Events - News - Anthropology Department - College of Arts and Science

Links
Anthropology Student Association

Other Events
Archaeological Institute of America
- Central Missouri Chapter Lectures
- St. Louis Chapter Lectures

University of Missouri–Columbia, Department of Anthropology seeks a full-time, tenure-track biological anthropologist with an active research program in human skeletal biology and who contributes to departmental focus on human adaptation, ecology, and evolution. Appointment begins Aug. 15, 2010. Ph.D. required at the time employment begins; publications and previous teaching experience desired. Typical courses may include skeletal biology, paleopathology, human biological variation, growth and development. Successful applicant will teach 2 courses/semester, advise graduate and undergraduate students, publish, and seek outside grant funding. Send letter of application, CV, reprint(s) or other sample(s) of work, and evidence of teaching ability to Search Committee, Dept of Anth, 107 Swallow Hall, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-1440. Applications will be reviewed beginning Nov. 15 and continue until position is filled. The University of Missouri is an EOE/AA/ADA employer.

Undergraduate Interns Needed for Anthropological Research

I am looking for several (2 or 3) undergraduates to work on an anthropological investigation of indigenous villages in the Amazon.

This is the first phase of an interdisciplinary project involving
MU's Department of Anthropology,
(Rob Walker http://anthropology.missouri.edu/people/walker.html) and the University of New Mexico's Department of Biology (Marcus Hamilton http://www.unm.edu/~marcusj/home.htm ). In general, we are interested in the many complex relationships among population size, village size and structure, land use, language and culture. The project requires mostly computer mapping work (in particular, using Google Earth Pro to zoom in on Amazonian indigenous villages to capture detailed aerial images and measure land-use areas) but will likely also entail data entry, library research, and some data analysis. Applicants should have a strong desire to learn computer mapping skills and to learn some basic Portuguese language skills. Benefits include hands-on research experience, potential co-authorship on articles in scientific journals, and college credit (Anthro 2950 Research Skills in Anthropology, 1-3 credit hours). To set up a time for an informal interview, or for more information, please contact Rob Walker at walkerro(at)missouri(dot)edu.

Wa-jée-pa-na
"The Missouri Crier"
University of Missouri-Columbia
Department of Anthropology Newsletter
Fall 2009 Volume 7

FROM THE CHAIR: The last issue of Wa-jée-pa-na appeared in Fall 2006. As is too often the case, things were busy and putting an issue together could not take precedence over more pressing matters. By popular demand, we are now back on task and eager to share with you news of our department, and given the preceding three years, there is a lot of news.

We were all heart broken when we lost Dr. Reed L. Wadley to cancer in Summer 2007. But we have a dynamite replacement in Dr. Robert Walker (Ph.D. 2004 University of New Mexico). Dr. Danny Wescott resigned effective May 2009, and we are in the process of recruiting to replace him. Dr. Frances Hayashida resigned in May 2008. But since Fall 2006, we have added (i) Dr. Greg Blomquist (Ph.D. 2007 University of Illinois), (ii) Dr. Mary Shenk (Ph.D. 2005 University of Washington), and (iii) Dr. Christine VanPool (Ph.D. 2003 University of New Mexico) in permanent, tenure-track lines. You can read more about each of these new faculty, as well as about the folks who have been around longer, and what they have been doing lately elsewhere in this issue.

Despite the appearance that all is rosy, the financial condition of the nation and the state of Missouri has put some strain on what we can and cannot do. As one cost-cutting measure, we are considering discontinuance of Wa-jée-pa-na in hard copy and distributing it to our friends and alums electronically only. Therefore, please send us your email address if you wish to continue receiving news of MU Anthropology.

If you have a news item that you wish to share with faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the department, please email it to Gail Lawrence ( gail@missouri.edu ) or I ( lymanr@missouri.edu ). We will include it in the next issue. We extend our sincere hope that all is well with you and yours. R. Lee Lyman

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 5th annual MU Museum and Gallery Crawl was September 17th and all enjoyed great weather. The Museum of Anthropology more than doubled its past best attendance when 350 people visited the exhibits! The featured displays were from the Show-Me the Best: Remarkable Missouri Artifacts exhibit, which is open until October 30th. Raffle prizes were awarded for those that were able to visit all five venues. Keep the event in mind for next year by watching the website: http://mugallerycrawl.missouri.edu

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

— Lyman, R. Lee . 2008. Quantitative Paleozoology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

— O'Brien, Michael J. (editor). 2008. Cultural Transmission and Archaeology . Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC.

