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Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Student researchers

Dig at 16th-century site explores impact of Inca’s empire-building

A 16th century estate in Peru will offer insight into how expanding empires subjugate people and appropriate their resources to promote a cause. Kylie Quave, an SMU graduate student in archaeology, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in southeastern Peru, the heart of the ancient Inca empire.

The 10-month fellowship begins in August 2009. During that time, Quave intends to excavate residences on the estate of 16th-century emperor Huayna Capac. She hopes to shed light on the Inca elites who lived there and supervised the estate’s daily operations, immigrant laborers and land, which had been appropriated by the nobility.

“The Incas transformed the rural landscape around their capital into immense sources of private wealth,” Quave says. “I hope to contribute to a global understanding of how empires use people and resources to promote their cause and how local communities respond to the imperial campaign.”

During her fellowship, Quave will collaborate with local archaeologists in the field and laboratory, along with local historians in regional and national archives.

With experience as an SMU teaching assistant and as a researcher and docent for the Dallas Museum of Art, she also plans to work with the local community to create educational programming for children and adults.

“We will bring together our diverse perspectives to understand how the Inca developed private investments in the rural heartland using a multiethnic labor force,” she says. “The community will be involved in the preservation of its past.”

Quave, a native of Brooksville, Florida, earned her Bachelor’s degree in art history in 2005 from Emory University. In SMU’s Dedman College, where Quave earned her Master’s degree in 2008, she has taken courses in archaeological method and theory, and previously has done fieldwork in Bolivia and Peru.

“Kylie’s dissertation will move beyond well-known Inca country palaces like Machu Picchu, developing valuable perspectives on how royal families developed and managed private resources that were key to the economic maintenance of the largest native civilization to develop in the Americas,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Quave’s dissertation adviser. “Her success is the latest for SMU’s doctoral program in anthropology, which recruits talented students and prepares them to make a professional impact early in their careers.”

Graduate student Amanda Aland was awarded a Fulbright in 2008, also to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

Quave is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Student Program. More than 40 SMU students have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan

Related links:
Kylie Quave
SMU Department of Anthropology
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences
Fulbright Program

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Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Researcher news

Evolution expert honored by Texas Freedom Network

Evolutionary theory expert Ron Wetherington, an SMU professor of anthropology and director of the University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, has received the 2009 Grassroots Hero Award from the Texas Freedom Network (TFN). Wetherington will accept the award April 16 at a ceremony in Dallas.

TFN presents the award each year to “a dedicated individual who exemplifies our work to stand up for science.”

ron-wetherington-tfn-200.jpgWetherington’s research interests include population genetics, human paleontology, science pedagogy and the historical archaeology of the U.S. Southwest.

Within SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in human evolution and forensic anthropology, as well as a noncredit required course for departmental graduate students, “Learning to Teach – Teaching to Learn.”

Wetherington is the author of “Understanding Human Evolution” (West Publishing, 1992) and four other books on anthropology and archaeology.

The TFN award citation points to Wetherington’s service during 2008-09 as an expert reviewer appointed by the Texas State Board of Education to evaluate new science curriculum standards.

“Whether working behind the scenes to patiently educate board members or in front of the cameras making a vocal case for science standards free from creationist ideology, Dr. Wetherington has worked tirelessly to ensure Texas students have a rigorous science curriculum that will prepare them for the 21st century,” TFN states.

Related links:
Texas Freedom Network award
TFN: Experts charge conflict of interest
Department of Anthropology
Center for Teaching Excellence
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences

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Culture, Society & Family Student researchers

Chimú pottery: Peru’s conquering Inca left mark

Amanda Aland, an SMU archaeology graduate student in Dedman College, and a team of students working under her direction in Peru, in 2008 unearthed evidence that the Incas left their mark after conquering the Chimú empire in the 15th century.

Now Aland has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student fellowship to conduct further archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

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In March 2009, Aland will return to a site on Peru’s northern coast, called Santa Rita B, where she spent several months last year excavating with the support of a National Science Foundation grant.

Slideshow: Aland’s Peru field work

“We found Chimú pottery and architecture that show Inca influences,” she says, in addition to centuries-old animal matter and human remains.

During her 10-month Fulbright fellowship, Aland hopes to learn the extent of the Incas’ influence on the Chimú people through further excavation and laboratory analysis of her findings.

“We want to piece together how the two empires interacted,” she says. “Did they go to war, or make peace living under new rules? We always can learn from the past.”

Aland, a Dallas native, earned a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of Southern California in 2004. At SMU, where she earned a Master’s degree in anthropology in 2006, she has studied archaeological theory, methods and grant writing while directing summer field research in Peru.

“Amanda is developing important new perspectives on the expansion of the Inca empire,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Aland’s dissertation adviser. “Peru’s north coast was an important provincial region, but one that is still not well understood by archaeologists. Her research stands to make a valuable contribution.”

Aland is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and one of 40 SMU students who have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan

Related links:
Amanda Aland
SMU Department of Anthropology
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences
Fulbright Program

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Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine

Tribe, urban poor supply insight into diabetes

Shawna, who is pregnant, calls diabetes a scourge. She is a member of the Akimel O’odham tribe in Arizona. “Diabetes is a sign that this life we’re living isn’t our life,” she says. “The one our ancestors had was way better.”

