Browsing by Subject "Anthropology"

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Accessioning visions of the people.
(2009-12) Goette, Susan Ann
Visions of the People was a complex and influential exhibit focusing on American Indians peoples. This study examines the role of museums as cultural interpreters, explores the social nature of objects as markers of cultural ideas and values, analyzes the ways in which particular representations achieve their authority, assesses object selection processes with attention to patterns of inclusion as well as exclusion, and investigates the cultural narratives employed by museum workers as they conceptualized and created the exhibit. This work explores the understanding, meaning, and representation of American Indian art, history, and culture that was fashioned by the museum (MIA). The import of this case study rests on the assertion that images are powerful. Museums display objects and images in an attempt to convey particular ideas and interpretations to an audience. This study has the potential to serve as a primer for those interested in museums as historically situated institutions that possess the cultural authority to reproduce and interpret the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves, as well as the stories we tell about others (C.Geertz). Each section of this study addresses a different topic, and brings together the perspectives of those people most concerned with or most impacted by each topic. Contributors to each section include: scholars, museum professionals, artists, and members of the audience. Each of these roles included both American Indian and non-Indian contributors.
Archaeological investigations of Xiongnu-Hun cultural connections.
(2010-08) Hsu, Yiu-Kang
Abstract summary not available
Assimilating Hawai‘i:racial science in a colonial “Laboratory,” 1919-1939
(2012-07) Manganaro, Christine Leah
This dissertation demonstrates how American physical anthropologists and sociologists working in Hawai‘i framed the biological and cultural assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into Americanness as natural rather than ideological, thus naturalizing the islands' incorporation into the United States as a story about integration rather than colonization. Scientists argued that mixing in this "racial laboratory" improved the quality of the majority non-white population, that migration and colonization were features of a natural historical trajectory of Americanization, and that race relations in the islands were the product of a human ecology that went hand in hand with capitalist development. All of these ideas became the racial common sense that traveled to the continental U.S. and perpetuated American amnesia about empire. This project revisits the historiography of the supposed retreat of scientific racism and, by closely examining the methods, actual data, and conclusions of scientists whose work shaped their disciplines, demonstrates how racialist thinking persisted in work that has been characterized as either questioning the race concept, as politically progressive, or both. Taking cues from studies of settler colonialism in Hawai‘i and recent debate about the actuality of a retreat of scientific racism in the United States, this dissertation demonstrates how treating assimilation as a natural process that needed to be better understood, rather than a discursive project of colonial governance, legitimated American power in the islands. During a period when scientists and politicians alike were interested in fitness, degeneracy, and the consequences of immigration and miscegenation as part of debates about national progress, scientists viewed Hawai‘i as a laboratory where they could conduct research on heredity and cultural change that was difficult or impossible to do in the continental United States. American social scientists working in Hawai‘i framed the processes they studied, particularly the assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into American culture and identity, as natural rather than ideological. American scientists with sometimes opposing political orientations such as Louis R. Sullivan and L.C. Dunn concluded that, unlike mixed race people generally and especially "mulattoes," Chinese-Hawaiian "hybrids" were actually improvements on their supposedly pure parents (chapter 1). Physical anthropologist Harry Shapiro, in his study of racial plasticity among migrants in a changed environment, developed few concrete findings, but helped establish Hawai‘i as a long-term human research site. Sociologist Romanzo Adams, who was trained at the University of Chicago, produced the history of Hawai‘i as a history of admixture that exaggerated the degree of interracial reproduction and suggested that the territorial population was well on its way to complete biological amalgamation (chapter 3). Through a series of interviews with couples in interracial marriages and the collection of student papers about identity and racial prejudice, many of which contradicted Adams' findings and predictions, graduate researcher Margaret M. Lam recorded the testimony of residents who both resisted certain types of racialization as they also participated in the construction and maintenance of racial boundaries and meanings (chapter 4). Finally, sociologist Andrew Lind, framed social inequality and tense race relations in the territory as a product of competition for jobs and housing, a "natural" feature of "human ecology," rather than a product of intentional labor control and government decisions (chapter 5). This advanced the idea that social conditions in Hawai‘i were a natural product of modernization rather colonization.