— O'Brien, Michael J. & S. J. Shennan (editors). 2009. Innovation in Cultural Systems: Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology . MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

— Pearsall, Deborah. (editor). 2008. Encyclo-pedia of Archaeology . Academic Press, San Diego and Oxford, UK. (3 volumes, 2382 pages)

— Lisa Sattenspiel . 2009. The Geographic Spread of Infectious Diseases: Models and Applications. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

—Steadman, L. B. & Craig T. Palmer . 2008. The Supernatural and Natural Selection: The Evolution of Religion. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO.

— VanPool, Christine S. & Todd L. VanPool. 2007. Signs of the Casas Grandes Shamans . University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greg Blomquist joined the faculty in August 2008. He is a biological anthropologist with interests in evolutionary genetics and life history evolution of humans and other primates. He has studied free-ranging rhesus monkeys to determine aspects of the evolution of costs of reproduction, population, genetic variation in skeletal morphology and life history, and the fitness consequences of socially transmitted female dominance hierarchies. Recent publications include:

— Blomquist, G.E. 2009. Methods of sequence heterochrony for describing modular devel-opmental changes in human evolution. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 231-238.

— Blomquist, G.E., M.M. Kowalewski, & S.R. Leigh. 2009. Demographic and morphological perspectives on life history evolution and conservation of New World monkey. In South American Primates: Comparative Perspectives in the Study of Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, edited by P.A. Garber, A. Estrada, J.C. Bicca-Marques, E.W. Heymann, & K.B. Strier, pp. 117–138. New York: Springer.

— Blomquist, G.E . 2009. Fitness-related patterns of genetic variation in rhesus macaques. Genetica 135:209–219.

Mark V. Flinn was promoted to Professor in 2009. Recent publications include:

—Flinn, M.V. & D.V. Leone. 2008. Alloparental care and the ontogeny of glucocorticoid stress response among stepchildren. In Alloparental care in human societies , edited by G. Bentley & R. Mace, pp. 156–174. Berghahn Books, Oxford.

—Nepomnaschy, P. & M.V. Flinn . 2008. Early Life Influences on the Ontogeny of Neuro-endocrine Stress Response in the Human Child. In Endocrinology of Social Relationships , edited by P. Ellison & P. Gray, pp. 364–385. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

R. Lee Lyman spent three weeks of the summer of 2009 at Washington State University boxing up faunal remains from a terminal Pleistocene archaeological site, loading the boxes in a truck, and transporting the remains to the MU campus. These materials were excavated in the 1960s but have never been thoroughly studied or reported. Thanks to NSF for the three-years of funding that are making the project possible.

Lyman continues to examine the relationship between paleozoology and conservation biology. This resulted in several invited presentations over the past couple years, and several book chapters are pending. Recent publications include:

— Lyman, R.L., & T.L. VanPool. 2009. Metric Data in Archaeology: A Study of Intra-analyst and Inter-analyst Variation. American Antiquity 74:485–504.

— Lyman, R.L., T.L. VanPool, & M.J. O'Brien. 2009. The Diversity of North American Projectile-Point Classes, Before and After the Bow and Arrow. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28:1–13.

— Lyman, R. L. 2009. Graphing Evolutionary Pattern and Process: A History of Techniques in Archaeology and Paleobiology. Journal of Human Evolution 56:192–204.

—Lyman, R. L. 2009. The Holocene History of Bighorn Sheep ( Ovis canadensis ) in Eastern Washington State, Northwestern USA. The Holocene 19:143–150.

— Lyman, R. L. 2008. Spondyloarthropathy in Cervical Vertebrae of Late Prehistoric Black Bear from Northwestern Oregon, USA. Ursus 19:194–197.

— Lyman, R. L. 2008. Climatic Implications of Latest Pleistocene and Earliest Holocene Mammalian Sympatries in Eastern Washington State, USA. Quaternary Research 70:426–432.

