basis for the clearly recorded prehistoric occupation.

Most importantly, this research clarifies the role of at least one mountainous area in the adaptive strategy of the prehistoric High Plains dweller. The implication is that other mountainous areas are likely to have been similarly important in local adaptive systems. The invitation is for other archaeologists to document this process for other locales within the High Plains culture area.

Author: Julie C. Benyo

Title: An archaeological investigation of intra-community social organizations at La Ceiba, Comayagua, Honduras.

Year: 1986

Abstract: The purpose of this investigation is the description and explanation of the special patterning of the community at La Ceiba in terms of intrasite social organization.

Settlement archaeology has typically used complex administrative/ritual centers to study organization. Although a few projects have identified residential patterns and noted their significance as components of settlement, these works have only superficially examined the specific nature of population organization embodied in the architecture and artifactual remains of smaller settlements where indices of relative wealth and status are less obviously apparent.

This dissertation describes an intensive study of the residential architecture and artifactual distributions at the site of La Ceiba (ca. A.D. 650-900) located in west-central Honduras. Data pertaining to architectural form, range of variation, differential intra-site distribution content and social separation are used to define the exact nature of population aggregates within the community. The social units so defined are then investigated in terms of various operative integrative features which served to unite these separate social organizations unto a single community system.

Author: Ellen Bigler

Title: Multiculturalism in upstate New York: Contested identities and the schooling of Puerto Rican youth in a de- industrializing economy

Year: 1994

Abstract: Multicultural reform in schools is being urged as a means of redressing educational inequalities for racial and ethnic minorities. This study, sutuated in an ethnically diverse upstate New York community, examines a heated public debate over the need for educational reform, and investigates educators' subsequent responses to proposed multicultural initiatives.

Ethnographic and discursive analysis of the community debate between white ethnic senior citizens and minority community members over the existence and consequences of racism in the local schools reveals sharply differing constructions of group identity and explanations for school failure. These divergent responses arise from the differing historical experiences of white ethnics and Puerto Ricans in the United States, which this study analyzes nationally and locally in order to explain the different ethnic communities' relations to the school.

In response to recommendations derived from the New York State Education Department investigation of the schools, school officials initiated multicultural reforms that included attempts to broaden the literature canon. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation, and detailed analysis of classroom exchanges, this study explores teachers' concerns about multicultural texts and the ways in which their choices, conditioned by their personal biographies and institutional practices and constraints, exclude or include particular ethnic voices and experiences. In a fine-grained analysis of literature lessons, contextualized with teacher and student interviews, two English teachers' treatment of multicultural texts and nonStandard language in the classroom are contrasted, with analytic focus on curricular choices and classroom interactions that affirm or negate the identities of nonmainstream students. Arguing that the reconfiguration of cultural and linguistic capital in the classroom may be particularly significant for minority students, this study addresses the difficulties of impleminting multicultural reforms and the importance of educators acknowledging and exploring the ways in which societal inequalities enter into the schooling process.

Author: Nancy Johnson Black

Title: Transformation of a frontier mission province: The order of Our Lady of Mercy in western Honduras, 1525-1773

Year: 1989

Abstract: The purpose of this investigation is the description and explanation of culture change in a mission province in colonial northern Central America. Both documentary records and archaeological data from research pertaining to western Honduras have been used in this dissertation.

Central to this study is a consideration of the interaction between Mercedarian missionary personnel and the indigenous Lenca Indian population, and the resultant change within the Mercedarian Order. Mission activities and policies were not uniform throughout colonial Latin America and varied over time in response to crown initiatives, the relationship between secular and religious authorities as well as among Spanish religious specialists, within orders, and among local populations and conditions in the frontier. The explanatory framework of frontier theory is used to examine aspects of the operation and goals of the Mercedarian mission province, Provincia Redencion de Cautivos de la Presentacion de Guatemala, in the Audiencia of Guatemala, and the nation of Hispano- Indian encounter in an area of the southeastern periphery of Mesoamerica, the ecclesiastical district of Tencoa located in what is today the department of Santa Barbara, Honduras. This examination of frontier theory as exemplified by Mercedarian social history is useful in order to identify and clarify some of the ambiguity associated with the term "frontier," to evaluate its potential as a conceptualframework for future research as well as to raise questions concerning social processes in the formation of colonial society in Latin America.

Author: Stanley C. Bond, Jr.

Title: Tradition and change in first Spanish period (1565- 1763) St. Augustine architecture: A search for colonial identity

Year: 1995

Abstract: Spanish St. Augustine was the first permanent European settlement established in the continental United States. Founded in 1565, its long term development makes St. Augustine an excellent laboratory for the study of culture change and continuity. This dissertation uses the built environment as an artifact for analyzing the development of colonial identity in the Spanish American world. St. Augustine is the primary focus of this analysis. Data used for this study falls into four hierarchial categories: 1) the town plan, 2) block relationships, 3) lot patterns and elements, and 4) building layouts and elements. Each of these categories is then examined within the context of five patterns of colonial identity: 1) the comparison of Spanish conquest society to other conquest societies, especially the Roman Republic, 2) the comparison of Spanish creole society to peninsular Spanish society, 3) the comparison of Spanish creole societies to one another, 4) the adaptation of conquest Spanish and colonial creole society to the physical and social environment, and links between class groups and individuals within specific creole societies.

The conquest and colonial situation is one of rapid change. The movement of populations into new environments and contact with foreign cultures sets up dissonance between the colony and parent culture. Punctuated equilibrium theory offers a new alternative to past theories of culture change. The principles behind punctuated equilibrium theory, a punctuated period of rapid change followed by a longer period of cultural equilibrium, are applies to the Spanish colonial situation.

The dissertation concludes that the built environment was a strong controlling and conservative mechanism in Spanish colonial society. The most significant areas of conservatism appear to be the town plan, elite household courtyards, and building style and layout. Through the built environment Spanish settlers and creole citizens could recognize themselves as Spaniards even in the context of their Spanish American environment.

Author: Laurel Herbenar Bossen

Title: Women and dependent development: A comparison of women's economic and social roles in Guatemala

Year: 1978

Abstract: The position of women relative to men is descibed for four Guatemalan communities which represent major sectors of teh national society as they are defined by regional, ethnic, class, and economic variables. These sectors are: the indigenous peasant highlands, the commercial plantations of the lowlands, the urban shantytown population and the urban middle class. Special emphasis is given to the influence of economic factors on women's overall social position in each of the four sectors. In particular, the sexual division of labor, the distribution of rewards and the control of strategic resources are examined in each of the four communities.

Intensive and extensive survey data are used to describe each community. In addition, case histories are presented illustration the economic strategies women employ in facing the opportunities and constraints of their particular positions. The use of these two broad sorts of information allows both objective, often quantitative, comparison across four very different communities and an appreciation of the qualitative differences among them. The comparison of the four communities explores the effects of the expanding money economy and increased integration into an international capitalist system in which Guatemla plays a dependent role. It is found that both local socio-economic conditions as well as thenational condition of dependent development have important effects on the degree of sexual equality that has developed in the different sectors of Guatemalan society. It is observed that women achieve a higher measure of sexual equality in the subsistence and iformal sectors of the economy than in the modern, formal sector.

Author: Lori A. Boulanger

Title: 'Resisting coercive assimilation': Identity, empowerment, and activism in the Native Hawaiian movement on Hawai'i Island

Year: 1999

Abstract: Hawaiians are engaged in an oppositional critique of the social and political structure which dominates island life. No longer content to be coercively assimilated by Western culture and colonialism, they have, since the 1970's, been organizing themselves at the grassroots level. Sovereignty, self-determination, cultural identity, and land issues form the basis for activism on every island whom grassroots organizations have emerged as part of the Hawaiian Movement. This dissertation is a study Native Hawaiians on Hawai'i Island who are engaged in this Movement, and in particular of three organizations: The Pele Defense Fund, Ka 'Ohana, O KaLae, and Free Association. The original intent of this research centered around three questions which focused on the construction of cultural identity in the Movement, the way in which the past is used and represented, and the relationship between activists and anthropologists. While activism and cultural identity have been the dominant themes throughout this research, the issue of identity as a construction has been overshadowed by a concern with how Hawaiians in this Movement experience their activism in the daily struggle for survival. What became most apparent is that Hawaiian activists are occupying contested lands both for political reasons, and in an effort to create places of refuge from the dominant society. By appropriating lands, building Hawaiian cultural villages, and protecting natural and historic sites, Hawaiian are clearly defining who they are while demarcating the boundaries between Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian cultural spaces. This dissertation explores the inner workings and variations within the Hawaiian Movement among the organizations studied, as well as within the greater Movement. These variations were found to include gender and class distinctions which were tied into degrees of assimilation into American society. I show that rather than ignoring the forms of asymmetry and inequality present in this Movement, their investigation provides a way to better understand the internal politics of the Movement and how these interact with the external forces of domination that are present. Such an understanding can strengthen a position of solidarity, as it helps to clarify the complex relations between dominant and dominated, as well as within oppressed groups.

Author: Elizabeth Bronson

Title: Agriculture, adaptation, and attitudes: Decision making among farm families in southern Costa Rica

Year: 1993

Abstract: Costa Rica is noted for the richness of its biological diversity. However, over the last twenty years the ecological balance supporting this diversity has become increasingly precarious in the face of a variety of human activities. Cattle ranching figures prominently among these. The beef industry is most prominently in the dry lowlands of Guanacaste. But, as large scale ranching operations have absorbed the lands most suitable for extensive stock raising, attention has turned to other geographic areas. Over the last twenty-five years, the interest in cattle ranching has spread into the southern Pacific regions of Costa Rica. These wet, tropical ecological zones are less suitable for grazing; the margin of soil fertility is narrow, and the ecological balance delicate.

Loss of soil fertility demands continual increases in applications of chemical additives to produce an adequate harvest; it also significantly reduces the protein content of pasture: more land is required to maintain the same number of cattle. And, of great social significance, sterile soil requires more land to maintain family. But the frontier has already been appropriated so fewer families have access to more land. Nevertheless, in spite of its land extensive nature, offering few opportunities to human labor, raising cattle continues to be a popular land use option.

The research itself is grounded in ecological anthropological theory, and the goal, at this fundamental level, lies in widening our knowledge of human adaptation. This study in agricultural decision making is founded on eleven months of ethnographic field research in south central Costa Rica. Decision tree modeling provides the framework for an analysis directed at better understanding the constraints and criteria supporting land use options among farm families owning small and medium farms among foothills of the Talamanca Mountains. Almost ninety percent of the farm households in the study community opted to raise beef cattle. Social pressures from outside play a significant part in local decision making. Equally important are internal conflicts over land use. These conflicts, rooted in past agricultural decisions, are exacerbating cultural and economic differences within the community, and will, in turn, affect future decision making.

Author: Adrian Louis Burke

Title: Lithic procurement and the Ceramic period occupation of the interior of the Maritime Peninsula (Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island)

Year: 2000

Abstract: This dissertation looks at the Ceramic period archaeology of a region referred to as the Maritime Peninsula which encompasses northern and eastern Maine, the Canadian Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and the regions of Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie in Quebec. Specifically, I focus on the interior or non-coastal portions of Maine, Quebec, and New Brunswick that form the upper St. John River Valley drainage. Background data on climate, flora, fauna, geology, ethnohistory, ethnography, cultural ecology, and history of archaeological research are presented, and are used to introduce the concept of the interior of the Maritime Peninsula as an archaeological cultural geographic area. Lithic raw material source areas known to have been used prehistorically are an important part of the archaeological record of the interior region. This dissertation describes the archaeology, geology, petrography, chemistry, and lithic production of three primary quarry source areas—Munsungun, Maine, Témiscouata, Quebec, and Tobique, New Brunswick—as well as several other source areas in the larger Maritime Peninsula region. Data characterizing these lithic sources are used to create a system for classifying archaeological samples as to source area with predictable accuracy depending on methods employed and raw material. Archaeometric methods employed include thin section petrography, neutron activation analysis, and x-ray fluorescence. Information on the exploitation of these different raw materials and the distribution of these materials across the region is used to analyze the movement of people and materials across the landscape and to explore questions of prehistoric cultural geography. Archaeological distributions are compared with models of socio-political organization and exchange. Expectations regarding the use of raw materials based on cost benefit studies are tested. Temporal control is poor for most sites, but some trends over time can be identified and related processual issues are addressed. The Maritime Peninsula, and in particular the interior region, provides useful empirical data for the study of the organization of stone tool technology among hunter-gatherer groups and for the further development of the culture history of the Northeast.

Author: Quetzil E. Castaneda

Title: An "Archaeology" of Chichen Itza: Discourse, power and resistance in a Maya tourist site

Year: 1991

Abstract: This is a study in the invention of Maya culture and of the Maya as a civilization. Within the history of Mexican politics and Yucatec regionalism, the interplay between local Maya society, tourism and anthropology has invented the Maya and embodied that invention in the ancient city of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. Through the archeological restoration of the ruins and the development of a tourist complex at Chichen and the nearby Maya town of Piste, a museum of Maya civilization was created. This tourist attraction is analyzed as an apparatus of power that regulates the localized practices of tourism as well as the discursive production of knowledge about the Maya that occurs in and is linked to Chichen Itza.

The first part explores the political, economic and cultural processes that have incorporated Chichen and Piste into the state apparatus and the emergent tourist region of Yucatan. The focus is on the production of knowledge about the Maya and how such knowledge is enmeshed in fields of power. It is argued that a Museum of Maya Civilization is constituted through texts "written" in language, material artifacts, charter tours, and everyday touristic activities.

The second part describes the local tourist apparatus in terms of power relations and strategies. The focus is on the politics of tourism, specifically the struggles and everyday resistance of handicraft vendors to the imposition of social control by state agencies, including the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The politics and ethics of my own ethnographic practices are discussed as they reveal the strategies of power and knowledge that compose the tourist apparatus.

The dissertation turns from a traditional anthropological study of a culture, towards an inquiry of anthropology, specifically its historical role in the invention of a culture and the ethical dilemmas of doing ethnography.

Author: Stefan Aleksander Czerwinski

Title: Determinants of blood lead levels in socioeconomically disadvantaged children from birth to two years: A biocultural perspective

Year: 1998

Abstract: Research has shown environmental lead to have significant health effects. These effects include decreased stature, neurobehavioral deficits, hearing deficits and even death at high doses. Certain subpopulations are at risk for increased exposure due to low income, urban residence and dietary habits. This research examines the determinants of blood lead levels in a sample of socioeconomically disadvantaged children in the city of Albany, NY. Children were followed from prenatal exposure until two years of age. This dissertation proceeds in two stages, first investigating the determinants of blood lead level at birth by looking at maternal characteristics that are related to increased fetal exposure. Significant predictors of elevated blood lead level at birth in these children include; increased maternal adiposity, increased food intake, female sex, and city center residence. The second stage of the dissertation examines predictors of blood lead levels during early childhood. Over the study period (1986-1992) there has been a substantial decline in blood lead levels. However, a substantial proportion (25-55% at various ages) of children in this population continue to have elevated blood lead levels according to CDC guidelines (i.e. $/ge$ 10 $/mu$g/dl). Significant predictors of increased lead levels from 3-24 months include the winter season, city center residence, maternal alcohol and cigarette use during pregnancy, increased age of housing, and increased maternal parity. These results show that lead toxicity continues to be a significant health problem in the United States, especially among disadvantaged urban populations. Even within this population, differences in residence pattern, financial resources and maternal behaviors are predictive of blood lead level.

Author: Stephen Murray Childs

Title: Political correlates of socioeconomic change in rural society: A study of three Malay communities

Year: 1977

Abstract: The impact of modernization on traditional rural society continues to be of utmost concern to the social scientist. A problem inherent in measuring this impact in terms of sociocultural change is the intercultural and intracultural heteogenity of rural society. The frequently dissimilar nature of rural villages, often adjacent to one another, has posed problems for the anthropological study which has traditionally consisted of an intensive study of a single community. The study here has as its focus three Malay communities, two of which are rural and the third a squatter settlement within a major city.

Ethnographic and historical analysis of these three communities reveals similarities in the attempts of each to make sociocultural adaptations to the impact of modernization in spite of variations in coping strategies which relate directly to dissimilarities in respective economic organizations. By researching the economic history of each village and the economic histories of groups of families within each village, it becomes possible to relate economic changes to class and status realignments as they have occurred in each village over the past half century. The effect such realignments have had, and continue to have, on the distribution of power and authority at the local level is of particular interest, and constitutes the principal focus of the study.

These research findings, dealing with socioeconomic changes and related changes in local governments over time, are offered as hypotheses which may be tested against other field data gathered from rural Southeast Asian societies.

Author: Audrey C. Choh

Title: The genetics of obesity and obesity-related factors among Samoans

Year: 2002

Abstract: Samoans are well known for their massive weight and muscularity. The general aim of this dissertation is to examine the genetic contributions to obesity and obesity related phenotypes among Samoans while additionally describing where fat is deposited, and how fat distribution may have changed during the lifespan, and over different time periods. Univariate genetic analysis of adult Samoans, indicates that heritability estimates (29%–58%) exist for overall fat measurements and blood pressure, but not for central fat measurements. The bivariate analysis among adults indicates that significant genetic (pleiotropic) effects exist between general fat measures and blood pressures. Genetic analysis among juvenile Samoans reveals significant heritability estimates (19%–100%) and genetic correlations for anthropometric measurements that are stronger than corresponding adult ones. However, even though a significant central fat heritability can be found among juveniles, they do not statically differ from adult estimates. Significant but weaker genetic effects also exist between blood pressures and anthropometric measurements among juveniles. Using cross sectional data spanning 24 years, the prevalences, means and principal components analysis indicate that American Samoans have increased both overall fat and central fat in the early 1990s. Comparison to published reports of other populations indicate that American Samoans have more overall fat and more central fat with the exception of Spanish/Hispanic origin populations. It is possible however, that the central fat that is deposited is mostly subcutaneous and not visceral as Samoans have been shown to have more muscle mass for given body mass indices.

