NEWS FROM OHIO STATE’S DEPARTMENT OF
ANTHROPOLOGY 2015 – 2016
anthropology.osu.edu
1
Welcome
I so look forward to this time of the year when I write about all of our exciting events and achievements. I’ll try not to brag, but what the heck – there’s a lot to brag about! I am often asked what motivates our faculty and students to be so productive and to improve upon an already very strong academic unit at The Ohio State University. The answer is a simple one: We are collectively motivated by the fact that we enjoy what we do – teaching great students, engaging in our multifaceted research programs and assisting Ohio State and the discipline of anthropology with our many service roles. In the following pages, you will see the remarkable record this past year in all three areas – teaching, engaging and assisting our institution and our discipline. How do we know we have great students? The proof is in the record. Sure, the entering class of freshman in our two undergraduate majors – anthropology and anthropological sciences – have a remarkable record coming into Ohio State: their average ACT score is 30, and 100 percent were in the top 25 percent of their high school graduating class. But that only tells a part of the story. For the real story, you will want to read what senior anthropological sciences major, Pallavi Oruganti, does in her major and what motivates her to excel.
2
How do we know we have great graduate students? It’s not just about the amazing scholarly records our new class of a dozen graduate students brings to Ohio State. That is part of the picture, to be sure. But, more importantly, it is their extraordinary success in professional engagement at national and international conferences involving the presentation of their papers and posters last year, often in collaboration with university faculty and their 18 publications, mostly in highly regarded journals. No wonder, then, that their job placement is approaching 100 percent with 70 percent in academic appointments.
Ohio State in 1949, where she taught for more than 40 years.
And, allow me in this brief note to brag about our faculty, and their achievements this past year. Our faculty rank among the top teachers in the university. Once again, one of our faculty, Scott McGraw, was selected for the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching celebrating the role of the best teachers and in giving our students the best possible classroom learning.
The remarkable accomplishments outlined here and in the pages to follow require considerable investment by the department and university. We rely on the university for our office and laboratory space, but the true costs cannot be realized without your contributions. It is through the generosity of our alumni and friends that so many of our programs are possible.
It is the productivity of the faculty that has brought the Department of Anthropology to the no. 3 rank of 181 universities and colleges in the United States. Their remarkable publications and scholarship is what drives the discipline forward, mapping new ground, making new discoveries, and engaging in improving the human condition with their contributions to research on infectious disease and health. In this newsletter, among other faculty, you will read about the work being done by Professor Jennifer Syvertsen in her efforts to develop a realistic (and sobering) understanding of epidemics covering broad swaths of the globe. You will also read about the remarkable discoveries of the earliest humans in the Americas, dating back thousands of years ago. Professor Mark Hubbe reports on the earliest record of human sacrifice in the Americas at a place called Lagoa Santa. Sadly, one of our esteemed emerita professors, Emeritus Professor Erika Bourguignon, passed away last year. One of the founders of what would become the Department of Anthropology, Bourguignon came to
We celebrate the arrival of our newest faculty member, Nicholas Kawa. Professor Kawa is an environmental anthropologist who focusses on food and sustainability and how societies in the forests of the Amazon River valley in Brazil and in the American Midwest maintain livelihoods and food supplies. He is the first faculty hire in Ohio State’s new Discovery Theme Initiative, Food and AgriCultural Transformation. How you can help ensure Anthropology’s continued success …
Gifts of any size are what make possible a significant part of student research, their travel to professional meetings to talk about their research. Big or small, a gift is used for students and their work laboratories and at field sites around the globe. We now have a significant teaching and research presence in North America, South American, Africa, Asia and Europe, and we are planning for more. Lastly, I want to say what a pleasure it has been for me personally to hear from alumni, mostly in letters, cards and emails. Please feel free to contact me at any time (Larsen.53@osu.edu). We want to know what you are doing, where you are going, and about the wonderful things you do. With warm wishes,
Clark Spencer Larsen Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences Chair, Department of Anthropology
IN THIS ISSUE 4 The Annual Paul H. and Erika Bourguignon Lecture in
Art and Anthropology
5
Research 6 Addiction and Social Justice, Global and Local 8 In Search of the First Americans 10 Chocolate is Driving Monkeys to Extinction
14
Alumni & Students 15 Pallavi Oruganti Looks to Hunters for Insight on
Infectious Diseases 16 Alumna Hannah Morris: The Underground Astronaut 17 Alumnus Robert Wheelersburg: NSF Fulbright Arctic Scholar
18
Department Updates 19 Department News
20 – 21 New Books and Grants
22
Student Awards
Cover Image: Gonodele Sery (holding illegal cocoa plants), Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire; co-author with Scott McGraw, Cocoa farming and primate extirpation inside Cote d’Ivoire’s protected areas.
