Before reaching adulthood, every individual experiences a period of dependency, the juvenile period, during which they rely on the older, more experienced members of their society for their security, subsistence and care. This juvenile period is an important stage of life for human physical and physiological development. In bioarchaeology, there has been limited research conducted on juveniles, particularly, the development of their own social identity and influences. The research method of stable carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) isotope analysis is used to reconstruct the paleodiet of juveniles to determine their dietary composition. Specifically, this research is focused on Kuelap, located in the highlands of Peru, a large settlement inhabited from 900-1535 AD, including pre-Inca (900-1469 AD) and Inca periods (1470-1535 AD). The primary aim of this research is to determine if juveniles consumed different foods through different time periods. Another aim of this research is to determine if juveniles were treated differently than their adult counterparts. Bone collagen samples, primarily ribs, from 32 juveniles were analyzed. The average δ13C value for the pre-Inca juveniles was –13.1‰, and –13.4‰ for the Inca period juveniles. There was no statistically significant difference in δ13C values between juvenile groups or between adult and juvenile subsamples. The average δ15N for the pre-Inca juveniles was +8.1‰ and +7.8‰ for the Inca period juveniles. The Mann-Whitney U test determined there was not a statistically significant difference in δ15N values between the juvenile burial groups; however, there was a statistically significant difference between the juvenile and adult subgroups. The findings suggest that there may have been preferential treatment toward or metabolic stressors on the juvenile. The results of this study offer insights to availability of dietary components, societal roles based on developmental age stages, and the potential role of parenting in Kuelap.

The sexing of human skeletal remains is important for identification and demographic purposes. It is made more difficult when elements such as the skull and pelvis are not recovered or are in too poor of a condition to assess. Previous studies have used carpal (wrist) bones of contemporary populations to assess the viability of these skeletal elements exhibiting sexual dimorphism, as these bones are small, compact elements that are usually recovered in good condition. This study evaluates the use of carpal bones recovered from an ancient Maya population from Belize to determine the biological sex of individuals. The study sample is part of the Maya Archaeological Skeletal Collection (MASC), which contains individuals from the sites of Lamanai, San Pedro, Altun Ha, and Marco Gonzalez and dates from the Late Maya Pre-Classic (400 BC-AD 250) to the Spanish Colonial period (AD 1521-1821). Multiple measurements were taken on 36 capitate, 34 lunate, 34 scaphoid, 27 trapezium, 24 hamate, 22 triquetral, 22 trapezoid, and 16 pisiform bones from several individuals. Discriminant function analysis was used to determine if sexual dimorphism is measurable in this population using these elements. Previous studies used populations with known identities, assessing individuals from crypts, graveyards, or medical collections from the last few centuries. This study varies from previous studies as it utilizes archaeological remains, making this study one of the first to evaluate non-contemporary remains with unknown sex. Results of this study demonstrate that this population exhibits sexual dimorphism and discriminant function analysis can be used to distinguish between two groups. This demonstrates that carpals could be used to help determine biological sex of archaeological populations as well as a tool to help with identification in forensic cases.

When a society experiences a collapse, political authority becomes decentralized, large settlements often become abandoned, economic specialization decreases; and monumental building projects, artistic, and literary achievements slow drastically. The Rio Verde Valley, a coastal floodplain located in the region of Oaxaca in Southwest Mexico, experienced such a collapse at the end of the Terminal Formative period (150 BC to 250 AD). A period of decentralization followed, with regional centers becoming the main seats of authority throughout the region. My aim is to understand how this collapse affected residential population mobility in the lower Rio Verde Valley between the pre-collapse Terminal Formative and post-collapse Early Classic periods. I seek to answer the question: could this political collapse have caused intra-regional migration amongst the people of Ancient Oaxaca? To answer this, I analyzed the stable 18O and 13O isotopes in a set of 21 samples of human long bone excavated from the Terminal Formative archaeological site of Yugüe and the Early Classic site of Charco Redondo. Oxygen isotope analysis is based on the principle that bone apatite and tooth enamel hold traces of oxygen isotopes found in the water that people drink, and that varying values of those isotopes reflect that the water was obtained from different sources. Based on literature surrounding the process of political collapse in ancient Mesoamerica and beyond, I expected to find evidence that intra-regional population mobility increased after the Terminal Formative period collapse. Instead, I found evidence of little to no mobility in both the Terminal Formative period site and the Early Classic period site, showing that the political collapse likely did not affect intra-regional mobility. These findings provide valuable insight into how human migration patterns correspond with political changes, both in the archaeological record of past civilizations and in modern societies.

