Eisele Awards for Pre-Dissertation Research

The Department of Anthropology is proud to recognize recipients of the annual Eisele Award to support pre-dissertation research.

2005 Award Recipients

Jason Moser

Lower Eastern Shore Shipyard Survey

The proposed research is part of a large-scale dissertation study that will investigate the historical and archaeological remains of shipyard sites on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore. My study integrates data drawn from Colonial and early American records such as probate inventories, tax records, deeds, and maps. The information will be entered into a computer-based GIS (Geographic Information Systems) predictive model and combined with environmental data about soil conditions, hydrology, and topography. I hypothesize that the predictive model will assist in identifying areas that may have once contained shipyard sites. An archaeological survey will then investigate the areas predicted to contain potential shipyard sites. Each location will be investigated and any archaeological features associated with shipbuilding will be recorded. At the conclusion of this survey the data collected from these sites will be compared with one another to develop a site typology. This site typology will help test a series of hypotheses about the location of shipyard sites, their spatial organization, the social and kinship relationships among shipwrights, and the role of shipbuilding in the local and regional economy.

Angela Schauber

Ontogenetic and Allometric Scaling of Dwarf and Non-Dwarf Mammalian Species

The objective of my research is to analyze dwarf and non-dwarf mammalian brain and body size ratios in order to determine the nature of the allometric constraints on insular dwarfs. I am interested in whether or not insular dwarf mammals scale similarly to their normal size continental counterparts. Research on insular dwarfism has been well documented; however, the allometric brain/body size relationships between insular dwarf and non-dwarf mammals are unknown. The value of understanding dwarf and non-dwarf mammalian brain/body size ratios lies in a broader context of human evolution studies. Current research on recently discovered hominin fossils could greatly benefit from a deeper understanding of the potential of insular dwarfism among hominins. Understanding how dwarf mammals scale in comparison to non-dwarf mammals may aid in determining the taxonomic classification of hominin fossils. My primary research question is – how do insular dwarf species scale ontogenetically and allometrically when compared to their closest non-dwarf relatives? During the summer 2005 months, I will conduct a pilot study by collecting and analyzing data from the mammalian collection at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The specimens measured for the pilot study belong to the genus species of deer, Odocoileus virginianus. I plan to compare Odocoileus virginianus, white-tailed deer, to Odocoileus virginianus clavium, Florida key deer. I am interested in whether Odocoileus virginianus clavium and Odocoileus virginianus scale along similar brain/body allometric and ontogenetic curves. The results may have the potential to resolve taxonomic debates and thereby ROCK the paleoanthropological community.

David Thulman, PhD Candidate

A Reconstruction of Social Structure in the Middle and Late Paleoindian Periods of Florida

My dissertation research explores how the first people in Florida organized themselves in an uninhabited landscape by testing alternative hypotheses of Paleoindian social organization in Florida during the post-Clovis, Middle and Late Paleoindian periods (ca. 10,900 – 10,000 BP) through analysis of artifact typology and distribution and the application of anthropological theories of band-level social and subsistence structure. I will be collecting images and location information of Paleoindian points from Florida. These will be measured and analyzed for the purpose of producing a typology. The location information will be entered on a GIS, and through the spatial distribution of densities of artifacts and typologies, I may be able to discern band territories using theories of stylistic variation and territorial structure.

Brian W. Trail, PhD Candidate

The Phenomenon of Collapse and Post-Collapse Adaptive Strategies of State-Level Societies: The Case of Mycenaean Greece

The subject of my dissertation research is an archaeological investigation of the collapse of complex polities (state-level societies) and the political, economic, and social organization of post-collapse populations. The case study for my research is the collapse of the Mycenaean polities, located on mainland Greece during the Late Bronze Age (1680-1050 B.C.), and the cultural processes that took place up to the end of the 9th century B.C. Following the collapse of the Mycenaean polities (ca. 1250/1200 B.C.), there is no archaeological evidence for complex social, political, or economic organization on the Greek mainland until the 8th century B.C. My research views collapse as a social transformation, or social process; it is a dynamic process that affects sites and cultural traditions in different ways.

Conceptualizing collapse as a social transformation indicates that it is people who are of central importance because people are who construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct social networks through times of political, economic, and social change, such as during and following state collapse. An understanding of post-collapse populations is necessary in order to elucidate the responses of people to short- or long-term power vacuums or failures of central organization. The data I am using comes from two kinds of archaeological research: surface survey and excavation. The information gathered from these sources will help me address questions on two levels, the regional level (inter-site) and the site (intra-site) level. Some of the questions to be addressed in my research concern demographic behavior, settlement patterns and hierarchy, and preferences for residence, burial, and activities of an economic nature (agriculture, industries, etc.).

2004 Award Recipients

Ashley Kistler

Women in the House: Kinship, Status, and Exchange among Q'eqchi' Market Women

Through ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, I will investigate my hypothesis that Q’eqchi’ market women use local kinship categories to establish themselves as market vendors in order to maintain positions of high status in the local social hierarchy. I argue that the Q’eqchi’ define kinship not through genealogical relatedness or lineal descent, but rather according to the local category of “house,” a social group based on shared residence and participation in household activities, such as subsistence, ritual, and exchange. Recent kinship theorists posit that one’s social status depends on his house affiliation, since houses embody the ritual, economic, and political identities of their members (Levi-Strauss 1982; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995).

I hypothesize that Q’eqchi’ market women achieve positions of high social status as a result of their houses’ longstanding participation in the marketplace. To perpetuate their houses’ status, older women transfer market positions to female house members, including adopted daughters, to ensure that market titles remain closely associated with their houses over time. Through continued participation in the market, women reinforce both their own high status identities and those of their houses. In this respect, Q’eqchi’ market women realize local notions of value grounded in the reproduction of their houses and of their high status social identities.

Through my research, I will determine how Q’eqchi’ market women define the house and identify the strategies that they use to incorporate individuals into the household. To do so, I will explore local Q’eqchi’ notions of kinship by examining the substances and practices that unite individuals as kin. I will also examine how marketers use the house to mediate social relations in the marketplace and legitimize their role in market exchange. In this research, I combine qualitative and quantitative methods, including kinship diagramming, a census of market women, spatial and social network mapping, open-ended interviews with marketers and community members, and participant observation in women’s homes and in the market.

Daniel Sosna, PhD Candidate

Social Differentiation during the Transition from the Late Copper Age to the Early Bronze Age in Central Europe

The Eisele Award supported the initial phase of the dissertation research focused on social differentiation in the central European prehistoric societies during the transition from the Late Copper Age to the Early Bronze Age. Social differences between individuals and groups buried in two cemeteries were inferred from the patterning of archaeological remains and mortuary treatment of the dead. This initial part of the dissertation research will be incorporate to the broader project focused on analysis of the intra- and inter-cemetery variability in Moravia (Czech Republic).

The main goals of the project are the following: 1) to model social differentiation and its changes during the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age in the region of interest, and; 2) to project the results of the research onto existing models of social organization of tribal societies. Tracing changes in social differentiation during the transition to the Bronze Age contributes to an understanding of processes that led to the emergence of centrally controlled prehistoric societies.