anthropology.osu.edu
3
The Annual Paul H. and Erika Bourguignon
Lecture in Art and Anthropology Picture Cave: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Mississippian Cosmos APRIL 21, 2016 6 p.m. U.S. Bank Conference Theater in the Ohio Union The 13th Annual Paul H. and Erika Bourguignon Lecture in Art and Anthropology features speaker Carol Diaz-Granados, research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University. Diaz-Granados will discuss her new book, Picture Cave: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Mississippian Cosmos (University of Texas Press, 2015), the first complete visual documentation of Picture Cave, an eastern Missouri cavern filled with Native American pictographs that is one of the most important prehistoric sites in North America. This lecture is made possible by a generous endowment from alumna Elizabeth (Betsy) Salt (MA, anthropology, 1975). For details, please visit anthropology.osu.edu
This pictograph of the Underwater Spirit is the first image one sees when entering Picture Cave. It represents the Great Serpent, a supernatural being found in American Indian oral traditions.
4
RESEARCH
Cercopithecus petaurista, the Lesser spot-nosed guenon
anthropology.osu.edu
5
Research
ADDICTION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, GLOBALLY AND LOCALLY
shape patterns of drug-related harm, she will also extend this line of inquiry. Her research has already generated two Ohio State seed grants, including a recently completed qualitative study on the reproductive health of women who inject drugs.
Jennifer Syvertsen, assistant professor, anthropology, is currently developing complimentary global and domestic lines of research that address prescient questions of drug addiction, social inequalities, and related health harms. “In Kisumu, Western Kenya, my ethnographic research examines how the emergence of injection drug use shapes the region’s enormous HIV epidemic,” said Syvertsen. “While HIV incidence has been declining throughout the rest of Kenya, drug and alcohol use may be contributing to Kisumu County’s unabated epidemic where HIV prevalence reaches 18 percent in the general population. In this region, rapid urbanization and unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities are changing the social landscape.” Syvertsen’s research reveals a chaotic drug market fueled by disaffected and bored youth who readily turn to drugs and engage in risky injection practices that heighten their vulnerability to HIV. As her team examines questions about how gender and structural vulnerability
6
New research will document the syndemic (mutually reinforcing health epidemics exacerbated by structural and social vulnerabilities) of substance use, violence and HIV/STIs among female sex workers in Kisumu, with a longer term goal of addressing male perpetrated violence. Syvertsen is also a co-investigator on a NIH-funded project to establish an epidemiologic cohort and use qualitative methods to assess the syndemic effects of substance use and mental health issues on engagement in the HIV care cascade among newly enrolling HIV+ patients in three East African countries. She will work with an interdisciplinary research team of physicians and public health experts to ensure that patient and provider experiences are incorporated into meaningful medical practice. “Given the gravity of the HIV epidemic in Kenya, this research has clear applied dimensions,” explained Syvertsen. “Our formative work helped provide the evidence needed at the national level to advocate for a needle exchange program in Western Kenya, the first in the region. Our proposed work in a clinical setting also has the potential to improve care and service delivery to a diverse cross-section of patients.”
Syvertsen hopes that this research will lead to fruitful opportunities to build research capacity among young Kenyan scientists and opportunities for Ohio State students to see the contributions that anthropologists make to global health research. She is also conducting research in Ohio. Together with colleagues from the Ohio State’s College of Social Work, Syvertsen is conducting qualitative interviews with healthcare providers and women to better understand adverse reproductive health outcomes among women struggling with opiate addiction. “Pregnant women and those with newborns tell us that navigating health and social service systems and the uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of opiate withdrawal in newborns takes an emotional toll,” said Syvertsen. “Further, the experiences of many of these women contrast with stereotypes of the ‘selfish addict mother’ and raise questions about how gender, stigma and notions of ‘deservingness’ shape women’s chances for a healthy life for themselves and their families. Syvertsen is working to expand this line of inquiry to examine opiate use in the broader population, including reported outbreaks of Hepatitis C and the risk for HIV to spread into new areas of Ohio. Read more about Syvertsen’s work in Global Health Matters (Fogarty International Center) at: go.osu.edu/syvertsen-hiv-kenya
My ethnographic research examines how the emergence of injection drug use shapes the region’s enormous HIV epidemic.
Jennifer Syvertsen, assistant professor, shares the results of her study on injection drug use and HIV risk in western Kenya to an audience of healthcare workers and researchers at the FACES clinic in Kisumu. FACES is a comprehensive HIV prevention, care and treatment program working collaboratively with the Kenyan Ministries of Health to build sustainable HIV care systems in Kenya.
7
Research
IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
Burial 26 from Lapa do Santo, Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Photo courtesy of Danilo Bernardo.
