Archaeology

• Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Long Term Human Response
• Tracing Prehistoric Socal Interaction
• Climatic Change and Human Response

Archaeometry

• Development of Techniques to Reconstruct Prehistoric Migrations

Children's Research Initiative

• Database on Child Development

Cultural Anthropology

• West African Art Trading in the US
• Fertility Control in China
• Vocational Education in the Metalworking Industries

Developmental and Learning Sciences

• Children, Neighborhoods, and Mobility

Geography and Regional Science

• Using GIS to Determine and Understand Neighborhood Needs
• Predicting Avalanches

Physical Anthropology

• Locomotion in Primates and Opossums
• Is Crawling Universal?

Social Psychology

• Advanced Training Institutes in Social Psychology
• Attitudinal Antecedents of War

Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Long Term Human Response

9907019
Madonna Moss
University of Oregon Eugene
Archaeology Program

As the focus of his doctoral dissertation research, Mr. Robert Losey conducted an archaeological examination of the effect of a large earthquake and tsunami (tidal wave) which struck the northern Oregon Coast in AD 1700. Archaeological data from the Northwest Coast of the US, as well as other parts of the world, provide an excellent source of information for understanding human and environmental response to specific major impacts because they allow construction of a diachronic picture with establishment of a pre-event baseline as well as reconstruction of both immediate and long term post event response. Coastal earthquakes and tsunamis have not only dramatic short term effects – destruction of property and human life – but pervasive longer term impact as well, in the form of basic environmental change which results from changes in relative sea level. Faunal, floral, and geological information recovered in the process of excavation often permit reconstruction of sequential environments. Mr. Losey’s research suggests that Native American communities on the Oregon Coast were adversely affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Portions of some communities appear to have been abandoned, perhaps as a result of being flooded by tsunami waves or due to detrimental impacts of the event on the local environment. However, there is evidence that many people survived the event and continued to inhabit the same locations. While some local estuarine changes were noted, it appears that subsistence practices remained essentially unchanged. This indicates, in this case at least, the highly resilient nature of traditional human subsistence practices and the ability of societies to survive infrequent, unpredictable catastrophic events.

Tracing Prehistoric Socal Interaction

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Gil Stein
Northwestern University
Archaeology Program

Archaeologists have come to realize that individual sites cannot be studied in isolation but rather must be understood in a broader regional social context. To gain insight into the rise of complex entities such as early states, this approach is essential since the development and control of long distance exchange routes provided the basis for the accumulation of political power and wealth. To collect relevant information it is necessary to determine accurately the points of origin of specific products and often this can be extremely difficult to do. One of the earliest civilizations arose in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys and prehistorians have postulated that it’s influence extended as far as highland Turkey. In fact it has been speculated that development of social complexity in Turkey – and its subsequent collapse - relates to the emergence of a long distance trade network. However, because of the rarity of Mesopotamian artifacts in Turkish sites, it has been difficult to evaluate this hypothesis. Under the direction of Dr. Gil Stein, Mr. Mark Schwartz focused his doctoral dissertation research on this question. He noted that bitumen (natural petroleum) artifacts occurred in natural deposits across much of the Near East, hypothesized that individual deposits might be chemically distinct, and concluded that if such archaeologically recovered artifacts could be matched with source, they could serve to reconstruct trade patterns. Working with Dr. David Hollander at the University of South Florida, he developed area specific bitumen signatures based on stable carbon and stable hydrogen isotope mass ratios and was able to trace changing trade relationships between Mesopotamian heartland and Turkish periphery over time.

Equally important, however, Mr. Schwartz and Dr. Hollander have developed a technique of widespread applicability. They employed a High Temperature Combustion Elemental Analyzer, a relatively new instrument, to carry out the hydrogen isotope analyses and in the process solved many of the practical problems, associated with memory effects, to produce accurate readings. The resultant lab manual they are developing will contribute to geochemistry as well as archaeology.

Climatic Change and Human Response

9727355
Tony Wilkinson
University of Chicago
Archaeology Program

Because significant numbers of people who follow traditional lifestyles live in semi-arid regions subject to highly variable and unpredictable rainfall; famine, death and population dislocation are recurrent threats. Scientists therefore wish to understand relationships between climatic change at varying time scales, population density, subsistence practices, and human resiliency. Because archaeology can track these variables over long periods of time - often measured in millennia - it has substantial insights to offer. Dr. Tony Wilkinson and his colleagues are pursuing long term research in semi-arid regions in Yemen on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. They have discovered that substantial populations were obtained prehistorically and that the region constituted a locus for the development of complex societies during the 4th through 2nd millennia BC. During much of this period, the area was somewhat wetter than today but it is significant to note that populations weathered the subsequent return to drier conditions. Through incorporation of geological members, the team has succeeded in reconstructing soil erosion patterns and noted while runoff related degradation occurred early in this process, groups were able to overcome this based on the development of terrace agriculture which facilitated soil retention. Thus no correlation was noted between population density and environmental degredation. Through modification of the landscape, using traditional techniques, it was possible to reach significant population densities and maintain them over a sustained period of time.

