Anthropology Theses and Dissertations

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Pela Vida das Mulheres: Violence Against Women and the Struggle for Justice and Care in Urban Brazil
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Masucci, Emily; Stephen, Lynn
In 2006, Brazil passed what is considered one of the most progressive policies on violence against women (VAW) in the world: the Maria da Penha Law. Among its provisions, the Maria da Penha Law called for the creation of an network of gender-specialized services—exclusively for women in situations of violence. Integrating women’s police stations, domestic violence courts, women’s centers, and emergency shelters, this unique policy framework has since garnered international recognition. Yet, by most measures, rates of VAW and impunity in Brazil continue to register among the highest in the world, especially among low-income women of color. Recurring VAW has generated skepticism among women, social movements, and scholars alike, who perceive fundamental limitations in a) the degree to which gender-specialized services serve women of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds, b) the fragmented and uneven implementation of the law in practice, and c) the law’s capacity to withstand shifts in Brazil’s volatile political landscape. This multi-sited research investigates the relationship between gender-specialized services, women’s movements, and outcomes of justice and care for women in situations of violence in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Specifically, it investigates why has it been so hard to effectively implement the reforms outlined in the Maria da Penha Law in Rio de Janeiro. How do “gaps”—between the law on paper and in practice—come to be and how do they impact the state’s ability to effectively render gender-specialized services for women in situations of violence? And how do people respond when they perceive that the state is unable or neglects to concede the rights and services mandated by the law? To do so, it couples a) an investigation of the institutional and political constraints that shape gender-specialized services through interviews with service professionals and differently situated state actors within the network; with b) long-term participant observation and interviews with women activists who are addressing recurring VAW having found they cannot rely on the state for protections or access to rights. Together these perspectives reveal important patterns in the everyday process of providing and accessing gender-specialized care. Ultimately, it is important to understand the contexts and conditions that constrain such efforts so we can develop reforms that are not only progressive on paper, but effective and sustainable in practice.
Open Access
The Paisley Caves: A Paleoethnobotanical Approach to Textiles Studies in the Northern Great Basin, Oregon
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Kallenbach, Elizabeth; Fitzpatrick, Scott
Paleoethnobotanical remains from the Paisley Caves offer an opportunity to explore how people engaged with plant communities over time. Fiber identification of textiles, together with radiocarbon dating, contributes new information about landscape use in the Northern Great Basin. Expanded marshlands during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene created suitable plant communities ideal for fiber technology, specifically wetland monocots and herbaceous dicots including dogbane and stinging nettle by 11,000 years ago. A change in fine cord technology during the early Holocene supports previous arguments of cultural change around 9000 years ago, but overall, continuity in fiber technology is key to subsistence activities and craft production throughout the Holocene. Despite climatic events during the middle Holocene, in which people transitioned from caves to sites centered around lakeshores and wetlands, the suite of fiber plants and their technological application remains constant. During the late Holocene, bast fiber material diversified with the addition of flax and milkweed. The presence of flax in particular, a high elevation plant, may reflect the increased use of upland root collection areas as populations increased. Cotton cordage and plaiting dating within the last 1000 years, and a more diverse textile assemblage overall, suggests expanded social contacts with groups farther south and east.This study also tests the feasibility of previously established fiber identification methods, including polarized light microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and their suitability for analysis of archaeological cordage from the Paisley Caves in Eastern Oregon. The methods were applied to herbarium reference samples for four key plants: Apocynum (dogbane), Urtica dioica (stinging nettle), Asclepias (milkweed), and Linum lewisii (blue flax). These plants are known historically and archaeologically as the primary sources of fibers used in fine cord-making throughout the Northern Great Basin. Results from the control study were then applied to samples from 180 fine cordage artifacts from the Paisley Caves. This study provides long-term data on culturally significant native plants used in the manufacture of fiber-based textiles over the last 14,000 years. The dissertation includes previously published material, and co-authored material.