Before World War II, diabetes was rare among the members of the Akimel O’odhams, also known as the Pima. Today, however, Shawna is among the 12,000 tribal members on the Gila River Reservation in south central Arizona who have the highest recorded rate of diabetes of any population in the world.

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The decline of agriculture set the stage for the health crisis, says Carolyn Smith-Morris, assistant professor of anthropology in SMU’s Dedman College and author of the new book “Diabetes Among the Pima: Stories of Survival” (University of Arizona Press, 2006), the first ethno-graphic account of diabetes in a community. The dramatic change of diet and reduction in activity levels, as well as a genetic predisposition to the disease, led to the epidemic, which affects 50 percent of the adults on the reservation, says Smith-Morris.

“This epidemic is about a culture defining its path in an industrial world,” she says.

For more than 30 years, the National Institutes of Health and other government and private agencies have studied the disease in the isolated Akimel O’odham population. Much of what doctors know about diabetes, a chronic disease that develops when the pancreas stops producing insulin, is based on research with the Akimel O’odhams.

Beginning in 1996, Smith-Morris lived and worked part time on the Gila River Reservation, attending health care classes, visiting medical clinics and joining holiday parades, birthday parties and bingo nights.

“After two and half years, I was finally invited to my first family memorial, spent my first nights in Pima homes, and began in earnest to study life at Gila River,” she says.

As a medical anthropologist, she has helped health care workers at Gila River better understand the Akimel O’odham culture and its attitudes about diabetes. She has spent 10 years studying the causes and conditions of the epidemic. Smith-Morris found that diabetes care practices that work in other cultures have not been as successful with the Akimel O’odhams.

From information gathered through personal interviews, surveys and observation, Smith-Morris’ research suggests that the Akimel O’odham’s diabetes epidemic can be curbed through a community-based approach tailored to their culture.

More than 95 percent of the population is obese, a risk factor of diabetes, but promoting jogging hasn’t worked well in a desert with few paved roads, Smith-Morris says. And a health care system based at one hospital is not always effective on a 372,000-acre reservation, where most residents live in poverty and where many residents don’t have cars. Buses run regularly to carry people to medical appointments, but the Akimel O’odham culture does not live by the clock, she says. In fact, while living among the Akimel O’odham, Smith-Morris deliberately slowed her big-city gait to match their more leisurely pace. In addition, diet change is expensive for a population where most live in poverty.

Based in part on her research, the tribe has spent millions of dollars to develop community-based clinics staffed by field nurses and case managers who provide more home-based care.

Smith-Morris’ research also suggests that improving prenatal care for Akimel O’odham women like Shawna can help curb the diabetes epidemic. Nearly 12 percent of pregnant women on the Gila River Reservation are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, compared with the U.S. average of 4 percent. Women with gestational diabetes and their babies are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes and its complications of kidney failure, blindness and amputations later in life.

“The Pima want to avoid diabetes,” Smith-Morris says. “They want to learn, but not always through the traditional Western methods of written materials and lectures. This epidemic is about a culture defining its path in an industrial world.”

Smith-Morris’ current research focuses on diabetes prevention in the urban setting of South Dallas, where 33 percent of families live in poverty and 61 percent are unemployed. She developed the diabetes prevention component of a proposed $15 million project to create a wellness center in a South Dallas neighborhood. The Baylor Office of Health Equity and the Foundation for Community Empowerment are developing plans for the community-based program.

“My advocacy in these projects has impressed upon investors and planners that healthier lives need less clinic-based, biomedical intervention and more infrastructure support such as family-friendly neighborhoods and jobs that pay a living wage,” she says.

She sees positive signs of change as tribal officials are taking more control of their health care system and health education. The hospital has hired more field nurses who travel to patients’ homes. Pima women are encouraged to fry their traditional bread in oil instead of lard.

Non-Native American health care workers also have a new opportunity to better understand their patients’ culture. Bill Knowler, head of the NIH diabetes, digestive and kidney disorders research office in Phoenix now requires all Gila River Reservation NIH workers to read Smith-Morris’ new book. &#8212 Nancy Lowell George

Related links:
Carolyn Smith-Morris
Gila River Indian Community
“Diabetes Among the Pima: Stories of Survival”
SMU Department of Anthropology
Foundation for Community Empowerment
Baylor Office of Health Equity
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences

Categories
Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins

Taos: Modern archaeology goes beyond digging

SMU-Picture.gifFor hundreds of years the beauty and mystery of Taos, New Mexico, have lured thousands of settlers and visitors, from the ancestors of the Taos and Picuris Indians and Spanish settlers to skiing enthusiasts and artists.

Now students participating in SMU’s Archaeology Field School have answered the call of Taos in their own way. In summer 2007 they began work on the first phase of a research project that will bring together University faculty and students, Taos community leaders, private landowners, and local, state and federal government agencies.

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Sunday Eiselt

The multifaceted undertaking will involve surveying on foot and through satellite and Google Earth images, as well as archival research and excavation. The collaboration marks the first time archaeological exploration has been conducted on the Ranchos de Taos Plaza.