Development of Techniques to Reconstruct Prehistoric Migrations

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T. Douglas Price
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Archaeometry Program

Many processes can lead to culture change and it is often difficult for archaeologists to select among plausible alternatives. For example evidence from many sites demonstrates that the Near East served as the cradle for the domestication of many plants and animals and that early settled village life based on agriculture and herding developed independently in this region. Radiocarbon dates indicate that it spread westward from there across Europe. While these facts are well established, understanding of the processes which underlie this pattern are not. Some researchers believe that groups of individuals moved carrying their new lifeway with them while others scientists postulate that populations were relatively immobile and that successive geographically contiguous groups adopted this new way of life. Both alternatives are possible and it is extremely difficult, on the basis of archaeological evidence, to choose between them. For many years Dr. Douglas Price and his colleagues have worked to develop chemical techniques which can be applied to bone and teeth and which allow individuals, over the course of their life, to be matched with specific regions on the landscape. The fact that bedrock geology often varies regionally in chemical composition, that such distinct chemical fingerprints are incorporated into plants growing on overlying soil, that they are transmitted to animal and human consumers and finally that this signal is preserved in multiple ways in human bone and tooth, make such studies possible. Dr. Price’s laboratory has continued to develop these methods employing both isotopic and trace element analyses for the purpose.

Database on Child Development

0126475
Martha Cox
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Children's Research Initiative

A data set on children’s early development within the context of their families and communities is being constructed by The North Carolina Child Development Research Collaborative. This partnership among U of NC at Chapel Hill, Duke, U of NC at Greensboro, and North Carolina State University is coming together around the Durham Child Health and Human Development Study to track children from 3 months through 3 years with a primary focus on the child’s emotional regulation abilities and communication abilities. The collaborating working groups focus on (a) biological processes, (b) quantitative analyses, (c)temperament and emotion regulation, (d) family and intergenerational relations, (e) memory language and literacy, and (f) child care, community and culture. The strengths of this data set derive from its multidisciplinary nature, the comprehensiveness of the assessments, and the inclusion of African American and European American families.

West African Art Trading in the US

9972928
Paul Stoller
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Cultural Anthropology Program

“Globalization” is a term much in the news, as corporations extend their markets across the world and new information technologies allow migrants to maintain active social lives in their old as well as new countries. Anthropologists label this ability of a person to live a dual social life as “transnationalism”. Anthropologist Paul Stoller studied this process among African art traders. If you happen to be wandering through the street markets of New York City, Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, or Santa Fe, New Mexico, you may well see a West African trader offering African Art from a sidewalk table. This increasingly common scene in urban America underscores some fundamental changes in American economic and social life.

This research project was designed to document one aspect of new social and economic diversification in the US: the emergence of new community forms, including a community of West African Art traders. As is the case among West African Art traders, many of these communities have members who are linked not through geographic proximity, as was traditionally the case, but through shared economic interests, ethnicity and religion. This project studied one such community -- West African art traders in North America.

The research suggests that the number of West African art traders who come to North American has increased substantially over the past three years. The vast majority of these traders are mobile merchants. They come to North America for short periods of time, usually three to four months and travel from trade show to trade show, city to city in search of expanding sales and client lists. When they deplete their inventories of African art, they return to Africa to pursue other interests (real estate, transport, precious gems) or to find and ship more African art to North America. Due to the presence of mobile merchants, the communities they construct are impermanent, but they share many social characteristics of the long-distance trading cartels of West Africa. In the 21st century, the traders employ new communications technologies to facilitate contemporary long-distance trade and to reinforce long-standing social rights and obligations. Although this community of traders is ever-shifting, Islam provides them a necessary social cohesion. The West African community of art traders is one of many ephemeral communities of immigrants that have emerged in North America during the past 10 years. This and other descriptions and analyses provides direct evidence of an important -- and often submerged -- set of social realities in contemporary American life.

Fertility Control in China

0003918
Stevan Harrell
University of Washington
Cultural Anthropology Program

Until the 1970s, weaving was an important subsistence activity that rural women in southern China were engaged in. This research in Xiaoshan reveals that women not only used the loom (as shown in the picture) for weaving, but also used it to carry out voluntary abortions before modern birth control facilities had become widely available. The working method-- the pregnant woman repeatedly battering the lower abdomen (uterus) with the handle while weaving, may seem brutal, yet it helped women realize the necessity of voluntary fertility control without informing the husband. The discovery of the women’s use of the loom for deliberate abortion sheds light on the debate over the roles of rational decision-making on historical demographic transition in China. It reveals that deliberate fertility control was a reality among some subgroups of the poor rural population in Xiaoshan. Women’s usage of the loom for abortion also touches on issues of gender. It shows that family fertility was not uniformly regulated by the collective good of the male-headed family. Rather, women themselves often had great individual power in manipulating and making rational decisions in fertility control.