Open Access
Microbes, Mothers, and Others: Allocare and Socially-Mediated Gut Microbiome Transmission Across the Colobus vellerosus Lifespan
(University of Oregon, 2024-03-25) Christie, Diana; Ting, Nelson
In this dissertation, I investigate relationships between gut microbiome variation and social interactions in a natural population of black and white colobus monkey (Colobus vellerosus) at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, Ghana. This species displays high levels of allocare, which varies across infants and increases infant contact with non-maternal adults, thus presenting an excellent opportunity to examine the role of early life social contact on the developing gut microbiome. Allocare following infant birth also changes adult social dynamics, providing a natural experiment for investigating the effects of longitudinal social change on gut microbiome variation. Thus, in studying social behavior and gut microbial variation in this species, I address gaps in knowledge related to the impact of social interactions on microbiome assembly early in life as well as how changes in social environment affect microbiome plasticity.In Chapter I, I introduce the importance of the gut microbiome, factors shaping its variation, and Colobus vellerosus as a model to better understand this topic. In Chapter II, I characterize the developing colobus gut microbiome and examine how adult social partners shape it. I found that shared social group was predictive of infant-adult microbial similarity and allocare behaviors by adults likely transmitted microbes to infants. However, I was unable to pinpoint dyadic transmission of microbes between infants and adult social partners. In Chapter III, I explore the relationship between social shifts and gut microbiome plasticity. I found that grooming increased among adult females after infant birth, which coincided with an increase in adult female gut microbial similarity. While I was unable to tie this increased microbial similarity to social relationships on very short (3-month) time scales, shorter time periods than typically used (6-month) did predict microbial similarity. In Chapter IV, I provide implications for this work, including the importance of adult social partners seeding the developing colobus gut microbiome, the underappreciated role of microbial transmission to the evolution of allocare, and how relatively short-lived changes in social relationships may cause microbial shifts in adulthood. This dissertation expands our understanding of the social factors shaping the gut microbiome, particularly in cooperatively breeding species. This dissertation includes previously unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
Some Social Implications of Trade Unionism in Ghana and Nigeria
(University of Oregon, 1962-06) Ramsperger, Richard
Although much has been written on patterns of labor In West Africa, there are no studies which are devoted primarily to the social aspects of labor unions. The purpose of this thesis is to try to determine to what extent the trade union movement has been affected, modified, or influenced by traditional economic, social, and political systems in Ghana and Nigeria. It will be necessary to consider first the major factors which have had a direct bearing upon the traditional and modern economic systems before the place of the trade union in . the scheme can be assessed, therefore, the thesis will include some descriptive data on traditional economic attitudes in Ghana and Nigeria and a comparison of these with the economic attitudes required for industrialization. Then the changes in attitudes and patterns of labor, which have accrued over time due to the impact of industrialization, will be treated. It will also be necessary to contrast the organization and function of traditional and modern economic associations In order to determine what influence these have had upon each other.
Open Access
Drums and Guns: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Nature of War
(Univeristy of Oregon, 1974-12) Nammour, Valerie Wheeler
Open Access
Geographic and Spatial Evaluation of Group and Territorial Decisions on Rapa, Austral Islands
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Lane, Brian; Fitzpatrick, Scott
A myriad of local adaptations has been associated with the great human dispersal across the Pacific Ocean, occasionally expressing cultural change in dramatic ways. On the small and remote island of Rapa (Rapa Iti) in the South Pacific, a tradition of monumental ridgetop fortified settlements was established between AD 1300-1400, only a century after colonization. In the 300 years that followed, fortified settlements became entrenched as a visible extension of endemic intergroup competition on the island. However, the underlying reasons for the construction and specific role these constructions played in the associated territorial conflict is still not well understood. The striking nature of the forts has dominated the island’s archaeology for over a century, and although often used as an example of the endpoint of intense intergroup competition in Polynesia, Rapa’s history and explanations concerning the emergence of territorial strategies have only been partially explored. This dissertation explicitly applies a human behavioral ecology framework to provide hypotheses and explanations regarding the endemic competition through analysis of the island’s resource base and placement of fortified settlements. This is accomplished through a series of geospatial analyses and spatial statistical models that explore agricultural productivity and cost reductive strategies related to territorial defense. The results of this body of work point to the changing nature of competition in the past and the dynamic roles that the fortified settlements played within society. The human behavioral ecology models of the ideal free distribution and economic defendability provide the theoretical framework for a more nuanced explanation of past intergroup competition and its most visible features, the pare.