8
Drawing, courtesy of Gil Tokyo
Since the arrival of the Spaniards to the New World, scholars and researchers have asked themselves three questions: Who were the first Americans? When did they get here? Where did they come from? “Surprisingly enough, here we stand more than five centuries later, and we still do not have good answers for these most basic questions about the initial occupation of our continent,” said Mark Hubbe, associate professor, anthropology. “What we do know is that this process was considerably complex; may have involved multiple waves of human dispersion into the continent, using both land and ocean routes; and that it happened at least 15,000 years ago, but possibly much earlier than that.” Deciphering this complex history with the scant remnants of the past is not a simple task, and one that requires researchers to look into these questions from multiple viewpoints. This is exactly where Hubbe’s research falls.
Hubbe’s work at the Lapa do Santo site continues the study of the Lagoa Santa remains and how their findings contribute to the understanding of the settlement of the Americas. Among the many findings that the Hubbe and the team reported in the past few years, two deserve special mention. The first one is the finding of the earliest case of decapitation in the Americas, reported recently in the journal PLOS One. This burial, dated to 9,000 years ago, consists of a single head with both articulated hands covering its eyes. The skull and hands were severed from the body after the death of the individual and buried in a highly ritualized way, following the symbolic beliefs of the groups that lived in the area.
… Early in the history of the human occupation of the continent, these huntergatherer groups gave nature and human life a complex symbolic meaning …
“While it is impossible for us to know what their specific beliefs were and why they treated this individual in such a unique way, this is a remarkable find because it demonstrates that early in the history of the human occupation of the continent, these hunter-gatherer groups gave nature and human life a complex symbolic meaning, treating their dead in special and unique ways,” said Hubbe.
Mark Hubbe is part of a multinational team of researchers, including Brazilians, Argentines, Germans and North Americans, who are dedicated to reconstructing the initial steps of humankind into the Americas. This team has been excavating and studying the early sites from Lagoa Santa region in Central Brazil. Lagoa Santa is a unique region in the continent due to both the unprecedented amount of early archaeological sites and the history of research in the area.
The second remarkable find, from the point of view of the cranial morphology, is that these early groups do not resemble the typical Native American groups. In fact, the differences seen across time inside the Americas are as big as the differences seen between the most different human populations in the planet nowadays. Since cranial morphology is highly correlated with genetic background, these results point towards a complex history of settlement of the continent.
According to Hubbe, the karstic region of Lagoa Santa has more than 800 documented caves and rock shelters, many of which were occupied by hunter-gatherer groups between 11.5 and 7.5 thousand years ago.
Do these differences indicate that two migrations occurred onto the continent, one bringing the Lagoa Santa cranial shape and the other the typical Native American cranial shape? Or are these differences indicating strong changes in the biological composition of the Native American groups during the past thousand years, as a result of adaptations to diet and life-styles?
“In the rock shelters, these early American groups lived intermittently, slowly accumulating thousands of years of evidence of their life-styles, including burials of their dead,” explained Hubbe. “Consequently, paleontologists and archaeologists have explored Lagoa Santa since the 19th century, when the Danish naturalist Peter Lund found the first evidence of human coexistence with extinct megafauna in one of the local caves. Lund’s work brought the remote area of Lagoa Santa onto the scientific map, becoming one of the most important archaeological regions in the Americas.”
anthropology.osu.edu
Hubbe hopes that future research will help answer these questions. “What we do know is that we are far from being able to explain the settlement of the continent and that every new discovery brings yet new aspects of the life and ways of the first Americans into light.” To learn more about Hubbe’s research, go to u.osu.edu/heads
9
Research
CHOCOLATE IS DRIVING MONKEYS TO EXTINCTION Scott McGraw, professor of anthropology and director of the Taϊ Monkey Project, Ivory Coast, is co-author of a study finding that endangered primates in national parks and forest reserves of Ivory Coast are facing extinction because of illegal cocoa farms.
One species of monkey – Miss Waldron’s red colobus – was not seen during this survey and has not officially been sighted since 1978. McGraw suspects that it is probably extinct.
The study appeared in the March 2015 issue of the journal Tropical Conservation Science.
Two other monkeys – the Roloway monkey and the Whitenaped mangabey – were seen in only two reserves and are critically endangered, at least partially due to the habitat destruction caused by illegal cocoa farms.
McGraw’s co-authors, E. Anderson Bitty, Sery Gonedele Bi, Jean-Claude Koffi Bene and Philippe K. Kouassi, all worked at one time as students for the Taϊ Monkey Project and now work for Ivory Coast research institutions.
“I’ve been doing survey work in these parks for 20 years, and it wasn’t nearly this bad when I started,” McGraw said. “The world’s demand for chocolate has been very hard on the endangered primates of Ivory Coast.”
The Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa beans, providing more than one-third of the world’s supply (in the year that ended in September, Ivory Coast produced a record 1.7 million metric tons of cocoa, according to the International Cocoa Organization in London).
McGraw offers a stark assessment of the likelihood of survival of the monkeys if illegal cocoa farming goes unchecked.
