Anthropology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9870

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Anthropology.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

Waterloo faculty, students, and staff can contact us or visit the UWSpace guide to learn more about depositing their research.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 87

4150 Cousins: What 7 DNA Ancestry Tests Can Tell You About Your Kin
(University of Waterloo, 2016-01-12) Nadeau, Danielle
This thesis presents the results of seven commercialized DNA ancestry tests that are all available to the public, for under $400 Canadian dollars each. This research is conducted to explore the use of commercialized DNA ancestry tests. The results from each test are compared in order to determine what they are able to tell a customer. The tests used are not the only tests available, but are chosen because of their popularity, price, and what they claim to be able to report to their customer. I find the databases that the tests include online to ‘find relatives’, who are other customers having the same Haplogroup or another matching genetic identifier, to be the most troublesome aspect of the results. Specifically, it is important for the public to clearly understand that these tests are not as conclusive as they are advertised to be, so that they are not misled in thinking that the tests have the potential to show things with certainty that they cannot.
Accessibility in Bioarchaeology: Methods of 3D Imaging of Entheses
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-19) Homerski, Nathan
This thesis examines accessibility within the field of bioarchaeology in two methods of generating 3D models of human remains, laser scanning and photogrammetry. These were analyzed for the following attributes: cost, time to perform method, ease of use, accuracy, and the utility of these methods in visual grading of entheses. The accuracy category measured such aspects as colouration and texture of the 3D image in comparison to the remains it was modelled after. The entheses on the 3D models were also visually graded to measure how accurately the 3D models could be evaluated using an ordinal method, such as Villotte’s (2006) method of entheseal analysis, in comparison to the same analysis performed with the physical remains. It was found that photogrammetric models were highly accurate at representing the qualitative attributes of the remains (colour, texture, etc.) while being both cost effective and easy to create. The laser scanned models were likewise easy to create, though they were far more expensive, and not qualitatively accurate. However, neither method was sufficiently accurate at entheseal grading. Overall, the aspects of photogrammetry made for a far more accessible method for researchers due to its low costs, ease to implement, and the little time needed for data collection, but it must be done with equipment that can produce higher resolution 3D models.
An Analysis of a Perplexing Group of Graves from Ancient Corinth, Greece
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-19) Lenz, Grace
In 2019 a post-12th century C.E. cemetery was identified at Ancient Corinth, Greece, in the area northeast of the ancient theatre. The 2019 and 2022 excavation season uncovered a perplexing group of graves with limited cultural context and an unknown date of usage. Ten adults, and one juvenile were excavated from this cemetery. The age-at-death of the adults range from 18-45 years. The juvenile was between the ages of 12-15 years. Ten shallow pit graves, and one cist grave with evidence of reuse indicate this cemetery was used on multiple occasions. In addition, in 2022, two infants were unexpectedly discovered high up in the remains of a Roman building, ~50 metres to the south of the NET Cemetery where the excavation of a Roman road was taking place. This thesis is a pilot study, providing the first analysis of the 13 individuals buried here. The goal of this research is to interpret the funerary practices performed by the living through the discussion of grave styles and treatment of the body, and to analyze the paleopathological data. Results of this study indicate the burial practices reflect Christian traditions, with their heads facing east to anticipate the second coming of Christ. Reuse of the cist grave indicates the living were aware of the location of the cemetery, and may have been members of the same community or social group. Pathological analysis of the adults indicate lifestyles associated with strenuous activities. Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) speaks to some individuals having experienced non-specific periods of stress in their childhood. Evidence for tuberculosis and brucellosis was present in two different adult males, and evidence for scurvy was identified in the two juveniles. This research presents the first skeletal cases of tuberculosis and scurvy from Ancient Corinth.
An Anthropological Perspective on the Experiences of Osteoarthritis in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, and South Yorkshire, England
(University of Waterloo, 2021-01-13) Richards, Emily
This research studies the experience of both being diagnosed and living with osteoarthritis. I conducted this research looking to understand whether and how societal norms affected medical treatment of the disease. The research mostly focuses on the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, with a small comparative section on South Yorkshire. Three key themes were discovered and analyzed throughout the research. The first theme is lived experiences of osteoarthritis, which focuses on the concepts of pain and loss. The second key theme is the interrelation of responsibilization, medicalization, and moralization. This involves how patients rationalize the causes of their own osteoarthritis and sometimes how these compare to others. The third theme is Doctor-Patient interactions. Participants explained their experience interacting with medical professionals about their osteoarthritis, and analysis highlights how these interactions influence the participant’s perception of their condition and their own health. Osteoarthritis is well understood from a biological perspective; however, this is only one element in medical treatment. It is hoped in this research that the consideration of lived experiences by medical professionals will improve flaws in the communication of osteoarthritis management and treatment.
