Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba is a second-year graduate student who received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship last year and is now preparing to conduct her pre-dissertation research. Nerli was awarded support to participate in the NSF diversity program, IDEAS, which she describes below.
I first became interested in anthropology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Riverside. A class with Dr. Robin Nelson introduced me to topics related to parent-child interactions. I had recently become a mother and I was extremely interested in those topics. Dr. Nelson’s class also assured me that even though biological anthropology had a dark history of institutional racism, new scholars are actively changing the discipline to be more inclusive. Hence, pursuing a degree in anthropology would allow me to ask challenging questions that would be relevant for marginalized communities. Dr. Nelson also gave me the opportunity to discuss with her research articles I would find outside of class. After reading the work of Dr. Fujita, I was attracted to the idea of studying breast milk components from a biocultural perspective.
I began working in Dr. Fujita’s Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research my first semester at MSU. I helped with literature search and writing for grants submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, both of which were successfully funded. This year my role expanded to include processing whole milk to milk serum, which is then used to run assays.
During my first year I was awarded the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship. This was thanks to the advice of multiple mentors, but mainly thanks to the endless help of Dr. Fujita, who read multiple drafts and offered generous feedback. I stated that I am interested in assessing changes of iron levels in human milk from short-term to long-term breastfeeding. Research suggests that iron-deficiency is a predictor of child stunting, which is associated with impaired health and cognitive development.
Having a supportive community is imperative; as Latina in a predominately White institution it
is easy for me to feel excluded. Therefore, I try my best to make sure that I am involved in programs that are committed to working with marginalized communities. I have been involved with the Michigan Indigenous/Chicanx Community Alliance (MICCA), where I help organize culturally relevant events that bring together students, staff, and community. By creating events such as the celebration for ‘Dia De Los Muertos’, we hope to give students a sense of belonging and form a community at MSU. I have also participated in conferences and workshops targeted at emboldening students from underrepresented backgrounds to apply to graduate schools. I am also a mentor for the MSU Indigenous Youth Empowerment Program, where we help young students with academics and cultural activities.
Fortunately, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Association of Physical Anthropology (AAPA) are also dedicated to increasing and supporting diversity within our discipline. This year, I have been selected to be part of a new program titled Increasing Diversity in Evolutionary Anthropology (IDEAS). This program aims to support underrepresented minority students who are committed to diversity with additional training and mentorship. The IDEAS Program provides students with a stipend to attend the 2017 AAPA meeting in New Orleans to attend a one-day workshop with mentoring groups. I will participate in discussions with other experts in the field of biological anthropology who are also interested in supporting diversity. I hope to learn to be a successful scholar while simultaneously advocating for underrepresented communities. I am also looking forward to conversations on how to become an ethical anthropologist within academia and the broader community. I am hopeful that the opportunity to learn from experts in the field of biological anthropology during my first years of graduate school will prepare me to reach my future goal of becoming a professor at a research institution.
Overall, I feel incredibly honored to have supportive mentors and in the future I plan to give back to the community that continuously supports me, and to the students of color who will come after me.
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Dr. Beth Drexler has been very research active recently, thanks to an American Institute for Indonesian Studies Luce Fellowship (2014-2016) and a Fulbright (2015-2017). Her current project explores human rights and memories of violence in the aftermath of authoritarian rule in Indonesia and Timor-Leste (known as East Timor during its occupation by Indonesia). Her next book, tentatively titled “Human Rights, Transitional Justice and History in Indonesia,” analyzes the process of producing and circulating knowledge about past human rights violations in and through public culture, film, fiction, art, courtrooms, documents, and efforts to write new histories. She’s conducted archival research, interviews, and participant observation in relation to the past, and is also working with organizations to explore new issues in the democratic present.
Art Crime at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research to campus for a week. During this time, she visited archaeology classes, met with faculty and students, gave a public lecture, and offered a graduate workshop. Over 90 people attended her lecture from campuses and cities across the state and over two dozen watched it streaming online. The fund provided the lecture with the foundational funding to secure co-sponsors for the event. Needless to say, it was an enormous success and we are excited to be in the planning stages for our next annual lecture.
Welcome to the Spring 2017 newsletter! As usual, there is a lot going on at this time of the year. I am happy to announce that we have hired Dr. Fredy Rodriguez as our new teaching professor. He will be an important link to new undergraduate majors, mentor teaching assistants, and bring a strong interest in cutting-edge pedagogies to our faculty. While serving as the interim undergraduate advisor this past year, Dr. Rodriguez initiated an Anthropology Showcase that will highlight work that undergraduates have produced in different anthropology classes and lab experiences. We will host our first showcase this coming fall, open to the public. This will be a great way to celebrate our students’ accomplishments and highlight Anthropology.
In 2011 Dr. Masako Fujita founded the Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research, where she and her students could conduct cutting edge anthropology research using biomarkers: measurable biochemical substances in bodies that can indicate various aspects of health. Recent grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation are funding two separate projects that together will address how variations in the beneficial contents of human milk, like antibodies and vitamins, relate to maternal health and the sex of the infant. There are substantial disparities in child mortality related to household income and sex of the infant, particularly in places in the world where gender discrimination and malnutrition are common. One contributing factor may be the level of protection that children receive from their mothers’ milk. One of the components now being measured in the lab is milk sIgA, an antibody that helps with immune protection for infants.