Open Access
Signatures of Aging and Environment in the DNA Methylome of Rhesus Macaques
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Goldman, Elisabeth; Sterner, Kirstin
While the link between aging and metabolic function is well recognized, little is known about how variables like diet are able to drive variation in health and longevity through interaction with molecular mechanisms of aging. Because aging does not occur uniformly throughout the body, tissue-specific analyses are necessary to elucidate patterns of age-related decline in organs with distinct physiological roles. Multi-tissue clocks have gained popularity in human clinical and biomedical research, but these models provide just one estimate of systemic health and cannot indicate where early, sub-clinical signs of disease may be starting to subtly manifest. Here, I took a targeted, tissue-specific approach and constructed two generalizable epigenetic clock models using genome-wide methylation data generated from blood (n=563) and liver (n=96) samples from rhesus macaques. I tested the blood-based model in an independent group of female rhesus macaques (n=43) as well as a group of wild yellow baboons (n=271) and found it predicted age with high accuracy in both populations. Next, I applied the liver clock to test whether long-term dietary restriction, a known pro-longevity intervention, delayed the pace of epigenetic aging in 63 rhesus macaques from a 33-year study conducted at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Monkeys entered the study at one of three developmental time points. I found that males who entered the diet study at older ages (>15 years) reaped the greatest longevity benefit but did not show slower rates of epigenetic aging. Both males and females who started the restricted diet as juveniles showed slower rates of epigenetic aging but saw no improvement in life expectancy, suggesting the clock may track trade-offs in energy allocation and could, in later life, become decoupled from an individual's risk of mortality. Finally, I found that all individuals in the dietary restriction study showed significantly less age-related loss of methylation compared to age-matched controls from the original liver dataset, suggesting diet-modification effectively delays age-related deterioration in the methylome. This dissertation includes previously unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
Saving Food in Bulgaria: Practicing Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Foltz, Lindsey; Silverman, Carol
Home-based food preservation in Bulgaria is widespread and these foods link material, biological and cultural survival, formal and informal economies, social networks, cultivated and wild-harvested foods. As such, they demonstrate how ordinary people engaging in mundane social practices, like saving food for the winter, are creating resilience and meaning in their lives in the context of broader economic and political forces, which lay largely beyond their control. These practices are intimately connected with the socialist past in Bulgaria and have continued to be adaptive in the post-socialist context. Their continual re-enactment and reproduction challenge unilinear conceptualizations of development in a globally integrated market economy. This dissertation was based on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in Bulgaria and remotely between June 2018-October 2021. Cellars in Bulgaria revealed a constellation of practices that entangle binaries often conceptualized as oppositional, for example: formal and informal economies, traditions and innovations, cultivated and wild plants and animals, local and global influences and ingredients, industrial and agroecological production. These common Bulgarian food preservation practices evidenced a politics emerging from the everyday in both implicit and explicit forms and are a useful complement to scholarship related to Alternative Food Networks and food sovereignty. The prevalence of these practices creates a large, diffuse community of people practicing “quiet” food sovereignty through the consistent re-enactment of their everyday foodways, such as saving food for winter. Preserve makers in Bulgaria demonstrate the power of practicing food sovereignty in everyday life.