An Archaeobotanical Analysis of the Iler Earthworks Macro Remains
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-23) Matthews, Carey
This thesis examines the archaeobotanical remains from the Iler Earthworks, a Springwells-Wolf phase site within the Western Basin Tradition (WBT) of Southwestern Ontario. Excavations between 2015 and 2018 resulted in soil samples from pit feature contexts that were floated as part of this study to collect archaeobotanical remains. Archaeobotanical data are underrepresented in Western Basin Tradition scholarship but can contribute to a better understanding of foodways and the interrelationships between humans and their environments. Subsistence strategies for WBT populations have been associated with seasonal mobility, with a low reliance on cultigens. This analysis suggests that the Iler community was engaging in cultigen use, and this is the first report where four out of five identified cultigens in Ontario are present at a WBT site. Yet, the analysis also suggests that the people of Iler remained committed to exploiting wild species. This suggests that while the Iler community was invested in horticultural practices as part of their foodways, so too were practices that emphasized gathering within the region. This may be connected to local ecological engineering practices which sought to maintain a highly diverse and rich resource environment.
Are Drag Queens Sexist? Female Impersonation and the Sociocultural Construction of Normative Femininity
(University of Waterloo, 2009-04-07T18:34:46Z) Nixon, Kevin D.
In a great deal of social scientific literature on gender, female impersonators have been framed as the example par excellence of crossgendering and crossdressing behaviour in the West. Perceived rather dichotomously as either gender transgressive or reinforcing of hegemonic gender norms, female impersonators occupy a very central position within the emerging fields of gay and lesbian, transgendered, and queer studies. Certain schools of feminist thought, dating back to the mid to late 1970s have framed female impersonators as misogynistic gay men who appropriate female bodies and a “feminine” gender from biological women. These theories argue that female impersonators utilize highly stereotypical and overly sexualized images of the feminine, in order to gain power, prestige, and status within the queer community. This study challenges popular feminist perspectives on drag, first on a theoretical level, utilizing advances in contemporary queer theory and secondly on an ethnographic level, based on a year long field study which involved both participant observation and unstructured interviews with several female impersonators and nightclub patrons at a local queeroriented nightclub in a city in southern Ontario, Canada. Aiming to understand the degree to which performers identified with the normative femininity they performed, this study argues for a more complex understanding of what motivates individuals to become drag queens, one that incorporates female impersonators unique subjective understandings of their own gender identities. Overall, this study calls for a more holistic perspective on female impersonation, which does not limit itself to any one theoretical model of drag.
Are Metric Methods Really User-Friendly? A Methodological Study of Sex Estimation Techniques for the Talus and Calcaneus
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-13) Chan, Grace
Skeletal sex is most commonly estimated using the pelvis and the skull. These elements, however, are not always available in archaeological and forensic situations as they may be missing or damaged as a result of burial practices or poor preservation. Anthropologists have developed sex estimation methods that utilize other skeletal elements, and many of these alternative methods rely on statistical analyses of bone metrics. Because metric methods are seen as more objective and less dependent on examiner experience, most have not undergone the independent validation to which morphologic methods have been subjected. The purpose of this research is to validate two previously developed metric methods for the talus and the calcaneus using a different population than the ones on which these methods were developed, and explore potential issues of precision and validity when these methods are applied by external users. This thesis recommends several areas for improvement in the development and publication of metric methods, including the necessity for more external validation studies, greater standardization of variables and methodology, an increased use of probabilistic estimates, and a re-evaluation of how symmetry and error are conceptualized and assessed.
