Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 16, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3743. Adviser: Donald Warren.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Arizona, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

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Numerous postcranial discrete characters and cranial and postcranial metric traits are compared among skeletal samples derived from four east-central Arizona Western Pueblo sites that were inhabited from the 12th through the 14th centuries A.D.: Grasshopper, Kinishba, Point of Pines, and Turkey Creek. Pearson's Lambda Criterion and discriminant analysis are used to reveal patterns of morphological variation among the four groups from which their biological relationships could be inferred. It is concluded that both discrete and metric skeletal traits should be used for biologically differentiating human skeletal series. After all traits were checked for intraobserver error, preliminary data analyses were conducted to elicit appropriate traits for differentiating the groups. Based on these analyses, it is notable that (1) the discrete traits of the postcranium used in this study are relatively independent of age, sex, robusticity, and each other, (2) craniofacial metric traits are influenced little by either occipital or lambdoidal deformation, (3) several postcranial metric traits significantly differ between younger and older adults, though this is not so for cranial metric traits, and (4) correlations among postcranial metric traits are moderate to strong; among cranial metric traits they are rather weak, and very weak among cranial and postcranial metric traits. For both metric and discrete traits, biological distance results obtained from analyses of axial and appendicular skeletal data are discordant. For the axial skeleton, excluding the mandible, the four Western Pueblo groups are relatively biologically homogeneous. For the appendicular skeleton the opposite is the case. Distance results provided by metric and discrete traits, respectively, of the axial skeleton are much more consistent than are those yielded by metric and discrete traits, respectively, of the appendicular skeleton. It is suggested that the axial skeleton, omitting the mandible, is probably less plastic than is the appendicular skeleton and is the appropriate unit of analysis in studies of biological differentiation of skeletal samples.

A clear understanding of interactions between the arid Southwestern environment and that area's prehistoric inhabitants has been a goal of Southwestern archaeology. This research has reconstructed annual corn and dry bean crop yields for southwestern Colorado from A.D. 650 to 1968, as well as the amounts of those foods available for each of those years. Colorado's five southwestern county dry farming corn and dry bean crop records were combined to create two regional crop series. Modern technology's increasing influence was recognized as being present in the two series. This influence was felt to parallel Colorado's statewide fertilizer consumption and was removed using a multiple regression procedure. Two modern technology free regional crop series resulted. These two series, along with the original two historic crop series were calibrated against five Four Corners tree-ring chronologies from four localities. Both Douglas-fir and pinyon were employed in the calibration. The calibration process used multiple regression so that each series' current annual crop yield could be predicted using one or more of 25 separate dendrochronological predictors. The regression equation deemed most suitable for predicting each of the four crop series was utilized to reconstruct annual crop yield estimates for the A.D. 652-1968 period. Normal verification was impossible since additional independent crop data were lacking. The reconstructed crop yield series were evaluated statistically. Portions of them were compared against historically recorded events. These two types of testing suggested that the retrodictions were probably valid. The crop yield reconstructions provided the basic data for four sets of storage simulations that attempted to determine corn and dry bean availability for each year from A.D. 652 to 1968, given certain assumptions about the levels of storage technology available to the Anasazi of southwestern Colorado. A. E. Douglass' A.D. 1276-1299 "Great Drought" appears to be confirmed. A number of additional famines or food crises have also been recognized. In addition, periods when food was super abundant have been identified. It now appears that much of the Four Corners large public construction projects were undertaken during and perhaps because of these periods of excess surplus.

This study illustrates the importance of finding out whether painted ceramics represent the total repertoire of decorated artifacts that are expected to carry social information. Painted designs on pottery are the focus of study because (1) painted decoration has had great importance in Southwest archaeology for studying social interaction, cultural affiliation, and fine-grained chronology based on stylistic change, and (2) painted decoration is less constrained by technology and intended vessel function than other attributes, and is most free to vary for social or ideological reasons. Two assumptions underlying previous work on ceramic design "messaging" are examined. First, are ceramics the most important medium for carrying social information? Second, is ethnicity the kind of information they are most likely to carry? These questions are addressed in a case study from the American Southwest. Decorated pottery, baskets, textiles, figurines, and rock art from the seventh century Basketmaker III period occupation of rock shelters in the Prayer Rock District, northeastern Arizona are examined. Comparison of design structure and content across these different media reveals two decorative styles, one for the portable household artifacts and one for rock art. In this case, pottery does not carry the full range of potential social information signalled by applied designs. The contexts of these two decorative styles are suggested by considering aspects of artifact function, design visibility, spatial distribution of artifacts, rock art, and architecture, together with hypotheses about gender differentiation and community organization. It is concluded that for the Prayer Rock Basketmakers, pottery decoration may have carried messages that had more to do with gender than ethnicity.