Biological and social factors associated with reduced lactation duration in overweight women.
(2011-06) Hauff, Laura Eileen
There is a well-established association between high pre-pregnant maternal body mass index and reduced lactation duration, yet the cause(s) of this relationship is unclear. The goal of this research was to examine how maternal overweight negatively impacts lactation duration using a holistic approach. Specifically, I explored the following questions: 1) Do psychosocial factors relating to body image impact the relationship between pre-pregnant maternal overweight and reduced lactation duration?; 2) Are breastfeeding problems in the early postpartum period more prevalent among overweight women and if so, do these problems mediate the association with reduced duration?; and 3) Do obese women have difficulty obtaining efficient positioning or experience hormonal abnormalities that result in low milk supply and, ultimately, early cessation of exclusive breastfeeding? Following a prospective, longitudinal design, data were collected from questionnaire responses, hormone analyses, observations of breastfeeding behavior, and measures of milk output. The sample consisted of 239 primiparous women from Minnesota who were well supported and had a strong intention to breastfeed. Results demonstrate that overweight women were less comfortable with and confident in their bodies and they had more concerns about their body shape and weight. Body image concerns during the postpartum period mediated the association between maternal overweight and reduced duration. Similarly, breastfeeding problems in the early postpartum period, especially maternal perception of insufficient milk, also mediated the relationship between maternal overweight and reduced duration. Finally, obese women had lower prolactin levels shortly after birth and they had more difficulty establishing efficient positioning while nursing. Poor positioning was a strong predictor of low milk output, which was associated with early cessation of exclusive breastfeeding. These findings speak to the importance of these factors for breastfeeding success. Fortunately, many of them are modifiable, which provide an opportunity for health professionals to intervene during the critical early postpartum time period when breastfeeding patterns are established.
Branding a global identity: labor anxieties, conspicuous consumption, and middle class culture in Hyderabad, India.
(2012-07) Aaftaab, Naheed Gina
Since India's economic liberalization in the1980s, corporations in the U.S. and Europe have been outsourcing service and computer programming jobs to urban centers in India such as Hyderabad. In this period, numerous Indian national as well as international processes have gone into making Hyderabad a "global city," where information technology (IT) jobs in multinational corporations provide new kinds of cultural capital and prestige that are shaping global Indian middle class identities. In this dissertation, I critically analyze how global neoliberal discourses encounter established, local practices, changing the previous calculus of social relations as well as refashioning particular meanings of the "global." IT professionals have to adapt quickly to take advantage of opportunities in the new economy, while also conforming to social benchmarks of job security set by previous generations. IT professionals have found ways to "brand" themselves and their careers to find a more solid foothold in a transient, transnational job sector. The process of branding involves specific kinds of soft skill training, resume building, networking, and practices outside of the professional space to be recognized as a "quality IT professional." New urban spaces of consumption such as malls, theme parks, and consumer showrooms have become iconic sites of global consumerism that seek to cater to these global, IT professionals. The significance of these landscapes is dependent on everyday, repetitive actions and narratives about consumption that highlight the city's present international role. Consumer practices play a dual role, at once the site of claiming to be globally Indian and the site of accusatory assertions of the loss of Indian traditional culture and the incursion of Western frivolity. Instead of looking at "traditional" and "Western" as opposing influences, I investigate how these concepts are produced through consumer practices and narratives of consumption. Furthermore, processes of professionalization and consumerism are incorporated into a global, modern, Indian middle class and the politics of exclusion that they deploy; a politics that recognizes some as being in synch with global and national growth, and renders large sections of the population invisible or outside of the citizenry of the Indian nation.
The Bronze-Age obsidian industry at Tell Mozan (Ancient Urkesh), Syria: redeveloping electron microprobe analysis for 21st-Century sourcing research and the implications for obsidian use and exchange in Northern Mesopotamia after the neolithic.
(2010-10) Frahm, Ellery Edward
Obsidian tools continued to be utilized in Northern Mesopotamia well beyond the introduction of metal but have received little archaeological attention. It is widely held that obsidian sourcing can offer little new information during a period in which there is a variety of artifacts and texts available to study. Obsidian, though, is unparalleled in its widespread use and ability to be sourced, so it provides unique information about contact, exchange, and migration. Its sourcing can complement other types of information and be used to test existing hypotheses. Before the recent excavations at Tell Mozan (ancient Urkesh) in northeastern Syria, most of the information about its inhabitants, the Hurrians, was inferred from linguistic or textual evidence. Identifying the sources of their obsidian artifacts can be useful for testing some of the highly debated inferences. The research at hand involved three primary goals. I sought, first, to demonstrate a sophisticated approach to obsidian studies in the Near East and, second, to redevelop an analytical technique -- electron microprobe analysis -- for sourcing obsidian. Therefore, I assembled and analyzed a reference collection of over 900 geological obsidian specimens from dozens of sources in Turkey as well as Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. I sourced a large number of artifacts (n = 97) so that I could explore spatial and temporal patterns on a site level. In addition, this analytical technique, if applied critically, can (i) control for obsidian as a mixture, (ii) measure artifacts non-destructively, and (iii) discern two chemically similar obsidian sources: Nemrut Dag and Bingöl A. Thus, based on my results, I not only differentiate these obsidians but also pinpoint the collection loci, down to a kilometer, of the Nemrut Dag obsidians found at Tell Mozan. My third goal involved identifying the sources of obsidian represented among the Bronze-Age artifacts at Tell Mozan. These results were, in turn, used to explore temporal and spatial patterns of the obsidian sources used at the site, consider broader implications for obsidian use in Bronze-Age Mesopotamia, and examine two issues regarding Urkesh and its Hurrian inhabitants. The overall similarities for two site areas suggest that people living in various parts of Urkesh had similar access to the same obsidian sources. On the other hand, all the sourced obsidian from the temple came from one flow at Nemrut Dag and a service courtyard of the palace contains the only Cappadocian obsidian. In fact, the greatest variety of sources is found in units containing palace courtyards. Regarding the broader implications, there is evidence at Tell Mozan of production of prismatic obsidian blades and bladelets (e.g, flakes with cortex, cores, and early-series blades), suggesting they were not imported from a production center. In addition, there is a prevailing assumption that, if Bingöl B obsidian is found at a site, one can presume that all of the peralkaline obsidian artifacts came from Bingöl A, not Nemrut Dag. My results reveal that this assumption, based on maximal efficiency, is specious. The hypothesis of a Hurrian "homeland" as far northeast as Armenia (or beyond) is considered -- but not supported -- in light of my obsidian data. There are no obsidians from northeastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, or Russia that would point to a link to those regions. The atypical variety of obsidian sources at the site suggests that the city may have had a mountainous hinterland to the north. When compared to the existing data for other Khabur Triangle sites, my results support a possible exchange link between Tell Mozan and Tell Brak, perhaps as part of an early Hurrian kingdom. The research at hand involved three primary goals. I sought, first, to demonstrate a sophisticated approach to obsidian studies in the Near East and, second, to redevelop an analytical technique -- electron microprobe analysis -- for sourcing obsidian. Therefore, I assembled and analyzed a reference collection of over 900 geological obsidian specimens from dozens of sources in Turkey as well as Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. I sourced a large number of artifacts (n = 97) so that I could explore spatial and temporal patterns on a site level. In addition, this analytical technique, if applied critically, can (i) control for obsidian as a mixture, (ii) measure artifacts non-destructively, and (iii) discern two chemically similar obsidian sources: Nemrut Dag and Bingöl A. Thus, based on my results, I not only differentiate these obsidians but also pinpoint the collection loci, down to a kilometer, of the Nemrut Dag obsidians found at Tell Mozan. My third goal involved identifying the sources of obsidian represented among the Bronze-Age artifacts at Tell Mozan. These results were, in turn, used to explore temporal and spatial patterns of the obsidian sources used at the site, consider broader implications for obsidian use in Bronze-Age Mesopotamia, and examine two issues regarding Urkesh and its Hurrian inhabitants. The overall similarities for two site areas suggest that people living in various parts of Urkesh had similar access to the same obsidian sources. On the other hand, all the sourced obsidian from the temple came from one flow at Nemrut Dag and a service courtyard of the palace contains the only Cappadocian obsidian. In fact, the greatest variety of sources is found in units containing palace courtyards. Regarding the broader implications, there is evidence at Tell Mozan of production of prismatic obsidian blades and bladelets (e.g, flakes with cortex, cores, and early-series blades), suggesting they were not imported from a production center. In addition, there is a prevailing assumption that, if Bingöl B obsidian is found at a site, one can presume that all of the peralkaline obsidian artifacts came from Bingöl A, not Nemrut Dag. My results reveal that this assumption, based on maximal efficiency, is specious. The hypothesis of a Hurrian "homeland" as far northeast as Armenia (or beyond) is considered -- but not supported -- in light of my obsidian data. There are no obsidians from northeastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, or Russia that would point to a link to those regions. The atypical variety of obsidian sources at the site suggests that the city may have had a mountainous hinterland to the north. When compared to the existing data for other Khabur Triangle sites, my results support a possible exchange link between Tell Mozan and Tell Brak, perhaps as part of an early Hurrian kingdom.
Community and aggregation in the Upper Mississippi River Valley: the Red Wing Locality.
(2009-06) Fleming, Edward Paul
The Red Wing Locality is a cluster of Late Precontact villages located in the Upper Mississippi valley of the Midwestern United States. It has long been interpreted as a monolithic presence within the broad regional context of Late Precontact times. While these studies place Red Wing into a broader context relative to a presumed dominant, Mississippian culture and other cultural entities, they have been at the expense of addressing cultural relationships within the Red Wing region itself. The research presented in this dissertation is a community-based, inside-out approach to understanding how the Red Wing Locality functioned for the populations it served. The core focus is the nature of the relationship of Red Wing Locality villages to one another and to their hinterlands. For decades, scholars have recognized the Red Wing Locality as a locale of intense social interaction, and the processes of social aggregation at central places provide an explanatory model for this phenomenon. A diverse range of materials are examined that highlight similarities and differences among villages in the Red Wing Locality. These data demonstrate that contemporary villages on opposite sides of the river had different hinterland contacts and access to resources. One conclusion of this research is that interactions and mobility patterns into and out of the Locality were structured by the Mississippi River. Finally, the Red Wing Locality is examined in the light of a three-tiered non-hierarchical community conceptual framework that at once separated individual settlements, combines the settlement cluster, and ties individual settlements to a broader region that included supporting hinterland populations that aggregated at Red Wing villages. A major contribution of this research is that it provides a new, holistic perspective of the archaeology of the Red Wing Locality and the Upper Mississippi River valley.
Contradictory economies in post-socialist rural Hungary: the emergence, endurance and persistence of the hoop-house economy in Balastya.