Open Access
Covid, Climate Change, and Carework: Mesoamerican Diasporic Indigenous and Latino Communities in the Willamette Valley
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Herrera, Timothy; Stephen, Lynn
Community-based agriculture is not only concerned with the cultivation of food, but also with the cultivation of connection, care, and exchange. This dissertation is based on fieldwork with a non-profit organization that operates seven community garden sites in Lane County, Oregon. Most of my research activity occurred at the largest garden site which happens to also be the oldest garden site, with some families having the same garden plot for two decades. I also travelled to all seven sites to either volunteer or attend workshops. In addition, I draw on my participation as an analyst and interviewer in the COVID-19 Farmworker Study (COFS) of Oregon, a collaborative research project involving twelve community-based organizations that serve farmworkers in Oregon. My research examines the experiences of multigenerational immigrant families in Oregon engaged in preserving traditional foodways and collective care through community gardening. The primary goals are to investigate the historical relationships between foodways and emotional carework within Latino and Mesoamerican Indigenous communities in diaspora. It examines how foodways shape community well-being despite the many challenges and traumas of migration. Participation in community gardening can serve as a social, emotional, and health resource for immigrant Latino families, functioning as a nexus of care and source of hope. This research is urgent since disproportionate food insecurities have only been exaggerated by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Using ethnographic methods such as participant observation, formal interviewing, and informal conversational interviewing, I document some of the integrated physical, emotional, mental health, and social impacts of the pandemic. These impacts include getting infected with COVID-19, losing loved ones, living in uncertainty, and experiencing significant loss of income that affected people’s ability to pay rent, utilities, food, and other expenses, producing what I call stress proliferation. Being exposed to the virus or having the virus forced people into two-week quarantines or even longer periods of recovery when many could not work, and if sick were physically debilitated. The precarity of Latino workers’ economic situations and the stress that comes from that precarity was inflated during the pandemic and left many struggling to catch up even after recovery and quarantine. Because the research has taken place both before and during the pandemic, I demonstrate how the caregiving practices forged through community gardening may continue to benefit families and communities after the pandemic through ideas such as curar y pertencer, caring and belonging, identified by my study participants. I also demonstrate how care practices might have shifted from pre-pandemic times to pandemic times.
Open Access
The Avian and Mammalian Remains from Nightfire Island
(The University of Oregon, 1973-03) Grayson, Donald Kenneth
Excavated in 1967, the Nightfire Island site yielded large amounts of artifactual, floral, and faunal data. This report presents the analysis of the bird and mammal segments of this large collection. While a fragmentary part of the archaeological record provided by Nightfire Island, these remains suggest a number of hypotheses, some of wide import, which may be tested by other categories of data from the site.
Open Access
Land and Labor at Salt River: Household Organization in a Changing Economy
(University of Oregon, 1967-06) Munsell, Marvin Robert
Economic change is one of the more visible effects of culture contact. This high visibility may well feature in its apparent primacy. Although culture change may result solely from the interplay of internal forces, few if any cultures have ever been free of external influence. Contact between groups, or their more adventurous representatives, must be reckoned with in analysis of change. It has, of course, been the focus of much anthropological research. But whereas Anglo-Europeans have been the dominant party in most culture contacts of recent centuries, they have not always had this role.
Open Access
Redefining Caste: A Study of Dalit Women’s Sanitation Labor and Generational Aspirations.
(University of Oregon, 2022-02-18) Chandvankar, Rucha; Karim, Lamia
This dissertation analyzes the persistence of caste-based sanitation labor and the ways in which Dalit women are redefining the associations between caste and sanitation labor. This project is based on ethnographic research I conducted among Dalit women who are part of the informal waste management sector in Mumbai, India. I use the Gramscian concept of hegemony to highlight that dominant caste groups used caste ideology to construct caste-based occupational divisions and subordinated other caste groups by assigning them degrading forms of labor. Caste hegemony has served to limit options available to subordinated castes, to the extent that economically impoverished Dalit women, like those who are part of this study, continue to perform sanitation labor. Specifically, my research documents how state and corporate regulation of waste management has threatened Dalit women’s livelihoods, while simultaneously creating a limited set of opportunities for them to seek formal employment in the management of waste. I investigate Dalit women’s association with the NGO Parisar Vikas, to argue that through their many activities, Parisar Vikas has cultivated a Gramscian good sense and fostered the capacity to aspire; enabling Dalit women to challenge the common sense of caste hegemony. Finally, I construct Dalit women’s claims for legitimacy in access to waste, demands for inclusion in the waste management system, and resolve to educate their daughters, as a redefinition of caste, through which Dalit women aspire to break the link between caste and hereditary sanitation labor.