Author: Jinsook Choi

Title: Language choice and language ideology in a bilingual Maya community: The politics of identity in Guatemala

Year: 2003

Abstract: This dissertation is an ethnographic and linguistic study of language choice and language ideology in Momostenango, a bilingual (K'iche' Maya and Spanish) community in Guatemala. It investigates the role of bilingual language practice in identity formation processes. Due to the long-lasting discrimination against Mayan languages, there has been a language shift away from Mayan languages to the official language, Spanish. Recently Mayan cultural activism has developed, which aims to support for Mayan identity and foster increased use of Mayan languages. The current sociolinguistic context demands an ethnographic study of Mayan languages in relation to identity formation processes in a bilingual community. The main objectives of the dissertation are (1) to explore identity formation in linguistic interactions and (2) to study language ideologies. Employing recent poststructural perspectives in anthropological and sociolinguistic studies of language ideologies, I argue that identities are situationally negotiated and ideologically constructed in and through language practices. Through analysis of metalinguistic discourses and actual speech events, this dissertation shows (a) how one's group membership is discursively constructed; (b) how one's group membership shifts from one moment to the next by switching language; (c) how one's group membership is enacted in text-in-process. Guatemala's identity politics involves both ethnic discrimination and the recent ethnic revitalization, as is formed in many other areas around the world. My work provides empirical data for a critical reassessment of the concept of ethnic identity in response to the ongoing debates about Mayan identity, by utilizing analytical tools developed in linguistic anthropology. The methodological and theoretical concerns of the study contribute to building a model for similar issues in other bilingual contexts.

Author: Sara Ciborski

Title: Culture and power: The emergence and politics of Akwesasne Mohawk traditionalism

Year: 1990

Abstract: The author offers an interpretive study of efforts by Mohawk (Iroquois) traditionalists to build cultural and political awareness at Akwesasne, an Indian community located on the U.S.-Canada border. Conceptions that Mohawks have about Iroquois culture, a specific history of relations with the dominant society, and the continuing struggle to solve serious social and economic problems in the community--are all important contributing conditions to Akwesane Mohawk traditionalism.

The study is framed by two narratives that raise issues of representation and ethics in the field of Indian-scholar relations: a narration of the evolution of the author's understanding of traditionalists' efforts, and a narration of a conflict between some Iroquois tradionalists and a number of prominent scholars in the field of Iroquoian studies.

Traditionalists are defined as those Iroquois people who choose to represent Iroquois culture and society to both the Indian and non-Indian public. Traditionalist strategies that are considered include: public elaboration of Iroquois conceptions of culture, tradition, history in journals, media, conferences, and international forums; leadership in debates internal to the community on culture, identity, and sovereignty; confrontation of social problems like casino gambling and inadequate education through a discourse on culture, sovereignty, and community well- being; construction of a sense of mission and cultural identity through intercultural encounters with non-Indian social activists; contesting of the authority of non-Indian scholars to define Iroquois culture and write Iroquois history.

The author argues that the cultural expressions and national aspirations of Akwesasne Mohawk traditionalists are a form of cultural nationalism, insofar as they are responses to the experience of internal colonialism, a structural relationship to the dominant society suffered by other U.S. racial minorities.

Author: Philip S. Colee

Title: The Housatonic-Stockbridge Indians: 1734-1749

Year: 1977

Abstract: The present-day Stockbridge-Munsee community of Shawano County, Wisconsin, is directly related to the community of Housatonic-Stockbridge Indians that are affiliated with the New England Company mission at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the period between 1734-when the mission was established in the Housatonic Valley on the western frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony--and 1749, the Indians associated with the mission achieved a high degree of acculturation. The identification of the Stockbridge Indians as "highly acculurated Indians" has characterized the Stockbridge community from that period to the present.

The present research offers an ethnohistorical reconstruction of the characteristics of the community during the first fifteen years of its existence, and examination of the historical context in which the community came into being, and an analysis of the historical testimonies upon which such a reconstruction must depend.

Author: Susan Renee Dauria

Title: Deindustrialization and the construction of history and ethnic identity: A case in upstate New York

Year: 1994

Abstract: The following is an ethnographic study which investigated the possibility that economic insecurity--as it is being experienced in the deindustrialized community of Amsterdam, New York--has strengthened ethnic bonds for newer immigrants. The largest ethnic populations in the city consist of citizens who trace their ancestry to turn-of-the-century immigrants who came from Poland and Italy to work in the carpet mills. The next largest contingent of people is a new infusion of Hispanic migrants, predominantly of Puerto Rican descent. This newer Hispanic population began migrating to the area in the 1950s, around the same time that the large carpet and textile mills were departing for non-unionized workforces in the South and overseas. The first Hispanic migrants came to the area as a consequence of deindustrialization, to work in diversifying marginal industries. Many of these diversified companies were textile factories which had changed over to exclusively Hispanic laborers in hopes of becoming more competitive. This created a split labor market in the town, as European-Americans continue to be employed in highly technical, unionized industries--primary sector markets--and Hispanic laborers are employed in low paying, non-unionized industries--secondary sector markets. In addition, a second group of Hispanic migrants has flocked to the community in response to unbearable conditions in New York City. This latest influx of migrants, which consists of many single mothers, has fled urban environments seeking refuge from crime, drugs, and violence. In order to determine how economic decline in this community affected the dynamics of ethnic identity, a model of interaction between people's economic status and their ethnic identity was formulated. To this end, a combination of methods, were employed to determine if the effects of reduced economic opportunity played a significant role in the increasing allegiances to ethnic identity for Hispanic minority populations as compared to Polish and Italian descendants. The findings indicate a higher intensity of ethnic identification for individuals with lower income levels, especially among Hispanic female residents.

Author: Denham, Melinda M.

Title: Experiences of In vitro fertilization donor egg recipients: The impact of technology on reproduction

Year: 2005

Donor egg in vitro fertilization (DE), first developed in the early 1980s, severs female biological reproduction into genetic (egg donor) and gestational (egg recipient) components.  Due to its high cost, in the United States DE is primarily used by white, middle and upper class women.  In the media, infertile women who utilize this assisted reproductive technology have been variously caricatured as desperate, irrational, selfish, feminist career women, too old, and/or cause of their own infertility.  Yet, amid the clamor of numerous stakeholders, the voices of egg recipients have often been absent.  This research project emerged as a means of addressing this silence by listening to and contexualizing egg recipients’ experiences as told.  Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with egg recipients recruited for this project through U.S. infertility clinics (2001-2002) and one online listserv (2003).  Political economic and interpretivist traditions in anthropology are drawn upon to frame egg recipients’ experiences in broader social-cultural-historical matrices, and to understand how recipients develop and use body narratives as they navigate the worlds of infertility and DE.

           DE shares common features with several other procreative technologies, such as non-normative reproduction, public reproduction, religious implications, and issues of disclosure of origins to children, family, and friends.  However, DE departs from the experiences of IVF, surrogacy, donor insemination, and adoption in key ways that have framed this research project, including simultaneously non-genetic yet biological mothering, motherhood at a later age, high and highly variable cost of treatment and donor fees, and embodied knowledge on the part of recipients of what donors experience.  In their narratives, egg recipients both challenge and accommodate cultural beliefs and norms, particularly regarding age-appropriate mothering, kinship definitions, consumption practices, and the commodification of children.  At the core of egg recipients’ narratives is motherhood.  Egg recipients variously adopt, reject, and reconstitute powerful cultural idioms about motherhood in asserting and normalizing their own status as mothers.  Finally, egg recipients’ narratives offer new vantage points from which to consider such crosscutting and politically charged themes as “good” vs. “bad” mothers, maternal nurturance and sacrifice, and the contested terrain of fetal personhood.

Author: Joseph E. Diamond

Title: The terminal Late Woodland/Contact period in the Mid-Hudson Valley

Year: 1999

Abstract: Characteristics relating to settlement pattern, subsistence, incised ceramics, and trade patterns are often used when comparisons are made between the Hudson Valley Algonquoians and the Iroquois. An analysis of 50 sites in New York's Mid-Hudson region encompassing archaeological sites of the Mohican, Katskill, Esopus, Munsee, and Wappinger me presented. These are then used to clarify the distinctions between the Hudson River groups and the Iroquois. Substantial differences in trade goods are apparent, owing to the particular nature of European-Native American relations in each area. Contrasts also include settlement pattern, particularly the lack of palisaded villages in the Hudson Region until the onset of European colonization. Horticultural use of maize and beans are similar but in the case of the Hudson River groups, horticulture appears to be grafted onto an already existing series of seasonal rounds by reoccupying the same landforms and sites that have been in use for several thousand years. This is not the case in Iroquoia, where horticulture necessitated a shift to palisaded villages in strategic hilltop locations. The data point to cultural stability within the Hudson Valley over several millenia. This stability was interrupted by European Colonization in the 1650's.

Author: Penelope Ballard Drooker

Title: The view from Madisonville; continuity and change in late prehistoric - protohistoric western Fort Ancient interaction patterns

Year: 1996

Abstract: The central Ohio River Valley, location of the archaeological Fort Ancient culture area, is virtually unknown to the historical record until the mid eighteenth century. Nevertheless, its residents participated in far-reaching exchange networks that brought them Spanish and French goods as early as the mid sixteenth century. This dissertation explores continuities and changes in intra-regional and inter-regional socioeconomic interaction during this prehistoric period, with a central focus on southwestern Ohio.

The Madisonville village and cemetery site in suburban Cincinnati, excavated primarily between 1879 and 1911, was the westernmost protohistoric Fort Ancient settlement. A revised site map, new radiocarbon dates, mortuary analysis, and consideration of European and exotic indigenous horizon marker artifacts in terms of quantities, source areas, and disposition contexts have resulted in a more complete understanding of site chronology, local and regional social organization, and protohistoric exchange relationships.

Madisonville is multicomponent, with the most sustained occupation(s) encompassing the fifteenth-early seventeenth centuries. All European artifacts present were available by ca. 1600. The protohistoric settlement appears to have functioned as an individual polity with achieved rather than ascribed leadership. A formal alliance with several other western and central Fort Ancient communities might have been a later development.

Ceramics, pipes, and site organization attest to intra-regional ties among all Fort Ancient communities of this period, but personal adornment, burial customs, and extra-regional interaction patterns differed between east and west. In the east, late prehistoric ties to eastern Tennessee (objectified in engraved shell gorgets) continued well into the seventeenth century. Other interaction partners included Riker-Wellsburg and Monongahela peoples to the north and Susquehannocks to the east. In the west, long-standing interaction with the upper Mississippi Valley (objectified most strongly in disk pipes) continued, as did ties to northern Ohio and the central Mississippi Valley. However, a new direction of interaction is indicated by the presence at Madisonville of artifacts traceable to late sixteenth century Basque trade in the St. Lawrence. Copper obtained from the Northeast was used to fashion distinctive ornaments, perhaps exchanged westward in connection with late-period bison procurement.

Author: Peter S. Dunham

Title: Coming apart at the seams: The classic development and demise of Maya civilization (a segmentary view from Xnaheb, Belize)

Year: 1990

Abstract: Archaeologists have lately begun to generate elementary models for the emergence and decline of complex societies based on the dynamics of interaction among numerous polities of roughly equal stature (e.g., peer polities and cluster interaction). Ethnologists have long employed a richly detailed model for similar multipolity situations, the segmentary state. Recent advances in Maya epigraphy and archaeology have encouraged Mayanists to postulate that the Classic Maya of the southern Lowlands (A.D. 250-950) were organized in such a segmentary fashion. This dissertation contends not only that Maya polities were segmentary but that the segmentary state construct provides important insights into the processes behind the development and demise of Maya civilization. It argues that the segmentary multiplication and replication of polities fueled the four major developmental episodes of the Classic period: (1) the initial expansion of the elite ethos, (2) the 'hiatus,' a sort of recession in the core, (3) the subsequent florescence, the latter years of which may be better thought of as incipient collapse, and (4) the complete disintegration of the final collapse. The segmentary state scenario offers a kind of unified theory for the trajectory of Maya development. The discussion also focuses on one particular mechanism for segmentation, boundary development, the tendency for new centers and polities to form along the boundaries between their predecessors. The site of Xnaheb, Belize is analyzed from this perspective. It is believed to have evolved along the boundaries between Lubaantun and Nim Li Punit, its nearest major neighbors. A gravity analysis of their sizes and locations shows that Xnaheb sits almost exactly atop the probable boundary between them. Many such boundary centers are identified. The loose segmentary organization of the Maya encouraged the development of these sites into independent polities, furthering segmentation. The principal contributions of this study are threefold. First, the concept of boundary development, which has been underemphasized by archaeologists, is elaborated in some detail. Second, the application of gravity analysis for the purpose of isolating boundary centers and polities is pursued in considerable depth. Third, the developmental implications of segmentary organization are explored. All three of these considerations may have applications in similar situations beyond the Maya area.

Author: Antonella Fabri

Title: (Re)composing the nation: Politics of memory and displacement in Maya testimonies from Guatemala

Year: 1994

Abstract: The following study aims to investigate the phenomenon of displacement of Maya people in Guatemala during the 1980s and to explore the process of formation of tactics of resistance against this strategy of control enforced by the Guatemalan state. Displacement is interpreted as ingrained in a system of control that targets the cultural and physical fragmentation of Maya people. In particular, the goal of this dissertation is to highlight the relation between ethnocide campaigns and institutionalized violence, and the strategies of creation of Maya identity by a national discourse on unity. One of the forms of resistance utilized by Maya people against the state is the expression of memories of violence that, even though silenced by official historical records, create a basis for the rearticulation of communities and identities that contest authority and truth of the state-authorized history. The memories contained in the analyzed testimonies of displaced Maya people defy a repressive structure of enclosure through the reinstatement of fragmentation. Testimonial narratives are themselves fragments that supplement and disrupt other histories, specifically those created by the nation-state. Further, testimonies provide Maya women with a space and a voice of their own, i.e., a forum where they can recount their experiences and, most importantly, rethink their roles within both Maya culture and the politics of the nation-state. The atomization of Maya communities is reflected and narrated in the testimonial genre as a way to utilize the fragment, or the memory of a supposed totality of history, as a prelude to the formation of Maya identity within and beyond the borders of the nation-state. Thus, this newly forged identity is not a unitary, totalizing one, but, rather, the product of the interrelation of many identities that, as fragments, resist totalization and elude control.

Author: Charles Fisher

Title: Social organization and change during the early Horticultural Period in the Hudson River Valley

Year: 1983

Abstract: The intensive study of the archeological record at a single site in the Hudson Valley indicated a shift in the use of this location during the Early Horticultural Period. This shift involved changes from generalized and maintenance activities to a more limited range of tasks at this site. The hypothesis of evolutionary growth was offered to explain this observed change as the result of specialization within the prehistoric societies which probably resulted in their increased organizational complexity.

The nature of the regional social organization during this period was also investigated. This consisted of the evaluation of an hypothesized regional focal economy. Several sites were described which provided evidence of considerable variability among the prehistoric settlements of the Early Horticultural Period in the Hudson Valley. This settlement variability necessitates the rejection of the hypothesized regional focal economy and consideration of an increase in organizational complexity during this period.

Author: Tricia Gabany-Guerrero

Title: Deciphering the symbolic heritage of the Tarascan Empire: Interpreting the political economy of the Pueblo-hospital of Parangaricutiro, Michoacan (Spain, Mexico)

Year: 1999

Abstract: The research examined how symbolic power is conveyed through the writings of local-level institutions that challenge the hegemony of colonial systems. The researcher focused on the use of archaeological sources and Spanish and Purhépecha-language documents. The researcher conducted three years of ethnographic fieldwork in the region and collected oral histories from elders in Parangaricutiro in addition to intensively studying colonial-period Purhépecha texts. The texts included the Pindecuario of San Juan Parangaricutiro (1624–1767), located by the researcher in the parish archive of San Juan Nuevo Parangaricutiro. The symbolic power of the Tarascan (or Purhépecha) Empire is examined through the study archaeological sites, the complex symbolism embedded in Tarascan metal products, symbolic associations between the natural and supernatural world, the organization of material resources, and the specific symbolism of the body as revealed in the Purhépecha language itself. The imposition of colonial Spanish rule in New Spain is discussed with specific reference to the contested domain of power between representatives of Spanish institutions. It is theorized that this contested domain provided a window for the reorganization of power relations within the political hierarchy of colonized Purhépecha communities. The text of the Pindecuario of the pueblo-hospital of San Juan Parangaricutiro provided examples of how local-level practices that of the Spanish Empire. Conclusions illustrate that the lineage system and political hierarchy of the Tarascan Empire were reproduced and transformed by the leaders of the pueblo-hospital during the early colonial period. This work challenges the relegation of Tarascan studies to the backwater of Mesoamerica by illuminating archaeological studies which demonstrate long-term occupation of the region, emphasizing evidence for the extensive political and economic organization of the Tarascan Empire and demonstrating colonial Tarascan contributions to and perspectives on the historical record.

Author: Liliana R. Goldin

Title: Organizing the world through the market: A symbolic analysis of markets and exchange in the Western Highlands of Guatemala

Year: 1986

Abstract: The marketplaces of the Western Highlands of Guatemala are viewed as sites of public socialization, where different ethnic groups meet, learn about each other and possible conflicts are neutralized through the process of exchange. Ongoing changes in the organization of the markets are seen as potentially affecting the form in which relations are constructed. The current process of separation of the economic aspects of exchange from the festive aspects of the open plaza reflect the changing conceptual schemes that inform the organization of the marketplaces.

The role of traders and the beliefs associated with them and their trading journeys are examined. The secular and ritual practices of these traders indicate presence of a traditional complex of traits within the region. It is also suggested that the knowledge and perception people have of the sociological composition of the region is related to the degree of business contacts which result from exchange at the markets. Exchange, as a total phenomenon is a basic organizing force for the inhabitants on the Western Highlands. This is reflected and supported by Quiche oral tradition. Living in competition with The Other for what are perceived to be limited resources, peasants build their lives around the negotiation of their material and spiritual well- being.