The project was made possible because the Field School, part of SMU’s Department of Anthropology in Dedman College, has established trust in this traditional community that in the past has regarded such efforts with suspicion.

“Modern archaeology involves a lot of soft skills, including cultural sensitivity and the ability to interact respectfully with communities,” says Sunday Eiselt, visiting assistant professor of anthropology and acting director of SMU’s Archaeology Field School. “You can’t just go in, put holes in the ground and leave.”

The Field School’s first project in the Plaza began last year as a volunteer effort. Taos native Lupita Tafoya’s adobe house has been in her family for 11 generations, and the original structure dates to about 1800. Field School students offered their labor to lower Tafoya’s packed-earth floor to create a step-down living room area. In the process they found a midden, or kitchen garbage area, dating from the early 1800s.

Digging the midden
The SMU students’ 2007 project focused on investigating the midden, as well as deposits in Tafoya’s dining room and front yard.

A total of 14 SMU students, 12 undergraduates and two graduate assistants, joined forces this year with two new high school graduates from Taos Pueblo.

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Pipad Krajaejun, Silpakorn U., Bangkok, and Allison McCabe, Taos Pueblo, excavate in Tafoya’s house.

They participated with the help of scholarships from a fund established by former Texas Governor Bill Clements and his wife, former Texas First Lady Rita Clements.

“It’s a big house with several later additions, so the students will recreate the construction history of the house as well,” Eiselt says.

At one time, archaeological exploration of historic cities was confined largely to abandoned areas that provided space for open-area excavation. That changed after World War II, when bomb craters left areas of large, old cities such as London and Warsaw open for investigation.

Researchers developed new techniques to cope with the logistical difficulties of doing archaeological digs in places where people lived and worked. As historical archaeology evolved, new skills were needed to address the often-divergent needs of individual communities.

Taos is an especially complex challenge, says Eiselt, who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and has been conducting archaeological research in Northern New Mexico since 1998.

A remote and historically close-knit community, the area has experienced a rapid influx of outside investment in recent years, from tourists drawn to its natural beauty and culture to investors seeking to capitalize on them. About 180,000 visitors a year converge on the town, which has a permanent population of just over 5,000. Tourism accounts for nearly 85 percent of an economy that also consistently maintains a double-digit unemployment rate and a cost of living nearly 14 percent higher than the U.S. average, according to the Taos Economic Report and other indicators.

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Mike Sandoval, Taos Pueblo

Impact of modernization
The tension between tradition and modernization in the community of Taos, between preservation and gentrification, is palpable, Eiselt says.

“Many former households just off the Ranchos de Taos Plaza are in ruins,” she says. “And with Plaza lots going for $400,000 each, the property taxes have created a situation in which residents whose families have lived there for generations cannot afford to do so now.”

The collaboration between the SMU Field School and the Taos community is creating an oasis of cooperation in the midst of this upheaval, Eiselt adds.

“It’s also a model of how to accomplish goals that serve the people and their interests, as well as our scientific and educational objectives,” she says.

As part of that model, each Archaeology Field School project begins with a volunteer component and follows the example set at Tafoya’s home. This year, the Field School students also helped with the annual cleaning and re-mudding (enjara) of the much-photographed San Francisco de Asis church, an adobe landmark whose earliest construction dates to 1772.

The Taos Plaza community is setting guidelines and providing context for the archaeologists’ work, Eiselt says.

“Many of the people who live here are accomplished scholars of the area’s history in their own right,” she says. “Interacting with them is another great learning opportunity.”

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Leslie Reeder, SMU Ph.D. candidate,
making pottery in La Madera, 2007.

Students measure the layers of flooring in Tafoya’s dining room to reconstruct the history of the house.

For example, it was Lupita Tafoya who told Eiselt that the social universe of Taos Plaza was too small for the proposed study, Eiselt says.

“She let us know that we needed to explore not only the Plaza, but all of San Francisco de Asis parish. So much of the community’s activity centers on that church; if we want to understand what we find, we need to understand that larger context,” she says.

As a result of that conversation, Eiselt has created a multiyear research plan. The plan’s three components, the oral history, archival work and general archaeology, will be carried out in consultation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the University of New Mexico’s Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, the Taos Archaeological Society and residents and archaeologists from the area.

One of the study’s major features is its emphasis on mapping rather than digging.

“Excavation, which is intrusive and destructive, will be avoided as much as possible, with most activities focusing on non-intrusive pedestrian or surface survey, including remote sensing, aerial photography and historic maps,” Eiselt wrote in her introduction to the research plan.

The study’s other highlight, a focus on community interaction, also helps the Archaeology Field School achieve one of its primary educational goals: to teach how to work as partners in places like Taos.

“We’re teaching students not to go in with an attitude of ‘Here’s your past. We know because we’re scientists,'” Eiselt says. “This work is about the people, not the objects.” — Kathleen Tibbetts

Related links:
Sunday Eiselt and her research
Sunday Eiselt brief bio
SMU Archaeology Field School
SMU-in-Taos
SMU Department of Anthropology
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences