Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, an intentional community of roughly 70 members in Northeastern Missouri, is working to create societal change through radical sustainable living practices and creation of a culture of eco-friendly and feminist norms. Members agree to abide by a set of ecological covenants and sustainability guidelines, committing to practices such as using only sustainably generated electricity, and no use or storage of personally owned vehicles on community property. Situated within the context of a sustainability study, this thesis explores how Dancing Rabbit is creating a more socially and ecologically just culture and how this lifestyle affects happiness and well-being.

Three communities of Green City, Olean, and Craig Missouri offer silent witness to the settlement patterns, economic development, and rise of popular housing in three different regions of the state. The buildings that remain provide tangible links to the past for citizens in each community. They also show how such disparate forces as evolving building technologies, mail-order catalogs, and the changing economic bases of these communities affected the design of local architecture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the most part, the contribution of these buildings to an understanding of the social history of the state and the visual and aesthetic importance of these buildings to today's landscape have not been fully investigated or appreciated.This thesis seeks to develop an understanding of the full range of influences on local Missouri architecture through a study of three communities, all of which were established as a result of the coming of the railroad during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Green City, Olean, and Craig; Missouri were selected because they are representative of hundreds of small rural communities in Missouri.The time period 1880-1930 was chosen because the largest percentage of construction took place during this time period. As a result of the economic conditions set forth by the Great Depression and the gradual decline of the railroad, few buildings were constructed after 1930. During this fifty-year period each community was transformed from wilderness into an ordered, productive agricultural landscape. The dramatic change can be seen in the buildings constructed - from the temporary, hewn-log buildings of the first settlers, to frame buildings, to more substantial brick buildings reflecting the prosperity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coinciding with the growth and prosperity of the railroad. The thesis will investigate the hypothesis that a majority of the buildings constructed between 1880 and 1930 drew inspiration in design, form, and type from pattern books and mail-order catalogs rather than architects. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 16, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 C37 / Master of Architecture

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / Melinda Daniels / The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has begun side channel restoration projects on the Missouri River as part of the Missouri River Recovery Program. The USACE acquires land on the Missouri River needed to develop fish and wildlife habitat. There is a need to prioritize which land to purchase on the Missouri River. High priority land would be areas that had side channels and can be constructed to restore ecosystems to a more natural state. Much of the river has since been dammed, straightened, and channelized starting heavily in the mid 1890’s, and historical side channels have been eliminated, leaving little information to guide USACE efforts to restore them. My thesis documents the historical distribution of side channels on the Missouri River between St. Louis and Kansas City and explores the relationships between side channel location and a variety of potential driving variables, including channel sinuosity, valley width, valley slope and the presence of large confluences. This is the first know study to document the historical extent of side channels on a major river system, and it is also the first to quantitatively explore driving variables of side channel formation. The historical analysis revealed abundant side channels in the late 1800’s, with a dramatic decline into the early 1920’s as engineering works on the river began in earnest. Results also show that high channel sinuosity and the presence of a large confluences are the two variables most correlated with side channel formation. Based on documented frequencies and locations of historical side channels, recommendations for specific side channel restoration opportunities are also highlighted.

This study examines decision making concerning tool use and rawmaterial choice through the analysis of bone technology from five sites from the MiddleMissouri subarea of the Northern Plains of North America. The research methods employed include high power optical microwear analysis, experimental replication,and the study of modern bone tool use. At the time of contact with Europeans andEuroamericans, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara lived in semi sedentary villages along the Missouri River where they practiced a mixed economy centered on both agriculture and bison hunting. The villagers were central in indigenous trade networks and later in the international fur trade, as European and Euroamericans traders and explorers sought to insert themselves into the existing networks. Occasional trade goods are found as early as the seventeenth century, increasing through time as more Europeans and Euroamericans entered the area, indicating that the villagers supplied the newcomers with food, horses, and furs in exchange for those goods. They also were impacted by European diseases, increasing violence, and by accompanying changes in many aspects of their society.Post contact technological change is often modeled as a relatively simple unilinear process in which metal tools quickly replaced older technologies. Analysis of modified bone and antler from historic sites indicates the processes were more complicated. Some tool types were quickly replaced, while others persisted, and there was also variation within tool types. Rather than immediately rendering bone technology obsolete, as has been suggested, there was an initial period of experimentation as people used the new metal cutting and chopping tools to modify the older bone technology. Some tools were made by simply shaping the bone with metal rather than stone, but in other cases the new metal tools were used to create bone tools in completely new forms. Both social and functional factors influence tool choices in raw material, form, and use. This study provides a deeper understanding of many processes involved in technological change in the contact period.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1928 A41 / Master of Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-129). Also available on the Internet.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on January 21, 2010). Thesis advisor: Dr. Gary Solbrekken. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-293). Also available on the Internet.