For this study, the research team surveyed 23 protected areas in the West African nation between 2010 and 2013 and found that about three-quarters of the land in them had been transformed into illegal cocoa production.
“Complete deforestation would constitute a death knell for most primates,” said McGraw. “If these animals disappear from these protected areas, we lose one of the few remaining opportunities to witness first-hand the interaction between primates, their behavior, and their habitat.” Can anything be done to slow the acceleration of deforestation and primate extinction?
“Of the 23 protected areas, 16 of them had more than 65 percent of their forests degraded by farms, logging or other human disturbance,” said McGraw. “While a variety of agricultural products were grown illegally in the parks, cocoa constituted 93 percent of the total crops grown.”
According to McGraw, shaded cocoa agroforestry, which does not involve the total removal of trees, has been shown to provide comparable revenues for farmers while preserving elements of habitat critical for primate populations.
Overall, 20 of the protected areas had illegal cocoa plantations and approximately 74 percent of the total land in these areas was transformed into cocoa production.
“It’s been done successfully in Brazil,” said McGraw. “There, a species of new World monkey — the golden-headed lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysomelas) — lives and thrives in agroforestry that consists of shaded coca farms (cabrucas).”
“When we started walking through the protected areas we were just stunned by the scale of illegal cocoa production,” said McGraw. “There are parks in Ivory Coast with no forests and no primates, but a sea of cocoa plants.” The impact of illegal cocoa farming on primates has been devastating. Thirteen of the protected areas (57 percent) have lost their entire primate populations, while another five had lost half of their species.
Whether or not this scenario is ideal or applies to primates in different regions of the world is not yet known. However, for McGraw and his co-authors, the existence of the cabrucas suggest that crop production and modified habitats able to support primate populations need not be mutually exclusive. “If we are unable to safeguard wildlife from illegal cocoa farming and hunting inside areas designated for their protection, what hope do we have of ensuring their survival outside forest reserves and national parks?”
Ohio State’s Science and Conservation in Africa’s Rainforests Fund (313356) supports anti-poaching patrols in selected rainforests, Ohio State student travel expenses in Africa, and sponsors an exchange program for African and Ohio State undergraduates. Please consider a gift. Visit: go.osu.edu/fund313356
10
The world’s demand for chocolate has been very hard on the endangered primates of Ivory Coast.
Scott McGraw
Illegal logging trucks entering one of the nature reserves where illegal cocoa farms are set up.
Researcher Gonodele Sery (middle) with cocoa-cutting assistant and local police reviewing Conservation International information on the region’s endangered wildlife due to illegal cocoa farming and illegal logging.
anthropology.osu.edu
11
Kyra Pazan (BA, 2014) sifting for artifacts at Neolithic tell in Hungary. Kyra is now a PhD student in anthropology at the University of Michigan.
12
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
PALLAVI ORUGANTI LOOKS TO HUNTERS FOR INSIGHT ON INFECTIOUS DISEASES Pallavi Oruganti, a fourth-year student from Centerville, Ohio, declared anthropological sciences as a major in high school. “I took a lot of courses in the social and behavioral sciences in high school and I really liked the broad community perspective,” said Oruganti. “And from the time I started college, I was interested in how human behavior impacts animal health.” As soon as Oruganti enrolled as a freshman at Ohio State she started to look for projects in the Department of Anthropology that would match her interests in animal and human behavior and prepare her to pursue graduate studies and a career in veterinary public health. “I love how diverse the field of anthropology is here at Ohio State,” Oruganti said. “You get so many perspectives – cultural, physical, behavioral and more – and that kind of diversity in perspectives is really critical to the study of anthropology.” At the end of her first year, Oruganti went to work in Ohio State’s Disease Ecology and Computer Modeling Laboratory (DECML) under the direction of Anthropology Professor Mark Moritz and Associate Professor of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Rebecca Garabed. DECML focuses on both field research and computer simulations to improve understanding of the mechanisms driving the transmission and persistence of diseases in populations of animals and humans. As soon as she began working in DECML, Oruganti began formulating the idea for a research project focusing on the behavior and perspectives of hunters. “There are a number of infectious diseases that pose risks for humans and/or livestock, and hunters represent a critical
anthropology.osu.edu
link in the transmission of infectious diseases from wildlife to livestock because many hunters are also farmers,” explained Oruganti. “However, it is unclear how much hunters know about the potential risks of these infectious diseases and whether and how that knowledge informs hunting practices.” Oruganti’s idea became a project — Hunters Knowledge Attitudes and Practices About Wildlife Diseases — and in 2014, she received a NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant to support her work. She also received funding for her research from Ohio State’s Undergraduate Research Office. In the summer of 2014, Oruganti interviewed hunters throughout Southeast Ohio, documenting their knowledge, attitudes and practices around infectious diseases. In addition, Oruganti looked at how and from whom hunters learned about the risks of infectious diseases and how this affected their hunting practices. “My preliminary findings show that hunters are very concerned about the health of animals and have some knowledge about infectious diseases,” said Oruganti. “But we need to do a better job of identifying how and from whom hunters get their information, is that information accurate and how can we develop effective communications and interventions to improve the health and wellbeing of humans and animals in the region.” Oruganti is finishing up her thesis now and will be graduating spring 2016. She plans on enrolling in graduate school and working towards a master’s degree in public health. “I’m so grateful for the amazing support I have had from the professors in anthropology,” Oruganti said. “I’ve been encouraged to pursue my passion at every step along the way.”
