Bourbon has been distilled in Kentucky throughout the history of the Commonwealth and has influenced how cities in Kentucky have grown, both physically and economically, over time. Throughout the 1870s until Prohibition, a large boom in the number of distilleries in Kentucky occurred with bourbon barons purchasing small, family-run distilleries and expanding them into a large-scale, booming industry that aimed to answer the demand for bourbon throughout the United States. In the mid-1890s and early 1900s, R.P. Drake owned and operated a distillery and a number of taverns that added a new industry to Madisonville and Hopkins County, bringing in revenue, shaping social practices, and testing the limits of legislation that had been passed to limit the ways in which bourbon could be produced. In this thesis, I analyze the R.P. Drake Distillery and associated artifacts in order to provide new information on how this small-scale, spring-based distillery was able to find success in the bourbon industry. Particular attention will be paid to how R.P. Drake adapted to legislation that placed limitations on his distillation and distribution methods. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 3, 2018. / bourbon, distillation, Hopkins County, kentucky, Madisonville, R.P. Drake / Includes bibliographical references. / Rochelle A. Marrinan, Professor Directing Thesis; Tanya M. Peres, Committee Member; Jessi L. Halligan, Committee Member.

The Northwest Coast of Florida is dotted by Woodland Period sites that speak to the richness and complexity of the populations in that region. Mound Field (8Wa8), located in Wakulla County, is a Woodland Period site whose faunal assemblage is indicative of a maritime-adapted society that relied heavily on aquatic resources. Through an examination of the vertebrate faunal remains recovered from the site, this research investigates Mound Field as a Woodland Period fishery that was actively managed by the population. This thesis contributes to the zooarchaeological research on the importance of aquatic resources for prehistoric populations, and the potential ways in which those populations modified and managed their environments. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 2, 2018. / Florida Archaelogy, Gulf Coast Aquatic Resource Management of Ancient Peoples, Gulf Coast Archaelogy, Mound Field Arcahelogy / Includes bibliographical references. / Tanya M. Peres, Professor Directing Thesis; Rochelle A. Marrinan, Committee Member; Jessi H. Halligan, Committee Member.

The eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) was an important resource for Mississippian period (ca. A.D. 1000-1450) peoples in Middle Tennessee. Turkeys were an integral part of Native American life and their use for food and raw materials is well documented. A preliminary study of human and turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) relationships at Fewkes (40WM1) suggests that turkeys may have been a managed resource at the site as opposed to being hunted in the wild. To further test this hypothesis, I collected osteometric data from eleven additional sites and isotopic data from three sites. I apply Niche Construction Theory to my examination of archaeological, biological, and ethnographic material to illustrate that turkeys were potentially managed under a free-range system that did not require supplemental feeding or captivity. This particular management strategy presents archaeologically as a high percentage of male turkeys with little to no indication that humans were in control of the bird’s diet. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2018. / March 21, 2018. / management, Mississippian, niche construction, Tennessee, turkey / Includes bibliographical references. / Tanya M. Peres, Professor Directing Thesis; Rochelle A. Marrinan, Committee Member; Jessi H. Halligan, Committee Member.

The Northwest Coast of Florida is dotted by Woodland Period sites that speak to the richness and complexity of the populations in that region. Mound Field (8Wa8), located in Wakulla County, is a Woodland Period site whose faunal assemblage is indicative of a maritime-adapted society that relied heavily on aquatic resources. Through an examination of the vertebrate faunal remains recovered from the site, this research investigates Mound Field as a Woodland Period fishery that was actively managed by the population. This thesis contributes to the zooarchaeological research on the importance of aquatic resources for prehistoric populations, and the potential ways in which those populations modified and managed their environments. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 2, 2018. / Florida Archaelogy, Gulf Coast Aquatic Resource Management of Ancient Peoples, Gulf Coast Archaelogy, Mound Field Arcahelogy / Includes bibliographical references. / Tanya M. Peres, Professor Directing Thesis; Rochelle A. Marrinan, Committee Member; Jessi H. Halligan, Committee Member.

This dissertation presents the results of an archaeological study of the Inka occupation and transformation of the Amaybamba Valley, Peru, during the Late Horizon, just prior to the Spanish Conquest. This region lies among the dense cloud forests of the eastern Andes, and was situated at the northwestern edges of the Inka heartland centered around the former imperial capital of Cuzco. The main interest for the Inkas in the Amaybamba lay in its capacity to produce large amounts of coca, a plant which was the foundation of a great many exchange relationships across the Andes. Not only was it central to exchanges between humans, but also with the most important non-human powers of the Inka world. These powers included major landscape entities, such as the mountains (apukuna) and other kinds of earth beings (often in the form of rock outcrops, or lakes, known as wak'as). The main focus of this dissertation is the question of how these entities were made subjects of the Inka polity. The broader theoretical framework that underpins my thesis is what I refer to as `political ontology', from which I argue for taking a `step-back' from more traditional (post-Enlightenment) accounts of politics which assume the state is a set of relationships between human actors only, and thereby consider the possibility of non-modern states in which other-than-human beings could be made into political subjects. The Amaybamba is thus presented as a case-study through which we can examine the empirical, archaeological traces of just such processes of subjectification. The Inka presence in the Amaybamba mainly took the form of a series of royal landholdings, which were associated with a number of aristocratic lineages within the empire. My arguments therefore have broader implications for how we understand the royal estate system more generally. In particular, I suggest that the royal estates - which appear from our Western perspective to resemble a series of elite-owned plantations - were in Inka eyes seen more as a means to discipline and control the productive capacities of a potent community of non-humans.

This dissertation examines two Late Archaic (5800-3200 cal B.P.) shell rings located on St. Catherines Island, Georgia. Employing novel methods, including CT-scanning and visual analyses using computer vision, as well as traditional techniques, the histories of each ring are explored and put into a broader context of social changes occurring across the American Southeast. All along the southeastern coastline, the Late Archaic is a time of remarkable social transformations. Populated by hunter-gatherers, sea levels stabilized at or near modern levels during the Late Archaic, which allowed the development of rich estuarine ecozones. Human communities adopted less mobile strategies than their forebears and began living in centralized locales during the Late Archaic and increasingly formalized and distinct divisions between sub-regional populations also become more prevalent. Technological innovations (including pottery) became widespread, along with shifts in subsistence strategies as shellfish and plant foods, particularly tree nuts, became dietary staples for many coastal peoples. All of these transformations helped to create a social landscape in which communal affinity, access to resources, and connection between people and place were brought to the forefront as population levels and densities grew and diverse communities came in contact—and perhaps competition—with one another. I also argue that these material, ecological, and demographic changes required social and perhaps cosmological transformations. Many of these transformations occurred at shell rings – circular or arced deposits of bivalve shells that surround broad, shell-free plazas. Investigating two such rings on St. Catherines Island, this dissertation first details excavations and the depositional character of each ring before turning to the radiometric and seasonality data drawn from both. In concert with a study of storage facilities found in the interiors of the rings, the temporal data suggests an ebb and flow of people into and out of rings, likely influenced by the maturation of hickory nuts and perhaps acorns. Analyses then shift toward pottery production and use, which show each ring was occupied by a distinct potting community. The precise nature of these communities and their relation to one another is unclear, but based on excavations in the direct centers of the rings, peoples at each were engaged in a similar set of ritual or religious acts, perhaps inspired by similar cosmological outlooks. An important aspect of these acts was the deposit of cremated corporeal remains in the ring centers, including, at least at McQueen, the placement of cremated human remains alongside a worked copper object. The meaning(s) of these deposits are unclear, but they are unique within the American Southeast. Although antecedents are lacking in the surrounding region, similar acts and objects can be found in the Great Lakes, perhaps suggesting a connection between the two regions. The dissertation closes with an attempt to provide narrative structure and explanatory models for the wide-ranging data now brought to light. Depending on Native American philosophers and writers, a novel understanding of shell rings is offered. This understanding revolves around an ontological world view in which landscapes are populated by powerful forces; forces with whom humankind can, and indeed, needs to be in communication with in order to lead a proper life. Based on this world view, I suggest that a dramatic reworking of the landscape, such as what would occur during sea level fluctuations, would require a refashioning of relationships with non-human forces, and it was at and through shell rings that such refashioning occurred.

Located in what is now Tallahassee, Florida is the former site of a Spanish mission named San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). This area was colonized by the Spanish in the heart of Apalachee territory and became an important component of Spanish rule: religiously, economically, agriculturally, and militarily. The Spanish Crown supported Franciscan missionaries to convert and pacify local Indians, while the military protected Spanish interests by defending the locals from English and French raids and quelled any uprisings. To this end, several forts were constructed, not only at San Luis de Talimali, but in several outlying areas as needed. At the fall of the Spanish mission system in the early eighteenth century, these forts were destroyed, either by the invading party or by the Spanish themselves to prevent their being useful to the enemy. Fort San Luis was no exception. In 1704, with the British army and their Creek Indian allies only days away, the soldiers at San Luis set fire to the fort complex and church before retreating east towards St. Augustine. San Luis de Talimali, as well as the Apalachee Nation, never recovered. The ruins of the fort complex would eventually be the source of treasures for antiquity hunters, as remnants of the once-powerful fortification produced cannon and other military artifacts. Starting in 1940, professional archaeologists conducted scientific excavations, and the land was purchased by the State of Florida in 1983. The most extensive archaeological project to excavate the ruins of Fort San Luis was conducted from 1998-2002, while the assemblage produced from those excavations provides artifact and spatial data. This thesis researches and demonstrates preliminary results of that analysis, with 450 of the 1700 field samples analyzed. The purpose of this thesis is to publish a detailed analysis of the artifacts recovered during the 1998-2002 excavations of the fort and blockhouse area and combine this analysis with previously published excavation data of the San Luis fort and blockhouse complex. I will use these new data to produce artifact distribution maps of the fort complex to determine usage areas within the blockhouse and make comparisons to published data from contemporaneous Spanish forts located throughout Spanish Florida. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 9, 2019. / Florida, Fort San Luis, Mission, San Luis de Talimali, Spanish, Tallahassee / Includes bibliographical references. / Tanya M. Peres, Professor Directing Thesis; Rochelle A. Marrinan, Committee Member; Jayur M. Mehta, Committee Member.

Material Culture of early Andhradesa

Quaternary animal fossils from India

The panchmahals