A multitude of factors can affect the decomposition process, increasing or decreasing its rate. Some of the most frequently observed variables are temperature, moisture, insect activity, and sun or shade exposure. Coverings can impact the decomposition process, and are found frequently in forensic cases. In a survey of New Mexico cases, Komar (2003) reported that sixteen individuals were found wrapped in plastic, and twenty were noted as wrapped in a cloth or blanket. In a survey conducted of eighty-seven cases, fifty-four of the bodies were wrapped in some type of covering. Plastic was most common, but a variety was noted, including rugs, sleeping bags, and blankets, (Manhein, 1997). In order to document how coverings affect early decomposition an experiment was designed to mimic a forensic setting. Three human cadavers were used in each of two repetitions of this experiment. Two of the cadavers were covered, one in plastic tarp, the other in a cotton blanket, while the third was left uncovered as a control. The selection of materials was based on case reports of cadavers wrapped in plastic and blankets (Komar, 2003, Derrick, 2007 personal communication). Demographic and environmental variation between individuals was kept to a minimum. Data collected included daily minimum and maximum temperatures and two daily temperature point comparisons. The bodies remained covered for thirty days during this data collection. At the end of that period, the bodies were uncovered and the amount of decomposition was recorded.

For nearly a decade, Eritreans have been fleeing their oppressive government and the human rights violations that occur within Eritrea‘s borders. This flight usually takes them across the nearest border, but there appear to be choices that refugees make along the way that lead to patterning of flight, selection of certain countries of safe haven and emerging hierarchies of third countries of resettlement. For geopolitical reasons, Eritrean refugees are both safe and at risk in Ethiopia. However, it is in Ethiopia that a highly trafficked refugee camp, Shimelba, was created in 2004. Beginning in 2009, the US has been accepting Eritrean refugees from this camp as a group resettlement. As the world economy continues to deteriorate, however, life in the US may be more difficult for refugees than ever before. This thesis will focus on the expectations of refugees before and during the process of group resettlement, and the complicating factors involved in resettlement, including US policies on terrorism, political interference in resettlement cases by Eritrean political groups, and the pressures to ―thematize‖ personal narratives for the purposes of resettlement success. Interviews were conducted with refugees expecting to be resettled to the US on the front end of the group resettlement, as were employees at international organizations who work in the protection and resettlement sector. To gain an understanding of the effects of group resettlement on the diasporic community, I contextualized refugees‘ experience with respect to the transnational ties that bind those in exile to those still inside Eritrea. These ties can be seen as transnational networks that permeate boundaries between citizen and refugee, home and abroad, political and social, and link refugees to the broader Eritrean diaspora in unexpected ways. Through this analysis, I have concluded that because Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are accepted prima facie, they do not have a firm understanding of human rights concepts, and have undergone a change in subjectivity only concerning the experiences of awaiting resettlement as subjects in the two transnational spheres through which they navigate.

Osteoarthritis is one of many diseases that accompany the ascension into old age. It has been documented in animals and humans alike. The current research examines porosity’s relationship to osteoarthritis. European American females and African American and European American males from the contemporary William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection are analyzed. The objective of this study is to determine whether or not a change in the relationship of osteoarthritis severity to porosity severity will occur as the criteria used to identify osteoarthritis changes from osteophytes alone (method I), to eburnation alone (method II), and then both osteophytes and eburnation (method III). The significance of the relationship of osteoarthritis severity to porosity severity is also examined for each method to determine whether or not porosity is related to osteoarthritis. The data reveal that in most instances there is not a change in the relationship of porosity severity to osteoarthritis severity when utilizing method I versus method III to identify osteoarthritis. However, the relationship of osteoarthritis severity to porosity severity changes when utilizing method II (eburnation) as the sole identifying criterion of osteoarthritis. There also appears to be a significant relationship between porosity severity and osteoarthritis severity in the left hips of African American and European American males. Furthermore, in the knee, porosity’s significance to OA, using any of the three methods, tended to be positively correlated with sample size. This suggests that porosity might be related to osteoarthritis and consequently should not be excluded as a criterion for osteoarthritis presence.