Vocational Education in the Metalworking Industries

9996220
Garry Chick
Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
Cultural Anthropology Program

The machining and tool & die industries are significant contributors to the American economy in terms of providing jobs and creating value. Like nearly all other industries, the viability and competitiveness of machine shops and tool & die shops depend, in part, on hiring and retaining skilled employees. In this study, anthropologist Garry Chick examined, compared, and evaluated the ways in which machinists and toolmakers are trained in western Pennsylvania, an area with one of the highest concentrations of small- and medium-sized machine and tool & die shops in the world.

Chick was interested in how potential employers saw the effectiveness of high school vocational training in the metalworking trades. The most striking contrasts between potential employers and potential employees were apparent in terms of what individuals in each group felt that machinists and toolmakers must know in order to succeed on the job. Students in high school vocational programs in machine-tool technology did not believe that topics such as trigonometry, algebra, oral communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and computer programming would be particular important to them in their occupational futures while skills in these areas were precisely what potential employers regarded most highly. On the other hand, students felt that “machine-tool technology,” basically learning to run machines, was extremely important while company owners felt that they could teach new employees how to run machines but they could not teach algebra, trigonometry, and problem solving skills.

The fact that students who attend vocational high school programs are often there because they are unsuccessful at or uninterested in academic classes is a major human resource problem in the machining and tooling industries. Similarly, the mismatch between what students think that they need to know in order to be successful and what employers want them to know is a serious problem in vocational education for the metal working industries.

Children, Neighborhoods, and Mobility

0091854
Jeffrey Kling
National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
Developmental and Learning Sciences Program

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) is a national demonstration program operated by the U.S. Deptpartment of Housing and Urban Development since 1994. Limited income families living in public housing in five large cities were randomly assigned to receive rental certificates to move to low poverty areas, to receive regular Section 8 rental certificates, or to continue to receive their current project-based assistance. This situation offers the first research opportunity to measure definitively and understand the impacts of a change in neighborhood on the social well-being of low-income public housing families. Over the last year, NSF support allowed the development and fielding of a survey of adults, youth, and children to examine impact. High response rates for this survey (89% for adults, 87% for children) increase confidence in the findings. The investigators learned ways to collect data from low-income adults and children through Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI). Results of the NSF funding include the new knowledge about approaches to surveys and tracking with this population, the survey instrument itself, and the results from the analyses, which will emerge over the next year.

Using GIS to Determine and Understand Neighborhood Needs

0237980
Sarah Elwood
DePaul University
Geography and Regional Science Program

The role of community-based organizations in the governance of U.S. cities has changed in recent decades. These changes have been most evident in their growing responsibilities for planning, problem solving, and service delivery tasks that directly affect neighborhood space and structures. In concert with these changes, these groups increasingly have used geographic information system (GIS) technology for mapping, analyzing, and demonstrating neighborhood needs and conditions. With support from a new Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) award, DePaul University geographer Sarah Elwood is exploring geographic information science, knowledge production, and community-based organizations in urban governance. This project will examine the priorities, strategies, and goals for urban change and neighborhood revitalization that community-based organizations can advance through effective use of geographic information systems. It should develop important urban geographic knowledge about the changing activities of grassroots citizen organizations in urban governance processes that shape neighborhood needs and conditions by showing how their role and power in this context is affected by use of GIS and other computer mapping and analysis technologies.

Predicting Avalanches

0240310
Katherine Hansen
Montana State University
Geography and Regional Science Program

Snow avalanches are a significant hazard in the mountainous environments of the western United States and in alpine regions around the world. Knowledge of spatial variations in snow stability and snowpack properties is critical for understanding and predicting snow avalanches. Although previous research has investigated spatial variability on individual slopes, most studies have simply looked at a single snapshot in time of an extremely dynamic system. Through a new award to Montana State University, geographers Kathy Hansen and Karl Birkeland aim to help fill this gap in fundamental knowledge by measuring and analyzing how the spatial variability of snowpack properties and snow stability vary through time. Preliminary work on this topic suggests that snow stability on a given slope may diverge or become more spatially variable over time as the snowpack stabilizes in the absence of external influences. If a slope is perturbed to the edge of instability, however, the snow stability may converge or become more spatially uniform. This study will utilize a new snow stability test and a sensitive instrument co-developed by the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research and the U.S. Army Cold Regions Engineering Laboratory to measure temporal changes in snow stability. Adjacent 900-square meter plots will be sampled through time at a variety of field sites. Data analyses will focus on how well snow stability measured in snowpits represents the mean of their respective plot and how spatial patterns of weak layer thickness, strength, and microstructure change through time. The proposed research will address a pressing question for snow avalanche research and prediction, and it will offer new and important information for scientists about how the snowpack evolves and how avalanches release.

Locomotion in Primates and Opossums

9904401
Daniel Schmitt
Duke University
Physical Anthropology Program

This team’s research is primarily concerned with the origins and evolution of primate locomotion. Researchers have identified a suite of locomotor features that distinguish primates from most other mammals (Fig. 1a, b). The unusual features of primate quadrupedal walking include: (1) a footfall pattern, called diagonal-sequence, in which the footfall of a hindfoot is followed by the diagonally opposite forefoot, (2) an humerus that reaches far forward at the time of contact with the ground (protracted beyond 90° relative to horizontal body axis), and (3) more weight (as measured by vertical force applied to the ground) placed on the hindlimbs compared to the forelimbs.

These features are thought to have evolved in the very first primates to facilitate movement and foraging behavior on thin, flexible branches. Schmitt and Lemelin hypothesized that if this is the case, then nonprimate mammals inhabiting similar, “fine-branch” niches should show locomotor similarities with primates. To this end, they compared the locomotor mechanics of two arboreal mammals committed to “fine-branch” niches: the woolly opossum and the fat-tailed dwarf lemur.

They found a remarkable degree of convergence between the woolly opossum and primates. The woolly opossum is the only known nonprimate mammal that shows all three locomotor features unique to primates. These results suggest that the first primates were probably cautious arboreal quadrupeds, something like a woolly opossum. Their data also support the theory that quadrupedal locomotion on thin, flexible branches may have set the stage for the evolution of other primate locomotor modes, including suspensory locomotion and bipedalism. Further information can be found in Schmitt, D. and Lemelin, P. (2002) The Origins of Primate Locomotion: Gait Mechanics of the Woolly Opossum. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 118: 231–238.

This project involved a strong collaboration with the Duke University Primate Center (DUPC). The DUPC is a unique research, educational, and conservation facility that is part of Duke University, and serves the Durham community as well. The DUPC provided animals for this project and invaluable expertise and help during the development phases of this project and during data collection.

Is Crawling Universal?

9896324
David Tracer
University of Colorado at Denver
Physical Anthropology Program

Crawling is widely assumed to be a necessary prerequisite to a range of later developmental milestones including eye-hand coordination, attainment of general motor skills, and social maturation. This research challenges the notion that crawling is ubiquitous in humans and is a necessary prerequisite to proper later development. Our analyses show that Au children aged 12 months and younger are carried in an upright posture by caretakers approximately 85% of the time. When on the ground, children are commonly put in an upright or supine position, but virtually never in prone. These patterns of infant handling appear to be adaptive, decreasing oral-to-ground contact and parasite transmission among Au infants. These patterns of infant handling also canalize the course of their later development and as a result: (1) Au children tend to fail Bayley Motor Scales items conducted in horizontal postures, but pass items conducted in vertical, and (2) Au children do not crawl prior to walking but instead universally pass through an upright “scoot” phase. These results demonstrate that crawling is not a universal developmental stage among humans, and that early locomotor development is profoundly conditioned by infant handling behaviors.

Advanced Training Institutes in Social Psychology

0129453
Michael Birnbaum
California State University-Fullerton Foundation
Social Psychology Program

0129717
James Blascovich
University of California-Santa Barbara
Social Psychology Program

0220977
David Kenny
University of Connecticut
Social Psychology Program

Advanced Training Institutes in Social Psychology provide quality training in new methodologies, statistical procedures, and other tools to support and enhance social psychological research. NSF funding helps to establish training institutes where researchers can spend time acquiring basic skills and knowledge.

One institute provides training in the use and development of immersive virtual environment technology (IVET). Another institute focuses on the use of internet technology to conduct social and behavioral science research. A third institute offers instruction in newly developed statistical methods for understanding social relations.

Attitudinal Antecedents of War

0307567
Kevin Carlsmith
University of Virginia Main Campus
Social Psychology Program

This project examines the antecedents of public support for U.S. military incursions into foreign states. In particular, it examines the factors that motivate U.S. citizens to support the proposed invasion of Iraq through methodologies developed in social psychology. The current international situation presents a unique yet perishable opportunity to gather empirical data that address this topic. A growing body of evidence suggests that individuals make punishment decisions on the basis of just deserts rather than utilitarian justifications such as deterrence or incapacitation. This project examines whether citizens -- contacted through a nationally representative survey -- respond to potential military action against sovereign states in a similar manner.

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