(2009-11) Kaiser-Holt, Sara
This dissertation is based on ethnographic research conducted in the village of Balástya, Hungary between 2001-2003. It is concerned with the nature of post-socialist life as lived, interpreted, and negotiated by rural people after the collapse of state-socialism. It discusses post-socialist life and economy and how rural people express their conceptions of the past, present and future. My central question is simple. What happens to people's identity and how people invent new ways of generating livelihoods when the political, economic and social system of forty-five years of socialism--a frame of reference that people used and lived through--vanishes and an extralocal economic model is crudely mapped on the lived landscape of everyday reality? As this ethnography demonstrates, post-socialist life is filled with anxiety. I claim that the anxiety is driven and fueled by the transformation from socialism to capitalism, and by the visible gap between observed phenomena of the "lived post-socialism" and the political-economic discourses of "capitalism." This study examines this critical and anxious transformation through the prism of a local economic innovation that I coin the "hoop-house economy." It investigates its emergence, endurance and persistence over time and argues that the shifting meanings of the hoop-house economy accurately mirror this transformation from market-socialism to market-capitalism, all the way up to the creation of the EU's market. Conceptually, the model of the hoop-house economy demonstrates the dialectical relationship between economy's two spheres--house and market. I distinguish among three types of the hoop-house economy, which I call 1) minimal, 2) liminal and 3) maximal and argue that the liminal hoop-house economy best represents the tension between economy's two value domains--commensurate and incommensurate--in post-socialist Hungary. This work challenges generalizations and broad assumptions about the transformation from socialism to capitalism. By examining this transformation through the complexities of local practices and ordinary life, my dissertation extends, but also complicates macro-level analyses, illuminating the linkages between changing political and economic institutions and the micro-level of everyday reality.
Crafting objects, selves, links: the embodied production of relational exchange in performances of craft in the United States
(2011-06) Glover, Jessie
"Crafting Objects, Selves, Links" formulates an ethnographic analysis of craft practice in the contemporary United States. Using performance as an analytic frame, the author examines the ways that crafters use the productive gestures of craft to generate opportunities for relational contact, achievement, learning, buying and selling, and other forms of exchange. The manuscript is divided into four sites: craft in recognizable sites of performance, the performance of leisure craft in craft circles, craft sellng spaces formed by crafter entrepreneurs, and sites on the World Wide Web where crafters take action together.
Deep reflection: an archaeological analysis of mirrors in Iron Age Eurasia.
(2012-04) Moyer, Alexandra Caroline
During the Iron Age, mirrors were frequently deposited in wealthy burials across all of Temperate Eurasia. Although mirrors had by that time existed for thousands of years, they experienced an upswing in popularity which coincided with intensified intercultural links resulting from globalization. This dissertation is a cross-cultural analysis of mirror burials in Temperate Eurasia, ca. 700 BC-AD 700, focusing on the questions of what mirrors could communicate, and to whom, and what characteristics were important in establishing mirrors as grave goods preferred among many cultures. This analysis brings together information on disparate areas of mirror use which have previously only been considered in isolation, discussing mirror use in mortuary contexts as one activity which united these various regions in spite of local variations. The mirrors are assessed in terms of their physical and phenomenological properties, along with their position and orientation in burials, utilizing three scales of analysis. These are a descriptive sample (I = 129), a series for which detailed information about mirrors and burials is provided and discussed; a conservative sample (I = 77), a selection of those sites with the best documentation which were used to calculate descriptive statistics; and an extended inhumations sample (n = 101), which includes only the inhumations from the descriptive sample, plus a few additional inhumations for which only minimal information was available. The extended inhumations sample was used to calculate descriptive statistics about mirror placement relative to the body of the deceased. Added context and a series of testable hypotheses were derived from an examination of mirrors in literature, folklore, images, and psychological and behavioral studies. The results provide evidence for a growing focus on self-examination and memorialization of selves within the context of increasing consciousness of globalization. In addition, mirrors provide direct evidence for that globalization, qua networks of exchange and interaction in late prehistoric Eurasia.
Engaging the intranatural at the source of the Douix (Côte-d'Or, France): objects, communication, and ritual in a fluid environment
(2014-11) Erdman, Katherine M.