Open Access
Examining Foraging models Using Dietary Diversity and Gut Microbiota in Bonobos (Pan paniscus)
(University of Oregon, 2021-11-23) Hickmott, Alexana; White, Frances
Optimal diet and functional response models are used to understand the evolution of primate foraging strategies. The predictions of these models can be tested by examining the changes in dietary diversity. Primate gut microbiome communities are of increasing interest due to their important role in nutrition, development, health, and disease. Recent evidence from gorillas suggests fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentration (FGMC) has no significant role in structuring gorilla gut microbiomes. We investigated dietary diversity and the gut microbiota in bonobos (Pan paniscus) at two research camps within the same protected area (N’dele and Iyema) in Lomako Forest, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We compared dietary diversity results from behavioral observation (1984/1985, 1991, 1995, 2014, & 2017) and fecal washing analysis (2007 & 2009) between seasons and study period using three diversity indices (Shannon’s, Simpson’s, and SW evenness). W¬¬e describe gut microbiome, δ13C, δ15N data, and FGMC for eighteen bonobo fecal samples from separate individuals, collected in June 2014 at Iyema, Lomako Forest, DRC. The average yearly dietary diversity indices at N'dele were Shannon H’ = 2.04, Simpson’s D = 0.18, and SW evenness = 0.88 while at Iyema, the indices were Shannon H’ = 2.02, Simpson’s D = 0.18, and SW evenness = 0.88. Shannon's index was lower during when fewer bonobo dietary items were available for consumption. The results of the gut microbiome analyses found that δ13C were significant [PERMANOVA F1,17 =0.17261, p = 0.023] in explaining beta diversity in gut microbiota but only when sex was a predictor in the model. Females had slightly higher δ13C values than males perhaps due to lower consumption of C4 plants by females. We found FGMC did not significantly explain the variation in bonobo gut microbiota beta diversity. We ran linear regressions on the abundance of the microbial genera and found eighty genera were significantly explained by FGMC. Overall, this research suggests that optimal diet models best explained bonobo foraging strategies and patterns in bonobo gut microbiota, diet, and stress may need to center around the differential consumption of C4 plants like Ficus spp. and terrestrial herbaceous vegetation (THV) by males and females.
Open Access
Improving chronologies in Island Environments: A Global Perspective
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Napolitano, Matthew; Fitzpatrick, Scott
Chronology building is a fundamental part of archaeology. Questions related to the timing and duration of events are inextricably connected to larger questions about human activity in the past. Given its wide applicability and temporal range that covers the last ca. 50 kya, radiocarbon dating is the most frequently used chronometric technique in archaeology. Preserved carbon-based organic materials such as charcoal, shell, and bone are often key sources of information for determining the onset and duration of cultural events that occurred in the past. Limitations of radiocarbon dating have long been identified, yet with advances, including accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and applications of Bayesian modeling (see below), archaeologists and other scientists have continued to improve the accuracy and precision of chronologies. For archaeologists working in island regions, these techniques have allowed archaeologists to engage with a number of complex issues including island colonization events (i.e., initial human settlement), paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and long-distance exchange and interaction between groups of people living on different islands.To examine chronological issues as they specifically relate to islands, I present four case studies as part of this dissertation in which various techniques are applied to archaeological datasets to improve the accuracy and precision of understanding human activity in the past. By applying a suite of methods, including chronometric hygiene, Bayesian modeling, glass chemical composition analysis, and marine reservoir corrections to case studies from four island regions around the world, I improve upon some of the limitations imposed by radiocarbon dating to create a more nuances understanding the past. These approaches allow me to address both large-scale questions such as the timing of human settlement across the circum-Caribbean, site-specific questions such as when stone money quarrying activity took place in a rockshelter site in Palau, western Micronesia, and how settlement patterns in southern Yap, western Micronesia was influenced by sea-level change around 2000 years. This dissertation includes unpublished and previously published co-authored material.
