The aim of this study was to investigate and report on female initiation among the Basotho of the rural eastern Free State and Lesotho. Triangulating the data gleaned with multiple methods and techniques (participant observation, the use of key informants, in- depth interviews, life histories), a descriptive account of the initiation process was possible. With the empirical evidence, a number of issues could be addressed. Firstly, the lacuna in the existing Southern African ethnographic literature concerning initiation, particularly that of girls is filled. Secondly, applying Van Gennepâs (1909) tripartite scheme for rites of passage, a theoretical framework, unlike abstaining only with a detailed ethnographic description, on the one hand was used particularly in the evaluation and analysis of the data, and on the other offered an opportunity to verify the applicability of said scheme. Thirdly, not only did this study attempt to answer the question of the occurrence of female circumcision among the Basotho, it argues that the existing literature does not clearly distinguish between the two actions âto initiateâ and âto circumciseâ, thereby placing their credibility in question.

Although antiretroviral (ARV) medicines do not provide a cure for HIV and AIDS and are associated with other problems such as side effects and drug resistance, they can increase the length and quality of life, as well as the productivity of patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Antiretroviral regimens have improved survival rates and lowered the incidence of opportunistic infections in people with AIDS. Strict adherence to ART is crucial in order to maintain a low viral load and to prevent the development of drug resistant strains of the virus. However, some patients do not return for follow-up on schedule and the likely outcome for such patients is sub-optimal adherence to prescribed ARV regimens and possible treatment failure. Anthropological studies have shown that patientsâ explanatory models are necessary additions to the treatment criteria used by health providers (Kleinman, 1980 & 1988; Nanda & Warms, 2002). Kleinman et al. (1978) introduced the concept of the explanatory model in applying anthropological insight to clinical practice. They maintain that, in the health care encounter, patients and practitioners may be working with different and competing models. If not properly managed, such divergent and incongruent models may result in ineffective treatment or non-compliance (cf. Jones et al., 1998). If Eisenbergâs (1977) assumption that, âa patient suffers illnesses, and doctors diagnose and treat diseaseâ is correct then Kleinmanâs (1980) pursuit to reconcile the social and medical constructs of ill health is a worthy endeavour. Unfortunately, such a comprehensive approach is for the most part, lacking in the literature. In line with Kleinmanâs view, this study argued that, HIV and AIDS, ARV medication adherence, prevention programmes and treatment readiness training cannot be studied and understood without taking into account the individualâs explanatory models (situated within and constrained by social context), as well as how individuals construct an understanding of and imposes meaning on the world around them. Given the importance of proper adherence management, the aim of this study was to conduct an ethnographic inquiry into the nature and role of individualsâ socio-cultural contexts in treatment adherence/non-adherence regardin antiretroviral treatment. In order to achieve this aim, three integrated ethnographic data collection methods, i.e., participant observation, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were employed to better understand the socio-cultural context and experiential understanding of patients on ARV. The results reinforced several important facts related to HIV and AIDS, ARV medication adherence, prevention programmes and treatment readiness training, and shed additional light on other areas of patient social interaction that might add value to current discourse/practices. The study concluded that patientsâ socio-cultural context provides crucial information that can be used not only to identify causal reasoning, understanding of ill health, treatment readiness training, prevention programmes and adherence to treatment, but to assist in ascertaining the most effective means of intervention within a particular society or community.

The aim of this study is to conduct an investigation from an anthropological perspective, on the impact that post-apartheid South Africa has had on the Afrikanerâs judgement of value, as well as on his identity-formation. Afrikaner values comprise therefore the central theme of three of the main articles, while narratives, myths, religion and identity represent the focus of incidence of the other two articles. Up to and including 1990, an official Afrikaner identity existed, which was largely determined by a grand narrative that was constructed around church membership, an association with political power and party membership, as well as membership of cultural organisations such as the Broederbond. After 1994, the loss of this official identity, has marginalised Afrikaners and plunged them into an existential crisis. In this regard, this study will point out two factors, namely that the Afrikanersâ emotional and intellectual ties with the Afrikaans culture, churches, politics and the Afrikaans language in the post-Apartheid dispensation are in a process of changing, even becoming attenuated; that Afrikaners are increasingly pursuing a new, cosmopolitan identity and way of life. Although commentators differ regarding the question as to what effect the post-apartheid dispensation had, and is still having on Afrikaners, it is undoubtedly true that the political and social transformations that South Africa has undergone since 1994 have indeed been far-reaching in nature and that these transformations largely took the great majority of Afrikaners by surprise. Afrikaners clearly were not prepared for the changes that ensued, with the result that after a period of fifteen years they are being confronted with the dire necessity to reflect on their values, their solidarity, their identity, as well as their role and place in the ânewâ South Africa. Recent anthropological information on the Afrikaner is limited â Afrikaans anthropologists have largely neglected the study of the changes that the culture and identity of Afrikaners have undergone since 1994. As a result, the contributions of Afrikaans-speaking anthropologists to the discourses surrounding current issues that affect the Afrikaner (religion, morality, identity, narratives and myths), and the characteristics of the so-called ânewâ Afrikaner, are relatively limited. In this regard the broad aim of the current study is to conduct a comprehensive ethnographic investigation into the current tendencies in Afrikaner culture and identity. Afrikaner values would thus be used as the point of departure from which the ethnographic material will be explored.