Author: David B. Guldenzopf

Title: The colonial transformation on Mohawk Iroquois society

Year: 1986

Abstract: The accumulation of wealth by certain European nations beginning in the 16th century eventually resulted in the articulation of these expanding colonial states with the kinship- based societies on Native North America. The form and content of this contact was a consequence of both the needs of expanding colonial state and the internal structure of each kin-based society. The emphasis of this work is on the expansion of the European colonial state into Northeast North America and the resulting institutional transformation of Mohawk Iroquois society. Institutional transformation is addressed through a documentary and archaeological investigation of specific interrelated issues surrounding colonial economic relations and their effect on local political process among the Mohawk. The interconnections between the development on internal economic inequalities and changing political power relations in Mohawk society are detailed. The relationship between traditional hereditary authority and achieved power is analyzed within the historical and ecological context of the early and late colonial periods. Traditional social orders of the early 17th century were maintained into the late 18th century. However, depopulation and the development of internal economic inequalities between the social orders contributed to qualitative changes in the traditional political system.

Author: John Hammer

Title: Predictive modelling in archeology for interior New York State

Year: 1991

Abstract: A model that predicts the possible presence or absence of an archaeological site based on the physiography of the area under examination is constructed and evaluated. A comprehensive discussion of the relevance of prediction in archaeology and attendant and peripheral issues precedes the actual building and testing of the model.

Author: Timothy Stephen Hare

Title: Political economy, spatial analysis, and Postclassic states in the Yautepec Valley, Mexico

Year: 2001

Abstract: In the present work I (1) describe a political economy approach, based on the marxian and Weberian traditions in social theory, that provides a foundation for anthropological inquiry in archaeological contexts, (2) outline an analytical toolkit that integrates recent technical developments in spatial analysis, and (3) demonstrate the theoretical approach and analytical methods in the context of non-capitalist states in the Postclassic Yautepec valley, Morelos, Mexico. I advocate a political economy approach that is marxian and guided by Weberian principles and methods. The actions of individual humans and groups create, reproduce, and transform the social, political, economic, and ideological relations that create social formations. The fundamental components of a social formation, individuals, relations, and context, combine to form social groups and bundles of relations. These analytical abstractions are examined through comparison with ideal models of social formations. To facilitate the comparative analysis, I outline and describe a set of spatial analysis methods that enable the archaeological application of this approach. This spatial analysis toolkit includes both traditional methods and new techniques made possible by developments in geographic information systems and spatial statistics. The new methods include Spatial Descriptive Statistics, Distance-Based Indices, Spatial Autocorrelation, Surface Modeling, and Boundary Modeling. I demonstrate my approach and analytical toolkit by examining settlement data from Postclassic period (A.D. 750–1521) polities in the Yautepec valley, Mexico. Several independent polities were founded during this period. One of these polities became an expansionary conquest-state (Yautepec). Ultimately, the region was conquered by the Triple Alliance. I conclude that local processes mediated interregional forces in the determination and transformation of the settlement patterns. The settlement and ethnohistorical data indicate that society in the Yautepec valley corresponds closely to the expectations of tributary models with strong centralization of power at the highest level. The organization and arrangement of settlements, however, does not reflect the concept of Nahua modularity. These results lead to a new synthesis of archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence for Nahua society that provides the basis for constructing new sub-models of social, political, and economic components of Nahua society, to address more specific aspects of Nahua social formations.

Author: James William Herrick

Title: Iroquois medical botany

Year: 1977

Abstract: The uses of plant medicines are understood in relation to the entirety of the medical-religious complex found in traditional Iroquois culture. A discussion of the Iroquois cosmos and the place of plants within the cosmos, along with a consideration of dominant value-orientations and cultural themes serves as an introduction to the more specific topics of Iroquoian conceptions of illnesses and treatments that follow. It is seen that all things (including plants and human beings) and events of the universe are thought to possess varying degrees of power which, in turn, is thought to maintain a balanced state provided that the ways established by the Creator are followed.

Traditional notions regarding four overlapping causes of various illnesses or imbalance are treated, and an attempt is made to pair broad categories or classes of symptomatic features with these native theorized etiologies. The results of this analysis are then considered in relation to the range of traditional health-actors or healers appealed to under various circumstances involving (a) the behavioral history of the patient/victim-- including previous treatments, and (b) symptomatic severity. Special emphasis is given to herbalists, clairvoyants and witches as they have traditionally gone about using plant medicines in restoring, maintaining or upsetting good heart (spiritual balance) in human beings. Relationships obtaining between individually applied medical practices involving plants and communal medical (or "religious") practices are also investigated.

It is determined that certain illnesses or symptomatic features thought to be brought about by powerful causal agents require equally powerful treatments that may be carried out communally or individually. At the individual level of treatment criteria are established for determining the relative degrees of power possessed by the various medical plants in traditional Iroquois culture.

Author: Denise Carrol Hodges

Title: Agricultural intensification and prehistoric health in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico

Year: 1986

Abstract: The effect of the intensification of agriculture on the health of the prehistoric population of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, is examined through an analysis of skeletal stress markers and pathologies. Four hypotheses are proposed regarding the relationship between health and agricultural intensification. Based on previous studies, the hypotheses suggest that health declined with the intensification of agriculture. The hypotheses are tested by comparing the frequencies of 10 skeletal markers among three temporal sequential groups of non-intensive and intensive agriculturalists.

549 individuals were examined from 14 archaeological sites in the Valley. The samples are from the Early Formative period through the Postclassic, and were pooled into three temporal groups. The Early and Middle Formative remains were pooled to form the Formative group, the Monte Alban periods I through IIIb were pooled to form the Classic group, and the Monte Alban periods IV and V were pooled to form the Postclassic group. The Formative group is the non-intensive agricultural group, the Classic and Postclassic groups are intensive agricultural groups, but differ in their social and political organization.

The comparisons of frequencies among the temporal groups of adults produce no significant differences in the frequencies of periosteal reactions, enamel hypoplasia, dental caries, periapical abcesses, dental calculus, or degenerative joint disease. A significant reduction in the frequency of periodontal disease and the rate of dental attrition is observed among the groups. A fluctuating pattern in which the frequency increased from the Formative to Classic and then decreased in the Postclassic is observed in the frequencies of the skeletal markers among the three temporal groups do not differ significantly. Power analyses of the statistical tests suggests that samples sizes are sufficient for a medium effect size to have been detected. I conclude that the health of the prehistoric population of the Valley of Oaxaca, as represented in this study, did not change significantly with agricultural intensification. The continuity in health levels may be related to the diversity of cultigens in the diet and the continuing contribution of gathered foods.

Author: Susan S. Hunter

Title: Health status: An anthropological model of its determinants

Year: 1987

Abstract: The determinants of health status have been the subject of concerted statistical study over the past two decades. Most of these studies are separate from the efforts to build theoretical health systems models in anthropology or health systems research. This study synthesizes a health systems model from earlier models and uses it to guide a large scale international statistical inquiry into the determinants of health status. In three data sets, countries are mathematically clustered on their health status indicators, then ranked into six levels of health development. These groups showed consistency across data sets, suggesting that they are not dependent on the specific health status indicators or their values in a given data set. Predictors of health development group membership are identified using a discriminant analysis. The predictors are similar across data sets, and include demographic variables and measures of economic structure. Regression analysis was used to identify the predictors of health status for each data set as a whole and for each health development level. These vary by health development levels but are similar between the data sets. The amount of explained variance was higher than in previous research on the same data sets, suggesting that partitioning these sets into health development levels prior to the regression analysis heightened the clarity of causal structure in the model. At lower health development levels, the underdevelopment of economic, health, and educational infrastructures allowed international intervention (aid, investment and export-import activity) to play a large role in health status determination. This was born out by results at middle heath development levels. At higher levels of health development, education, women's status, and political structure are especially important health status determinants. The synthetic model developed from earlier research was born out by the results of the analysis. Recommendations for future research include use of the findings in health policymaking in developing countries, development of a series of path models for each level of health development, and incorportion of ethnologically derived variables so that anthropological theories concerning health status can be tested.

Author: Cindy Mathieson Ibechem

Title: When women leave the village: An evaluation of women's power and their protest actions in Ofodim, Umuneke, Imo State, Nigeria

Year: 2000

Abstract: The present study examines the relationship between women's power and their participation in organizations in Ofodim, Nigeria, a contemporary rural village in the southeastern part of the country that is densely populated by Igbo people. The Igbo Women's War of 1929 took place near this area (Aba), and it has often been cited as an example of women's power. In the past, the strength of Igbo women's organizational networks enabled them to wage such an extreme action, which some scholars interpreted as an anti-colonial protest. During Nigeria's colonization by Great Britain (1914–1960) many indigenous customs and traditions were affected. For example, the majority of Igbo speaking people adopted Christianity as their predominant religion rather than the conventional practice of worshipping goddesses and gods, while other changes in the social relationships between women and men also occurred. The British colonial superstructure influenced both Igbo religion and social relationships, as well as changed women's organizations and networks to some extent. To date few evaluations of the Women's War have interpreted it as a symbol of women's conventional protest actions, nor have the perspectives of the women involved been examined. Igbo women's organizations survived colonialism and the advent of Christianity in Nigeria, yet what remains to be analyzed is in what ways they have changed and whether women still feel they have the ability to wage similar protests in the future. One of the questions explored here is whether or not women are still able to make their grievances known through conventional channels. I argue that the Women's War was a conventional protest or mass evacuation of women from an area and that it was not simply a reaction to colonialism, and women in contemporary Nigeria still run out (mgbapu umunwanyi ) of a village, town, or region as one method of expressing their grievances. In attempting to understand the current dynamics and operations of women's organizations in rural Igbo villages (e.g. Ofodim), I utilized a combination of survey questionnaires, women's life/protest narratives, and oral history accounts. Historical archival research, including oral history documentation and an ethnohistoric approach, is also utilized to summarize many rich sources of personal information about women's mgbapu that is a clear demonstration of women's protest actions and their power.

Author: Thomas R. Jamison

Title: Symbolic Affiliation, Architecture and Settlement Patterns in Southern Belize: Nim Li Punit and Xnaheb during the Late Classic

Year: 1993

Abstract: This dissertation is about group interaction and how relationships within and between communities may be investigated through the examination of architecture and spatial patterns.

Architectural and spatial patterns are known to be highly symbolic of group identity and affiliation. These forms are constructed in reference to identity and affiliation. In addition, they are contexts for social action. Thus, they serve as both "models of" and "models for" culture and society (Geertz 1983). Architectural and spatial patterns are, therefore, appropriate for the investigation of interaction and affiliation. Survey and excavation of the Late Classic Maya sites of Nim Li Punit and Xnaheb in southern Belizo provide extensive data for exploration of these issues. Quantitative and qualitative examination of the data was carried out to assess the interactions between and within these communities.

These analyses suggest Nim Li Punit and Xnaheb were not affiliated in terms of socio- political identity. Site organization, density, structure size, as well as some construction techniques are significantly different between the two communities to suggest lack of socio- political affiliation. In addition, there are indications that the two sites had different affiliations within the region and with other regions.

Author: Gwynne Lee Jenkins

Title: The bureaucratization of birth: Midwifery programs, national health care, and local birth conventions in rural Costa Rica

Year: 1999

Abstract: This research examines the push and pull between international programs, national policies, and local practices on the transition from home to hospital birth among a diverse group women in one of the Costa Rica's poorest rural townships. Costa Rica has achieved a high level of health care through its socialized system of medicine, which has made hospital births free and available to all women. These successes are enmeshed in a rich discourse of development, democracy, and Costa Rican national ideology. However, national successes in hospitalization have not been easily reproduced in rural townships, where there was a twenty-year lag in the domination of hospitalization, and women continue to rely on midwives and family members for care in the hinterlands. It is an ideal setting in which to document the impact of international health programming on national policies, the intersection of national ideology and “reproductive modernity,” and the process through which rural women negotiate local culture, geographic access, and national law to achieve adequate health care during pregnancy and birth. Arguing that bureaucratization is the key process motivating the progressive hospitalization of birth, my research examines conventions and practices defining birth at the local level before the opening of access to biomedical care. I trace the progressive infiltration of the national biomedical infrastructure into rural areas, and the changes in the legal and social position of midwives both before, during, and after this process. The narratives of local laywomen provide an understanding of how they experienced this change in models as mothers and midwives. The ethnohistorical approach I utilize documents change not only through analysis of policies, mandates, and statistics, but through women's own words, using their narratives to convey the local complexities of the transition from home to hospital birth. Together, these accounts constitute a multi-vocal history of changing health care practices.

Author: Stephen Doniphin Jones

Title: Deconstructing the Celts: A skeptic's guide to the archaeology of the Auvergne (France)

Year: 2000

Abstract: This dissertation proposes a model of subsistence, land use, and society for the Arverni, a powerful people in the Auvergne region of central France during the late Iron Age or “La Tène” ( c.450–50 BC). The data derives from 10 years of field and bibliographic research, and especially a new GIS-connected database of all sites registered in the region's archives. The goal is to counter pervasive models grounded on the stereotypical comments of Mediterranean enemies rather than archaeological evidence. My ecological approach reconciles the diversity of human societies and ecosystems, on the one hand, with the limited repertory of human behavior and the logical processes that limit it. This involves an interplay of so-called “induction” and “deduction” counter to traditional processual dogma. Traditional functionalism—the presumption of functional efficacy—is evaded by focusing on logistical likelihood linked with observed ethnographic tendencies, set out in a “null hypothesis” of how agropastoral societies would behave in temperate environments without demand for surplus; this notes necessary, likely, and convenient norms that may be assumed unless forces counter to the hypothesis are at work. After an overview of theories and archaeology of La Tène Europe, I explore ancient and modern models of the Arverni polity. Arverni evidence is then presented within a Stewardian framework of land use, modes of production, and socio-economic organization, and site details are discussed in the context of settlement clusters. The resulting model posits a polity of low density with cultural controls on political and economic stratification. The self-sufficient settlements were separated by a half kilometer or more, with few signs of substantial specialization and no signs of centralization. Foreign trade items were well distributed through feasting. This may have led to some degree of centralization, hinted by the abandonment of some sites, but there is no positive evidence of the proto-urban “oppida” that have been alleged for much of late La Tène Europe. Restricting one's view to the evidence, the domineering aristocratic empire attributed to the Arverni seems to have been a much more flexible, small-scale, egalitarian polity.

Author: Neal Brewer Keating

Title: Pictures and power: The historical anthropology of Iroquois painting, A.D. 1600--2000

Year: 2002

Abstract: This dissertation examines the relationship between pictures and power in the history of Iroquois or Haudenosaunee painting from A.D. 1600–2000. The central analytical units are Iroquois artists (painters), indexes (pictures), prototypes (subject matter), and audiences. Through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and historical, visual, and archaeological research using primary and secondary sources, Iroquois painting is described through time, and situated within shifting socioeconomic worlds, which include extensive autonomous territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and reduced, confined territories of Indian Reservations/Reserves in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of the colonial contexts in which the documentation of Native American cultures and societies transpired, histories of Native American visual expression have received little attention. The evidence for Iroquois painting during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was mainly recorded by Europeans and Euro-Americans who often held little regard for these depictive practices. This disregard extended into the nineteenth century, when Iroquois painting was classified as pictography, and situated by unilinear evolutionists as an inferior form of writing practiced by “savage” and “barbarian” peoples. For most of the twentieth century, Iroquois painting was rejected as an “inauthentic” expression of Indianness, while simultaneously rejected as art. This treatment of Iroquois pictures by non-Natives has produced a substantial record of expressive and subjective Native agency, but at the same time has hidden or repressed this record beneath layers of historical discursive practices. The dissertation suggests three distinct periods of Iroquois painting since European contact. The eighteenth and seventeenth century evidences widespread, public, intercultural practices of painting on human bodies, trees, bark, and leather. The nineteenth century is marked by a near-total absence of Iroquois painting. Iroquois painting returned in the twentieth century, especially towards the end. From a formal perspective, enormous discontinuity is demonstrated across these three periods. But from a Native perspective, there is a functional continuity to these diverse genres of painting: conveying and constituting specifically Native identities and experience. As markers of identity, Iroquois pictures are inscribed power relations of social and cultural memory. To trace their history is to describe cultural transformation and post-colonial Native survivance.

Author: Judith Kempf

Title: The dynamics of culture and health disease and curing among the Ecuadorian Coaiquer Indians under the impact of acculturation

Year: 1982

Abstract: This study focuses on the health and the traditional medical system of a South American tropical forest Indian people both under traditional conditions and during cultural contact.

The Coaiquer Indians are located in Colombia and Ecuador. The paucity of information on Coaiquer culture as a result of little early contact, their small population, isolated settlement pattern and secretive manner, and the fact that today most of them have been assimilated, make the Coaiquer one of the least known South American indigenous peoples. The Plan Grande Coaiquer have retained some traditional culture by migrating from Colombia to the isolated forests of northern Ecuador.

Part I of this work presents a picture of traditional culture. It examines how the extreme but stable habitat, small size and low density of population and subsistence pattern of low labor with high yield lay the foundation for the loose and flexible social structures. Coaiquer society is characterized by egalitarian relations with no positions of power, prestige or authority, a bilateral kinship system and the absence of a formal political system. The most complex and elaborate institution in Coaiquer society is the medical system.

This work analyzes the socio-political role assumed by the medical system. Focused on a ritual, the chutun and witchcraft, the system serves to mediate political relations, provide a mechanism for social control and cohesion, facilitate population distribution and legitimize the values and norms which are the foundation of Coaiquer identity. A major concern of the analysis is the role of disease in cultural behavior. A correlation is shown between the physical ailments and activation of the medical system. In particular, the high incidence of intestinal parasites in the population is shown to have cultural significance.