Open Access
Marine Mammals Before Extirpation: Using Archaeology To Understand Native American Use Of Sea Otters And Whales in Oregon Prior to European Contact
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Wellman, Hannah; Moss, Madonna
Tribal ancestors living on the Oregon coast prior to European contact were skilled fisher-hunter-gatherers residing in a rich environment, home to diverse marine mammals. Euro-Americans over-exploited these marine mammals and drove some species to near extinction. Some marine mammal populations rebounded while others, such as the locally extinct Oregon sea otter, never recovered. Threats from hunting are past, but marine mammals on the Northwest Coast today face new challenges, and sea otters and cetaceans are foci of conservation efforts. Despite the interest these taxa enjoy in the present, little systematic study of their use by and relationship with precontact peoples in Oregon has occurred, and this dissertation addresses these gaps in knowledge.To address ancestral tribal use of sea otters and cetaceans I researched previously excavated faunal assemblages. The Par-Tee (35CLT20) and Palmrose (35CLT47) sites located in Seaside, on the northern Oregon coast, were home to the Clatsop and Tillamook at contact. Par-Tee and Palmrose were occupied at different times in the Late Holocene (~1850-1150 cal BP and ~2750-1500 cal BP, respectively). The two sites were excavated in the 1960s-1970s and contained an enormous quantity of well-preserved faunal remains. The Tahkenitch Landing (35DO130) site is located on the central Oregon coast, north of Reedsport, and was home to the Lower Umpqua Indians at contact. Tahkenitch Landing was occupied from the early to mid-Holocene (approximately 5000-3000 BP) and contained a large quantity of whale bones which were previously analyzed, but not identified to species level. I conducted zooarchaeological analysis of the sea otters from Par-Tee and Palmrose (NISP=2992) and cetaceans from Palmrose (N=1174) and Tahkenitch Landing (N=33). With my co-authors, I analyzed ancient DNA from 20 Seaside sea otter specimens and performed Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) and ancient DNA identifications of 158 cetacean specimens. These analyses provided new insight regarding precontact ancestral tribal use of sea otters and cetaceans and the historical ecologies of the animals. This dissertation provides a socio-ecological dataset with implications for potential reintroductions of sea otters and the conservation of cetaceans in Oregon today. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
A genomic investigation of bonobo (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) divergence
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Brand, Colin; White, Frances
Our closest living relatives are two species in the genus Pan: bonobos and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are further divided into four subspecies. While there are a number of phenotypic similarities between bonobos and chimpanzees, there are also a number of differences, particularly in social behavior. Additionally, some phenotypes are highly variable among chimpanzees and within each of the five lineages. The absence of an extensive bonobo and chimpanzee fossil record means that genomic data provide the best window into their evolutionary past. This dissertation uses reassembled and remapped autosomal genomic data from all five Pan lineages to answer questions about adaptation and demography in the time following lineage divergence, ~ 1.88 Ma. We find evidence for positive selection in deep time within genes related to the brain, immune system, musculature, reproduction, and skeletal system. Most of these patterns are lineage specific and only one candidate gene was shared across all chimpanzee subspecies and another two were shared across all five taxa. We also observe that recent positive selection is largely the result of variable environmental conditions acting on standing genetic variation rather than de novo mutation in the four Pan lineages we could analyze. Finally, we consider previous models for the demographic history of these taxa. The best fit model includes a single introgression event from bonobos and central chimpanzees. We also find that the common ancestor of chimpanzees is older than previously estimated. Our results collectively broaden our understanding of the complex evolutionary history of the Pan genus. The identification of positively selected genes both recently and earlier during lineage divergence as well as understanding the processes that drove recent positive selection in these taxa contributes to better estimating the timing of lineage-specific adaptations, reconstructing the behavior and genetics of the Pan common ancestor, and recognizing potential selective pressures for these adaptations during key time periods in chimpanzee evolution. Estimates of demographic parameters can also offer further insight into adaptation and other evolutionary processes in these species and more broadly. This dissertation includes previously unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
Canoes, Kava, Kastom, and the Politics of Culture on Aneityum
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Wood, Latham; Scher, Philip
This dissertation explores questions concerning contemporary socio-political formations on Aneityum—the southernmost island of the Republic of Vanuatu—as Aneityum firmly establishes itself on the tourism world stage. “Mystery Island”—the islet just south of Aneityum, receives over one-hundred cruise-ship calls a year, and tourism is the primary way the Anejom population—of approximately 1,400 people— participate in the global market economy. In Anejom—the vernacular of Aneityum island, “cruise ship” is signified as nelcau—“canoe”, but the word “nelcau” signifies more than just the marine vessel, it is also a metaphor for socio-political groups on the island, and the geographical places those groups currently reside or once resided. These geographical and social “canoes” have become the focus of Aneityum’s “traditionalist”—kastom movement. The Anejom signifier “nelcau” is pivotal to both national as well as global economic and political processes on Aneityum, while also being central to local understandings of kinship. Analogous to the way “kava”—the ancestral drink of Vanuatu —is being commoditized for both national and global sensibilities alike, the commoditization of “culture” innovates the way people think about themselves in relation to things and the world. In sum, this work interweaves understandings of global processes with indigenous perspectives, life-worlds, and kinship—to contribute to critical understandings of post- colonial socio-political movements, and the politics of “culture” in a global political economy.