As culture changes, so does disease. This change has been seen in a variety of diseases, but none are so hotly debated and researched as the treponematoses, the four diseases related to and including venereal syphilis. There have been decades of debate on every aspect of syphilis: where it came from, who gave it to whom, how it evolved, and what the distribution was at various points in time. Herein, the four types of treponematoses will be examined along with the clinical pathology of each. The skeletal evidence will be examined carefully, taking into account the distribution of lesions for each of the treponematoses in order to discern whether they can be distinguished. The debate over the Columbian/pre-Columbian origin of venereal syphilis will be discussed, along with the equally rampant debate over the unitarian/nonunitarian hypotheses for the evolution of the disease. In order to draw conclusions on the origin of the treponematoses, the area of first contact between Spanish explorers and the New World inhabitants will be examined. Next, the problem of differential diagnoses will be discussed, followed by the examination of DNA techniques being employed to trace the origins and distribution of the treponematoses. From the beginning of its recognition as a disease of humans, debate has surrounded syphilis and its cousins, making it one of the most argued over diseases in human history. Syphilis has long held a place in the forefront of researchers‟ minds in various disciplines: medical anthropology, paleopathology, epidemiology, virology, and DNA research. Because of the mysterious beginnings and often virulent pathology, decades of debate and ideas about the disease have gained more and less popularity in scientific fields. Unfortunately, there is still no clear winner to any of the debates. For all the research that has been done, more questions arise. What is the ultimate origin of the treponematoses? Is it a single disease manifesting itself in different ways based on location and social standards? Is it a quartet of closely related syndromes that evolved their virulence in their respective environments? These and other questions will be examined through many different aspects of research.

The Watts Bar Reservoir study area is an artificially defined region of 13,815 hectares, demarcated by the resevoir boundary of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Following completion of the Watts Bar Dam in 1942, the reservoir impounded 95 river miles of the main Tennessee River, in addition to portions of the Clinch, Emory and Piney rivers, as well as several smaller tributaries. Since the mid-nineteenth century archaelolgical investigations have been conducted in the region. However, the sporadic nature of these research endeavors has created a somewhat fragmented picture of the regions prehistory. Following Smith's (1978b) model of the linear bandinog of environmental zones adjacent to the course of meandering streams. this thesis addresses the site location in the reservoir. Specifically, the main river channels of the Tennessee and Clinch rivers were divided into one kilometer tracts in order to delineate the natural distribution of environmental variables. A comparison of tracts containing archaelolgical sites and those without sites was made using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test. Although the use of random sampling methods to obtain negative information has been strongly advocated (i.e., Binford 1964;Thomas 1973; Kvamme 1985; Kellog 1987), I chose to use all the tracts to offset the biases in the archaeological record due to the sporadic nature of the region's research. A separate and additional test was conducted for the delineation of patterns of natural shelter selection.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 365-402). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

The specific and subspecific taxonomies of African primate populations such as Cheirogaleus and the Galagidae have been challenged in recent years (Bearder, Honess, Bayes, Ambrose, and Anderson 1995; Groves 2000), and it has been suggested that the taxonomy of another group, Perodicticus, may not adequately reflect the diversity of its members either (Schwartz and Beutel 1995; Grubb, Butynski, Oates, et al. 2003). Taxonomies are an organizational framework used by researchers conducting comparative studies, and their completeness and accuracy is important for evolution and systematics. A representative sample (N=132) of specimens allocated to Perodicticus, representing the entire known geographic range of the genus, was examined and described by dentition, cranium, post-cranium, and pelage. Measurements were taken with sliding calipers, and tape and non-metric descriptions are supported by photographs. The descriptions (observed values) were then compared to summaries of distinguishing and diagnostic descriptive traits received from previous taxonomies (expected values). Specimens were found that were highly congruent with traditional descriptions of the taxa Perodicticus potto edwardsi, Perodicticus potto ibeanus, and Perodicticus potto potto. A single specimen was found that matches the expected description for Perodicticus potto faustus, which is not taken as support for reviving that taxon out of its synonymy with Perodicticus potto edwardsi. Specimens were found that partially resemble the descriptions for Perodicticus potto ju-ju and have been tentatively identified as such. Previously undescribed features present in the population assigned to the genus Perodicticus have also been found, including a bowed fin on the mesial margin of the lower (caniniform) anterior premolar in most of the specimens conforming to the descriptions for P. p. ju-ju and P. p. potto.

