This project is an investigation into the role of wild game in the subsistence modes of the miners of the 1867 Wyoming Gold Rush. It is a preliminary step toward understanding both the dynamics of food procurement during the settlement of the American West and the place of those dynamics in a larger model of the history of American relations to and use of natural resources. Three faunal assemblages from different locales within the historic gold-mining town of South Pass City, Wyoming are analyzed and compared in terms of the presence and use of wild and domestic taxa. Historical sources are assessed for evidence of game procurement and perceptions of natural resources. Although the studied assemblages do not empirically represent the wild game depletion suggested by documentary sources, they do reflect cultural preferences of the time, and may represent a situation of depletion and ultimately a shift in utilized game resources.

No description available.

This thesis explores the impact and effectiveness of Human Tissue Act 2004 (HTAct) and the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (Guidance) upon museums in England and the human remains housed within those museums. Whilst the HTAct is a piece of legislation targeted primarily at the medical profession, two sections are pertinent to museums. Firstly, Section 16 legislates for the establishment of mandatory licensing for various activities involving human remains; including the storage and display of human remains under 100 years old. Secondly, Section 47 gives nine national museums previously bound by the British Museum Act 1963, the power to de-accession human remains under 1000 years old from their collections. Conversely, the Guidance is a document developed by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in order to guide Section 47 affected museums and other institutions holding human remains through the growing number of requests to repatriate human remains and to offer a set of best practice recommendations relating more generally to the treatment of human remains. In order to understand the impact and effectiveness of the HTAct and the Guidance, an England-wide museum survey was undertaken; the results of which form the basis of this research. Museum responses to this survey would seem to indicate that, other than financially, the HTAct has had little impact upon museums and that, two years after the publication of the Guidance, many museums had still not implemented its best practice recommendations. Indeed, despite the HTAct and the Guidance, results indicate that there are still a number of unresolved issues relating to the treatment of human remains in English museums.

For the first time, Mid-Late Holocene insect fossil assemblages were studied from inland northern Sweden, producing new evidence relating to both natural environmental changes and human impacts. The insect fossil assemblages from natural deposits indicated extensive woodland with old and dead wood and a deep litter layer of decaying matter. Human impacts became apparent from the 1st millennium AD, when the landscape around many sites became more open, with elements of heath. It is difficult to determine whether these changes were driven purely by human activity, indicating subtle landscape change as a result of periodic exploitation, or if natural influences were significant in creating this landscape structure. If connected with human use, then the impacts of periodic exploitation can be seen to be subtle and localised, but notable enough to leave tell-tale signs in the insect fossil record. These relatively subtle changes in the environment can be compared with the more severe effects found during periods of historically known permanent settlement, where extensively open and disturbed habitats are suggested in the insect fossil record. Species associated with arable and pasture land are restricted to the last few hundred years, in association with settled occupation. The climate signal in the insect fossil record has been weak, and use of the Mutual Climatic Range method (MCR) has not revealed evidence of climatic fluctuations during the Late Holocene period.

The ability to identify and to trace the origin and movement of individuals is of major interest in forensics, archaeology and anthropology. To date, DNA profiling is still the most effective approach for human identification. Despite the success story of DNA profiling, there is a constant search for additional methods to aid in the identification of human remains. In recent years increasingly strontium and lead isotopes analysis have proved particularly useful as tracers for individual residency and migration. The re-occurring problem of limited sample material in archaeological and forensic investigations led to the second objective to investigate where sample material could be saved. The development of a new method for the simultaneous extraction of both strontium and lead from bone and teeth on a single Pbspecific resin proved to be successful. Both elements could be purified in sufficient amounts for successive isotope analysis. This work also investigated for the first time the feasibility of using the remaining bone residues after DNA extraction for further Sr and Pb isotope analysis. The first isotope results were promising and did not show any significant differences between fresh bone and bone residues. However, a more extensive trial is required to validate these exciting preliminary findings. To maximize the evidence for individual identification an interdisciplinary approach was chosen for this study. DNA profiling and strontium/lead analysis were employed in two case studies on human remains from a) the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and b) from a Late Anglo-Saxon burial in Norfolk, UK. DNA analysis proved not to be achievable due to the degraded nature of the skeletal tissues in both case studies. Strontium and lead isotope analysis could identify two possible migrants among the Spanish burial population. In the Norfolk case, isotopic evidence implied that the group was unlikely to be of local (Norfolk) origin.

The inclusion of lime in burials is observed in historical and archaeological records, in contemporary mass graves and forensic cases. Clearly there are controversies within the literature and there is a general misconception of the effects of lime on decomposition. Recent casework in Belgium and the UK involving the search for human remains buried with lime, have demonstrated the need for a more detailed understanding of the effect of different types of lime on cadaver decomposition and its micro-environment. Field and laboratory experiments using pigs as human body analogues were undertaken to obtain a better understanding of the taphonomic processes that govern lime burials. The changes observed in the experiments were related back to archaeological parallels in which white residues have been found. The combined results of these studies demonstrate that despite conflicting evidence in the literature, hydrated lime and quicklime both delay the initial stages of the decay process but do not arrest it completely. The end result is ultimately the same: skeletonisation. Furthermore this study stresses the importance of the specific microenvironment in taphonomic research and highlights the need for chemical analysis of white residues when encountered in a burial. Not all white powder is lime. White residue could be identified as calcium carbonate, building material, body decomposition products, minerals or degraded lead. This study has implications for the investigation of clandestine burials and for a better understanding of archaeological plaster burials. Knowledge of the effects of lime on decomposition processes also have bearing on practices involving the disposal of animal carcasses and potentially the management of mass graves and mass disasters by humanitarian organisation and DVI teams.

This thesis investigates how male and female athletes competing in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were portrayed in two British and two American newspapers (The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post). It also examines how the total amount of coverage was distributed between athletes of each gender. Previous studies have shown that female athletes are not given as much space as male athletes (Jones, 2004, Caple, Greenwood, & Lumby, 2011, Godoy-Pressland 2014) and that when they are reported on, not portrayed in the same way as male athletes (Eagleman, 2015). This can have negative effects for athletes and their sport (Knight & Giuliano, 2011). For this essay, a corpus was created out of articles from the four newspapers, which were subsequently analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings showed a greater equality in the amount of coverage provided by newspapers than had been shown by previous studies, but with such a small sample, results could not be generalised widely. For the qualitative analysis, articles from two specific events were analysed and determined to not contain any major differences between males and females, with only one exception, which was Los Angeles Times’ article on the women’s artistic gymnastics team all-around event.

Research on word learning has focused on childrens ability to identify a target object when given the word form after a minimal number of exposures to novel word-object pairings. However, relatively little research has focused on childrens ability to retrieve the word form when given the target object. The exceptions involve asking children to recall and produce forms, and children typically perform near floor on these measures. In the current study, 3- to 5-year-old children were administered a novel test of word form that allowed for recognition memory and manual responses. Specifically, when asked to label a previously trained object, children were given three forms to choose from: the target, a minimally different form, and a maximally different form. Children demonstrated memory for word forms at three post-training delays: 10 mins (short-term), 23 days (long-term), and 6 months to 1 year (very long-term). However, children performed worse at the very long-term delay than the other time points, and the length of the very long-term delay was negatively related to performance. When in error, children were no more likely to select the minimally different form than the maximally different form at all time points. Overall, these results suggest that children remember word forms that are linked to objects over extended post-training intervals, but that their memory for the forms gradually decreases over time without further exposures. Furthermore, memory traces for word forms do not become less phonologically specific over time; rather children either identify the correct form, or they perform at chance.

The Roman town of Herculaneum, due to its burial by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, provides the rare opportunity to study the diet of middle and lower class Romans living in an urban context in mid-1^st century AD Italy. Knowledge concerning Roman diet, prior to the growth of bioarchaeology in the 1960s and 1970s, was derived from the ancient texts and focused primarily on the elite diet. The diets of the poorer classes have often been considered monotonous and unhealthy and consequently, malnutrition is believed to have been widespread in urban centres. Collaboration between the numerous sub-disciplines of bioarchaeology, including archaeobotany and zooarchaeology, has begun to take place amongst scholars working on the Vesuvian sites and diet is currently being studied using a more holistic approach. The ancient sources act as a secondary resource and it is now the physical food remains that play a crucial role in examining Roman diet and associated topics such as trade, health and nutrition. This thesis investigated the bioarchaeological remains from the Cardo V sewer that ran beneath the shop/apartment complex of Insula Orientalis II in Herculaneum. It is the first large scale study to combine both new and existing bioarchaeological material from Herculaneum in an effort to provide the site with its own bioarchaeological data set, particularly with regards to food and diet. In total, 220L of soil was examined for carbonized and mineralized seeds, seashells, eggshells and fish bones. 194 taxa were identified, included including 94 botanical, 45 fish, 53 shellfish and two bird taxa. 114 of the 194 taxa can be considered edible foodstuffs. The statements of the ancient authors concerning dietary diversity have been examined in light of these findings and found to be comparable. The material displayed little taphonomic bias when compared to Pompeian bioarchaeological assemblages. The excellent preservation of the material, combined with data from modern food sciences, has allowed for much needed interpretation to take place in the areas of health and nutrition. The variety of cereals, fruits and seafood indicate close connections with the nearby land and sea and consequently, the economic implications of such extensive resource exploitation have been considered. A nutritional analysis of the finds have shown that diets were nutrient dense and healthy, enabling the people of Herculaneum to achieve modern day stature as well as survive and recover from illness. Thus it can no longer be assumed that those of moderate means ate an unhealthy and monotonous diet, that malnutrition was widespread in urban centres, and finally, that descriptions of foodstuffs in the ancient sources apply only to the wealthy.

No description available.