— Lyman, R.L., T.L. VanPool, & M.J. O'Brien. 2008. Variation in North American Dart Points and Arrow Points When One or Both Are Present. Journal of Archaeological Science 35:2805–2812.

— Lyman, R. L. 2008. (Zoo)Archaeological Refitting: A Consideration of Methods and Analytical Search Radius. Journal of Anthropological Research 64:229–248.

Michael J. O'Brien , Dean of MU's College of Arts and Science, managed to find the time to do some research. Recent publications include:

—Mesoudi, A., & M.J. O'Brien. 2009. Placing archaeology within a unified science of cultural evolution. In Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution, edited by S.J. Shennan, pp. 21-32. University of California Press, Berkeley.

— O'Brien, M. J. , & S. J. Shennan. 2009. Issues in Anthropological Studies of Innovation. In Innovation in Cultural Systems: Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology , edited by M.J. O'Brien & S.J. Shennan, pp. 3–17. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Craig T. Palmer was awarded tenure in August 2008. Craig notes that subsequent to that, the year marked an exciting transition. The translation of the book whose publication was the reason he pursued an academic career into a fourth foreign language ( A Natural History of Rape, co-authored with Randy Thornhill, MIT Press, now translated into French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean), and the publication of his mentor's life work on the evolution of religion ( The Supernatural and Natural Selection , co-authored with Lyle Steadman, Paradigm Publishers), the original goals of his career have been accomplished. He now eagerly looks forward to pursuing the topic that has emerged as his new main interest (the role of heroism in human evolution), a continued broadening of his research in Canada, and contributing to the seemingly endless ideas for projects sprouting from the minds of our current crop of impressive students. Recent publications include:

—Murray, G., B. Neis, C. T. Palmer , & D. Schneider. 2008. Mapping Cod: Fisheries Science, Fish Harvesters' Ecological Knowledge, and Cod Migrations in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Human Ecology 36:581-598.

— Palmer, C. T., B. Wolff, & C. Cassidy. 2008. Cultural Heritage Tourism Along the Viking Trail: An Analysis of Tourist Brochures for Attractions on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 23:211–226.

— Palmer, C.T., K. Coe, & R. L. Wadley. 2008. In Belief We Trust: Why Anthropologists Abandon Skepticism When They Hear Claims about Supernatural Beliefs. Skeptic Magazine 14:60–65.

— Palmer, C. T. , L. Steadman, C. Cassidy, & K. Coe. 2008. Totemism, Metaphor and Tradition: Incorporating Cultural Traditions into Evolutionary Psychology Explanations of Religion. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 43:713-729.

—Coe, K. & C. T. Palmer . 2008. Human Categories and Health: New Findings Regarding the Power of the Concept of Ethnicity. In Fundamentals of Cancer Prevention , Second Edition, edited by D.W. Alberts & L.M. Hess, pp. 137-158. Springer, New York.

— Palmer, C. T ., L. B. Steadman, & R. Goldberg. 2008. Traditionalism and Human Evolutionary Success: The Example of Judaism. In Aspects of Judaism Revealed by Contemporary Biological Theory: A Neo-Darwinian Analysis of Biblical Lore and Judaic Practices , edited by R. Goldberg, pp. 139–164. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO.

Deborah Pearsall is collaborating on two NSF-funded projects, “Historical ecology in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean,” P.I Dr. Peter Siegel (Montclair State University), and, with Neil Duncan, “The Ynalche Project: The Political Ecology of Late Prehispanic Agriculture on the North Coast of Peru,” P.I. Dr. Frances Hayashida (University of New Mexico). Pearsall continues her research focus on early agriculture in the Neotropics, and on phytolith analysis methods. She presented a paper at the 2009 Society of Ethnobiology meetings on the archaeology of two Neotropical root crops, arrowroot and lleren. Recent publications include:

— Pearsall, D. M. 2009. Investigating the transition to agriculture. Current Anthropology 50: 609-613.

—Zarrillo, S., D. M. Pearsall , J. S. Raymond, M. A. Tisdate, & D. J. Quon. 2008. Directly dated starch residues document Early Formative maize (Zea mays L.) in tropical Ecuador. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:5006-5011.

—Berman, M. J. & D. M. Pearsall . 2008. Starch grain analysis: Crossing the frontiers of Caribbean paleoethnobotany. Latin American Antiquity 19:181-203.

— Gu, Y.S., D. M. Pearsall , S. C. Xie, & J. X. Yu. 2008. Vegetation and fire history of a site in southern tropical Xishuangbanna derived from phytolith and charcoal records from modern sediments. Journal of Biogeography 35:325-341.

— Pearsall, D. M . 2008. Plant domestication and the shift to agriculture in the Andes. In Hand-book of South American Archaeology , edited by H. Silverman & W.H. Isbell, pp. 105–120. Springer, New York.

— Pearsall, D. M. 2008. Modeling prehistoric agriculture through the paleoenvironmental record: Theoretical and methodological issues. In Re-thinking Agriculture: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives , edited by T.P. Denham, J. Iriarte, & L. Vrydaghs, pp. 210–230. LeftCoast Press.

Since July 2007, Lisa has been developing an individual-based computer simulation model that will be used to model the effect of successive infectious disease epidemics and chronic underlying health conditions on the demography of St. Anthony, Newfoundland. Her graduate student, Carolyn Orbann, has been a crucial participant from the beginning of this process. In addition, she has been assisted by two undergraduates, Lauren Huber, who began working with the group in January 2008, and Curtis Atkisson, who contributed during the 2008-09 academic year. Another of Lisa's grad students, Jessica Dimka, has recently joined the group as well. During the last year a prototype simulation model was designed and tested and work is progressing on extensions of this model. In particular, a directed movement process, where agents can move from one specific place (e.g. a house) directly to another specific place (e.g., school) have almost been completed. Once this process is working adequately, the model will be used study potential patterns of spread of influenza in the absence of other diseases or health conditions, and eventually it will be extended further to introduce different infectious diseases on a regular basis corresponding to known outbreaks that occurred in the community and to incorporate different health levels resulting from TB and/or malnutrition, which are known health problems for the community.

Last year Lisa welcomed to her group two new PhD students, Jessica Dimka and Erin Miller, and this year she welcomes a new MA student, Ariel Dombrowski. Her students, Connie Carpenter, Karen Slonim, and Carolyn Orbann are progressing well in their studies. Connie and Karen passed their comps last year and are feverishly working on their dissertations; Carolyn plans to take her comps later this fall.

Lisa's Columbia Cemetery paper will be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology within the next few months.

Mary K. Shenk joined the faculty in January 2008. She has been awarded a three-year NSF grant to study the causes of the demographic transition in rural Bangladesh. She spent the summer of 2009 studying Bengali (or Bangla) at a language program in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and plans to be in the field collecting data from January through July of 2010. Over the past year or so she has presented papers at the American Anthropological Association meetings in San Francisco, the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association meetings in St. Andrews, Scotland, and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meetings in Fullerton, CA.

— Shenk, M. K ., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, J. Beise, G. Clark, W. Irons, D. Leonetti, B.S. Low, S. Bowles, T. Hertz, A. Bell, & P. Piraino. In press . Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Agriculturalists: Foundations of Agrarian Inequality. Current Anthropology .
—Borgerhoff Mulder, M., S. Bowles, T. Hertz, A. Bell, J. Beise, G. Clark, I. Fazzio, M. Gurven, K. Hill, P.L. Hooper, W. Irons, H. Kaplan, D. Leonetti, B.S. Low, F. Marlowe, S. Naidu, D. Nolin, P. Piraino, R. Quinlan, R. Sear, M. K. Shenk , E.A. Smith, & P. Wiessner. In press . Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth and Dynamics of Inequality in Pre-Modern Societies. Science .
— Shenk, M. K . 2009. Testing Three Evolutionary Models of the Demographic Transition: Changes in Fertility and Age at Marriage in Urban South India. American Journal of Human Biology 21:501-511.

Christine S. VanPool taught as a visiting assistant professor for a couple years, and joined the tenure-track faculty in August 2007. She is interested in the prehistory of the American Southwest. Recent publications include:

— VanPool, C. S. 2009. The signs of the sacred: Identifying shamans using archaeological evidence. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28:177–190.

