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),