13
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
GRADUATE STUDENT AARON COMSTOCK WITH OHIO PREHISTORY PhD student Aaron Comstock is an anthropological archaeologist who has been researching Ohio prehistory since 2006, when he participated in his first field school near Chillicothe, OH, while an undergraduate at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo. In 2011, Comstock enrolled as a doctoral student at Ohio State and began researching the emergence of village life in prehistoric Ohio and its relationship to the spread of maize agriculture. Building on the work of other scholars in the region, Comstock is looking at the role of migration and culture contact in cultural change, a finding that is relevant to contemporary issues in globalization studies. He is also highlighting the role of climate change in developing push and pull factors which influenced the movement of populations throughout the Mid-Continent Region of the United States. “The field of anthropology occupies a unique position between natural and social sciences and the humanities, and I strive to incorporate this syncretic mindset into my research of past societies,” said Comstock. Comstock’s work has focused on the transition from Late Woodland (c. AD 500-1000) horticulturalists to Fort Ancient (c. AD 1000-1650) village agriculturalists. Incorporating a multi-scalar perspective, Comstock examines environmental change, local traditions and the influence of chiefdom societies in the Mississippi Valley, and the influence these had on cultural change in the Ohio Valley. Over the last two summers, Comstock helped supervise archaeological field schools with Anthropology Professor Robert Cook at the Turpin site (Anderson Township, Ohio) and the Guard site (Lawrenceburg, Indiana). These sites represent the remains of two of the earliest Fort Ancient villages in the region, each of which have produced artifacts, architectural
14
styles and community structures which indicate that these early villages had ties to Mississippian chiefdoms in Illinois and Tennessee. A total of six structures has been excavated at these two sites, each of which was built using wall trench architecture (a form of prefabricated wall construction), which is a hallmark of Mississippian dwellings. At Turpin, the focus of Comstock’s dissertation, two adjacent communities have been identified next to a large burial mound. These communities may represent contemporary groups from different backgrounds who lived here to practice mortuary rituals. One structure in each community was excavated at the 2015 Department of Anthropology archaeological field school. “Ongoing analyses will provide a comparison of these dwellings and test hypotheses regarding when these villages formed, who lived in them and what their connections were to the Mississippian world,” explained Comstock. “Evidence from these domestic contexts points to an early and sudden transition to village life among Fort Ancient societies along the Ohio River, and is rewriting what we know about how contact between groups of people can foster cultural change.” Comstock has helped teach four field schools through SUNY Geneseo and Ohio State; published scientific articles on Ohio and Midwestern prehistory; and taught numerous courses in anthropology.
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
ALUMNUS ROBERT WHEELERSBURG Growing up in a small Ohio Appalachian town on the borders of Kentucky and West Virginia, Robert Wheelersburg (BA, anthropology, 1980), professor of anthropology, Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, described his world then as “homogeneous and white.” “I was personally acquainted with zero Latino, African-American, Indian or any other hyphenated Americans,” said Wheelersburg. “Until I left home at 17 to enlist in the service I spent the vast majority of my time with people who looked, acted and talked like me.” While the Navy introduced Wheelersburg to people from diverse backgrounds, the seed to become an anthropologist was planted on Sept. 2, 1966 when the first Star Trek episode aired. “Spock changed my life because he made me want to learn about other cultures and helped me choose to study anthropology at Ohio State,” said Wheelersburg. Wheelersburg entered Ohio State on the GI Bill to study chemistry, but courses in anthropology and archaeology pulled him away from the test tubes and beakers. “After I finished arguing in class with Professors Poirier or Schulli about hominid brain size or Professor Chen about whether nations have an identity, I would rush home to watch the day’s episode with fellow anthropology majors. Spock’s study of other cultures and life forms, combined with my formal anthropology classes in Lord Hall, shaped my interest in becoming a professional anthropologist,” Wheelersburg said.
Two Swedish Saami herders mark a rare albino reindeer (the equivalent of branding). Photograph by Wheelersburg, Ran Saami Village, Västerbotten, Sweden, 1994.