Beneath the Hype: Engaging the Sociality of Artificial Intelligence
(University of Waterloo, 2018-04-23) Govia, Leah
Artificial intelligence (AI) is highly visible in today’s public media. With potential uses across domains such as healthcare, labour and transportation, its capacity to impact human lives is widely apparent. As it continues to enter into public view, concerns surrounding its research and application also arise. Here, narratives of techno-optimism, technological determinism, and dystopia often shape the AI imaginary with sensationalist displays of super-intelligence and existential concern. Counterpoised to these representations, this thesis investigates the sociality that inheres in everyday practices within artificial intelligence as emerging technology and as a field of study. Drawing on methods and scholarship from STS and socio-cultural anthropology, I explore the attitudes and experiences of specialists to analyze how entanglements of the socio-cultural, ethical and technical appear within more mundane, everyday practices of AI. Often overshadowed by popular, sensationalized understandings of technology, the focus on such experiences and practices allows for an initial view into a situated understanding of AI beneath the hype.
Bioarchaeology in Greece: Breathing Life into the Early Helladic and Archaic Skeletal Assemblages from Klenia
(University of Waterloo, 2019-01-15) Schaljo, Emily
Rescue excavations between 2014 and 2015 in Klenia, Corinthia, Greece uncovered an assemblage of human skeletal remains from one Archaic (750-479 BCE) and four Early Helladic (2650-2200 BCE) tombs. Until recently, bioarchaeology and the comprehensive analysis of human skeletal remains in Greece has been uncommon. However, theoretical and technological developments in bioarchaeology have highlighted the importance of studying these remains, as they provide insights into the biocultural lifeways of individuals of the past. The present research provides basic osteobiographical data for the human skeletal remains recovered from the Klenia tombs and explores their geographical and temporal context in order to provide situated interpretations and insights into the lives of these individuals. The results of this work reveal information pertaining to the life and possible weaving and cooking activities of an older adult female from the Archaic period, and to the lives of those interred in the Early Helladic graves, which likely represent a familial or social kinship. The Early Helladic skeletal remains within their context suggest an agricultural lifestyle. Further, the discovery of infant skeletal remains within these tombs highlights improvements in bioarchaeological recovery methods, and suggests the inclusion of infants in commingled tombs within extramural cemeteries. This alters previous understandings of intramural infant burial during the Early Helladic period in Greece.
Biodiversity Citizen Science Data Production Through iNaturalist: An Anthropological Exploration
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-04) Xu, Alice
iNaturalist is a common mobile application used in biodiversity citizen science projects and education. The application lets laypeople of all levels of expertise submit species ‘observations’ that can include correlating photo and audio data. All iNaturalist observations are publicly available and can be utilized by professionals in environmental organizations, researchers, academics, and park rangers. By drawing on participant observation at citizen science events hosted by the environmental charity EcoSpark, interviews with academics as well as professionals working for federal and provincial government institutions, it appears that the movement of data from the laypeople to the researchers and professionals can involve acts of giving and taking as well as an abundance of activities that spurn hope and trust for biodiversity citizen science involvement. As explicit anthropological engagement with biodiversity citizen science remains an area for ripe exploration, this thesis thus aims to embark on an anthropological exploration of a sample of iNaturalist users in Ontario, their perspectives, and the data production activities that engage them in biodiversity citizen science efforts.
Biopower, Disciplinary Power and Surveillance: A Qualitative Analysis of the Lived Experience of Drug Users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
(University of Waterloo, 2020-03-31) Scher, Benjamin
Focusing on the role of police as primary actors in the arena of citizen safety, this thesis examines the effects of police practices on the daily lived experience of drug users accessing a Supervised Consumption Site within a community centre which I refer to as the Hawthorne Resource Centre. This site is located in the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood of Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on Foucauldian conceptualisations of power, the findings of this research suggest that modes of both biopower and disciplinary power are pervasively operative in various realms of the day to day lives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients. Evidence of the scalable nature of these modes of power are seen within the internal functioning of the Supervised Consumption Site, outside in the methods of community policing in the Downtown Eastside and in weekly police practices in Oppenheimer Park. As such, my study represents a multi-scalar assessment of how these Foucauldian power structures work at multiple levels and locations in the Downtown Eastside. Additionally, the trauma and stigma within the narratives provided by many of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients suggests an appreciation by those clients of their lack of social and cultural capital. This understanding shapes how they navigate the distinctly bounded physical neighborhoods of Vancouver. Driven by the narratives of the Hawthorne Resource Centre clients, the findings of this research illustrate the importance of power relations within specific policy interventions and show that a better understanding of power in the context of interventions is crucial for policy-makers.