The second part of this work looks at the health and traditional medical system under the impact of efforts to assimilate the Plan Grande Coaiquer into Ecuadorian national culture. Because culture change did not reach all Plan Grande Coaiquer to the same degree, a nuclear population of 18 households (172 persons) was selected and divided into traditional and acculturating Coaiquer according to their adoption or rejection of nine traits emphasized by the assimilation program. It is shown that traditional Coaiquer have good nutritional status, low incidence of chronic disease and relative freedom from epidemic disease. The native medical system not only serves socio-political functions but is efficacious in treating health care problems under traditional conditions. Changes brought about by contact, particularly in diet and sanitation, have resulted in decline in health status reflected in nutritional-deficiency diseases, lower resistance to intestinal parasites and declining dental health in acculturating Coaiquer. In these cases the native medical system has lost its efficacy both to cure the new illnesses and to reincorporate these individuals into the values and behaviors of traditional culture. Thus, culture contact has negatively effected the physical and cultural survival of some Plan Grande Coaiquer.

Author: Tim Knab

Title: Words great and small: Sierra Nahuat narrative discourse in everyday life

Year: 1983

Abstract: This represents an ethnographic approach to communication that attempts not only to define the categories of speech used in everyday life in the Sierra de Puebla in East Central Mexico, but the native conventions that define discourse structure in narrative. Given that tale telling is an integral part of everyday activities, it is not unusual that native speakers should describe features essential to a well formed discourse in terms of the same metaphors that they use to describe other broad types of social activity such as politics, religion and cosmology. In order to understand the meaning of the terms used to describe discourse structure in terms of their overall cultural context, a type of 'thick description' is necessary that relies on a dialogical approach to the material and the native speakers own interpretation. An understanding of the role of metaphor in myth, ritual, cosmology and everyday life is essential to an understanding of its meaning in describing narrative discourse. In this case it is essential to describe the salient features of discourse structure, compare performances and distinct versions of related narratives, as well as, the differential capacity of master narrators and apprentices to use the basic features of narrative form. This is then compared with the terms and concepts used by native speakers to organize their own knowledge of tale telling to contrast the two systems. Extensive texts are presented in the ethnopoetic format to illustrate the role of both linguistic and paralinguistic features of discourse structure in myth, folklore, prayers and ritual dances. Speakers of Modern Aztec in Sierra de Puebla, like their Toltec ancestors, still value the art of speaking well enough to call their leaders to this day tatoani, speakers. Speaking and speaking well is an integral part of culture in the Sierra and it is not only through the content of narrative that basic cultural values are expressed, but also through the context and structure of narrative performances for native speakers. Politics, ritual, folklore and myth as well as orgins and culture heroes are an integral part of narrative today in the Sierra de Puebla.

Author: Kristen L. Knutson

Title: Sleep, health and socioeconomic status among adolescents of the national longitudinal study of adolescent health

Year: 2004

Abstract: Adolescence is a very important developmental period because the trajectory for adult health and quality of life begins at an early age. An important health-related factor is sleep, and the objective of this project is to examine whether sleep quality and duration play a role in adolescent health, growth and development by analyzing data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents. The first specific aim was to test the hypothesis that sleep is related to health. Sleep duration significantly predicted general health status, depressive symptoms (CES-D) and emotional distress, even after controlling for many covariates including socioeconomic status (SES). Shorter sleep duration was associated with worse health. Results indicated a gender difference in the association between sleep and body mass index (BMI). Among males, shorter sleep durations are associated with larger BMI z-scores and greater risk of being overweight. No significant association existed among females. The second specific aim tested the hypothesis that the relationship between SES and health is mediated by sleep. The results indicated that higher SES was significantly associated with shorter sleep duration and more sleep problems, as represented by insomnia, trouble waking and insufficient sleep. This is in the opposite direction as hypothesized, thus sleep does not appear to mediate the association between SES and health in this sample. The third specific aim was to examine the relationship between sleep and growth and development. Gender differences were again observed. Sleep problems were only associated with pubertal stage in females, as represented by self-reported breast and curvaceous body descriptions. Higher pubertal stage was associated with increased risk. Sleep duration, however, was significantly associated with pubertal stage in males but not females. Higher pubertal stage in males was associated, with shorter sleep durations. Menarche was significantly associated with both increased sleep problems and reduced sleep durations. There was no clear association between self-reported height velocity and sleep duration. The results indicate that sleep does have some association with health among adolescents. Furthermore, quality of sleep appears to decrease with pubertal development among females, while sleep duration decreases with pubertal development among males.

Author: Louise Krasniewicz

Title: The differences within: The politics of representation, identity and gender informing the 1983 Seneca Women's Peace Encampment

Year: 1988

Abstract: In the summer of 1983, a group of feminist anti-nuclear protestors established the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment near a nuclear weapons storage depot in upstate Seneca County, New York. The purpose of the peace camp was to protest nuclear weapons and to critique the "patriarchal society" that created and used them. These public protests soon developed into arenas of disagreement and occasions for violent clashes between the Encampment and the locals in surrounding communities who disagreed with the women on issues of politics, religion, sexuality, morality, and women's roles. This study looks at the conflicts between these two groups, at the strategies they used to deal with their differences, and at a series of particularly violent confrontations during which their conflicting views and values came into play. The differences between the groups proved to be very disturbing to both sides, and the public acknowledgment of these differences threatened the deeply held assumption that categories and symbols like men and women, Americans, the flag, religion, the family, patriotism, and authority were stable, easy to understand, and shared by all members of American culture.

In the process of negotiating these differences, each group created representations of themselves and the "other" in order to construct a coherent identity that said who they were and what was their rightful place in a plural, conflict-ridden world. These conflicting representations (which were expressed through personal narratives, journals, letters-to-the- editor, conversations, gossip, rituals, symbols, photographs, media coverage, etc.) were tools in the social, psychological, and political dramas in which people defended their identities against erosion and reinterpretation.

This study analyzes these constructed texts, identities, and representations in order to show their rhetorical composition and the discursive constraints that affected their production and utilization. The study concludes that constructing representations is a powerful political act that not only controls the crucial definition of self and other, but also the differential access to power, resources, influence, and status. The results of this study are presented here in the form of an experimental ethnography that employs, at the same time that it is exploring, a variety of textual forms and voices.

Author: Peter Conrad Kroefges

Title: Sociopolitical organization in the prehispanic Chontalpa de Oaxaca, Mexico. Ethnohistorical and archaeological perspectives

Year: 2004

Abstract: The present work combines ethnohistorical and archaeological analyses to examine how prehispanic societies were organized in the Chontalpa region in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico. After the Spanish invasion, the ethnolinguistic group of the Chontals was described as a barbarian people without substantial settlements and without any form of sociopolitical complexity. Subsequent ethnographies have perpetuated this stereotype. In contrast, a closer examination of textual and pictorial evidence from the Colonial period concludes that several coastal Chontal communities were integrated into complex polities. This is reflected in population size, settlement patterns, and ruling dynasties. Cases in point are the villages of Astata and Huamelula at the Río Huamelula, district of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. I directed surface survey and test excavations there in 2001 (Proyecto Arqueológico Río Huamelula—PARH), thus providing complementary archaeological data on substantial settlements with civic-ceremonial functions. Chronometric evidence and a ceramic chronology point to a prehispanic settlement sequence from the Early Classic period (A.D. 300–600) to the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1350–1521). The coastal Chontalpa appears to have been closely integrated into the Isthmian exchange network that distributed art styles, obsidian, and ideological symbolism. The regional comparison of architectural data suggests that Classic-period Huamelula and Hualampamo were among a series of small centers closely interacting in political competition as well as social and economic exchange. While the growing Postclassic-period occupations at these localities experienced some internal shifts, there are no indicators for a complete abandonment or replacement of the local populations until the Colonial period. Ethnohistorical sources reveal sociopolitical differences between the lowland and highland Chontal societies of the Late Postclassic period, related to the impact of outside groups and expansionist states. The highland Chontals appear politically less centralized and formed a political confederacy under Aztec leadership against their neighbors. In contrast, the coastal Chontalpa was subdued by the conquest-states of Tututepec and Tehuantepec, which may have led to a higher degree of sociopolitical differentiation. This interdisciplinary case-study of the prehispanic Chontalpa de Oaxaca shows how peripheral communities actively participated in larger political and economic networks and responded to powerful expansionist polities of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica.

Author: Kim M. Lanphear

Title: Health and mortality in a nineteenth century poorhouse skeletal sample

Year: 1988

Abstract: Physical anthropologists have begun to examine health and mortality during periods when cultures shift from one subsistence/technology base to another. This effort has largely been concentrated on the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as it occurred during the Neolithic. The purpose of this dissertation is to use the methodology developed to study the Neolithic Revolution in an examination of health and mortality changes associated with the transition from agricultural to industrial society as it occurred during the 19th century in the northeastern United States.

A skeletal sample of 296 individuals from a poorhouse located in Rochester, New York has been examined for evidence of disease and premature mortality. This sample is supported by historic documents which have been used to provide further information about disease and nutritional stress experienced by the poorhouse inmates. An additional goal of this study is to test the representativeness of the skeletal sample by comparing its morbidity and mortality to that derived from vital registration records.

That the residents of the Monroe County poorhouse were disease and nutritionally stressed is indicated by the skeletal sample and the documentary record. If it can be assumed that the poorhouse represents those of lowest socio-economic class, a comparison of disease- specific mortality between the house and the nearby city of Rochester indicates that socio- economic status played a role in the disease experience of the 19th century populations, buffering some segments from some diseases while exposing others.

Comparison of the frequency of stress markers in bone between the poorhouse sample and those of agricultural, hunter/gatherer, and slave skeletal series demonstrates that chronic stress as indicated by enamel hypoplasia, tuberculosis, and tibial bowing is greater among the poorhouse skeletons. Iron-deficiency anemia and staphylococcal and streptococcal infections of long duration do not display clear differences among the series examined.

The mortality and morbidity data generated from the Monroe County Poorhouse skeletal sample have been compared to that from its vital registration documents and appear to confirm the representativeness of this skeletal series. Given this finding, other historic and prehistoric skeletal samples can be consulted with confidence to increase our understanding of culture change during all periods of human existence for which skeletal remains are available.

Author: Lynnette E. Leidy

Title: The timing of menopause in biological and sociocultural context: A lifespan approach

Year: 1991

Abstract: A lifespan approach was used to examine the timing of menopause in relation to bio-behavioral and reproductive variables, and women's response to the timing of menopause in relation to chronological, social, and gynecological scales of time. An assumption was made that age at menopause is related to rate of follicular atresia, and that biological and behavioral factors which affect rate of follicular atresia ultimately affect age at menopause. The four aims of this study were to determine the median age and mean recalled age at menopause; factors significantly associated with early or late ages at menopause; women's response to the timing of menopause within their lives; and factors associated with the description of menopause as 'early', 'on-time', or 'late'. The sample consisted of 376 participants recruited from job sites and community groups. Of those interviewed, 88 reported history of hysterectomy, 112 reported a natural menopause at least 12 months prior to interview, of which 105 recalled the year of their last menstrual period. Median age at menopause, by probit analysis, was 49.96; mean recalled age at menopause was 49.3 years (s.d. 4.8). Age at menopause was significantly negatively correlated with body mass index at interview. There was no similar correlation among women who did not gain or lose 50 pounds across adulthood. Age at menopause was earlier (not significant) among women who reported weight changes of 50 or more pounds. Age at menopause was significantly earlier among smokers than non-smokers. Age at menopause was later among married women than single women, among women with 5 or more pregnancies, and among women with less than 13 years of formal education. Age at interview, number of pregnancies, smoking habits, years of schooling, and family income were significant variables in multivariate general linear models applied to explain variation among early, average, and late ages at menopause. Response to the timing of menopause was significantly related to history of hysterectomy, chronological age, expected age at menopause, and years spent menstruating. Chronological age was more important than the presence or absence of children in the home, marital status, or grandmotherhood. It appears that the timing of natural menopause was gauged on a chronological time scale.

Author: Flavio Rojas Lima

Title: La Cofradía Mesoamericana: un Reducto Cultural Indígena

Year: 1987

Abstract: This thesis subject matter has received extensive attention within Mesoamerican ethnology under the various labels of Cofradia System, Cargo System, Fiesta System, Civil Religious Hierarchy, etc. It has received so much scholarly comment that it might be considered a paradigmatic issue within Mesoamerican studies. The approach taken here adds a new dimension by emphasizing the dialectical nature of Cofradia Systems. The Spaniards who introduced the institution to the Indians in the Sixteenth Century used it as a means of economic exploitation and ideological domination. The Indians accepted it, and eventually strongly identified themselves with it. Hence, the need of a dialectical approach to its understanding.

The Cofradia institution is first described as it is still encountered in contemporary Mesoamerica, and a brief historical description of its origin and development through time is given. Next, the historically changing social and political conditions in Guatemala are presented in order to provide proper context for the analysis of the Cofradia as it has functioned in Guatemalan Indian communities. Both context and Cofradia are then illustrated by a specific case study, the Quiche-speaking community of San Pedro Jocopilas (Department of El Quiche). This section is based largely on the author's field work in the community in 1979 and 1980. Finally, the specific findings of Guatemala and San Pedro are placed in the larger Mesoamerican perspective, and general characteristics and processes are deliniated. The dialectical nature of the Cofradia are pulled out for special scrutiny and elaboration.

A central issue dealt with in the thesis is the nature of the interaction process associated with the introduction of a new mode of production in Sixteenth Century Mesoamerica by the Spaniards. The Cofradia is found to be one institution by which the Indians, who were seeking a way to ameliorate the alienation imposed upon them by the Spaniards, were able to re-establish enduring ties with nature and community. The Cofradia, thus, is seen to have a dual or contradictory nature: it facilitated Spanish domination at the same time that it permitted the Indians to resist it.

The thesis also deals-more briefly-with the violence that accompanied the conquest and neo-conquest processes in Guatemala, and the impact of these processes on the Cofradia System. Political violence, in fact, reached a crisis point in Guatemala precisely at the time that field work in San Pedro Jocopilas was being undertaken by the author. These developments have placed new and ominous burdens on the Cofradia Systems of Guatemala.

Author: Christopher R. Lindner

Title: Geoarchaeology of culturally induced flood impacts: Schoharie Valley, Eastern New York

Year: 1987

Abstract: This study offers the first evaluation of whether gaps in the archaeological record of a river valley are caused by floods promoted by land-use on a drainage basin scale. When a watershed is disturbed by devegetation without conservation, runoff causes more severe than normal inundations that can affect sites by displacing artifacts or deeply covering them with sediments. Research on this phenomenon combines geographical background information with stratigraphic tests for geomorphic and cultural evidence. Notable for archaeological site scarcity, the study area is the bottomlands along the lower reach of Schoharie Creek. This small river drains the northern Catskill Mountains in eastern New York. Geographic data reveal that nineteenth century wheat cultivation disastrously upset the balance between soil development and erosion in the Schoharie watershed.

Stratigraphic tests yielded three related indications of the resultant period of frequent, severe inundations: 1) a recent site buried to an abnormally great depth, 2) a cultural layer overlain by a thick cover of coarse-grained flood sediments, 3) signs of erosion and redesposition of artifacts. Discoveries of features and pottery from prehistoric Chance period Iroquois are unusual in the region for location on the floodplain rather than in upland terrain. Test excavation also found a component dating to the obscure Bushkill period of Early to Middle Woodland times.

This use of geomorphology has global ramifications for settlement survey and cultural resource management of floodplain localities by improving assessment of potential flood impacts due to drainage-wide accelerated soil erosion. The method will also assist researchers who must prospect for bottomland sites. Ultimately, the approach will improve understanding of how slower and more subtle shifts in the environment, such as those due to climatic alteration, affect the archaeological record.

Author: Timothy Charles Lloyd

Title: Mortuary patterns, social organization, and ideology at the Hopewell site (Ohio)

Year: 2002

Abstract: The Hopewell site (33Ro27), Ross County, Ohio, has had a long and illustrious history. Its investigation began in the early days of American archaeology. The first recorded investigations were carried out by Caleb Atwater, Squier and Davis, and Warren Moorehead. Archaeological surveys around the earthworks continue to this day, nearly two centuries after Atwater's work. Nearly a century ago, Hopewell was chosen as the type site for a Middle Woodland period cultural phenomenon that has since been identified in regions from western New York, to Kansas City, and to the gulf coast (Griffin 1967). Very few archaeological sites achieve this level of notoriety. In spite of the fact that nearly a century has passed since Hopewell was chosen as a type site, and in spite of the fact that over 75 years have passed since the last recorded mound excavations, there is no published description of all the available archival data from the known mound excavations. Greber and Ruhl (1989) described some of this data, particularly with regard to the Mound 25, the largest mound at the site, but the published record for many of the other burial mounds remains incomplete. The following analysis of the mounds at the Hopewell site is based on the available pushed data, as well as my analysis of the unpublished archival materials from the Moorehead excavation (Field Museum of Natural History) and the Shetrone excavation (Ohio Historical Society). I describe and interpret the available published and unpublished data regarding the locations and characteristics for each of the over 40 previously identified mounds, 16 of which are known to have contained burials. I use the combined data in analyses designed to identify material patterns within the highly variable mortuary data, and use these patterns to make inferences regarding aspects of the organization and beliefs of the people who created the site. This represents only the immediate goal of this research. The significant research potential in the identification of mortuary patterns at the Hopewell site lies in the use of such patterns for intersite analyses to address cultural and temporal relationships between the earthwork sites.

Author: MacKenzie, Christopher James

Title:Maya bodies and minds: Religion and modernity in a K'Iche' Town

Year: 2005

This dissertation focuses upon the roots and underlying rationale defining contemporary religious choice in the K’iche’ Maya community of San Andres Xecul.  Four religious options are examined: the shamanic forms of traditional religion or costumbre; Pentecostal Christianity, especially as expressed in its Roman Catholic forms (associated with the Charismatic Renewal and the Curillo movement); a formally ‘Mayanised’ Catholicism, as expressed through the programme of inculturation theology in the Catholic Church; and a ‘purified’ Maya spirituality, associated with Maya ethnic activism.  I argue that despite the generally antagonistic relations between proponents of most of these religious options, they share certain elective affinities.  With regard to the first two options, costumbre and Pentecostal Christianity, I argue that a fundamentally corporeal-based cosmology undergirds both.  I examine the literature on embodiment, and suggest that the rise in new forms of religion (especially Pentecostalism) might be interpreted in terms of what is offered to the believer in spiritual terms, rather than reducing religious choice to a function of some other process or pressure (political, economic etc.).  The two remaining options, a Mayanised Catholicism and a purified Maya spirituality, while likewise opposed in many ways, share elective affinities not only insofar as they privilege Maya culture, but in the stress they place on the rational, reason-based nature of their respective religions.  While more or less formal rationslisatoin, or theologisation, proceeds differently in each case, and is differentially received in by adherents in Xecul, both religions seem to accept a Cartesian dualism when it comes to matters of the spirit or mind.  These matters are to be argued, systematized and thought, rather than primarily experienced corporeally.  A broader theme which runs through this dissertation concerns the way modernity is indigenised in Xecul.  My interpretations here are largely informed by Weberian and Marxian scholarship.  Other issues considered include ‘development’ as conceived locally, economic migration to the United States, and various forms of political engagement, at the local and national levels.  In presenting my claims, I draw upon the results of my ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, as well as an extensive review of the relevant literature.