Todd L. VanPool and Christine S. VanPool initiated a multi-year collaborative field project with Gordon F.M. Rakita of the University of North Florida. They supervised an archaeology field school in Summer 2009, and began excavating the 76 Draw Site near Deming, New Mexico. Recent publications include:

— VanPool, T.L., C.T. Palmer, & C.S. VanPool. 2008. Horned Serpents, Tradition, and the Tapestry of Culture. In Cultural Transmission and Archaeology, edited by M. J. O'Brien, pp. 77–90. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC.

Rob Walker joined the faculty in August 2009. His interests lie primarily in the budding field of Human Macroecology. This area of study sees humans as integral components of ecosystems and subject to similar fundamental principles of energetic flux and constraints as other organisms.

Rob collaborates closely with colleagues at University of New Mexico's Departments of Anthropology and Biology. This inter-disciplinary research has led to a series of publications in the last several years focusing on large-scale patterns of human variation. Starting from first principles of energetic allocation, this work has shown that much human variation in natural-fertility populations is not unlike patterns seen in other organisms. For example, much human life-history variation appears to relate to the force of mortality. Namely, higher mortality associates with faster body growth and earlier menarche and reproduction. There is also the expected energetic trade-off between the number and size of offspring across and within natural-fertility human societies. Moreover, the total mass of weaned offspring produced by human mothers across their lifespan is exactly that of an average mammal (1.4 X mother's mass)!

Rob does fieldwork in the Amazon Basin with horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers. Currently, Rob and 5 undergraduates in a Research Skills course are using Google Earth to map hundreds of indigenous Amazonian villages to examine the relationship between space use and population size. Interestingly, subsistence-level human economies show an economy of scale in the area of land needed to meet their subsistence needs. In other words, as populations grow each additional individual requires less per-capita area in order to satisfy their metabolic demands. One idea is that this efficiency stems from the complex networks of food and information sharing that comprise human societies. Recent publications include:

— Hamilton, M. J., O. Burger, J. P. DeLong, O. Burger, R. S. Walker , M. Moses, & J. H. Brown. 2009. Population stability, cooperation and the invasibility of the human species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:12255-12260 .

— Walker, R. S., M. Gurven, O. Burger, & M. J. Hamilton. 2008. The trade-off between number and size of offspring in humans and other primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275:827-833 .

— Walker, R. S. & M. J. Hamilton. 2008. Life history consequences of density dependence in the evolution of human body sizes. Current Anthropology 49:115-122.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

—In March 2007, Peter Gardner participated in a one-week Oxford Round Table on "Migration of Peoples: The Insularity of Nations," at Lincoln College, Oxford. His paper, "Transmigration: Encountering 'others' in today's pluralistic nations," was published online in the Winter 2007 Forum on Public Policy Online. He also published "Quasi-incestuous Paliyan marriage in comparative perspective" in The Open Anthropology Journal, 2 (2009): 48-57. And, in 2009, he revised and updated ANTH 2030: Cultural Anthropology, as offered by MU's Center for Distance and Independent Study.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

—Mark Beary (PhD student) spent the summer working on his dissertation proposal, teaching, and continuing his work at the university's Research Reactor. He is currently preparing to take his comprehensive exam this fall; his dissertation research will focus on the use of fluctuating asymmetry as a measure of developmental instability in bioarchaeological assemblages. In April, Mark presented a paper at the annual American Association of Physical Anthropology meeting entitled Testing the MNI and the MLNI: Which method is most likely to be accurate and when? and also received a $500 Pollitzer Travel Award based on an essay submission. In keeping up his forensic interest, Mark is currently working on chapter on forensic taphonomy that will be included in a new edited volume on forensic anthropology which is due out next year. Additionally, he continues to consult on forensic cases with the Medical Examiner's office when necessary. Finally, and most importantly, in keeping up with their joint research in primatology, Mark and his wife, Emma, continue to raise their 3-year-old daughter, Ava, and their 18-month-old son, Isaac. Ava started preschool this fall and Mark hopes to complete his degree before she graduates from high school.