The processes of population movement, culture contact and interaction have been shaping human societies for millennia. Though there is a wide and diverse body of literature on interaction and network theory in the social sciences, it is only recently that the wider economic, political, and cultural implications of interaction have been considered for ancient Andean societies. This dissertation explores the outcomes of interaction between Chancay settlers and local chaupiyunginos in the Huanangue Valley, Peru, during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1470 CE). Drawing specifically from one aspect of the interaction approach--entanglement theory--which explores the complex types of relationships that develop between groups when exotic goods are inserted into local systems of value (Dietler 1998, 2010; Hodder 2013), I seek to show how inter-group exchange and resource sharing drew small scale groups living on the western slopes of the Andes into webs of interdependency. Using a combination of ethnohistoric and archaeological data, I argue that Chancay colonists became entangled with local chaupiyunginos due to the Chancays need for irrigation water and, in turn, the chaupiyunginos desire for marine resources. Furthermore, though many cases of entanglement lead to one group being subjugated by the other, the Chancays economic power and the chaupiyunginos tactical power may have prevented this from happening. Rather, these entanglements seem to have eventually created an expanded interdependent alliance between these groups, one which helped them to later fend off encroaching highland groups, and later, the Inka.

During the early-middle Holocene (7500-4000 BP) on the west coast of South America, the intense exploitation of a changing marine environment led to sedentism and an increase in social complexity (e.g., Moseley 1975, 1988; Yesner 1980; Erlandson and Jones 2002; Arnold 2004). One of the most archaeologically visible societies during this period was Chinchorro in northern Chile and southern Peru. These people were maritime foragers who developed a sophisticated mummification process of human cadavers, in fact, the earliest in the world. Scholars have generally thought that the technological and symbolic sophistication of Chinchorro mortuary patterns is strong evidence to infer a sedentary lifeway and social complexity. However, to date, no hard empirical evidence has ever been established to show that these people were sedentary and complex beyond their mortuary practices. My research primarily focused on the earlier maritime societies that once lived in the circumscribed environments of river deltas in the arid central-north of Chile on the Pacific coast during the early-middle Holocene. It took a paleoecological approach - seasonal growth-ring studies of shellfish - to investigate sedentism and seasonality of resource procurement at two Chinchorro archaeological sites, Camarones 14 and Camarones Sur, on the north coast of the Atacama Desert. I also investigated the seasonality of procurement of shellfish remains at the Huaca Prieta mound (north coast of Peru), which presents a different type of social complexity from ~7,500-4,000 BP. The methodology was centralized in the analysis of the shell growth rings of selected species. I developed a new methodological approach to shell growth ring analysis for the study of seasonality and possibly sedentism. Although this research was more methodological than theoretical in focus, several conceptual and interpretative issues were investigated, that is, whether similar environmental conditions as well as social and technological ones, influence cultural complexity in the way it was developed by the Chinchorro society and by Peruvian peoples at Huaca Prieta.

This study examines the emergence of adolescence in Sacha Loma, a small, indigenous Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The new cohort of teenagers in Sacha Loma is the first generation to be encouraged to remain single and childless while pursuing broadening aspirational horizons that include higher education, white-collar employment, and mass-mediated consumer culture. With a focus on young women and intergenerational dynamics, the dissertation explores adolescent girls new status in terms of the concept of the bodily logics of productionthe complex of principles and aspirations that direct how identities are (re)made through productive activities carried out on and through the body. For elder women, bodily capacities are central to their identities as producers of crops, food, and children. Young women extend this bodily logic in novel directions. They marshal their teenage status and its perks (technology, mobility) in service of unprecedented productive endeavors, like higher education, in which bodies continue to be a prime resource. They embody modernity through practices of consumption (clothing, tele-viewing) and non-consumption (dieting)forms of identity work they view as necessary to achieve their aspirations. The study highlights multiple frameworks for future-making that are emerging in Sacha Loma. In contrast to views of Western influences as homogenizing global forces that rend the kin group, this study finds both change and continuity. As young Ecuadorian citizens eager to stake their claim to the consumer economy, young women deploy Western images and ideas to seguir adelante (get ahead) by pursuing non-agricultural work and projects of self-making. Yet these influences are powerful mechanisms for the production of proper Kichwa persons, as young womens aspirations remain directed toward augmenting the resources of the body social. The dissertation foregrounds production as a Kichwa-centered notion that not only illuminates contemporary indigenous experiences of social change, but also suggests an angle of reflection for interrogating social theory of globalization and local modernities.

This study focuses on intergenerational changes to environmental knowledge, reasoning, valuation, and practice in Sacha Loma, an indigenous Kichwa community on the banks of the Napo River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. While Sacha Loma persists as a community of rural smallholders, it has undergone a continually-evolving relationship to the exigencies of the global economy since its founding. Recent structural evolutions have included land privatization, the advent of state-sponsored formal schooling, the arrival of an eco-tourism NGO, and a rapid uptick in mobility and access to urban centers. The dissertation asserts that such structural change has co-evolved with patterns of environmental knowledge, reasoning, and valuation in a mutually-constitutive manner that reflects changing notions of personal and familial desire. Based on a cultural epidemiological perspective positing cultural forms to be evolving, emergent distributions of understanding within a population, the study uses both ethnographic methods and the formal elicitation of environmental knowledge, reasoning, and valuations to infer intergenerational changes to epistemological frameworks of the local forest. I find that while relational modes of understanding the forest have been in tension with utilitarian understandings based on cash cropping since Sacha Lomas founding, the production of new practice-based logics based on the school calendar has also, for young people, rendered legible understandings of the forest based on various environmentalist ideas (propounded through the NGO and the state-run oil company). The concomitants of this legibility are a decreasing knowledge base related to forest species and their interactions, in turn related to a wholly-new utilitarian valuation of the local forest. The consequence of this literal and conceptual distancing from the forest is a valuation on moralistic but fungible terms that links forest conservation to the possibility of tourist dollars. To expand the relationship of these shifts in environmental understandings to the problem of culture change more generally, I develop the notion of epistemological practice, meant to account for evolving, reciprocal connections between behavior, ideation, and structure within a community of practice.

This thesis focuses on the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) testing that was performed on the University of Montanas (UM) ethnographic collection. This collection is housed in a repository in the UM Anthropological Curation Facility (UMACF). The main concern over the artifacts and the reason behind the decision to perform such testing was to determine if any hazardous pesticides were used as part of past conservation treatments on the collection over the course of its history at the University of Montana. The XRF tests were performed during the winter of 2011-2012 on over 350 artifacts. The results had been previously unanalyzed. The result of the scanning yielded 844 graphs showing the levels of nine different heavy metals and elements. These elements included arsenic, lead, mercury, bromine, barium, selenium, cadmium, chromium, and antimony, all of which can be hazardous to humans who may interact with the artifacts. Further, the presence of some of these elements, such as bromine, may indicate that items were treated with pesticides. A sample of 131 of the artifacts and 258 of the test results showed high concentrations of arsenic, lead, and antimony on a majority of the artifacts. The cause of the readings could be from a variety of means ranging from the manufacturing process of the items, environmental influences, or pesticide dust from a previous application. The pesticide lead arsenate, however, uses all three of the metals, lead, arsenic, and antimony. The presence of these three metals and the high correlation between the concentration of lead and the concentration of arsenic could be indicators that this pesticide was used in the collection. The conclusion of the testing showed that although these elements may be detected on the artifact, the results of XRF testing are inconclusive. XRF can provide researchers with the information that the element is present but lacks any method to explain the reason behind it. Further tests at the UMACF could prove vital in explaining these results. Until these additional tests are complete, caution, such as using nitrile gloves and respirators should be used in the collection when handling the artifacts.

Native Americans are widely known as one of the most economically disadvantaged populations in the United States. Anglo-European imposed socioeconomic structures altering the landscape have interrupted the culturally specific behaviors associated with food security: access to food resources, the control of food production, its distribution, which has influenced how people go about preparing culturally specific foods today. In order to understand food security in this study area, it is essential to show how individuals have maintained access to food resources within the existent ethnohistorical literature. Second, to demonstrate the local perceptions about food through interviews conducted with tribal members who discuss commodities and their distribution, the ways people go about preparing these foods, and how individuals want to maintain access to healthy food in the future.

Repatriation attempts to reconcile opposing values regarding human skeletal remains. Repatriation has sometimes been contentious because it raises the question of which aspect of human remains is more important, cultural or scientific values. Repatriation is also an issue of power. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) provides a procedural framework with which to negotiate power relationships between scholars, tribes, and the U.S. government. Property rights are integral to power, as the holder controls the use of and access to and interpretation of indigenous skeletal remains. Property rights concerning Native American human remains are an integral part of indigenous cultural self-representation. Property rights over human remains are part of the struggle of Native American communities for political and cultural sovereignty. Applying the concept of ownership to human remains is controversial, however, because such rights determines who controls access and interprets human remains and associated cultural materials. NAGPRA is a multifaceted law that strives to address the issue of possession of indigenous human remains and cultural objects. NAGPRA draws upon many aspects of the American legal system, such as property, constitutional, and tribal sovereignty law. The Act has equally complex regulations, some of which have sparked controversy and animosity between repatriation advocates and opponents. This thesis creates a legislative history of NAGPRA by examining the socio-historical processes that lead up its passage. The Act has been described as a property law, a procedural law, and as human rights legislation. The Act is partly all of these, which creates conflict in interpreting and applying its regulations. This thesis addresses the need for an examination of NAGPRA through the various fields of law that make up its legislative history and legal framework. This thesis will also examine the different legal aspects of the Act, such as property law and tribal sovereignty. Repatriation polices and case studies from the United States and abroad will be briefly discussed to examine NAGPRA in an international context.