Author: Martin Del Campo, Edgar

Title: The Nagual hiding in shadows: Metamorphic supernaturals, contested discourse, and the complications of fieldwork in the Huasteca Veracruzana of Northeast Mexico

Year: 2006

The nagual is one of the most widely described supernatural creatures in the ethnology of Mesoamerica, and it is also one of the most confounding for its breadth of meanings.  Traditional ethnographic descriptions of this being refer to two principal definitions: a magical creature able to assume animal forms or a companion spirit in sympathetic rapport with an individual.  Its recurrent association with discourse of witchcraft and the diabolical reflects colonial and contemporary programs to demonize the nagual and other specialists of indigenous religious traditions.
            Although this entity has been principally described from the folklore of indigenous societies, it has been adapted to national Mexican media, whose representation of the nagual has in turn influenced mainstream images of the figure, linked to discourse on the indigenous condition, especially from the stance of urban and Mestizo populations.
            My hypothesis for this investigation is that discourse on the nagual are fluid; it’s meaning are determined by social context and also shaped historically by patterns of hegemony. I conducted a case study on patterns of meaning determination for the nagual and the related tonally among the Nahuas of Chicontepec, Veracruz, Mexico.  The data are drawn from communicational observations and semi-structured interviews, and they represent various genres through which discourse on the supernatural are circulated.  Additional data was also obtained from brief visits to Tampico, Tamaulipas; and Otomi communities in Ixhuatlan de Madero, Veracruz.  Fieldwork for this investigation was conducted from September 2004 to May 2005.
            The dissertation is structured to follow the course of the field season, to describe several key events in which discourses on the supernatural were involved.  These events reveal a larger cosmos of supernatural entities and phenomena that are conceptually related to the nagual and to each other. My social position among the indigenous communities was subject to an ongoing dialogue that in turn influenced what could be communicated with me on subjects of the supernatural and on dangerous discourse on witchcraft.  I have organized the chapters to reflect the evolution of my position through the season and its impact on the data I could obtain.

 

Author: Steven Jack Marqusee

Title: An analysis of late postclassic Period Quichean art form from the Highlands of Guatemala

Year: 1980

Abstract: Only recently have archaeologists begun to systematically excavate Late Postclassic highland Guatemalan archaeological sites. Consequently, relatively little is known of the material cultures of the various ethnic groups that inhabited this region. This study is concerned with one aspect of the material culture - the art - of the Quiche, the most politically dominant of the highland groups, and the groups they controlled or influenced during the period just prior to the Spanish Conquest.

Recently excavated art objects provided much of the data analyzed, though museum and private collections and published materials provided other examples. More than four hundred objects were described, photographed, drawn, and studied to define (1) the similarities and differences between the art of the groups generally referred to as "Quichean", (2) Quichean iconography, and (3) the foreign influences on Quichean art.

Because of the many ethnohistoric documents from the Quichean and adjacent and related groups, and opportunity to test the "historical approach" arose. Ethnohistoric documents such as the Popol Vuh and The Annals of the Cakchiquels define the characteristics of many Quichean deities, though not all could be associated with Quichean artistic motifs. Frequently, it was necessary to utilize ethnohistoric documents of neighboring groups to understand Quichean icongraphy. This suggests that sometimes foreign art forms, especially from central Mexico and the Mayan lowlands, were used to portray Quichean deities since few foreign deities are mentioned in Quichean documents.

Significantly, those areas which reveal high concentrations of lowland Mayan deity motifs are the same areas settled by lowland Mayan immigrants about a.d. 1250. This suggests the existence of long-standing, well-maintained ethnic boundaries which cross-cut both political and linguistic boundaries.

Central Mexican artistic motifs are found dispersed throughout the Quichean area without regard to political, linguistic or ethnic boundaries. Ethnohistoric documents tell us that a skilled class of ethnic Mexicans residing at the major centers were craftsmen for the various Quichean groups, possibly accounting for this distribution.

The art objects in different media were found not to be evenly distributed throughout the highlands. This may be due to regional economic specialization or the distribution of the natural resources from which these art objects were produced.

Several different regional styles of ceramic modeling were identified from the highlands. One style used to portray figurines and adornos has been identified from the Sacapulas regions and may represent a ceramic tradition. Another style used to portray large incensario adornos has both eastern and western highland variants, and may suggest less of a stress in producing quality art objects in the western rather than the eastern highlands.

Finally, a Quichean variant of the Mixteca-Puebla art style was defined. While there are significant differences in form between Mexican and Quichean variants, the most radical differences lie in the ideational realm. This style pervaded Mesoamerica during the Postclassic, and may have been introduced into the highlands by merchants or Gulf Coast immigrants. The Quichean variant has been discovered so far only at the major Quichean centers. Perhaps the ethnic Mexican craftsmen were responsible for producing it. Recently, a globular vessel, part of a cache, was discovered at Utatlan. The vessel, decorated in the Mixteca- Puebla style, was no doubt produced in Mexico. It is the only such object so far discovered in the highlands and provides a direct link between these two areas.

Artistic data suggest that the Quichean groups shared many motifs and the Mixteca-Puebla style with other Mesoamerican groups. Ethnohistoric data confirm that these similarities may have been superficial for the motifs and the highland Guatemalan Mixteca- Puebla style variant were usually assigned Quichean meanings. This may indicate that the highland groups were out of the mainstream of Mesoamerican cultural activity vis-a-vis other contemporary Mesoamerican groups.

Author: Frances E. Mascia-Lees

Title: A cross-national analysis of sexual stratification in contemporary socities

Year: 1983

Abstract: Within the last decade, anthropologists representing many theoretical orientations have produced an expanding literature concerning sexual stratification and the determinants of women's status. Many of these studies, however, have one major flaw. This is their tendency to claim a universal low status for women. This focus on low status has often led investigators to search for the one key factor responsible for this universal situation in the hope that if such a factor is discoverable, its eradication might bring about sexual equality. This view of women's position as universally low, however, has serious consequences since it fails to credit women with a wide range of accomplishments and also perpetuates myths concerning women's biological, social, and cultural inferiority. In light of this, it has recently been suggested that instead of searching for unicausal explanations of women's status, it is more appropriate to treat women's position as a composite of many different variables, and to demonstrated any interrelationships which exist among the different aspects of status.

Consequently, using an international data base consisting of national level indicators of women's status, which was compiled from a range of sources, statistical analyses were used in this study to accomplish three objectives.

The first was to document the range of variation that occurs in the degree of sexual stratification in a large sample of contemporary nations. These results indicate that women still lag considerably behind men in many areas of life, and that sexual stratification is a widespread phenomenon touching women all over the world. The second objective was to operationalize status, and in conjunction with this, to develop a model of status. The model exemplifies the complex nature of women's status in contemporary nations. The third objective was to isolate the social factors that have value in explaining and predicting women's position in the various realms of life. Here it was found that it is unsatisfactory to propose isolated factors as cure-alls for women's status ills.

This study exemplifies the shortcomings of treating status as a simple, unitary idea as well as the shortcomings in proposing unicausal explanations of sexual stratification.

Author: Jonathan N. Maupin

Title: Fruit of the accords: health care reform, decentralization, and community participation in Highland Guatemala

Year: 2006

Abstract: In this dissertation I examine the process of health care reform in Guatemala by analyzing the implementation of the Sistema Integral de Atencion en Salud (SIAS) in the municipality of San Martin Jilotepeque.  Analyzing the process of health care reform in Guatemala, I attempt to show how health care reform filters through and reflects the often competing agendas, processes, and structures at the international, national, and local levels. I examine the process of health care reform in Guatemala by analyzing the influence of global economic processes and international health paradigms and the structure of health care reform, as well as the active appropriation of health care reform by political groups at the national level to further their own socio-economic and political agendas. At the local level, I focus on the implementation of SIAS in San Martin
by analyzing the process of civil participation by the contracting of NGOs to provide health services as well as community participation through the recruitment and training of community health workers and midwives. I question the effectiveness of SIAS in fostering the processes of decentralization and democratization by analyzing how the implementation of SIAS in San Martin filters through the unique socio-cultural identities, power structures, and concepts of power and authority that exist in each rural community. Rather than creating new mechanisms for civil collaboration and community participation with the government, I argue that participation in SIAS is strongly influenced by local power structures, concepts of power and authority, in addition to local expectations of the identity and practices of community health care workers and midwives. Finally, I examine the impact of SIAS on existing health care providers in rural communities, as established community health workers and midwives must redefine their own identity, practices and authority.  This dissertation addresses an important gap in research on health care in contemporary Guatemala by illustrating the way in which health care reform is an active domain for the redefinition of the Guatemalan nation at the interstices between global economic processes, national socio-economic and political strategies, and local realities.

Author: Michael Frances McCarthy

Title: An investigation of some proposed universals on script borrowing

Year: 1985

Abstract: In this study, the history of the origins and development of writing systems is surveyed with the goal of determining the specific changes that occur when the writing system of one language is adapted to write another.

Differences from the "received" views in the literature are explored as a frame of reference. Some proposed universals of script borrowing are investigated in depth, together with background structural and sociocultural factors though to affect them. Several case studies which illustrate these matters are examined and various statistical computer procedures are applied to the data from these cases to determine whether or to what extent they support the proposed universals. These mathematical procedures are used to predict changes in borrowed scripts and are checked against the actual cases considered here. The results are significant and from these procedures a new universal is proposed.

Author: Brent Ernest Metz

Title: Experiencing conquest: The political and economic roots and cultural expression of Maya-Chorti ethos

Year: 1995

Abstract: The ethnographer set out to test a theory that the unique world view of the Maya-Chorti of Jocotan and Olopa in eastern Guatemala orients them as a group to resist integration into the capitalist market. He found instead that the Chorti have no conception of economic independence versus integration and have only a vague notion of a 'Chorti ethnic group. This leads him to take a more inductive approach to discover why this is so. When faced with a decision of how to write about the people many of whom have become his friends, he abandons the established ethnographic approach of de-emphasizing the emotional complexities of being human and their political economic roots. Instead, he chooses a narrative approach organized according to his perceptions of key Chorti emotions. The Chorti have a long history of marginalization, a condition intensified by Spanish and post-colonial non-Indian rule. Today they find themselves trapped between non-Indian economic and political domination and the inability to self-subsist due to overpopulation of an increasingly infertile environment. The result has been a perceived loss of respect for one another, a common feeling that the local nature deities have abandoned them, and persistent anxiety about sickness and death. Economic and political opportunities outside their rural communities have been limited by lack of access to modern knowledge, technology, and political power, a non-Indian culture of condescension, and a related Chorti emotional complex of embarrassment. Further limiting their power in the outside world are real and perceived violent threats from outsiders, supernatural forces, and themselves. Despite these oppressive conditions and feelings, Chortis show a marked resolve to be independent, an appreciation for outside assistance, and both a collective and individual determination to improve their condition. Many still enjoy the grounding comforts of localized social conventions, and some maintain optimism. There is no turning back to isolation for the Chorti whose future will in large part depend on the assistance of outsiders--local non-Indians, pan-Mayanists, development agencies, and social scientists--as much as on the Chorti themselves.

Author: James Stephen Molnar

Title: Interpreting fishing strategies of the Odawa

Year: 1997

Abstract: This study presents an examination of fishing activities of the Odawa (Ottawa) and other Native peoples of the northern Great Lakes in the Late Woodland and Contact periods. Data from numerous sources are considered inductively to search for patterning relevant to fishing strategies. The Hunter's Point site (BfHhB-3) in Ontario provides the primary data set. Fishing strategies are interpreted from archaeological remains and reconciled with ethnohistoric accounts. Conclusions of this analysis are compared against other regional studies of fishing activities.

Author: James Lorin Mondloch

Title: Voice in Quiche-Maya

Year: 1981

Abstract: This thesis analyzes devices used in Quiche and other Mayan languages to mark grammatical relationships, especially the use of voice. Voice is defined as a process performed on transitive verb stems, usually by means of suffixes, which either mark the relations between the arguments of transitive clause, and/or mark the focus of either of these arguments. In addition to voice, three other devices are used in Mayan languages to mark grammatical relations: personal pronouns, word order, and prepositions.

Chapter 1 presents a survey of these four case marking mechanisms in Mayan languages. The case marking roles of personal pronouns, word order, and prepositions for Quiche are discussed in Chapter 2. These first two introductory chapters serve to put the voice system of Quiche in its wider context as one of several mechanisms used for marking grammatical relations in transitive clauses.

The verb system of the language must be understood before the Quiche voice categories can be discussed. In Chapter 3 the basic morphology of both transitive and intransitive verbs for the language is presented. The Quiche voice categories are presented in Chapter 4. Six voice categories marked by suffixes on transitive verb stems, are described: the active, the simple passive, the completive passive, the absolutive, the antipassive, and the instrumental. The morphology, syntax, and semantics are given for each of the voices.

Author: Richard Montag

Title: A tale of Pudicho's people: Cashinahua narrative accounts of European contact in the 20th century

Year: 1998

Abstract: During the early 1900s, the Cashinahua and other Panoan groups, then living on the headwaters of the Jurua River in Brazilian Amazonia, fled oppression caused by the rubber boom. This study provides an account of the experiences of one Cashinahua group as its members resettled on the Curanja River in Peru. The data examined are oral narratives, historical sources, and the author's own field experiences in their community between 1969 and 1981. Annotated native texts constitute the focus of this study, the goal being to privilege Cashinahua testimonies as a source of understanding their own thoughts and actions as they experienced rapid social changes during the twentieth century. This study demonstrates that the Cashinahua have been both active and reactive in shaping a future for themselves at the edges of two dominant cultures, Peru and Brazil.

Author: David F. Mora-Marin

Title: The grammar, orthography, content, and social context of Late Preclassic Mayan portable texts (Mexico, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador)

Year: 2001

Abstract: In this study I describe and analyze the orthography, grammar, and possible linguistic affiliation of a subset of Late Preclassic texts present on inscribed jade and stone preciosities. The topic is framed within an historical anthropological interactionist approach that applies the following ethnohistorical methods: art history, archaeology, paleography, epigraphy, and linguistics. I focus on the application of the paleographic, epigraphic, and linguistic methods, and use the results to draw out implications for the sociocultural and linguistic history of Mayan civilization, specifically concerning the history of the Mayan script and its orthographic conventions, the linguistic affiliation of the earliest Mayan texts, the social context for the diffusion of Mayan writing in the Mayan region. After providing the necessary sociocultural, linguistic, and epigraphic background for the study of early Mayan writing (Chapters I–III), I present three epigraphic case studies focusing on the study of portable texts from the Classic (A.D. 200–900) and Late Preclassic (400 B.C.–A.D. 200) periods. The first (Chapter IV) consists of a study of the grammatical structure of the dedicatory formula of inscribed Classic pottery vases. The second (Chapter V) consists of a study of the grammatical structure, content, and context of the texts on Early Classic jade plaques. And the third (Chapter VI) consists of a detailed description and analysis of the signary and grammatical structure of a small subset of portable Late Preclassic Mayan texts. I conclude that the earliest Mayan portable texts exhibit the same basic orthographic conventions as later Classic texts, that they represent Ch'olan or Yukatekan languages, that they mainly contain examples of the dedicatory genre. I then discuss the results from the case studies and their implications for the sociocultural context of Late Preclassic Mayan civilization (Chapter VII), as well as for the sociolinguistic context of Late Preclassic Mayan hieroglyphic writing (Chapter VIII).

Author: Martha C. Muntzel

Title: The structure of Ocuilteco

Year: 1986

Abstract: Ocuilteco is an Otomanguean language spoken in Central Mexico. Ocuilteco, although still a reasonably viable language, is rapidly being displaced by Spanish, the national language. Use of Spanish is reinforced by mass communication, the educational system, governmental language policy and the attitudes of the speakers themselves which value Spanish more highly. The youngsters in the communities where Ocuilteco is spoken are being socialized and educated in Spanish and do not speak Ocuilteco.

Since very little linguistic data is available it is very important that this language be described. The major goal of this thesis is to provide a reasonably comprehensive description that will serve as a basic reference work. The Introduction (Chapter 1) is followed by a structural and generative phonology (Chapter 2) of Ocuilteco segments, morpheme structure rules, and major and minor phonological rules. Chapter 3 deals with the grammatical categories and morphology: nouns, pronouns, articles and demonstratives, quantifiers, adjectives, locatives, verbs and adverbs. Syntax (Chapter 4) covers word order and the general syntactic constructions. The Appendices contain Ocuilteco-English- Spanish, English-Ocuilteco and Spanish-Ocuilteco vocabularies.

Author: Kathleen A. O'Connor

Title: The age pattern of mortality: A micro-analysis of Tipu and a meta-analysis of twenty-nine paleodemographic samples

Year: 1995

Abstract: The objectives of this study were to: 1) examine the age patterns of mortality for the early colonial Tipu Maya skeletal sample, and twenty-eight additional paleodemographic samples; and 2) explore some of the biocultural and methodological variables affecting paleodemographic age patterns of mortality. Life tables and the Siler model, a biologically based competing hazards model of mortality, were used to evaluate and smooth the paleodemograhic data.