First Place “Stone Skipping in Matemwe“
Second Place “Fishing Boat on the Zambezi”
The goal of this study is to determine the plant diet of the populations occupying the Cloudman site over 2000 years until European entry into the Great Lakes, as well as analyzing how plant diet changed over time at this site. The Cloudman site on Michigan’s Drummond Island provides an excellent opportunity to explore this problem because of the large range of time during which the site was occupied. Ceramic rim sherds from the Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and Protohistoric periods contained large amounts of carbonized food residue. Samples of the carbonized residue are currently being chemically processed and analyzed using optical microscopy for diagnostic plant phytoliths and starches. Preliminary results of this analysis have determined that maize (corn, Zea mays sp. mays) starches and wild rice (Z. palustris) phytoliths were present in the residues adhered to several Laurel Middle Woodland ceramics potentially as old as 2000+ years.
Burials from the archaeological site of Caesarea Maritima, located in Israel, represent two groups that used the site during the Medieval Period: Christians and Islamic Bedouins. The Christian settlers lived in permanent agricultural communities, while Bedouins are nomadic and visited the site sporadically. This study sought to determine whether differences in the culture of the two groups found at Caesarea had an effect on who was buried there. I focused specifically on sex, using standard morphological features of skulls and pelves to determine the sex of the Caesarea individuals, who are currently curated in the MSU Bioarchaeology Laboratory. Using the skull, I looked at the skeletal features of the nuchal crest, mental eminence, supraorbital ridge, supraorbital margin, and mastoid process. When looking at the pelvis, the features to be considered were the greater sciatic notch, subpubic concavity, ventral arc, and medial aspect of the ischiopubic ramus. Based on archaeological indicators of burial treatment, individuals were placed into one of the following categories: Islamic, Christian or Unknown. For each group, I will present the relative frequencies of males, females, and unknown individuals. Discussion will focus on possible interpretations of the differences in the sex ratios found between groups.
It is a common assumption, both within and outside of medicine, that genetic characteristics of certain racial and ethnic groups increase their susceptibility to certain diseases. Although many studies have shown that genetics cannot be used to identify race or ethnicity, racial-ethnic identity is commonly used as a proxy for determining individual risk for diseases thought to have a strong genetic basis, such as diabetes. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and participant observation conducted with patients and clinicians at a diabetes and weight management clinic, we will explore how the idea of genetic susceptibility is applied to and understood by members of diverse racial-ethnic groups. We analyze how clinicians discuss and use race in identifying individuals at risk for diabetes, and how patients discuss their risk and responsibility for managing diabetes. In this paper, we will discuss how racial and ethnic identity may be used by clinicians to determine individual susceptibility to diabetes, and how those concepts may in turn affect the patient’s perception of responsibility in managing their disease. We will consider whether such racially based diagnosis could impact the overall health and wellness of these patients and patients like them.
The purpose of this research is to explore if burning of faunal remains can help clarify the depositional episodes of Structure 26 and the behaviors associated with them. Structure 26 was a burnt domestic structure near the center of the occupied area of Morton Village, an archaeological site located in central Illinois that was occupied during A.D. 13001400. After burning, the structure was abandoned and the resulting basin was filled in some way. Using standard zooarchaeological methods and procedures, identifiable bones and bone fragments were separated into unburned and burned categories, with burned bones defined as being more than 50% burned. Bones were also separated into mammal, fish, bird, turtle, and general vertebrata categories in order to see if different types of animals were present between excavation levels. This research will help to generate more knowledge about household behavior, trash disposal, and formational processes at Morton Village.
Although mainstream anthropological theory posits race as a social construct grafted over variation in geographic ancestry, certain scholars in physical anthropology argue that viewing race as a biological concept is still a valid way of analyzing human diversity. Strains of research in physical anthropology dating back to the early 20th century claim that humans can be divided typologically into distinct races, each with their own unique set of traits. However, these ideal racial types do not always correspond to the reality of individual ancestry and ignore the variation within racial groups. Using cluster analysis of skeletal remains of individuals with records of self-reported race, we will demonstrate that the ideal racial types offered by supporters of race as a biological concept lack efficacy in describing human variation.
Dental filing is a form of intentional cultural modification popular among the ancient Maya where teeth are shaped into different patterns. Modifications represent a social distinction such as ethnicity, or membership within a corporate group. Previous studies concluded that the modifications likely did not reflect social status, but there is debate about the meaning of variations in prevalence and form found between different groups. This study focused on the dental modifications in central Belize to identify the presence of distinct social groups. Modified teeth from a variety of mortuary contexts (rockshelters, caves, and surface sites) were classified using a popular typology developed by Javier Romero, and relatively frequencies were compared to see if the prevalence and specific modification type varied based upon burial location. Discussion of the results will include possible meanings of the differential patterns of prevalence of the modifications based upon knowledge of previous archaeological investigations of the area.
MSU’s Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) works to learn from MSU’s past by examining the archaeological record prior to development or changes in the landscape. Because of this mandate, CAP has excavated sites all over campus, finding artifacts that date to different times throughout the university’s history, as well as finding prehistoric Native American artifacts that predate the campus. CAP has divided MSU’s history into 4 time phases: Phase 1(1855-1870) – Beginnings, Phase 2 (1870-1900) – Foundation, Phase 3 (1900-1925) – Expansion, and Phase 4 (1925-1955) – Legacy. During the fall 2016 semester, I used a geographic information system (GIS) to visualize where on campus we have found artifacts from each of these four time phases. CAP uses a GIS to keep track of our excavations by plotting point data and polygons on an aerial image of campus. Point data represent shovel test pits we have completed and polygons represent excavation trenches. This poster looks specifically at the distribution of artifacts found on campus from each of the aforementioned time phases, and tries to draw some conclusions about campus development and change.