How are objects used to communicate with the intranatural? The Source of the Douix, a freshwater spring in France, is an ideal site for addressing this question due to the quantities of offerings recovered. Evidence exists for ritual deposits beginning in the Hallstatt period (800-400 B.C.) with nearly continuous use into modern times. This analysis focuses on the diverse objects from the Gallo-Roman Period (50 B.C.-A.D. 450). The results of multiple levels of statistical and spatial analyses between the Douix material and other similar sites are used to address how objects were used for communication with the intranatural during the Gallo-Roman Period. Examining the entire Douix assemblage illustrates how changes through time are expressed materially and how new perceptions or use of the site corresponds to this material evidence. These differences, when examined thoroughly, can provide greater insight into the use of objects as devices for communication with the intranatural. Data accessible through: http://hdl.handle.net/11299/167932.
An Exploration of Materiality in Josef Winkler’s Narrative Structures
(2015-10) Burwick, William
Josef Winkler’s work is defined by iterations of events from his childhood, most of them in the context of Austrian provincialism, Catholicism, and their patriarchal structures of dominance. In each of his narratives, memories are rehearsed and retold with increasing semantic precision, every time more complicated through intermedial references to sound, smell, and cinematic imagery. In his pursuit of the aesthetics of form and genre, Winkler consciously inserts material objects that become crucial elements in his recollections of the past. This dissertation argues that common household items, sacred relics, or brand items constitute familiar categories of objects that are presented, framed, and placed within the text, where they function as an essential part of narrative structure. While they re-affirm apparently ossified systems of belief, they also break them down. Everytime the object or thing re-occurs, it has changed and thereby changes everything around it. While he fetishizes and manipulates things, in particular those associated with the act of writing, he exposes both their power and their powerlessness with irony and satire. As objects in a system of exchange, they stand in as autobiographical as well as cultural signifiers and articulate a distinct discourse about a particularly ambiguous and ambivalent “semiotic order of things.”
Family matters: advance care planning for people experiencing homelessness
(2011-04-13) Grengs, Leah
The number of homeless individuals in Minnesota in 2009 was estimated at 9,452 youth and adults. Homeless people have been shown to die at 3 - 10 times the rate of the general population and at a younger age. Additional reasons that suggest the great need of advance care planning in homeless populations include the assumption that impoverished populations have poor health care and personal relationships. However, in my qualitative analysis of 70 advance directives of individuals experiencing homelessness the most striking result was the importance of family; evident in responses to every question in the advance directive. Combining data from the advance directives and surveys, I discovered that 60% of individuals saw their family regularly, felt that their family cared about them, trusted their family to make decisions concerning them and named a family member as their health proxy. After realizing the important role family played in the end of life preparations of individuals experiencing homelessness, I coded the advance directive responses regarding family, and found six major themes. The most common theme was "evidence of strong family values and relationships." Literature concerning family relationships of single homeless adults is scarce, since emancipation from family is a widely exploited assumption and often considered a main cause of homelessness. However, these data show that adults experiencing homelessness in Minnesota have strong family connections and values and want their family to speak for them in cases of serious illness or death.
From birth to bones: skeletal evidence for health, disease, and injury in the Gombe chimpanzees.
(2010-08) Kirchhoff, Claire Ann
The Gombe skeletal collection is the largest assemblage of wild chimpanzee skeletons with known life histories. As such, it provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore the relationship between behavior and the skeleton. I examined skeletal markers of health and stress, and their relationship to age, sex, and dominance rank. Age was correlated with arthropathy incidence and pathology incidence, but the inclusion of chimpanzee infanticide victims resulted in a more complex relationship between age and trauma incidence. Sex was not correlated with trauma or pathology incidence, but the distribution of traumata differed between males and females. Neither age nor sex correlated with enamel hypoplasia severity. Dominance rank did not correlate with any of the skeletal markers of health or stress, but change in rank was a significant predictor in some cases. These results should be treated with caution because the number of chimpanzees whose ranked changed is very small. It may be possible to better assess the effects of change in rank on rates of skeletal trauma and pathology in the future.