To estimate the Tipu age-at-death distribution both population specific and reference sample based aging methods were used. The population specific method using regression analysis and toothwear predicted a significantly younger age-at-death distribution than the reference sample based methods. This was true whether the inverse calibration or classical calibration approaches were used with the population specific toothwear method. The results were consistent with previous studies finding that reference sample based methods tend to overestimated age-at-death from late adolescence to the middle adult years.

The Tipu sample was characterized by a high level of mortality and an unusual age pattern: mortality increased in the first three years of life, and was very high during the childhood and adolescent years. This age pattern was consistent with predictions made using the ethnohistoric record pertaining to Tipu, and epidemiological theory. Tipu was probably a declining, largely refugee population which experienced relatively infrequent but oscillating cycles of infectious disease epidemics.

Only twelve of twenty-nine paleodemographic samples were found to be of adequate quality to fit well to the Siler model. Most of the twelve samples had only two of the three additive hazard components of the model well determined. These data were sufficient to generate a model age pattern of mortality for paleodemographic data. The paleodemographic model differed from national model age pattern of mortality: the paleodemographic model had higher survivorship to age 35; lower infant and early childhood mortality; higher later childhood and adolescent mortality; and an earlier and more rapid rate of aging. These differences may be due, in part, to bias in age-at-death estimation methods and incomplete enumeration at the youngest and oldest ages.

Author: Kazuyasu Ochiai

Title: When the saints come marching in: Inter-community public rituals among the Tzotzil Indians of Southeastern Mexico

Year: 1983

Abstract: This dissertation deals with a public ritual, the visiting saints, among the Tzotzil communities of the Chiapas highlands of southeastern Mexico. A visiting saint is a Catholic saint image either brought or taken from one community to another by a delegation of community officials on the occasion of major festivals. Since the exchange of visiting saints is a ceremonial and diplomatic relationship between two communities, it differs from a pilgrimage, which is a religious relationship or performance between devotees and some specific place. Special attention will be paid to the visiting saints observed in and around San Andres Larrainzar, a township where the author carried out field research during 1978-1979, 1980-1981, and the summer of 1982.

Although Tzotzil public rituals related to major festivals and civil-religious hierarchies have been studied in some communities, their analysis has been confined within the context of each ritual. In order to understand the annual public ritual cycle in San Andres Larrainzar as a whole, the author pays attention to the contrasting forms of celebrations of the township: Catholic festivals and the carnival.

The author especially focuses his research on an inter-community public ritual, the visiting saints, mainly because the custom has not been sufficiently studied, despite the fact that it embodies the cosmological and historical experience of the people who perform it. He examines the historical background of the ritual analyzing archival documents as well as published materials. The author considers it most important to afford a detailed ethnographic description of this custom, which is now falling off in certain communities before it can be recorded.

Author: Jan Marie Olson

Title: Unequal consumption: A study of domestic wealth differentials in three Late Postclassic Mexican communities

Year: 2001

Abstract: A holistic perspective which includes all social classes is necessary to understand the social world of Postclassic Mexico. I analyze differential consumption data to determine if domestic activities can illustrate class divisions and other complex socioeconomic relations. These activities include trade, ritual, production, food preparation, and entertaining/serving. The data are derived from household excavations at Capilco, Cuexcomate, and Yautepec in Morelos, Mexico. The research objectives are: (1) to identify variation in the relative and absolute household wealth of elite and commoner classes from the Middle Postclassic to the colonial period; (2) to compare domestic activities at urban and rural sites, and between classes using data from ceramic sherds, groundstone artifacts, chipped stone tools, and figurines; (3) to investigate the importance of social complexity as a factor in the structure of both urban and rural society; (4) to assess the relative variability of household activities in relation to larger processes. The main findings of this study are: (1) It is possible to sort domestic structures into elite and commoner classes and to use portable artifacts to describe infra-class variation. The study identified a dual class model which revealed a broad range of variation within classes. (2) A holistic analysis of artifacts allowed for interpretations that would have been missed had they been studied in isolation. (3) Comparing changes at the household level over time revealed that each class and site reacted differently to larger political and economic structures. (4) Domestic activities changed over time, even though some tasks remained basic to the functioning of households, e.g., food preparation. Incorporation of communities into a larger political sphere often had little direct effect at the household level. Yet, some reorganization was evident in incorporated communities such as seen in the case of the Cuexcomate elite and in the increase in craft production. (5) The greatest changes in domestic activities were found between the MPC and the LPC-A, and again between the LPC-B and colonial period. In the LPC-A greater energies were spent on trade, ritual activities, and production; while in the colonial period the frequency of kitchen activities and food preparation tools increased.

Author: Andreas G. Orphanides

Title: Towards a theory for the interpretation of material remains in archaeology: The bronze age anthropomorphic figurines from Cyprus

Year: 1986

Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to review the main trends in the interpretation of social organization in general and in archaeology in particular, to adopt a theoretical perspective for such interpretation in archaeology, and to utilize this perspective for the interpretation of the Bronze Age terracotta anthropomorphic figurines from Cyprus. Material remains are conceived as symbols of non-arbitrary use, which are related to ideology. Their meaning is determined by their context and form. Form and content cannot by separated.

A review of the so far suggested interpretations of the prehistoric figurines indicates that the predominant Mother Goddess interpretation has not been sufficiently documented. Prehistoric figurines may have different meanings depending on their cultural, temporal and geographical context.

A methodological line is followed, within which hypotheses concerning the interpretation of the Bronze Age terracotta anthropomorphic figurines are tested. The testing of the hypotheses is based on a suggested classification of the figurines, as well as on a number of observations concerning their form and context. The figurines are considered to be funerary symbols the represented humans who were related to the deceased, or the goddess Astarte. Their role was to make it possible for individuals to continue contributing towards the maintenance and reproduction of the society in the Afterlife.

Author: John E. Pfeiffer

Title: Late and terminal archaic cultural adaptations of the lowest Connecticut valley

Year: 1992

Abstract: The data in this dissertation are the direct result of intensive archaeological survey and excavation. The study concentrated on three adjacent small river drainage basins on the southernmost eastern slope of the Connecticut River Valley. The project area presented a superior situation for the study and definition of culture systems during the Late and Terminal Archaic periods. This local study defined a complete cultural system during the Terminal Archaic Period that has been termed the Great Island Phase and represents the study area's expression of the Susquehanna tradition. This analysis has also suggested two cultural continua. One extended between the Late Archaic and Terminal Archaic periods and the second persisted through the Late and Terminal Archaic into the Early Woodland periods. The data indicate contemporaneous and therefore coexisting cultural adaptations.

Author: Shawn M. Phillips

Title: Inmate life in the Oneida County Asylum, 1860--1895: A biocultural study of the skeletal and documentary records (New York)

Year: 2001

Abstract: This dissertation examines biological and historical records for the health consequences of long term institutionalization in nineteenth century North America. The biocultural approach is taken to investigate interactions between cultural, environmental, and biological factors in nineteenth century contexts. The Onieda Asylum skeletal sample, the Albany Almshouse skeletal sample, and socio-historical documents serve as the case studies and original data presented in this analysis. The Oneida Asylum skeletal sample represents inmates from a long term institution (an asylum for the mentally ill), from the second half of the nineteenth century in upstate New York. The Albany Almshouse skeletal sample, a short term institution from late nineteenth century upstate New York, is used in this study to represent life in the general population for comparison with the Oneida Asylum. Methodologies for this project include: Critical analysis of socio-historical documents; computerized anatomical digitizing and long bone robusticity indices (cortical maintenance and biomechanics); Diseased & Missing Tooth Index (DMI) and Caries Rate; differential diagnosis (marcroscopic and radiography) of paleopathological lesions. This study uncovers the unique suite of health consequences associated with the culturally constructed institutional environment in nineteenth century America. Labor therapy was ubiquitous as a form of treatment in long term institutions to reform, cure, or rehabilitate social deviants. One biomechanical consequence of labor therapy was increased skeletal robusticity into old age. Other indicators of the consequences of labor therapy at the Oneida Asylum are unusually high frequencies of Schmorl's nodes and compression fractures in the spine. Inmate oral health suffered at the Oneida Asylum due to a complete absence of professional and personal oral hygiene. The DMI and CI in the Oneida Asylum skeletal sample is poorer than any recorded for nineteenth century North America. Paleopathological patterns reveal particular fracture patterns in extremities, vertebral fractures, high pathogen burden, and miscellaneous conditions (cerebral palsy, poliomyelitis, hyperostosis frontalis interns). The biocultural perspective is utilized to explain the health consequences as biological outcomes of the social, economic, political, and medical environment that created nineteenth century long term institutions.

Author: Carol A. Raemsch

Title: Craniometric variation within skeletal samples of diverse biological composition

Year: 1995

Abstract: This research explores the patterns and causes within-group morphological variation through an analysis of skeletal samples of both known and unknown biological composition. The "known" samples are well-documented in terms of their composition, and are two types: those in which individuals are presumed to be related to one another, and those in which individuals are not related. The "unknowns" are prehistoric samples for which there is little documentation regarding their biological composition. Craniometric data are used to examine levels of variability in these three categories of skeletal samples.

Analyzing levels of variation within several different skeletal samples serves to document the range of variability in groups that vary in cultural, temporal, spatial, and genetic backgrounds. Studying variation within samples of known composition will assist in identifying whether craniometric variability accurately reflects known relationships among individuals, and in identifying whether levels of variation in samples of similar biological composition fall within a specified range. Analyzing variability among samples of related and of unrelated individuals produces baseline levels of high and low variation that can be used to classify samples whose composition is not known.

The results indicate that each sample differs in its magnitude of craniometric variability. Contrary to what was expected, "related" and "unrelated" samples do not represent two distinct ranges of variation, but instead exhibit an area of overlapping as expected, some of the samples of related individuals do not exhibit relatively lower variability. Based on the samples used here to represent high and low variation, and based on the overlap created by the high variability "related" samples, "unknowns" cannot be definitely classified as samples of related or of unrelated individuals. It is suggested that the unrelated samples used here accurately reflect known relationships among individuals, and that related samples do not reflect the expected levels of variation either because they are misclassified or because various microevolutionary and behavioral influences played a large role in producing the level and patterning of variation expressed by these groups.

Author: Alicia Ré Cruz

Title: The two milpas of Chan Kom: A study of socioeconomic and political transfromations in a Maya community

Year: 1992

Abstract: This study is an analysis of the socioeconomic and political transformations in Chan Kom, a Maya peasant community in Yucatan, Mexico and the articulation of the community with the larger region and nation. The original peasant village of Chan Kom, as studied by Robert Redfield in the 1940s, is today a community with both rural and urban components. This study focusses on the people's perception of their community as in a state of 'crisis' because of an active process of migration to the nearby city of Cancun. The perception of crisis is the point of departure for this analysis, which integrates the Mayas' representation of their community as divided into two competing social groups with a statistical analysis of the socioeconomic composition of both the rural and urban aspects of the Chan Kom community.

This study develops an 'interactive' approach to the understanding of social complexity in peasant communities. The interactive approach integrates interpretive analysis with the empirical description and explanatory capabilities of political economic analysis. The interpretive analysis of the community 'in crisis' reveals the existence of a social schism in Chan Kom that the Maya define as the migrants (los de Cancun), and those who remain in the village (los Antiguos). A statistical analysis of the social composition of the community demonstrates that this bifurcated representation, expressed in terms of 'we' and 'they' cultural categories is oversimplified. Only by integrating these two approaches does the complexity of social relations within the community become clear.

The addition of the urban component to the definition of community in peasant studies is necessary to achieve a holistic picture of the socioeconomic structure of peasant society. Furthermore, it reveals the importance of rural ideological representations in the adjustment of peasants to the urban environment. The urban peasant community remains active in the local, rural community affecting its social, economic and political development. The analysis of either of these communities alone ignores the dynamic interaction between them. Therefore, anthropologists must enlarge their definitions of community in peasant studies in order to understand the transformations of both rural and urban components and the active interaction of this larger community with the arena of the postmodern world.

Author: John Charles Redmond, Jr.

Title: Behavioral lateralization and cerebral asymmetries in Hylobates syndactylus

Year: 2000

Abstract: To investigate the effects of singing on handedness and cerebral structures, this dissertation examined both external cerebral asymmetries and leading limb preference of the melodious primate Hylobates syndactylus. Moreover, sex differences, which are often ignored in studies of primate handedness and cerebral asymmetries, were examined. Behavioral lateralizations were examined through videotaped frame-by-frame analysis of leading limb preferences of male and female duetting and non-duetting siamangs (n = 25). Results indicated that the number of males lateralized to either the right or left was significantly greater than expected from chance alone. When analyzed as a group, females showed a significant right hand leading limb preference while duetting. However, at the individual level, leading limb preferences were not influenced by vocal activity. A number of traditional markers were used to investigate the occurrence of cerebral asymmetries on siamang endocasts (n = 29) including; frontal, occipital and cerebellar petalias, frontal and occipital hemispheric arc lengths, and the size and height of the transverse sinuses. The most common trait was the occurrence of a left occipital petalia, which was found in over half (57%) of the endocasts examined. The finding of a significantly larger left than right occipital arc length further supported this finding. Finally, the occurrence of a larger and higher right transverse sinus was found in 64% of the endocasts examined. Sex did not affect the distribution of cerebral asymmetries in this sample. While the examinations of the direct relationship between cerebral asymmetries and behaviors such as handedness are in their infancy, the present study indicates that external cerebral asymmetries are not related to leading limb preference during brachiation in Hylobates syndacylus. Nevertheless, many individual endocasts were found to possess cerebral asymmetries and many subjects were judged to be individually lateralized for leading limb preferences. To examine this relationship further, future studies should consider focusing on the relationship between cerebral asymmetries and hand preferences in individual subjects that show a lateral bias.

Author: Stuart A. Reeve

Title: Root crops and prehistoric social process in the Snake River headwaters, northwestern Wyoming

Year: 1986

Abstract: This study explores the significance of plant resources, and specifically Camassia quamash and other root crops, to prehistoric adaptive systems of peoples occupying the Snake River headwaters of northwestern Wyoming. The major thesis is that the eastern biogeographic boundary of the liliaceous root crop blue camas (Camassia quamash) provided an ecological context for surplus root harvests, and for social aggregating. Female root gathering activities may have provided economic and ideological bases for ceremonialism, trade and political alliance central to the reemergence of a high country adaptive system since perhaps 10,000 B.P. in the mountains of northwestern Wyoming. Camas meadows in northern Jackson Hole are often surrounded by small archeological task sites that include grinding stones, earthovens and chipped tool assemblages instrumental to the procurement and processing of root crops. Lithic assemblages from meadow and non-meadow sites are compared to demonstrate both the sequence of seasonal subsistence and settlement patterns, and to differentiate work activities at female-oriented meadow sites and presumed male fishing sites. The largest archeological site in the region, the Lawrence site (48TE509), was located near extensive meadows formerly found on the Snake River delta at the northern end of Jackson Lake. Lithic materials indicate repeated use of the Lawrence site by groups from both within and beyond the biogeographic range of blue camas. Reconstructions of earthoven dimensions at the Lawrence site indicate very large, probably communal, root harvests. Pollen analysis of earthoven soils suggests the utilization of meadow vegetation for layering materials in conjunction with root cooking. Direct paleobotanical evidence for use of camas or other crops is relatively rare in comparison to their presumed economic importance. The implications of social aggregations of Jackson Hole are Yellowstone Plateau obsidians and other lithic materials at several important sites in Wyoming that provides seasonal complements to mid-summer occupations at camas meadows in the Snake River headwaters.

Author: Christina Barbara Rieth

Title: Culture contact during the Carpenter Brook phase: A tripartite approach to the study of the spatial and temporal movement of early Iroquoian groups throughout the upper Susquehanna River Valley

Year: 1997

Abstract: This project used the archaeological record to study the movement of ceramic vessels (and hence people) throughout the Upper Susquehanna River Valley, during the Carpenter Brook phase (A.D. 900-1150). Nineteen ceramic assemblages, from three clusters of sites located along the main branch of the Susquehanna River, were studied to determine the spatial and temporal movement of pre-Iroquoian groups during the early Late Woodland Period. Trace element analysis and ceramic attribute analysis served as the primary mechanisms for reconstructing movement and interaction networks. Ceramic seriation and radiocarbon dating were used to assess contemporaneity between sites so that a chronology of the Upper Susquehanna River Valley could be created. The results of this dissertation indicate that the groups living in the Upper Susquehanna River Valley usually interacted with other groups who lived within 25 miles of their base camp. Although long distance interaction occurred between all three groups, the most extensive interactions appear to have been between Owasco and Clemson Island groups living in the middle and lower regions of the project area. Such interaction networks probably centered around the trade and exchange of horticultural products, which were commonly transported in locally manufactured containers. Currently, there is little to indicate that Clemson Island groups migrated into New York at the beginning of the Carpenter Brook phase.

Author: John Henry Relethford

Year: 1980

Abstract: The genetic structure of a population refers to the relationship of gene and genotype frequencies. Since this relationship is strongly influenced by deviations from panmixia, genetic structure is essentially a reflection of the population's mating structure. As such, the study of population structure allows the assessment of the effects of cultural variation upon the gene and genotype frequency distribution. For human populations, the model of population structure which is most often appropriate is the isolation by distance model, which predicts an exponential decrease in genetic similarity as geographic distance increases.

This study deals with two areas of human population structure: (1) the development of methods for assessing population structure using anhtropometric traits, and (2) the analysis of cultural influences, other than geographic distance, upon observed genetic variation. Both of these areas are investigated with reference to a specific population -- rural western Ireland during the 1930's. Ethnographic evidence suggests the isolation by distance model to be appropriate for describing the genetic structure of this population.

The data used in this study are anthropometric measurements collected during the 1930's for 347 adult males and 261 adult females in 12 towns in three counties of western Ireland. To assess the effects of long range migration upon the degree and pattern of population differentiation, two additional samples were derived by removing known intercounty migrants from the total male and female samples. A fifth sample was derived using unmarried females only, in an attempt to control partially for local migration upon marriage.