Wheelersburg is Elizabethtown College’s first professor of anthropology and currently, the first NSF Fulbright Arctic Scholar at the University of Iceland. He has worked in the Arctic for more than 30 years, primarily in northern Sweden, Iceland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. His primary focus of research has been on Saami (Lapp) reindeer herders in Sweden and Russia and is supported by three Fulbright Scholarships; fellowships from the Scandinavian American Foundation, the Arctic Institute of North America and the Arctic Consortium of the United States; and several grants, mostly from the NSF Arctic Social Science Program.
anthropology.osu.edu
15
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
THE UNDERGROUND ASTRONAUT Hannah Morris (MA, anthropology, 2012)
In 2013, alumna Hannah Morris answered an ad on Facebook posted by Lee Berger, professor of human evolution studies at the University of Witwatersrand, for archaeologists with caving and climbing abilities to work in South Africa. A few weeks later, Morris was on a plane to Johannesburg to work inside one of the most remote chambers in the Rising Star cave system, at the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site in South Africa. “When we started the project, we believed that the Dinaledi chamber might contain the remains of one of the most complete fossil hominins (human relative) ever discovered,” said Morris. “However, the chambers were so difficult to access and Lee needed a team of qualified excavators who were slender enough to reach the chambers and recover these fossils.” Morris joined five other women scientists from around the globe chosen to excavate the site. These women — Marina Elliot, Becca Peixotto, Alia Gurtov, K. Lindsay Hunter and Elen Feuerriegel — became known as the Underground Astronauts. The 21-day excavation began in November 2013. The journey to the Dinaledi chamber involves crawling through Superman’s Crawl, a short tunnel less than 25 centimeters high; climbing vertically up a 20 meter underground ridge called Dragon’s Back; and then descending through a narrow, 12 meter vertical chute that narrows to 18 centimeters (approximately 7 inches) wide at one point. “The first time I made it down the chute, there were a lot of bruises, scrapes, ripped clothing and cursing,” remembered Morris. “There were crystals on the wall that were razor sharp, and protrusions that dug into my hips. I couldn’t turn my head to look at where I was putting a hand or foot, because my helmet would get stuck in between the walls.” Once she finally made it into the fossil chamber, Morris’ goal was to clear the loose and scattered fossils laying on the surface. Local cavers helped thread two miles of communication and power cables down into the fossil chamber to allow Berger and his team, located on the surface, view what was happening in the chamber.
16
“On the second day, we realized that we were not just dealing with the skeletal remains of one individual — there were remains of more than one hominin in this cave,” said Morris. By the end of the expedition, Morris and her fellow “astronauts” excavated some 1,550 specimens in all, representing at least 15 individuals, from infants to elderly adults. These remains contained multiple elements from almost every part of the body, a remarkable find that would tell the story of the growth and development of these hominins. “Days later, after a particularly long afternoon in the cave, it hit me,” said Morris. “I had excavated and touched the remains of six individuals from our human lineage — individuals who lived and died and walked across the same path that I was walking down. I sank down to the ground staring at my hands. I think each of us had moments like this, when we were able to grasp for a moment the impact of what we were discovering.” In May 2014, at the Rising Star Workshop in Johannesburg, scientists from around the globe analyzed the remains from the Dinaledi excavation and produced a series of scientific papers detailing the anatomy, taxonomy and context of the hominin remains. This analysis ultimately led to the conclusion that these fossils represented a new species of hominin, Homo naledi, that deliberately disposed of their dead in this chamber. “I was truly honored and grateful to be part of such an incredible team,” Morris said. “And now comes the really fun part — Homo naledi has a lot more to tell us about hominin evolution, what it means to be human, and how we came to be the way we are.“ The Dinaledi chamber is now the richest fossil hominin site on the continent of Africa, and one of the most well represented fossil species in the world. Morris is currently a graduate student at the University of Georgia, ICON & Warnell School of Forestry.
anthropology.osu.edu
17
DEPARTMENT UPDATES Anthropology graduate student Mackie O’Hara and Song Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Peking Man site. Together with Professor Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, they are collaborating on the analysis of dental growth and development in Chinese hominins.
18
DEPARTMENT UPDATES DEPARTMENT RANKINGS
Moritz Awarded NSF EAGER Award
The Department of Anthropology at Ohio State ranks 3rd out of 181 universities and colleges evaluated in the United States, according to Academic Analytics. This ranking reflects the commitment to achieving eminence in research and scholarship by anthropology at Ohio State. For details and to RSVP for the Bourguignon lecture, please visit anthropology.osu.edu
McGraw Receives Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching Mark Moritz’s project, “Modeling Coupled Herd and Household Dynamics in Pastoral Systems,” is being funded by the National Science Foundation’s EAGER (Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research) program. The project will focus their efforts on developing an agentbased model to examine the impact of the domestic cycle of households on the demography of family herds and ultimately on regional livestock populations.
