This dissertation examines an instance of population movement from northeastern Arizona to the Safford and Aravaipa valleys of southeastern Arizona in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in order to understand the scale at which these migrations occurred, as well as the effect these migrations had on the expression of identity of both migrant and indigenous groups. Previous research indicated that at least one group of migrants from the Kayenta and Tusayan areas of northeastern Arizona arrived in the Safford Valley in the last decades of the thirteenth century. The research presented here found that several other parties of puebloan migrants arrived in both suprahousehold level and household level groups during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, first settling independently of local populations, and then intermingling with local populations at mixed settlements. Initially, as migrant and indigenous populations remained segregated from each other, their pre-migration identities were maintained, and each group remained distinct. However, as these populations began to live together at mixed settlements, they renegotiated their identities in order to deal with the day-to-day realities of living with groups of people with whom they had no previous experience. Through this process, migrant and indigenous groups formed a new identity that incorporated elements of the pre-migration identities of both groups. With these results, a model of the effects of migration on identity was created and refined to allow the social consequences of migration to be better understood.

What was the spatial and social organization of ancient Maya cities, and how were diverse populations socially and politically integrated? This dissertation explores these questions by investigating the formation of local communities around minor temples in outlying areas of Ceibal, Guatemala. Many researchers have suggested that minor temples were important integrative hubs in lowland Maya settlements. I further propose that they were the physical and ideological centers of different local communities, akin to neighborhoods, throughout Ceibal. I define a local community as a supra-household social group comprised of members who share common histories and ties to particular places. Communities may be constituted through co-residence, similar modes of living, and common beliefs and practices, which foster shared identities and differentiate one group from others. At the same time, many communities can arise within—and in turn reinforce—a greater vision of cohesion across a larger society. To assess the relationships between minor temples and the socio-spatial formation of local communities, I investigate: 1) whether different segments of the population settled around each temple, creating discrete residential zones around the city; 2) whether there was a communal source of water within each zone, which would have been an important location for daily interactions and a crucial source of potable water; and 3) if there were variations in material culture across different residential zones, which could relate to social differences. A diachronic evaluation of multiple lines of evidence enables me to explore how these groups formed and changed through time. Data for this study was collected through systematic excavations of five minor temples, nearby residents, and potential aguadas (manmade reservoirs) associated with temples across Ceibal. The results of my analysis suggest that different groups of people constructed their own temple as they moved into outlying areas of the site throughout the Late and Terminal Preclassic periods (ca. 350 BC-AD 175). I found evidence that people routinely gathered at the temples for ceremonies, which may have helped foster group identities. The geospatial analyses of settlement data I performed in ArcGIS and my comparisons of pottery assemblages from different temple groups strongly suggest that local communities formed as discrete socio-spatial units around specific temples. Analysis of pollen in soils collected from the aguadas revealed that these features held water seasonally, and that maize was cultivated nearby. Together, my research suggests that local communities were established through ritual practices carried out at the temples, co-residence, management of communal sources of water, and potentially collective participation in agricultural production. Community patterns may have changed in later times, however, after many of the temples were ritually terminated around sometime between AD 175 and AD 300. In summary, local communities at Ceibal were somewhat autonomous: they controlled their own local resources, carried out their own building programs, and performed many of their own religious ceremonies. Nevertheless, the social relations undertaken at this intermediate level of society were integral to shaping, maintaining and changing the larger sociopolitical order through time.

This dissertation examines the meanings, mechanisms and logic of gendered political negotiations between Nixtayolero theater Collective and the Sandinista state in Nicaragua between 1979-90. I explore the drafting of the cultural policy of the FSLN as a party in government and the way Nixtayolero members worked that policy through over time; i.e., the way they envisioned the state/revolution and constructed their own identities in relation to and against it. For this I focus on the inter-connectedness of dominant tropes in Nicaraguan leftist political culture: the popular, vanguardism and production. I analyze this inter-connectedness asking how and why, under the pressure of U. S. sponsored aggression, the construction of the external enemy involved the creation of the enemy within in the process of building national unity. Focusing on the inter-connectedness of these three tropes also guided my examination of the contradictions and conflicts of authority within the group itself. Out of these contradictions and conflicts concerning authority came emergent cultures; i.e., local-specific counter-narratives and cultural praxes that defied the official "popular culture" of the state. In my analysis, the gendering effects of power techniques such as pastoral power became central. This notion allowed me to look at the gendered premises of Sandinista state formation (production associated with work outside the home as reason, patriarchal respect mores and honor-shame codes in the construction of masculinity) as generative logics affecting people's experience of revolution. Using this notion of power I was able to dispel the privileged knowledge position of the leaders of the party in government. As the state was forced to militarize there was a shift in notions of leadership related to production (increase in production for the war effort) and the popular. This shift involved going from communion with the people, consciousness raising and democratization of culture, towards a policy of professionalism and exclusive vanguard representation based on power as knowledge. This privileged knowledge position allowed guidance of consciousness and affirmed modernization. My thesis thus explores (a) the masculinization of nationalism and of revolutionary authority accompanied by (b) a simultaneous process of marginalization of difference and feminization of marginality, and (c) the eventual and also simultaneous subversion and reproduction of this gender order by Nixtayolero members in the latter half of Sandinista rule. Waging war against the external enemy thus became a matter of masculine honor, strength and virility. Internal ideological differences and conflict, on the other hand, involved feminization of the enemy within.