This research understands the characteristics of the regional and local political economy utilizing an intensive form of rice agricultural technology during the Middle Bronze Age (800-400 BCE), in the central western Korean Peninsula, focusing on how social components (e.g. regional polities, local communities, and individual households), in the context of emergent complexity, were related to each other in shaping a specific sociopolitical organization that utilized improved technology for primary agricultural production. Relevant information has been generated by reconstructing MBA regional settlement patterns through the use of surface survey and excavation data, analyzing the spatial correlation between regional settlement hierarchy and differences in abundance of rice soils, the necessity of cooperative water management, easy accessibility to important junctions of ancient transportation routes, and investigating household wealth/status variability. All of this information is used to place MBA society somewhere in the sociopolitical continuum, two ends of which correspond to the extreme top-down and bottom up systems, respectably. The top-down models assume that suprahousehold-level organization and management of labor-pooling necessary to utilize intensive agricultural technology, while bottom-up ones emphasize the individual households¡¯ and/or small kin-based groups¡¯ role in initiation and maintenance of the system. I conclude that there was a mixture of the two strategies mentioned above, in MBA rice-agricultural intensification, rather than the consistent compatibility to either strategy. Communities within individual polities were organized differently indicating compatibility with either system, sometimes in substantially different manners. Even when comparing polities located in quite similar environmental settings, there were quite noticeable differences in production and distribution of wet rice. In this light, beyond simple positioning in the continuum on the basis of reconstructing the differing levels of social organization, this study attempts to make such a reconstruction more dynamic by emphasizing the possible strategies pursued by different social actors, especially elites who are likely to get more benefits from the intensive agricultural systems. A possible strategic activity subjected by elites is feasting. The rigorous participation of commoner households in the intensive production of wet rice is observed at certain center and it may have been encouraged and compensated by feasting activities.

The impact of the European presence in Iroquoian lands began to be strongly felt during the seventeenth century. The spread of epidemics, the participation of Iroquoian groups in the fur trade and the emerging world capitalist market, and the conversion of Natives to Christianity were among the numerous ramifications of Iroquois-European interaction during this period of nascent globalization. The goal of the dissertation is to investigate the extent to which traditional household-level patterns of social structure and economic organization changed or endured in the face of European contact, as well as how these processes impacted Iroquois gender relations and roles. The research project involved archaeological investigations of the Rogers Farm site, a Cayuga Iroquois village near Savannah, New York, dating from the 1660s to the 1680s. By the time of the sites occupation, the Iroquois had already experienced close to a century of interaction with Europeans. In addition, the village was the site of the Jesuit mission of St. René. The archaeological evidence recovered from Rogers Farm revealed both change and persistence in traditional household organization and domestic activities. Primary findings include: (1) a decrease in household size; (2) a decline in the importance of matrilineality and matrilocality in determining household membership; and (3) changes in household production and consumption of durable goods; but (4) continuity in household distribution of food resources. Although households contracted and were differently defined, they continued to operate cooperatively and carried out many of the same functions as prior to the Contact period. Members of the community took part in exchange with Europeans and incorporated new objects into their inventory of material culture, but the local-level economy remained based on reciprocal obligations. Lastly, neither the men nor the women of Rogers Farm were able to escape the consequences of the encroaching European presence in their lands. Men and women exercised different patterns in the selective adoption of European goods and in maintaining traditional technologies and productive activities. Although they experienced the effects of European interaction differently in their daily lives, they continued to play complementary roles in the newly reorganized economic endeavors of the period.

Households are fundamental units of society that possess powerful explanatory potential; however, few studies have approached household organization during the critical contact period within the Mid-Fraser Canyon. The 2012 excavation of Bridge Rivers Housepit 54 (HP 54) offers a rare opportunity to investigate such socioeconomic relationships and their spatial manifestations. Hypotheses structured with a household archaeology theoretical framework emphasize household socioeconomic strategies. The first hypothesis outlines a network strategy characterized by greater centralization of power, hierarchical complexity, and material-wealth that is reflected in residential units with individual features and disparate accumulations of prestige goods and high utility resources. Such floor plans have been ethnographically observed among the Thompson and Lower Lillooet. The second hypothesis proposes a corporate household strategy that lacks the centralization of power seen within the household in the network strategy. Such a strategy could be reflected by two spatial arrangements: 1) a collectivist approach with multiple residential units that lack significant wealth-based differences and 2) a communalist approach with a central hearth and shared activity areas. Housepits divided by activity areas or rooms predicted by the communalist approach have been described in ethnographies of the Shuswap and the Upper Lillooet as well archaeological reports of the Keatley Creek site. To identify HP 54s floor plan, this analysis employs GIS mapping techniques to reveal different distributions and clusters of lithic, historic, and faunal data in relation to features. This thesis will examine the relationship between ethnographic and archaeological records as well as indigenous life during the Fur Trade Era, while also contributing to an enhanced understanding of household relationships.