Field Publishes Book on Nu’alolo Kai Professor Scott McGraw was one of ten Ohio State professors honored in 2015 for teaching excellence with the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. Students, faculty and alumni nominate faculty; and a committee of students, previous recipients, and alumni choose the recipients. Recipients are recognized with a $3,000 honorarium and they are inducted into the Academy of Teaching. Students describe McGraw as a passionate and enthusiastic classroom teacher. “I love that he lives out his passion in the field where primate numbers are decreasing at a fast pace,” one student said. “I know the species he studies are in good hands with all the great work he is doing for them.” For more than 25 years, McGraw has been observing and documenting the behavior of a community of West African monkeys living in the Taϊ forest of Ivory Coast. He is the director of the Taϊ Monkey Project, an NSF-funded program aimed at documenting the behavior, ecology, and conservation of eight monkey species. McGraw is also the recipient of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring.
anthropology.osu.edu
Julie Field, associate professor, anthropology, has published a new book, Abundance and Resilience: Farming and Foraging in Ancient Kaua’i (University of Hawaii Press, 2015). Along with her co-editor and colleagues, Field’s book summarizes the analysis of more than 18,000 artifacts from the archaeological site of Nu’alolo Kai, located on the remote Na Pali coast of the island of Kaua’i. The site was excavated by archaeologists from the B. P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu between the years 1958 and 1964, and again by University of Hawaii archaeologists in 1990. Field directed and conducted the analysis of many of the artifacts from Nu’alolo Kai in the late 1990s. (continued next page)
19
DEPARTMENT UPDATES (continued) The book looks at the economics of daily life in ancient Hawaii through the analysis of the remains of birds, turtles, dogs, pigs, fish, mollusks and other creatures. It also examines the potential for human predation to have resulted in the decline of native species, and makes observations of prehistoric trends that can be applied to modern conservation efforts, such as the protection of rare and threatened animals (Hawaiian monk seals and Newell’s shearwater).
Cohen Publishes New Book on Ethnographic Research
Willow Awarded Research Grant Anna Willow, associate professor, anthropology (Marion campus), received a grant from the WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support her project on energy resource development in British Columbia’s Peace River region. Willow’s project will generate primary data on diverse responses to oil and gas, coal mining and hydroelectric energy developments in the region with the objective of developing an analytical framework capable of explaining environmental decision-making in areas of active anthropogenic environmental change.
Eliza Gardner Receives Borlaug Fellowship
Jeff Cohen, professor, anthropology, is the author of a new book, Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World (University of Texas Press, 2015), a compelling narrative of fieldwork and the intellectual processes behind ethnographic research. In this groundbreaking work, Cohen discusses the adventure, wonder, community, and friendships he encountered during his first year of work, but, first and foremost, he writes in service to the field as a place to do research: to test ideas, develop theories, and model how humans cope and react to the world. Cohen is the recipient of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Diversity Enhancement Award.
20
Graduate Research Associate Eliza Gardiner has been awarded a Borlaug Fellowship in Global Food Security, to fund her dissertation research, “Impacts of Social Relations on the Privatization of Communal Land and Implications for Food Security in Burkina Faso,” and a semester of dissertation writing. Through a case study of Burkina Faso, Gardiner’s research aims to document and explain how privatization is impacting social relations among farming community members, agroinvestors and the state.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY GRANT FUELS STUDY OF NEOLITHIC VILLAGE LIFE Clark Larsen and collaborators Christopher Knusel (University of Bordeaux); Scott Haddow (Stanford University); Marin Pilloud (University of Nevada, Reno); Mehmet Somel (Middle Eastern Technical University) and Jessica Pearson (University of Liverpool), were awarded a National Geographic Society grant for their project, “Coming Together: Neolithic Village Life at Catalhoyuk, Turkey.� The bioarchaeological study of the human remains provides a multi-scale record of households, neighborhoods and regions of the community via the analysis of biological relatedness (biodistance), dietary variation and nutritional inference (stable isotopes) and health (growth and development, physiological stress).
anthropology.osu.edu
21
2014-2015 STUDENT AWARDS Undergraduate Majors Gwendolyn Donley, Department Best Undergraduate Award (for her second time) Emily Schueller, Department Best Undergraduate Writing Award Emily Schueller, Critical Language Scholarship Award Megan Jones, Critical Language Scholarship Award
Graduate Students Tim Gocha, Department Outstanding Dissertation Award Sharon Buck, Department Outstanding Master of Arts Thesis Award Lisa Beiswinger, Department Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award
Noah Dunham, Fulbright-Hays Grant Mary Beth Cole, Hizmet Essay Contest, Academic and International Affairs Office of the Rumi Forum, for her essay, “Transforming Altruism from Selfish into Sacrificial: How Reciprocity Inspires Service in the Hizmet Movement.” Aaron Comstock, American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Grant Jesse Goliath, Brian Padgett and Marissa Stewart, AAPA William L. Pollitzer Award Elizabeth Gardner, West African Research Association Predoctoral Fellowship Erin Kane, Noah Dunham, and Sarah Holt, Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research awards, Ohio State chapter of Sigma Xi Ana Casado, Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and Scholarship
Selin Nugent, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant; Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
Daniel Hughes Memorial Fund
Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
Supports travel to present papers or posters at national/international conferences:
Katherine Marklein, American Research Institute in Turkey Research Grant Lori Critcher, Ohio State Ray Travel Award Allison Clark, Turner/Cambridge University Press Poster Award, American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) Mary Beth Cole, AAPA Mildred Trotter Prize
Lori Critcher, Society for American Archaeology: (Podium Paper) “Potential Applications of the Bioarchaeology of Care Methodological Approach for Historic Institutionalized Populations.” Mark Anthony Arceño, American Association of Physical Anthropologists: (Poster) “Counting Calories, Counting Culture: Considerations for Diversity and Food-Based Dietary Guidelines.”