The degree of population differentiation was tested using univariate and multivariate measures of relative among group variation. For both sexes, population differentiation increases as more migration is controlled for, as predicted by spatial models of population structure. The female samples show greater among group variation than males, which is due to the greater effect on non-genetic influences on males than females.

The appropriateness of a spatial model of population structure was tested using non- parametric correlations of geographic and anthropometric distance among all pairs of towns. All of the female samples show significant correlations, with the correlations increasing as more migration is controlled for, thus showing how recent migration obscures the basic spatial pattern.

Estimates of the parameters of the isolation by distance model were obtained using methods developed for with anthropometric traits. For the female samples, these parameters are in close agreement with independent estimates obtained form surname data, and are similar to values from other studies of rural European populations.

Simulation of population structure was performed to assess the effects of changing population size in Irish demographic history. The results indicate that the rapid increase and subsequent decrease in population size in Ireland during the 19th century acted to cancel one another. These simulations suggest that violation of the assumption of constant population size may not be crucial.

Analysis of the residuals from the isolation by distance model was accomplished using rotational fitting and regression analysis. Comparison of the female samples shows recent migration upon marriage to be a factor influencing residual variation. Economic factors affecting the attraction of migrants are also shown to have a strong influence on residual variation, where towns with larger population size and/or a more extensive transportation network are more similar biologically than expected on the basis of geographic distance alone.

Author: Rosalie M. Roberston

Title: Oneida indian education planning in Wisconsin

Year: 1985

Abstract: An educational planning survey conducted on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Wisconsin has been designed to determine if community needs are served by the tribal education programs. The purpose was to access current understandings and concerns of the Oneida people regarding education generally and Oneida educational goals specifically.

The Galileo methodology utilized provides a metric multidmensional scaling instrument (MMDS) to identify and measure cognitive domains. The procedure contains two phases of interviewing. Within the target population, a sample of Oneidas first responds to a series of questions in open-ended interview. These Phase 1 results provide a qualitative description of the domain of education for the Oneidas, identifying the specific concepts within their cultural reference frame. A paired comparisons questionnaire administered in Phase 2 allows for a precise representation of the domain of education, and generates a cognitive "map." For educational planning, a message component of the Galileo instrument is especially designed to identify effective messages to potentially improve communications between tribal staff and the community, and to help achieve specific educational goals.

As a document in applied anthropology, the Oneida study is first a problem-oriented report for the Oneida education staff and the community. It is secondly an exposition of the Galileo theory and method of research on the measurement of cognitive and cultural processes, as it may be successfully applied to anthropological and education research.

Author: Matthew Howard Rogers

Title: Totems and tourists: Tourism and cultural production on Haida Gwaii/The Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia

Year: 2002

Abstract: This dissertation examines the social effects of a growing economic reliance on tourism on the people of Haida Gwaii/the Queen Charlotte Islands, a remote archipelago off the west coast of Canada. In the past twenty years, as the traditional natural resource based industries of this region have fallen on hard times, tourism has been promoted as an ecologically sustainable alternative. However, this shift can have unanticipated social consequences. Often described as the fastest growing industry on the planet, tourism is a product of the industrial age, resulting from advances in transportation technology and the rise of the middle class. However, its root motivations can be found in universal human practices such as ritual pilgrimage. For tourism experiences to be meaningful to participants, they must deliver a sense of authenticity which reflects a recognizable essence of place. By commodifying aspects of culture as ‘sights’ to be consumed, tourism places an economic value on cultural productions, a process which can change their meaning over time. Additionally, the socioeconomic disparity which commonly exists between hosts and guests raises concerns about political hegemony and colonial or imperial power. Three propositions were advanced in order to frame and direct the research. The first of these examined the connection between the demand for authenticity and the growth of tourism in remote locales. The second concerned a conflict of interests between resource-based industries and those of the tourism industry. The third suggested that the tension between proponents of environmental conservation, the tourism industry, and resource-based industries may be interpreted in terms of class conflict. The tourism industry on Haida Gwaii has grown during a period of intense environmental conflict over the fate of the ancient forests of the northwest coast. The creation of a new national park on the islands following a bitter struggle attracted the attention of the nation and the world. Now, fifteen years later, residents continue to grapple with the stresses which accompany a developing tourism sector at the same time as traditional resource based industries continue to decline.

Author: Brenda Picciotto Rosenbaum

Title: With our heads bowed: Women, society and culture in Chamula, Chiapas

Year: 1987

Abstract: The lives of women in the Tzotzil Maya community of Chamula, in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico are viewed from various perspectives. The analysis focuses both on the ideology--the way in which the culture defines women, men and their interaction and interprets their behavior--and on social action--the behavior "on the ground" influenced by economic, social and political forces.

The community is studied in a temporal fram from prehispanic times, when the social organization was based on patrilineages which controlled the land, to the present. Today Chamulas have become land-poor peasants thoroughly incorporated into the state economy as unstable wage laborers. It is suggested that the power of these men eroded as the patrilineages weakened and men became wage workers. Because they leave their hamlets and their wives and children for several months every year and because of the generalized poverty of the Chamula people, men have become increasingly dependent on their wives' help to support their families. Women also have played a crucial role in the men's quest for power and prestige in their community. This increased dependence on women causes deep anxiety in men, who feel their superiority thus imperiled.

The ideology presents conflicting views of women. On the one hand, they are seen as "cold," or weak and vulnerable as compared with men who are inherently endowed with more "heat," ore courage and strength. On the other hand, women are associated with the Earth, a powerful sexually aggressive and potentially destructive female, who controls the fertility of crops and people. The ideology thus reflects a deep-seated ambivalence towards women. Since men's superiority and masculinity are based on women's inferior position and on male control of women, this ambivalence has important consequences. It pervades the interaction between men and women and characterizes it as conflictive and, often, violent.

Author: C. Mathews Samson

Title: Re-enchanting the world: Maya identity and Protestantism in the western highlands of Guatemala

Year: 2004

Abstract: The primary question addressed in this work is: What does it mean to be both Maya and Protestant in Guatemala? To answer this question I employ an ethnographic approach, rooted in the concern for human agency embodied in practice theory, to examine religious practice in the Mam and Kaqchikel Maya presbyteries of the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala. The study adds a comparative case of indigenous Protestantism within a historical denomination to the literature on religious pluralism in Mesoamerica. The presbyteries represent the second and third largest Maya language communities in Guatemala, and the uniqueness of the case resides in the manner in which the groups seek to reinterpret historical Protestant Christianity in terms of Maya culture. The frame for the research emphasizes local activity in the context of forces emanating from beyond the local community itself. Primary among these forces are the violence from a thirty-six year civil war and a rise in organizing for cultural rights embodied in the pan-Maya ethnic renewal movement that coalesced in the early 1990s. Through analysis of the iconography of church buildings (templos) and their place on the landscape and excerpts from conversion-related narratives, the Mam emerge as more traditional in their integration of Maya identity and Protestant practice. Nevertheless, church symbolism shows an embracing of aspects of Maya culture and cosmology, and the narratives reveal tension caused by the rejection of aspects of Maya culture required by spiritual dictates of evangelicalism. In contrast, the Kaqchikel challenge Protestant symbolism represented by the pulpit and the authority of the minister in scriptural interpretation by organizing themselves along the lines of communities rather than congregations. The way in which the Kaqchikel constructed the identity of an assassinated minister as a martyr for Maya culture, ecumenical Christianity, and human rights shows a politically engaged evangelicalism. Both groups manifest a communitarian ethic that challenges the notion of Protestants as individualistic and uninvolved in political or communal affairs. Despite differential approaches, both cases testify to a “re-enchantment of the world” by bringing Maya culture to the reinterpretation and renewal of Protestant identity.

Author: David G. Scotchmer

Title: Symbols of salvation interpreting Highland Maya protestantism in context

Year: 1991

Abstract: Employing Clifford Geertz's symbolic framework to explain the ethnographic significance of Maya Protestantism in a highland community in Western Guatemala, the author concludes that local religious change signals a grass-roots social movement of cultural revitalization among Guatemala's majority Indian population. The sacred symbols of Maya Protestantism provide the foci for interpreting the religious beliefs and the individual and organizational behavior of Mam and Spanish speaking adherents. Despite continuous Protestant missionary contact throughout this century, significant numbers of Indians have converted only recently from Maya Traditional religion and orthodox Catholicism to a variety of Protestant religious and expressive forms. Through more than fifty local autonomous churches, Indians and Ladinos have identified with both historic Presbyterianism and sectarian Pentecostalism according to varied criteria with cultural, economic, and political consequences. A typology of distinctive features illustrates the differences and similarities of these groups within local and national religious institutions. Sherry Ortner's interpretive methodology is used to explain three key summarizing symbols including Kajaw Crist 'Our Lord Chris,' Tyol Dios 'God's Word,' and Tak'un Dios 'God's Work' as these are experienced and expressed within their own context by Maya Protestants. Three dilemmas confront the highland May including 1) the struggle to believe given religious change and spiritual uncertainty, 2) the struggle to understand given cultural pluralism and conflicting religious authority, and 3) the struggle to survive given economic landlessness, ploticial oppression, and ethnic division. By placing the words and actions of believers within their own problematic, the author shows that Maya Protestantism represents a symbolic inversion of Maya Traditional religion enabling Maya Protestants to reconstruct a meaningful world view and liveable ethos given structures and constraints beyond their control. The question of a Maya Protestant rationality from within a Weberian perspective is addressed; along with Talal Asad's critique of Geertz's symbolist view of religion as sui generis to culture as both of these topics relate to a theory of social change and the construction of meaning.

Author: Stephen L. Selka

Title: Religion and the politics of ethnic identity in Bahia, Brazil

Year: 2003

Abstract: This dissertation explores how Brazilians of African descent involved with different religious groups construct their ethnic identities and participate in the struggle against racism. The study is set in the state of Bahia, known for its rich Afro-Brazilian traditions and as a center of racial consciousness in Brazil. Activists today are confronting racism and racial inequalities that until recently many Brazilians refused to acknowledge. Many groups engaging these problems are religious, and ethnic affirmation based in African-derived religion, namely Candomblé, is at the heart of the anti-racism movement in Bahia. Yet many see racial mobilization based on a unitary ethnoreligious identity as problematic. As I explore in this dissertation, Catholic, evangelical, and Candomblé religious organizations assign radically different meanings to traditional Afro-Brazilian symbols and practices and differ widely in their approaches to questions of black identity. Christian organizations vary widely in their views about such affirmations of Afro-Brazilian culture. In addition, because of widespread appropriation of traditional Afro-Brazilian culture for nationalistic and commercial purposes, many activists are concerned that its power as an organizing principle has been undermined. Drawing on contemporary theoretical perspectives on practice, identity and politics, in this study I examine debates over religious legitimacy, ethnic identification and approaches to racial mobilization in Bahia. While some argue that disagreements over these issues have hindered the development of an effective mass movement against racism in Brazil, I argue that Afro-Brazilian identity politics in Bahia often involves pragmatic alliances between religious, cultural and political groups with diverse views and seemingly incommensurate approaches. Along the way I examine the often neglected relationship between the progressive evangelical movement and anti-racist initiatives. Throughout this dissertation, I emphasize that Afro-Brazilian ethnoreligious identities in Bahia are multiple and contested rather than unitary and homogeneous.

Author: Ling-Ling L. Shih

Title: Inventing new womanhood in China/Taiwan: A historical anthropology of gender

Year: 2004

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to illustrate the usefulness of Weberian theory in gender studies. More specifically, the study applies Weberian theory to explain the mechanisms for the radical gender transformation in early 20 th-century China and Taiwan. It attempts (1) to show the inadequacy of defining gender solely as a social/cultural construct and (2) to demonstrate the utility of a Weberian-based gender theory for describing the transformation of gender ideology as more than a mere consequence of socio-cultural change, but also as a consequence of political and economic change. The two Chinese case studies provide a new socio-historical study of changing gender ideologies, roles and relations in China and Taiwan. Based on comparative analyses of the two case studies, the research concludes with the following empirical generalizations: (1) Gender transformation is generally a result of endogenous and exogenous forces; (2) gender is not a mere cultural construct, but a socio-historical construct, conditioned by socio-cultural, economic, and political process; (3) there is no causal relationship between national/socialist movements and women's liberation; (4) colonialism can be an important factor in shaping the (dis)course of women's movements.

Author: David M. Simms

Title: Tourism, entrepeneurs, and change in southwest Ireland

Year: 1981

Abstract : This study focuses on small-scale entrepreneurship in a tourist economy. The research site is a small town, which recently experienced a tourist boom, in a Gaelic-speaking area of Southwest Ireland, where most businesses are family owned and operated.

Principal aims are to investigate factors that led to a relatively rapid rise of entrepreneurship in a community that had exhibited strong constraints against pronounced entrepreneurial activity, and to examine strategies entrepreneurs have adopted to capitalize on the tourist trade. The impact of entrepreneurial activity outside the strictly business sphere also is analyzed.

Patterns of tourism in the Irish republic and in the area of the field work site are dealt with, as is the history of tourism in the area. Ethnographic descriptions of the town prior to the tourist boom and today are presented. Bed and breakfast houses, pubs, craft shops, and other businesses run by natives and outsiders are looked at in separated chapters. Also explored are competition and status among entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship and social behavior, and symbolic aspects of tourism and entrepreneurship.

It is proposed that strong constraints against pronounced entrepreneurship can be overcome only under several conditions: when there is substantial economic stimulus from the outside, and when there are some changes in business ownership. Successful entrepreneurs may provide models and incentives for others. Once begun, changes can be relatively rapid if many businesses, though marginal, are already in existence. Natives will tend to avoid certain potentially lucrative occupations if they associate them with past poverty or peasant-related activities, leaving them to outsiders. Natives are more apt to modify existing practices and skills, the younger generation tending to make the most extensive modifications. The transition from a marginal to a lucrative economy in a family firm may be accompanied by improved family relationships, as well as significant changes in other aspects of social life.

Author: Timothy J. Smith

Title: A tale of two governments: Rural Maya politics and competing democracies in Solola, Guatemala

Year: 2003

Abstract: A Tale of Two Governments is a dissertation about rural democracy in post-war Guatemala and the first complete study of the Mayan town of Sololá. Setting this book within the renaissance of a Mayan government that dates back nearly 500 years, I offer a critical interpretation of the challenges of pan-Mayan nationalism through a study of a conflict between two political groups, whose members are predominantly indigenous. The fieldwork for the book began in 1997, when a local “anti-party” of Mayan activists controlled both the official municipal government and the Mayan municipal government, enjoying a successful campaign for reforming local and regional institutions which had discriminated against indigenous populations. Their authority was challenged by the local wing of a legalized guerilla party, which managed to take over both municipal governments in the 1999 and 2001 elections. This dispute has included death threats, an outpouring of media, police response, mass protest, court indictments, legal grievances, and destruction of public buildings. Through the use of mass media, historical documents, linguistics, eye-witness accounts, and personal narrative, I provide an examination of this dispute by looking at the slippage between Mayan nationalism and the key issues that drive rural electoral politics, the contested meanings of democracy, struggle between traditional and modern authority, and factionalism in highland Guatemala.

Author: Solano, Martin

Title: The life stresses of poverty: skeletal and historical indicators of activity patterns in the Albany County Almshouse skeletal collection, 1825-1925

Year: 2006

The study of human skeletal samples can offer a great deal of information regarding the behavioral patterns of past populations.  While numerous studies exist on pre-industrial societies, little research has involved the occupational stresses in early industrial societies.  This study is an examination of skeletal indicators of activity and occupational stress in the Albany County, New York, Almshouse Cemetery skeletal collection (n=1205), derived from the lower socioeconomic classes of an early industrial urban population.  Skeletal behaviors and mechanical stress are assessed using several methods, including postcranial robusticity, rugosity (muscle marking size), enthesopathies (trauma to muscle insertions), osteoarthritis, trauma, and activity related (non-metric) traits.
The overall pattern of skeletal characteristics indicates relatively high levels of mechanical stress in this sample.  Robusticity and rugosity values both indicate increased mechanical loading in both makes and females, as observed in the long bones of the upper limb.  These measures also indicate that physical demands were imposed at a young age.  Enthesopathies and osteoarthritis, pathological indicators of excessive mechanical stresses are common in this sample, including young adults.  However, these pathological features are partially attributable to systemic illnesses and other conditions not related to activity.  The pattern and frequency of traumatic injuries indicates a combination of occupational hazards and interpersonal violence.  Amputations, and complete fractures that were poorly set, may have led to permanent dependency on the Almshouse until death.
A number of differences are observed in the pattern and distribution of these markers of activity between males and females, indicating differences in the sexual division of labor.  However, similar levels of robusticity, rugosity, and pathological indicators of activity suggest equivalent physical demands between the sexes.  Historic records on the city of Albany and the Almshouse provide considerable support for the patterns of skeletal stress seen in this sample.  Most males were employed as general laborers, subjected to excessive bending, lifting, carrying, shoveling, and many other repetitive and physically demanding behaviors.  Few females had wage-paying jobs, although domestic chores were physically demanding and repetitive, including laundry, cleaning, cooking, and sewing.  The use of several skeletal indicators of activity, combined with historic information, provides a holistic view of behavior and occupational stress in this underprivileged population.

 

Author: John R. Sosa

Title: The Maya sky, the Maya world: A symbolic analysis of Yucatec Maya cosmology

Year: 1985

Abstract: The analysis of symbolic expression is a cross-disciplinary endeavor, to which anthropology makes a specific contribution. By discussing the contemporary paradigms in this field of study, in conjunction with the documentation of the world ethnographic record, this thesis seeks to develop a model for the symbolic interpretation of a traditional people's cosmology, or their view of their existence in a conceived universe. These people are the Yucatec Maya of Mexico, for whom we have extensive archaeological and historical documentation, and although this creates great potential for diachronic analysis, this study is confined to the synchronic component, so that a contemporary society's system of meaning can be studied in terms of its complexity, logical organization and multi-dimensional significance. To do this, the Maya symbols of le sˆantoho', le sˆaantoh meyaho', u y—ok'ol kˆab', and bey ti' ka'an, bey ti' lu'um, will organize the data presentation, and include a discussion of the role of sacred meanings in all phases of social and ritual life, the curing and ritual practices of the hmen, the Maya ritual specialist, the Maya conception of the world, and a comprehensive comparison of all of these to reach a synthesis of their shared meanings. A major goal will be to treat these categories in terms of their internal variation, so as to discuss the implications of this for both the dynamic process by which a society shares a cosmology, and for its cultural organization

Author: Susana Cuevas Suárez

Title: The Amuzgos' zoological world: An ethnoscientific approach

Year: 1987

Abstract: The foci of the present study includes both an analysis of the criteria used by the Amuzgos to organize the animals and the evaluation of those criteria which are reflected in the culture in general.