—Connie Carpenter (PhD student) is working at Boone Hospital to keep involved in medicine and pharmacy, and to work with some great doctors who treat infectious disease. She recently published her M.A. thesis work:

Carpenter, C. & L. Sattenspiel. 2009. The design and use of an agent-based model to simulate the 1918 influenza epidemic at Norway House, Manitoba. American Journal of Human Biology 21:290-300.

Connie presented several papers in 2008, including: “Tuberculosis, cluster analysis, and the everyday geography of homeless shelter residents,” presented at the Medical Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Tuberculosis (MACET) at the Kansas City Health Department in Kansas City. And: “Social networks and TB transmission,” presented at the Responding to a TB Event Meeting at the Heartland TB Center in San Antonio, Texas. And: “Tuberculosis, cluster analysis, and the everyday geography of homeless shelter residents” (with J. Johananning) presented at the Missouri-Illinois Stop TB Group Meeting in Collinsville, Illinois.

Recent posters include: Carpenter, C., J. •Johanning, & L. Phillips. 2009. Tuberculosis transmission and the everyday geography of the homeless. American Journal of Human Biology 21:248-249.

•Carpenter, C., J. Johanning, & L. Phillips. 2009. An interdisciplinary approach to tuberculosis transmission in a homeless shelter community. Presented at the National TB Conference: “TB Elimination, It Takes a Village” in Atlanta, GA.

— Keith Chan (PhD student) travelled to Lima, Perú with the Anthropological Radiography Group to radiograph skeletal material from the Inca Period. The ARG is directed by Kathleen Forgey of Indiana University Northwestern and Dawn Sturk, Radiography Program Director of Hurley Hospital in Flint, MI.

— Jayme Cisco (MA student) is interested in indigenous populations, primarily Native Americans and the Maori of New Zealand. Her emphasis area is Cultural Anthropology, and she is Graduate Vice President of ASA.

— Neil Duncan (PhD candidate) published, in 2009, “Gourd and squash artifacts yield starch grains of feasting foods from preceramic Peru” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:13202-13206. This is part of Neil's dissertation research, and the article is coauthored by Deborah M. Pearsall and Robert A. Benfer, Jr.

— Ryan Ellsworth (PhD student) successfully defended his MA thesis "Evolution and Religion: Theory, Definitions, and the Natural Selection of Religious Behavior.” He also recently co-authored chapters in the books The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (2009), and The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior (2009).

— Jason Fenton (MA student) presented a poster on his paleoethnobotanical research at the 2009 Society for American Archaeology meetings. The poster presented preliminary findings on vegetation change in Trinidad resulting from human occupation of the island.

— Carolyn Orbann (PhD student), along with L. Sattenspiel, C. Atkisson, & L. Huber, presented the poster “Individual-based modeling of acute infectious diseases in historic St. Anthony, Newfoundland” at the Human Biology Association Annual Meeting, in Chicago, in 2009. This poster was also entered in the MU Life Sciences Week poster competition and won first place in the Science and Society Category.

Carolyn also presented “Understanding the Relationship between Disease Mortality and Kinship at Mission San Diego 1769-1850” at the MU Research and Creative Activities Forum, in March 2009. It won First place in the Social Sciences and Law Category.

Carolyn's research interests involve computer simulation of epidemic disease, demographic processes and the effects of European colonization on indigenous populations of California.

— Abigail Middleton (PhD student) joined the Paleoethnobotany Lab in Fall 2009. She excavated in Peru with Dr. Frances Hayashida in summer 2009, and also has research experience in Belize. Abigail was awarded a 5-year graduate school fellowship to attend MU.

— Christina Pomianek (MA 2006) was accepted into the MU Anthropology PhD program. Christina was awarded a 2009-10 National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Fellowship. She also won a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship to study Indonesian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in summer2009; the Boren Fellowship will pay for her to study Indonesian at Ohio University-Athens during Fall semester. She also was awarded a Fulbright to cover 10 months of research in Borneo from January-October 2010.

— Matthew Shaw 's (Ph.D. student) paper “Timber and Nails: Norse Exploitation of Canadian Resources, ca. AD 1000 – 1450” was named the “Best Conference Paper” at the 2008 Midwest Association for Canadian Studies conference. Matt also presented the poster “Form, Function, and Identity Marking: Bisection of the Southern Bastion Wall at Breclav-Pohansko” in 2009 at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in Atlanta, GA.