Christopher Brown, Ohio State Mershon Center Student Research Grant
Selin Nugent, Society for American Archaeology: (Poster) “The Walking Dead: Osteological and Isotopic Indicators of Mobility from Middle Bronze Age Commingled Human and Faunal Burials in Naxçivan, Azerbaijan.”
Natalia Zotova, Ohio State Mershon Center Research Grant
Andrew Weiland, Society for American Archaeology: (Podium Paper) “Practical
Zacharia Hubbell, AAPA Anatomy in Anthropology Award
22
and Social Storage among the Ohio Hopewell: Archaeobotanical and Ethnohistorical Evidence for Delayed Return of Pre-Maize Crops.” Nicole Hernandez, Society for American Archaeology: (Poster) “Archaeological Starch Preservation and Methodological Parameters: Where Does Qaraqara, Viti Levu, Fiji Fi.”
Larsen Research and Travel Award Tim Sefczek, “Examining the Morphological and Behavioral Paradox of Aye-Ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) in Maromizaha, Madagascar.” Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing, “Managing Mixed Messages: Societal Expectations of Motherhood and Maternal Stress during Pregnancy.” Chris Brown, “An Event-Centered Analysis of Citizenship in Kumasi Zongo” Aaron Comstock, “Soil Memory and Social Change: Determining the Tempo and Mode of Midden Development at the Turpin Site Using Micromorphological Analysis.”
Elizabeth A. Salt Anthropology Travel Award Brianne Herrera, “Assessing Population Affinity through the Effects of Evolutionary Forces and Environment on Cranial Morphology.” Selin Nugent, “Mobile Pastoralists and Mortuary Space: Political Entanglements in Complex Polities of the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan.” Andrew Weiland, “Land Management among the Ohio Hopewell: Training and Pilot Study in Methods of Phytolith Extraction and Analysis from Sediment Cores near Hopeton Earthwork, Chillicothe, Ohio, USA.”
SUPPORT
Give to Anthropology Dear Alumni and Friends: Please consider making a gift or donation to the Department of Anthropology. Each and every gift makes a tangible difference in the lives or our students and faculty. All gifts are tax deductible as permitted by law. Here are some examples of funds you may wish to consider. For more giving opportunities, visit our website at anthropology.osu.edu A gift to the SCIENCE AND CONSERVATION IN AFRICA’S RAINFORESTS FUND (313356) supports student’s travel expenses to Africa, anti-poaching patrols in selected rainforests, wildlife education materials and materials for programs in rural African schools. Sponsors exchange programs for African and Ohio State undergraduates.
A donation to the BOURGUIGNON LECTURE IN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY FUND (311079) will ensure that the only annual Anthropology department-sponsored event will continue on into the future.
A donation to the DANIEL HUGHES MEMORIAL FUND (20331) ensures that more of our best and brightest graduate students have the opportunity to travel to and present their research at professional conferences.
anthropology.osu.edu
23
Non-Profit Org. U. S. Postage PAID Columbus, OH Permit No. 711
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 4034 Smith Laboratory 174 West 18th Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210 anthropology.osu.edu
Putting an old total station to use in archaeological mapping at the 2,000 year old camp of Dhufari pastoralists in Oman.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNE SKIDMORE
Sieving archaeological remains at the 2,000 year old winter camp of Dhufari pastoralists in Oman.
Overhead archaeological photography at the 2,000 year old camp of Dhufari pastoralists in Oman. Anthropology Professor Joy McCorriston researches agricultural origins and development and paleoenvironmental conditions in the ancient Near East. She is the director of the RASA (Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia) Research Project and has directed archaeological research projects in Yemen and Oman. Currently, McCorriston leads the Ancient
24
Human Social Dynamics in Arabia project in Oman, building upon more than a decade of related archaeological and palaeoecological study in Hadramawt, Yemen. Her team has documented the earliest food producers (forager-pastoralists) in Arabia and investigated later pastoral specialization, sacrificial rituals and monuments in pastoral landscapes.