Open Access
Gender, Identity, and Belonging: A Community-based Social Archaeology of the Nunalleq Site in Quinhagak, Alaska
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Sloan, Anna; Moss, Madonna
This dissertation presents a social approach to archaeology at the Nunalleq site, located just outside the contemporary Yup’ik community of Quinhagak, Alaska. Nunalleq is a pre-contact village comprised of two sod house complexes occupied intermittently between about AD 1570 and 1675, concurrent with the Bow-and-Arrow Wars period on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Since 2009, the site has been the subject of the Nunalleq Archaeology Project, a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and Quinhagak’s Qanirtuuq Inc., an Alaska Native Village Corporation. Threatened by climate change, Nunalleq has yielded a stunning array of well-preserved material culture, including masks, human and zoomorphic figurines, wooden tool handles, grass basketry and cordage, lithic artifacts such as knife blades and drill bits, clay lamps, and abundant faunal, botanical, and paleoentymological remains. Residents of nearby Quinhagak feel connected to the site, and consider its inhabitants to be their ancestors. Following Indigenous, decolonizing, and community-based approaches to archaeology; gender archaeologies; and Native feminist theories, this project uses local knowledge about Yup’ik social identities to interpret three material culture categories at Nunalleq: 1. objects related to facial adornment, including labrets and human representations featuring tattoos and nose beads; 2. uluat, or “women’s knives;” and 3. bentwood vessels featuring incised qaraliq markings. Anthropological and archaeological methods are combined in this research. While semi-structured ethnographic interviews from Quinhagak residents guide project themes and interpretations, the results of archaeological stylistic analyses and 19th and 20th century ethnographic materials are also woven in, creating a multidimensional assessment of how site inhabitants expressed gender, identity, and belonging. While gender, age, status, and forms of family, village, and regional identity were all likely important in the social world of the ancestors, overarching concepts of Yup’ik personhood cross these categories and come to the fore as key to identity formation. Conceptions of the social world authored by Quinhagak residents and other Yup’ik culture-bearers helped reveal these dynamics. Methods of listening and a focus on local iterations of identity were important components of the research, and may be useful approaches for future community-based archaeologies of past social worlds.
Open Access
THE CULTURAL POSITION OF THE KALAPUYA IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
(University of Oregon, 1951-06) Collins, Lloyd R.
Open Access
Male Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) sociality: Behavioral strategies and welfare science applications
(University of Oregon, 2021-04-29) Gartland, Kylen; White, Frances
Evolutionarily, individuals should pursue social strategies which confer advantages such as coalitionary support, mating opportunities, or access to limited resources. How an individual forms and maintains social bonds may be influenced by a large number of factors including sex, age, dominance rank, group structure, group demographics, relatedness, or seasonality. Individuals may employ differential social strategies both in terms of the type and quantity of interactions they engage in as well as their chosen social partners. The objective of this dissertation is to examine sociality in adult male Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) and the varying strategies that individuals may employ depending on their relative position within a social group. The first study examines dominance from multiple contextual measures and compares rank against social network centrality. Results from this study indicate that approaches based exclusively in aggressive interactions may not capture nuances of rank relationships and also that rank does not necessarily predict network centrality. The second study compared individual dominance rank and reproductive success based on their aggressive and affiliative behavioral strategies. Results from this study suggest that while increased aggression may enable individuals to attain high rank, males with lower rates of v aggression achieve higher reproductive success. An individual’s aggressive strategy did not predict their affiliative strategy. We also see evidence for the operation of alternative mating strategies within this population. The third study used a biological markets approach to examine the relationship between male demography, social trends (directionality and chosen partner), and social centrality. Results from this study show that older individuals of higher rank are able to maintain fewer high-value social bonds as demonstrated by decreases in directed affiliation and negative correlations between rank and measures of network centrality. Conversely, younger lower-ranking males exhibit higher rates of directed affiliation and more network centrality likely as a means of maintaining multiple lower-value social bonds. This dissertation includes co-authored material currently in review for publication with peer-reviewed journals