The relationships among obesity, body fat distribution, and insulin and glucose levels (fasting and 30-minute post prandial) were examined in Zuni Indian adolescents. Males showed a significantly higher mean lean body mass (LBM), mean waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and mean waist circumference, but a significantly lower mean percent body fat and 30-minute insulin level than did females. Males followed a pattern of abdominal fat distribution while the female pattern was more gluteo-femoral. Increasing mean fasting insulin levels were significantly related to increasing mean fasting glucose levels in both males and females, indicating the presence of insulin resistance in these adolescents. While males and females exhibited a similar correlation between insulin and glucose, females secreted more insulin in response to a glucose load. This study suggests that waist circumference is a preferred method of assessing risk for hyperinsulinemia and possibly insulin resistance than WHR in these adolescents.

Cosmology -- the theory, origin, and structure of the universe -- underlies and informs thought and human action and manifests in people's material culture. However, the theoretical and methodological tools needed to understand cosmological change over archaeological time scales remains underdeveloped. This dissertation addresses the history of the Pueblo people of the American Southwest, specifically the Tewa of the northern Rio Grande region in modern New Mexico, to identify and explain cosmological change in the context of dramatic social and residential transformation.The Great Drought and resulting abandonment of much of the northern Southwest in the late-1200s acted as a catalyst for a complex reorganization of the Pueblo world as displaced migrant groups interacted with existing communities, including people of the Rio Grande region. I argue that this period of immigration, reorganization, and subsequent population coalescence of disparate people, with different world views and histories, resulted in a unique construction of the cosmos and, eventually, the Tewa identity and history that the Spanish encountered in the late 1500s. The resulting Tewa cosmology recorded in twentieth century ethnography, while heavily influenced by histories of conquest and colonization, is therefore a palimpsest of the memories, identities, and histories of disparate peoples brought together by the events of migration and coalescence.Using data collected from architectural mapping, pottery analysis, ceramic compositional analysis, and dendrochronology, I infer a history of settlement and interaction between and within possibly disparate ancestral Tewa groups in the northern Rio Grande region. I then interpret ritual landscape data with respect to cosmological change, focusing on natural and cultural (shrines and rock art) features immediately adjacent to the village.I argue that new cosmologies were developed through negotiation of worldview between disparate peoples displaced by the mass-depopulation of the northern Southwest. The ethnographic Tewa cosmology has roots in multiple traditions but is innovative and unique in the context of the larger Pueblo world. However, because the majority of the Pueblo world underwent similar residential, social, ritual, and cosmological transformation from A.D. 1275-1600, a Tewa case study has broad implications for the remainder of the Pueblo Southwest.

This report documents excavations at the Elsinore site (CA-RIV-2798/H) which is located at the mouth of the outlet channel on the northeast side of Lake Elsinore, Riverside County, California. Lake Elsinore is one of the only natural lakes in southern California, and is located at the eastern base of the Peninsular Range at the terminus of the San Jacinto River. Following the methodological approach of behavioral archaeology, this report explains how changes in lake level affected the lives of the people that lived on its shores. Identifying changes in site structure in relationship to the natural environment provides one of the keys to the interpretation of the lacustrine adaptations that took place over the past 8,000 years. One of the most important aspects of the site is that it holds cultural remains representing the entire prehistory of the region in a stratified context. A total of 138.45 m3 of fill was excavated from 27 units in deposits nearly three meters deep. Excavations revealed a large flaked stone assemblage including bifaces, unifaces, projectile points, flake tools, and 19 crescents; a variety of ground stone artifacts are present as well. Distributional covariation of artifact and ecofact classes serves as the basis for intrasite comparisons and the overall interpretation of the site. The interpretation addresses issues such as site function, activity areas, and the effect of differing lake levels on the inhabitants. The presence of a stable lake during a time of climatic instability was probably the main factor that drew people to its shores. Initially these people were organized as small bands that moved throughout the area as resources became available in different environmental zones. However, during the early to middle Holocene transition we see a change in settlement structure associated with a social organizational shift to a family based society. Although investigations revealed a late Holocene occupation at the site, the structure of the site at this time is fundamentally different from the earlier periods and failed to produce data necessary to allow for comparable discussion of social change during the late Holocene.

The paper outlines the historical development of Kenyan land tenure reform in relation to a group of smallholders in Maragoli. The transformation of common property into private property has not completely destroyed the authority of local institutions in matters of land tenure and land use. Customary social obligations have continued to play a role in the decision-making process of smallholders in Maragoli. The government in Kenya continues to be uninformed by the socioeconomic realities that affect smallholders. Agrarian law and administration should be built on the kinds of agricultural systems that are being practiced by the majority of the population in Kenya.

The topic of resuscitative decision making for hospitalized patients has generated numerous discussions among clinicians and ethicists. Traditionally, their attention has focused on normative standards, describing how decisions should be made, rather than on how they are made in practice. This study uses qualitative techniques, including key informant and participant interviews, participant observation, and microanalysis of in-hospital discussions, to assess what influence the doctor-patient relationship and other sociocultural and contextual determinants have on actual decision making and communication regarding resuscitation. The results suggest that many factors influence these processes. These include issues of competency and ambiguity, prototypical images of life and death, and the use of a structured form for documentation purposes. In light of these findings, the discussion suggests ways in which physicians can improve resuscitative communication with patients and families.