— Kyle Waller (new Ph.D. student) graduated from Eastern New Mexico University with a M.A. in Anthropology. His thesis, "Stable Isotope Analysis in the Middle San Juan Region: The Tommy Site and Mine Canyon Site," used strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes to examine pre-historic migration and change in dietary practices over time at two Puebloan small house sites in the Middle San Juan Region, near Salmon Ruins. Kyle intends to take additional stable isotope samples from both faunal and human teeth from the two small-house sites to strengthen interpretations of hypotheses. This should allow him to publish the migration analyses and dietary analyses as two separate articles, and/or poster presentations at a professional conference. Kyle hopes to pursue other research applications of stable isotopes in the Middle San Juan Region, including analysis of macaw and turkey from Salmon Ruins as an alternative method for examining domestication.

Kyle spent summer 2009 excavating at the 76 Draw Site, a Casas Grandes site in Deming, New Mexico. Next summer he will work at MURR doing preparation of artifacts for NAA, and hopes to continue work at the 76 Draw Site with Dr. Todd VanPool and Dr. Christine VanPool. He also intends to participate in the Forensic Anthropology Field Methods course at the recently opened Body Ranch in San Marcos, Texas.

Kyle hopes to pursue doctoral research in the Casas Grandes region, doing bioarchaeological research. Potential research topics that he hopes to pursue include mtDNA analysis of human remains from Paquime, Hanos, 76 Draw and other outliers to compare within the regional system, as well as to other sites throughout the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. If destructive analyses are allowed, he would also like to pursue stable isotope analyses similar to his M.A. research. Other bioarchaeological research he would like to undertake includes non-invasive methods for determining biodistance such as craniometric comparisons to draw similar conclusions to the mtDNA, as well as doing non-invasive cross-sectional geometry to examine functional adaptation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

— Corey Hudson completed his MA thesis “Mitochondrial Ancient DNA Analysis of Lawson Cave Black Bears ( Ursus americanus )” in June 2009. He has entered the PhD program in Biological Sciences at MU.

— Earl H. Lubensky (Ph.D. 1991) passed away this year. Earl had been a nearly permanent fixture around our Department for many years, only slowing down slightly in the past three to four years. He will be missed by us all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The Department has adopted the goal of increasing the departmental support of graduate student research. Ever since about 1990, support of Anthropology graduate students has been woefully inadequate. Some seek extramural research grants, and a number of those applications have been funded. But many have not, and sometimes a small amount of money (for an airplane ticket to a field site, for some trace element analysis, for a radiocarbon date) is all that a student requires. The existing

Raymond Wood Opportunities for Excellence in Archaeology fund has over the years provided financial support to a number of graduate students pursuing advanced training in archaeology.

The Dorothy (Dot) Gelvin Fund for Physical and Biological Anthropology is nearly finalized and formal. Bruce Gelvin, Lee Lyman, and Mike O'Brien signed papers making the fund official early this fall; we await the Curator's approval. Please consider donating to this fund.

The James A. and Margaret S. Gavan Lectures in Anthropology recognizes outstanding contributions to all four subfields. Every other year or so, the Department invites an internationally known speaker in one of the four subfields to deliver a lecture.

For additional details on development, contact the main office (573-882-4731), or email the Chair: lymanr@missouri.edu.

The University of Missouri, Department of Anthropology, maintains a web site at (http://anthropology.missouri.edu). If you would like to put your information on our site or make suggestions, contact Gail Lawrence at Gail@missouri.edu . Dola Haessig created our web site and we are very proud of her work. Make plans to come visit the Anthropology Department soon. The Anthropology Museum is open during most regular business hours. We would love to see you! If you can't make the trip, then email us with news.

MU Department of Anthropology Faculty History
Emeritus Recognition Dinner – November 8, 2009

Emeritus faculty are honored and recognized tonight for their contributions to the development, growth, and current health
of the University of Missouri-Columbia Department of Anthropology.

Events/News

Undergraduate Interns Needed for Anthropological Research