When analyzing skeletal remains in bioarchaeology, the pelvis and skull provide the most accurate results for sex estimation; however, these are not always present or sufficiently preserved to provide quality data for this purpose. In addition, the amount of time spent analyzing human remains in field or museum collection contexts may be constrained. Therefore, alternate methods of sex estimation that also increase efficiency should be explored. This study aims to establish the minimum number of key measurements of the talus necessary to estimate biological sex with a level of accuracy comparable to published studies that are more time intensive in their data collection. Measures of talus width, length, height, and volume were collected on individuals from two ancient Egyptian (N=162) and three ancient Maya (N=98) archaeological populations. Set points and allocation ranges for these four measures were applied to individuals of known sex and indeterminate sex from these populations to test their accuracy and then compared with the accuracies achieved in existing research using the talus in sex estimation. The four measures used in this study resulted in comparably high accuracy in sex estimation when compared with prior research based on more extensive methods using the talus. The most significant limitation of this study was the small number of individuals available for data collection from three of the smaller site populations. Nevertheless, the method used in this study directly addresses logistical and ethical concerns surrounding the analysis of human remains as it requires less time spent handling the remains and less time spent on analysis out of the field while still providing comparable accuracy. This study also contributes population data for ancient Egyptians and ancient Maya which will facilitate further investigations of sexual dimorphism and sex estimation in these populations.

Chiapa de Corzo Mound 3 was excavated by Tim Tucker under the direction of the New World Archaeological Foundation in July 1965. Mound 3 is located in the ritual center of Chiapa de Corzo, the southwest quadrant. Significant Preclassic and Protoclassic architecture, burials, and caches were discovered there but were never fully analyzed or published. A complete analysis of this mound is necessary to better understand the role of Chiapa de Corzo as a whole and as a regional power. This thesis completes the analysis and accomplishes the following goals: (1) completes the ceramic analysis and classification started by Tucker, (2) produces a catalog of all the burials and caches and their furniture found in Mound 3, and (3) describes changes in the architecture of this mound for each construction phase to determine the general function of Mound 3 throughout its occupation.

This thesis examines a group of 114 burials found within the Terre Haute African Cemetery in Midlothian, Virginia, using gender and resistance as frameworks through which to understand the relationships that members of the historically Black Huguenot Spring community had with the American funeral industry as it developed parallel to the cemetery’s use history from roughly 1800 to 1934. The movement for the beautification of death and increasing emphasis on material goods for funerary commemoration beginning in the nineteenth century did not occur in a vacuum; this work explores the ways in which Huguenot Springs community members chose to participate and adapt these practices to their needs and economic context. This thesis is also interested in the legacies of historic African American cemeteries as sites for community memory, vindication, and the enactment of agency, both historically and today.

In 2011, following several years of in-country research, I published a book on Lithuanian folk pottery. I enrolled in the Folk Studies master’s program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in 2014, well after my research and book had been completed. In the present study, I use my newly acquired knowledge of folklore In my previous work to revisit Lithuanian folk pottery. In my previous work, I had sought to create a picture of “authentic” Lithuanian folk pottery that was confined to the narrow temporal borders of 1861-1918. Here I deconstruct conventional ideas about authenticity, as well as culture and heritage, in order to expand my study to three additional periods: the interwar period of independence (1918-1940), the Soviet period (1940-1990), and the post-Soviet period (1990-present). Examining additional epochs of folk pottery production, I search for the commonalities and continuities binding together both objects and makers through seemingly disparate eras marked by dramatic political, social, and economic ruptures. To do this I examine the interconnected roles of political ideology, revised historical narratives, cultural policy, socio-economics, and concepts of cultural identity. Sifting through these various facets of national identity, I ultimately find that it is in the consistent nature of the adaptations that folk potters and artists make to the dramatically changing circumstances where consistent patterns are found. It is in these circumstances that people must survive, as individuals, a culture, and a nation. This study relies upon three central components: My previous research, texts related to folklore and cultural theory, and a wealth of new interviews conducted in Lithuania between September and November of 2015. Utilizing these tools, I move beyond my previous aim of reconstructing a period of history to engaging with art and culture as living, dynamic phenomena that are ever-changing and present but which possess roots in history and tradition.

Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) is a scarcely represented species in Northwest Coast archaeology, but its remains are abundant at Tse-whit-zen, a large, Lower Elwha Klallam village in modern Port Angeles, WA that was occupied over the past 2,800 years. Because sablefish flesh has high nutritional value and it can be easily captured from nearshore waters in its juvenile form, sablefish should have been pursued where it was available. Therefore, the scarcity of sablefish in many Northwest Coast archaeological sites could indicate this species was not abundant in past fisheries. However, current zooarchaeological reports do not contain sufficient information on taphonomic histories, sampling, or zooarchaeological methods to determine whether patterns of sablefish scarcity could actually explained by differential destruction of sablefish remains, sample size effects, screen size effects, or misidentification. In this thesis, I examine how each of these factors may have affected the abundance of sablefish remains in Northwest coast archaeological sites. I evaluate four hypotheses that attribute sablefish representation to zooarchaeological identification methods, screen size, sample size, and post-depositional destruction of fishbone. While I do not explicitly test whether social and ecological factors affect sablefish abundance, sociocultural and environmental variation can be considered likely explanations for the observed patterns of sablefish representation if the other hypotheses are rejected. I test my hypotheses using three scales of archaeological records. First, I reanalyzed six previously analyzed Salish Sea assemblages to assess whether criteria for sablefish identification exist, are valid, and have been applied consistently. Second, I synthesized fishbone data from 35 previously analyzed Northwest Coast assemblages to evaluate the effects of screen size, sample size, and post-depositional destruction on sablefish representation. Finally, I integrate previously unreported fishbone data from the analysis of Tse-whit-zen into the synthesis of previous studies. The Tse-whit-zen materials I report on here represent six discrete time periods in the 1,800-year history of one large area of the site, which encompasses part of a plankhouse, providing a unique opportunity to examine the effects of screening, sample size, and post-depositional destruction at an extremely fine scale. I also use data from the reanalysis of a portion of the Tse-whit-zen fishbone to verify the consistency of sablefish identification for this site. I reject all four hypotheses and conclude that the uneven distribution of sablefish is likely a true reflection of ecological factors, human decision-making, or both factors. Whether sablefish scarcity is related to distributions of sablefish in past environments, or whether humans chose not to pursue sablefish is not known from the current study. Connecting sablefish capture to specific seasons with body-size regression methods may reveal associations between sablefish acquisition and other seasonal fisheries and activities, and help evaluate whether they conflicted with sablefish procurement in some contexts. Although zooarchaeological identification and reporting methods do not appear to account for sablefish scarcity, zooarchaeologists need to include more information about their methods so that the validity of inter-assemblage comparisons can be assessed. Zooarchaeologists maximize the value of their contributions to anthropology, biological sciences, and human ecodynamics when they explicitly report the methods they use to identify animal remains. By reporting the methodological and analytic procedures they used in detail, zooarchaeologists enhance the reader's confidence in their conclusions and provide future researchers with the information that is required to replicate their results. Which elements were recorded, and the criteria that were used to make taxonomic attributions, fundamentally affect the primary faunal data that researchers use. This study is part of a growing interest among zooarchaeologists in data quality assurance and quality control, which constitute a critical part of every large-scale comparative analysis.

The post-firing variability of fire-affected rock (FAR) recovered from a stone-cooking platform within a prehistoric stone grill was examined. This examination tested the physical properties of FAR recovered from site CA-SBR-3773, located the Crowder Canyon Archaeological District in San Bernardino County, California. There is a lack of archaeological research in this area of Southern California; however, this project established a fundamental perspective of thermal feature reuse and episodes of firing activity for prehistoric cooking features by examining the physical changes FAR experienced due to various heat exposures. Regional archaeologists often encounter these features as they speckle the landscape of upland desert regions in California. This research is an experimental project that compares the cultural stones’ properties to those of non-cultural origin, which have been fired various times during controlled replicative experimentation. The end comparison identifies the FARs’ change in physical conditions. Repeated exposure to high temperatures has a direct relationship to the stability and matrices of rock, in this particular case, schist (Yavuz et al. 2010). As the stone is repeatedly exposed to high temperatures, its durability and structural components begin to deteriorate. This deterioration can be measured and compared to pre-fired physical properties. One of these physical properties is the stones’ porosity, which is calculated using the measured absorption rate of stone before and after exposure to firing episodes. These firing episodes are meant to approximate the cultural use of these stones during prehistoric cooking episodes. The results of the experiment show that FAR may have some diagnostic capabilities to infer multiple firing episodes, confirm facility reuse, and support suggested mobility with respect to available resources and temporal episodes through accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating and other analyses such as micro-botanical analysis.

Long-term human dietary change is a poorly understood aspect of Columbia Plateau prehistory. Faunal assemblages from thirty-four archaeological sites on the Plateau are organized into fifteen aggregate assemblages that are defined spatially and temporally. These assemblages are examined in terms of a focal-diffuse model using ecological measures of diversity, richness and evenness. Variability and patterning in the prehistoric subsistence record is indicated. Major trends in human diet and shifts in subsistence economies are documented and the relationship between subsistence and some initial semi-sedentary adaptations on the Plateau is clarified.