An accurate description of the rules used by the people of a culture, constitutes a "theory" of that culture, which represents the conceptual model of organization used by its members. The analysis of a culture's terminological system will reveal the cognitive world of its members. Culturally significant cognitive features must be communicable between persons in one of the standard symbolic systems of the culture. A major share of these cultures will undoubtedly be codable in a society's most flexible and productive communication device, its language.

This study presents a complete ethnozoological classification among the Amuzgos of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is intended to work toward several objectives; such as to go more deeply into the Amuzgos culture, its system of meaning through the analysis of how the members of this society organize and conceive their own world. The Berlin, Breedlove and Raven's theory about the nomenclature of folk taxonomies will be applied to present the part of the Amuzgos culture that the folk taxonomy reveals. Some arguments and examples about the "intermediate category" will be presented to support its near universal characteristics.

This study includes a comparison between the Amuzgos ethnozoological classification and the "scientific" or Western classification of animals. This comparison is by no means presented here with the intent to recognize or to accept one classification rather to the other. On the contrary, the objective is to demonstrate that both classifications reflects traits of both cultures, Amuzgo culture and Western culture reflected by the scientific classification system, since the criteria by which to order the whole group of animals the Amuzgos used is different in many ways to those used by the scientific classification.

Author: Bradley Scott Tatar

Title: Narrating the revolution: Sandinistas and the politics of memory in Masaya, Nicaragua

Year: 2003

Abstract: This dissertation explores the construction of Sandinista and anti-Sandinista political identities in Nicaragua during three historical periods: the insurrection against Somoza [1977–1979], the period of the Sandinista government [1979–1990], and the post-Cold War decade of parliamentary democracy [1990–2001]. I argue that Nicaraguans craft their political identities by reciting autobiographical narratives about their participation in the revolution. In Masaya, the most important narratives told by Sandinistas concern the Insurrection of Monimbó, a local uprising that occurred in February of 1978. The narratives told by the residents of barrio Monimbó differ substantially from the official and institutionalized history of the insurrection promulgated by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [FSLN]. I argue that the orally transmitted stories about the insurrection indicate that Sandinista political identity is constructed in the social spaces of civil society, which are not controlled by party or state. Furthermore, the capacity of the FSLN to function as a political party requires the utilization of narratives about the insurrection in political rituals, the mass media, and in everyday social interactions. Comparing my interviews with Sandinistas in the 1990s to interviews that were published in 1982, I found that the narratives of the Insurrection of Monimbó had undergone alterations of meaning. The 1978 Monimbó insurrection expressed a Sandinista identity that was nationalist and predicated upon the notion of a national tradition. In contrast, the Sandinistas of the 1990s focused on constructing an anti-capitalist movement. In addition to describing the difference between Sandinista identity and other political identities, I describe the social and historical causes of heterogeneity within the Sandinista movement of the late 1990s. Analyzing the political discourses used during the 2001 Nicaraguan election campaigns, I argue that differing narratives about the insurrection are indicative of disagreement within the Sandinista movement about the nature of socialism and the feasibility of its implementation in post-Cold War Latin America. This work contributes to the study of the Nicaraguan revolution by illustrating that Nicaraguans elaborate specific interpretations of history that serve as the basis for social groups with distinctive political identities.

Author: Matthew S. Taylor

Title: Diachronic Changes in Hunter-Gatherer Dental Health and Disease on the Texas Central Gulf Costal Plain

Year: 2006

Abstract: This dissertation explores the changes in dental disease and health from early hunter-gatherers from the Texas Central Gulf Costal Plain (TCGCP). Data for this work was gathered from 517 individuals representing 21 cemetery sites, which range in date from the Paleoamerican (c.9000BP) to the Protohistoric (c.450BP) time periods. During all phases of prehistoric occupation, inhabitants maintained a hunting and gathering subsistence strategy. Models of hunter-gatherer dental health predict that past foragers experience a characteristic pattern of disease. This pattern is marked by relatively low frequencies of tooth decay and infection while adequate nutrition would have led to few signs of metabolic stress. However, foragers would have experienced high levels of dental wear. These models suggest that forager dental health was relatively stable across time. To test this assumption, quantitative and qualitative observations of dental lesions, demographic anomalies, and tooth size data were used to assess the patterns of dental health over time. Interpretations were supplemented by the available ecological and archeological record.
To refine paleodemographic analysis, a new method of estimating age at death from dental wear is proposed. This method employs ethnographic analogy, and uses observed hunter-gatherer demographic data as a model. The method relies on seriation of second mandibular molars and assumes that the oldest individual was over 70 years of age at death. Results indicate that significant numbers of early TCGCP hunter-gatherers survived to advanced ages, especially in the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods.
Results regarding dental disease reveal that frequencies of dental lesions were variable from one time period to another. Nearly all classes of dental disease reached their lowest frequency during the Late Archaic period, with the highest frequencies occurring in the following Late Prehistoric. Dental disease frequencies plateaued during the Protohistoric, and do not seem to have been significantly impacted by early contact with Europeans. Dental disease frequencies were not influenced by fluctuations in tooth size, since there were no significant changes in the size of teeth between successive time periods. Contrary to previous assumptions, hunter-gatherer dental health is not static. Significant changes were observed across time and were likely influenced by cultural and technological innovations in food preparation and collection methods.

Author: Forrest D. Tierson

Title: Influence of dietary cravings and aversions during pregnancy on maternal diet and pregnancy outcome

Year: 1982

Abstract: Dietary cravings and aversions during pregnancy comprise a ubiquitous complex of symptoms, yet relatively little is known of its etiology or epidemiology. If dietary cravings and aversions affect maternal nutrition in such a way that nutrient levels are increased or the ingestion of embryotoxic agents is decreased, then the impact on maternal (and subsequently fetal) health in human populations might be considerable.

The objectives of this study are (1) to demonstrate where changes in maternal diet occur during pregnancy, both in terms of specific food items and the time during gestation when changes occur, (2) to determine the frequency of specific dietary cravings and aversions during pregnancy, (3) to determine the stages during pregnancy at which cravings and aversions occur, (4) to assess the impact of cravings and aversions on nutrient and caloric intake by categories of subjective reasons used to explain the origin of cravings and aversions, (5) to assess the impact of dietary cravings and aversions on changes in maternal diet over the course of pregnancy, (6) to assess the association of birthweight and fetal viability with cravings and aversion during pregnancy, (7) to determine the interaction between maternal and nutrient intake and fetal outcome, and (8) to investigate the relationship of aversions to specific foods with maternal exposure to identified and suspected dietary embryotoxins, such as alcohol, tobacco smoke and caffeinated beverages.

The data used in this prospective study include information on nutrient intake based on 24- hour recalls, the frequency oh consumption of specific food and beverage items at several periods during pregnancy (based on 7-day dietary recalls), the time of occurrence of specific dietary cravings and aversions during pregnancy, fetal outcome information from physician records, and information on maternal condition, including weight gain and complications during pregnancy. These data were obtained on a white middle-class sample of 400 pregnant women in Albany, New York, whose pregnancies were ascertained in the 12th week, and who were interviewed systematically throughout their pregnancies.

Simple univariate tests demonstrate the relatively great affect of dietary cravings and aversions on the frequency of consumption of specific diet and beverage items. Most cravings and aversions can be defined as being endogenous in origin, with little difference in their expression whether defined as endogenous or exogenous in origin.

Although direct effects of dietary cravings and aversions could not be demonstrated in this well-nourished population, both regression and discriminant analyses pointed out the large positive influence of the consumption of vegetables and fruits during pregnancy on subsequent infant birthweight, and the large negative influence of smoking and coffee intake on metric measures of fetal outcome.

In this study, information on the frequency of food and beverage consumption during pregnancy based on 7-day dietary recalls was found to be much better at accounting for the variance in metric fetal outcome variables such as birthweight than were data on actual nutrient intake (based on 24-hour recalls).

Author: Ann Kennedy Wentworth

Title: Woman of business or lady of the manor?: an archaeological examination of changes in gender roles among the hudson valley elite during the eighteenth century

Year: 1994

Abtract: The following study analyzes the changes in gender roles among New York landowning families during the mid-to late 18th century through ceramic styles and vessel forms present in a archaeological collection recovered during excavations conducted at Clermont State Historic Site, a Livingston family home.

The premise that social values are projected through the use of material goods allowed for the examination of how rapidly changing social values resulting from the concurrent rise of capitalism and the adoption of a more democratic form of government affected the women from the emerging landowners class. The changes in women's sphere of influence from businesswoman, estate manager and partner to her husband to household manger and arbitrator of family social life was investigated through consumer behavior evidenced by changes in the style and forms of ceramic wares chosen to furnish the dinner and tea tables. This change in women's roles was analyzed in the context of the historical development of the Hudson Valley estate lifestyle, the political and social forces leading to the American Revolution, The cultural legacy of the Dutch period and the family history of the Clermont Livingstons.

The results indicate the women of Clermont were active participants in the transition that entailed a constriction of their economic and public life, but expanded their authority in the social, moral and familial spheres. The evidence for this transition to a general elite lifestyle is shown in a preference for fashionable ceramic wares, for forms associated with fashionable beverages, and for matched dinner and teaware sets associated with social entertaining. An examination of the historical, social and familial context provides clues as to why these women chose to follow this course of action.

In addition to the perspective gained into the attitudes of the Livingston women and by extension into the attitudes of their peers, the stratigraphic analysis of the excavations led to new conclusions about the construction and history of the Clermont mansion in Columbia County, New York.

Author: Patricia Whelehan

Title: Group homes: an alternative to institutionalization for troubled adolescents

Year: 1979

Abstract: This study examines adolescent socialization, deviance, and planned culture change within the therapeutic environment of a group home. The group homes studied are an urban, community based alternative to a private child caring institution. These particular homes are established for emotionally disturbed and/or dependent adolescents; i.e., those adolescents with either behavioral or emotional problems or those with no kinship networks in the larger community. Those adolescents placed in group homes no longer require institutionalization, but are not yet ready to live in the larger community on their own.

The study describes how these adolescent males who leave the subculture of Catholic, medium-sized child caring agency for that of a group home are resocialized into the larger society. Resocialization is understood by examining how these adolescents adapt to the subcultural environments of the institution and group home. As the socializing milieu, based on nuclear family model, the group home exposes the residents to an American middle class life style through open access to the community and close living arrangements with adults and an adolescent peer group. From this experience, the residents are expected to internalize larger societal behaviors and values. The process of behavior change as well as the conflicts and reasons for program success and failure are presented.

Success of the group home program is operationally defined by the number of residents who adopt conforming behaviors and attitudes of the larger society in relation to a desire for upward mobility, education, full time employment, or close interpersonal relationships with peers and adults. At this point in the residents' lives, this is expressed through such acts as reunification with their families, high school attendance, heterosexual dating, respect for authority figures, and little or no involvement in extralegal behavior such as theft or assault. In contrast, failure is indicated by those residents returned to the institution or discharged to the community at large because of unresolvable interpersonal conflicts in the house, extensive truancy, or repeated involvement in extralegal behavior.

Given the structure of this specific program, it was found that program success depended on four factor: resident mental health, community acceptance, interstaff communication, and recognition of inherent biases in the program. The greatest degree of success occurred among residents who were found to be psychologically healthy and could conform most easily to house and community norms, accept authority figures, and form friendships. These variables were measured through psychiatric interview, mental status exams, and the WISC (Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children), Rorschach, and Bender Visual Gestalt tests. The program was not prepared for residents with more severe behavioral or emotional problems. Community acceptance of the concept of such programs and their physical presence in a given neighborhood were found to be important factors in program success. Communication problems between group home staff and administrators contributed to program failure. Lastly, a bias towards middle class behavior was believed to be unrealistic given the residents' backgrounds, present needs, and their stated future desires. In general, a group home model based on open community access has the greatest degree of success when its residents are relatively free of psychiatric problems; when the houses are located in communities which will accept the presence of "deviants"; when the staff represents positive role models from the residents' backgrounds; and when the goals of the program reflect the residents' needs and abilities.

Twenty-two months were spent as a participant-observer in the group home program established by a private child caring agency in New York State. Data collected during this period included daily journals of group home activities, institutional case histories and psychiatric evaluations of the residents, institutional policy statements, and interviews with administrators and group home staff members.

In conclusion, resocialization was found to be effected primarily by resident psychological well being, and secondarily by careful staff selection, and realistic, commonly accepted goals for the residents. In addition, the establishment and maintenance of the program itself was largely determined by community reaction to the idea and presence of the group.

Author: White, Daniel D.

Title: Size and Shape of the Cerebellum in Catarrhine Primates and Plio-Pleistoncene Fossil Hominins: A Paleoneurological Analysis of Endocranial Casts

Year: 2005

Over the past several decades, neuroscientists have expanded scientific understanding of the function of the primate cerebellum.   Experimental and clinical evidence has revealed that the cerebellum plays a role in both motor and cognitive functions.  The strong link between the cerebellum and neocortical areas associated with higher cognitive functions makes this structure an important piece in the puzzle of human brain evolution.
This disseration utilizes endocranial casts of five primate species ( Macaca, Hylobates, Pongo, Gorilla, and Pan) and eight Plio-Pleistocene fossil hominins (Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Homo) to examine the evolution of cerebellum size and shape through time.  Linear and geometric morphometric techniques are employed to quantify the size and shape of the posterior cranial fossae (representing the cerebellum) and endo-basicranial surfaces of catarrhine and fossil endocasts.
Three general questions are tested in this dissertation.  1) Do cerebellum size and shape show grade level differences in this sample of catarrhine primate endocasts?  2) Are cerebellum size and shape laterally asymmetrical?  3) Are cerebellum size and shape sexually dimorphic?
The major empirical findings of this work are: 1) analysis of linear cerebellar measurements reveals no statistically significant lateralization or dimorphism in the total catarrhine sample; 2) linear measurements indicate that macaque males are significantly larger than females in cerebral length, cerebellar breadth, and cerebellar length, 3) absolute measurements of cerebellum size appear to parallel cognitive advancements in catarrhine evolution more closely than relative or index measures, 4) cerebellum shape appears to differ between grades of primates, 5) Macaca cerebellum shape and basicania as determined by landmarks and geometric morphometric  techniques are lateralized and sexually dimorphic; 6) principal components analyses of cerebellum landmarks alone and in conjunction with other basicranial landmarks revel an antero-posterior foreshortening and a medio-lateral expansion in cerebellum and basicranial shape from monkeys to hominoids; 7) hominins and apes differ mainly in the position of the landmark representing the location of the foramen magnum.

Author: Susan Jane Wurtzburg

Title: Sayil: investigations of urbanism and economic organization at an ancient maya city

Year: 1991

Abstract: This dissertation is dedicated to description, analysis, and explanation of urbanism and economic organization at Sayil, a Terminal Classic (A.D. 800- 1000) Maya center in Yucatan, Mexico. Various models of urbanism are evaluated and criticized, and it is determined that anthropologist Richard Fox's (1977) urban typology provides the most useful model. Based on this model, test implications are established and applied to the Sayil data, which consists of architectural remains, and ceramic and lithic artifacts. In addition, test implications are also formulated for the presence of a marketplace. To accomplish this, treatments of marketplaces in the anthropological literature in general and in the Maya area specifically are surveyed. The developed test implications are applied to an in-depth analysis of an area at Sayil which has been identified as a possible marketplace. Sayil proves to fit Fox's administrative urban type and it is highly probably that it possessed a marketplace. These results provide the basis for the interpretation of urbanism and economic organization advanced in this dissertation. These findings - the basic data, the models, and the analysis - are relevant to research in the Puuc region, in Maya cities, and in urban archaeology.

Author: Lyla Yastion

Title: Networks of contemplative action in American culture: A study of mystic practice and emergent community in a contemporary Christian-Catholic contemplative movement (New York, Thomas Keating)

Year: 1998

Abstract: The field study upon which this dissertation is based examines seven centering prayer groups in Manhattan, New York City in order to understand and document the interplay between individual spiritual practice and the supportive environment of group process. These groups belong to a wider national and international network of contemplative prayer support groups called Contemplative Outreach. This loosely-structured network of small groups, which typifies a grassroots type of organization which emerged out of the plethora of 1960's social movements for liberation and cultural transformation, was founded by Trappist monk Father Thomas Keating in 1984 in response to the exodus of Catholics who were looking for a meditative practice similar to the popular Eastern methods. Inspired by the reforms of Vatican II, particularly the injunctions to retrieve the Christian contemplative path followed by mystics and saints from the inception of Christianity and to empower the laity in a more democratic ecclesial atmosphere, Keating and two other monks at St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, MA rediscovered and reworked the practice of resting in God's silence without dependence on words or images (the apophatic tradition), calling it centering prayer. This study reviews the spiritual heritage of Contemplative Outreach, examines the network's relationship to the hierarchical Roman Catholic church structure which it modifies through a more democratic, lay-oriented, ecumenical design, demonstrates how Contemplative Outreach reflects traits of American culture in which it is embedded, and analyses the evolutionary elements in group process which point towards the building of `family' and community. It is proposed that the predominance of women in Contemplative Outreach, particularly at the small group level, indicates the agility of women in roles which require communicative and relational skills as well as their inclination to mystical practice because of a cognitive framework which emphasizes intuition, empathy, and practicality. Moreover, it is suggested that Contemplative Outreach is representative of a new cultural paradigm which encourages a healing awareness of the interconnectedness of all life, perceived at the mystic level of higher consciousness and through group process.