Gesturing towards Shambhala: the mimesis of modernity, the Dharma, and science in McLeod Ganj
(2011-08) Stromback, Dennis
Summary abstract not available
Hominin paleoecology and cervid ecomorphology
(2009-04) Curran, Sabrina Christiene
Homo erectus (senso lato) was a remarkable hominin in that it was the first hominin to have a biogeographic distribution throughout the Old World. While there are many hypotheses regarding why Homo erectus dispersed into Eurasia when no other hominin before had, this dissertation focused on those hypotheses concerning extrinsic environmental influences. There were four main goals of this study: 1) to establish habitat reconstruction methods using ecomorphology for the family Cervidae (deer and relatives), 2) to introduce geometric morphometrics to studies of ecomorphology in paleoanthropology, 3) to expand ecomorphological methods that can be conducted upon incomplete bones, and 4) to apply the methods introduced here to four Eurasian fossil sites. Ecomorphological methods have been established for the Bovidae, but methods for Cervidae, often the most abundant taxon in Eurasian paleoanthropological assemblages, are lacking. Cervid morphology as it relates to adaptations to habitats was analyzed here for four skeletal features using 3D geometric morphometrics (GM). GM was particularly suited to this study because it allowed for quantification of morphology that previously had been evaluated qualitatively. Further, shape variation associated with different habitats and substrates was visualized, allowing for recognition of subtle variations in morphology. Two joints surfaces of extant cervid femora and tibiae, in addition to the entire calcaneus and the plantar morphology of the third phalanx, were analyzed here using canonical variates analysis. Morphology of the calcaneus was found to vary with habitat along a continuum from open to closed vegetational structure. The femoral and tibial joint morphology was more discreet in variation, having closed and non-closed variants. Plantar morphology of the third phalanx was found to reflect substrate type and varied on a continuum from more dry to more wet substrates. The methods introduced here were applied to four Plio-Pleistocene fossil sites. Though only one of the four sites (`Ubeidiya, Israel) contained hominin remains, all four were reconstructed to have been open to intermediate open habitats. These reconstructions are broadly similar to contemporaneous African and Eurasian hominin sites, and thus, habitat type did not preclude hominin occupation of Valea Graunceanului (Romania), and St. Vallier and Senèze (France).
Hungry Spirits: Anishinaabe resistance and revitalization
(2014-02) McLeod, Laura Eleanor
Tribal members of the White Earth Band of Anishinaabe-Ojibway have struggled for generations to maintain their collective rights to Turtle Island, their vast homelands and territories stretching throughout North America, especially through the Upper Great Lakes region where they have lived and traveled for more than 10,000 years as America's first residents and First Nations (Quimby 1960; Wright 1972; Usher et al 1985; Tanner, ed. 1987; Morton and Gawboy 2000). The focus of this dissertation is the struggle of the White Earth Anishinaabe to recover land (LaDuke 2005; Silverstone 1987; Lurie, J. 2003) and protect subsistence rights to hunt and fish in northern Minnesota (Lone Fight 1994). It also represents an ethnography of resistance and revitalization in the face of land loss (Gibson 1978; Lurie, N. 1978) and market debasement (Swenson, ed. 1982; Spry 1983; Shkilnyk 1985) in an increasingly globalized world (Davis, S. 1982, 1991; Davis, W. 1993; Hornborg 1994; Abrahamson 1998; Piot 1999). In 1986 twelve U.S. Congressmen voted in Washington DC to end all land claims held by the White Earth Band (Shipp 1987). However, the Band has never relinquished rights to fish and hunt throughout their territories ceded by treaties of 1837 and later in 1855. Today 93 percent of the reservation's 837,000 acres is controlled by non-Indians: two-thirds held by European American immigrant farmers and individuals who own lake cabins, resorts, or hunting grounds; the U.S. federal government including U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; State of Minnesota; Becker, Mahnomen, and Clearwater counties (tax forfeiture lands); religious organizations and major corporations. The anthropological research problem is this: how does one analyze and compare relationships between community and market economies (Lofving, ed. 2005; Gudeman 2008)? In their struggle to recover their land base and revitalize their community's economy and well-being, tribal members want to show that a standing forest, one that provides food stuffs (animals and plants), material needs, and medicines, for local community members, has more value than a clearcut forest (Woehrle 1996).
Identities in Crisis: Complex, Overlapping Religious Constructions in the Post-Soviet Space of the Altai Republic
(2011-12-14) Heimark, Erik;
Invoking Identity: Santería, AfroCubanism, and Hegemony
(2015) Myers, Emily;
Santería, a syncretic religion, developed under slavery in Cuba in the early 16th century and emerged as a way to preserve AfroCuban identity. Today, Santería is a global phenomena, with santeros of all ages and races hailing from around the world. This thesis argues that as Cuban hegemony changed, Santería practice had to adapt its presentation and its preservation of AfroCuban identity. I identify five historic moments to show the different ways in which Santería evolved under five different hegemonies. The historic moments I discuss are: (1) Europe and West Africa at the inception of Spanish colonization and the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th century; (2) Colonial Cuba and Europe during the slave era from the 16th century through the end of the 19th century; (3) Cuban independence from Spain from the mid to the end of the 19th century; (4) Revolutionary Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s; and (5) Cuba today. Philosophies of Enlightenment and aché, institutions of marginality and authority, and even souvenirs have shaped the development of Santería. I also describe syncretism as an ongoing discourse that permits the temporality and the adaptability Santería requires. Most importantly, I propose that unraveling the history of AfroCuban religious identity models how the United States and Cuba must unravel their political identities to bring greater amity between our peoples. !
The late Archaic-Early Woodland transition in Southeastern Minnesota.
(2009-11) Perkl, Bradley Edward
Between approximately 3,500 and 1,800 years before present, indigenous societies inhabiting southeastern Minnesota experienced a profound cultural transformation. During this time, a combination of environmental changes, technological innovations and socio-cultural shifts stimulated lifeway alterations among people of the Archaic Tradition to those of the Woodland Tradition. This unique natural region developed from a complex sequence of climatic, geomorphic, and vegetational events with a variety of resources that offered a favorable location for human occupation. Mobile and dispersed Late Archaic groups utilized a more or less balanced admixture of upland and lowland resources. Near the end of the Late Archaic period important resources were becoming depleted from packed populations resulting in less mobility, territorial claims and increased conflict. As a result, subsistence began to shift to more localized use of domesticated and wild plants and aquatic resources. Groups began congregating in lowland settings and increased their reliance on stored foods. A change in climate likely exacerbated the subsistence, settlement and sociocultural shifts. A significant climate change occurring between ca. 3,500 and 3,000 BP influenced the vegetation patterns and modified the landscape. The prairie border shifted westwards, replaced with oak savanna and increased mast production and deer habitat. Along the Mississippi Trench and larger tributary streams, dramatic increases in flooding rejuvenated floodplains, increased overall productivity, and created environments conducive for pioneer plant species that were used for food by the Late Archaic and Early Woodland inhabitants. Such flooding may have disturbed lifeway routines in lowland settings by disrupting access to resources and resource production for prolonged periods. In the uplands, snowier conditions may have caused declines in resources (e.g., deer, hides) and hunting access. In response, use of aquatic and plant resources increased during the Early Woodland, where a shift to more lowland resources is evident. Populations congregated in semi-sedentary to sedentary settlements in river valleys. Territorialism, conflict, and the use of stored foods were intensified. Technological changes included the adoption of ceramics allowing for more efficient plant food processing. Egalitarianism gave way to hierarchies and ceremonialism may have increased. Following these adjustments, groups archaeologically identified as Early Woodland emerged.

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