Bird Monitoring and New Media: An Anthropological Exploration
(University of Waterloo, 2019-01-25) Moscovitch, Mallory
As the diversity of new media increases, people have more choices than ever before to select between various media for specific uses. In this thesis, I draw from my own research to look at the ways that bird monitors associated with the rare Charitable Research Reserve in Cambridge, Ontario, share or keep their observation records of birds in the digital age. I conducted participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and survey fieldwork from May – September 2018. In chapter one, I highlight how the proliferation of digital media provides users with novel choices of which medium to select for specific uses. In the following chapter, I unravel this further to reveal that bird monitors choose to use a diversity of media and I explore how this accords with the expectations of the rare Charitable Research Reserve. I suggest that while some bird monitors share their observation records in accordance with expectations, some share in other ways, or choose not to share at all, keeping their records without sharing. In the discussion of chapter two, I emphasize the joint role that media and exchange play in the context of eBird. I argue that eBird produces a kind of fame, or at least recognition, that may increase one’s credibility as a bird monitor or discredit them through instances of bird species misidentification. It is my hope that this research and the insights that might be gleaned from this study have practical applications for the rare Charitable Research Reserve and other organizations that engage the public in the digital age. Furthermore, I hope that this research might meaningfully contribute to the growing body of literature on the interaction between humans and technology.
Careful capitalism: Children, residential kinship, and live-in domestic work in Costa Rica
(University of Waterloo, 2024-05-31) Font, Camila
Limited publications address structures of residential kinship and live-in domestic work in Central America. Informed by participant observation fieldwork with three families, and open-ended interviews with employers (6) and domestic workers (5), this thesis discusses how kin relationships are created and sidelined through the industry of live-in domestic work in Costa Rica. Employers understand the industry of domestic work as a tradition to be upheld for proper societal standing. These relations of labour and kinship are sites of patronal benevolence that encourage the workers to limit their involvement with their families through poverty wages and patriarchal employment practices, and thus reproduce nationalist and gendered social orders that erase interdependence between employer’s tradition and worker’s paid labour. Furthermore, as a project of philanthropic social reproduction, selective kinship embeddedness of the worker and their child in the employer’s kin structures does not guarantee financial citizenship for the live-in domestic worker. Social mobility for the children of domestic workers is framed as depending on the worker’s present labour and on continued patronal investment. Furthermore, this thesis recognizes how workers, their children, and employers learn to understand structures of difference and navigate their shifting roles across social groups according to Marian ideologies of age and gender. This thesis offers a critical approach towards public issues anthropology as a social practice, and contributes to linguistic anthropological theorization on kinship, gender ideologies, and labour.
Caribou Hunting at Mingo Lake: A Comparative Study of Pre-Dorset and Late Dorset Hunting Methods
(University of Waterloo, 2021-01-12) Hilts, Emily
Caribou are a very important resource in the Arctic because they provide food, raw material for weapons and tools and skins for warm winter clothing. The methods used to hunt these animals have been studied extensively by ethnographers who lived with and observed Inuit groups during the late 19th and early 20th century. At that time, hunting methods were changing due to the fur trade and the introduction of rifles but there were still groups who used older methods of hunting that would have been similar to techniques used by ancient arctic peoples. LdFa-1 is a multi-component caribou-hunting site on the northwestern corner of Mingo Lake, Southern Baffin Island, Nunavut that was used by the Pre-Dorset, Dorset, Thule, and Inuit. The focus of this paper is the distinct Pre-Dorset and Late Dorset occupations. The Pre-Dorset lived from around 4,500 B.P. to 2,700 B.P. before developing into the technologically different Dorset culture, who survived until sometime before 700 B.P. before disappearing for reasons that are still unclear to archaeologists. The Pre-Dorset and the Late Dorset both hunted caribou at Mingo Lake but the only surviving evidence for the methods they used are in the form of a few stone endblades and harpoon heads. Due to this limited archaeological evidence, a study that combines ethnographic accounts with the archaeological data has the potential to determine which techniques for hunting caribou at Mingo Lake would have been possible by each culture with the technology it possessed.
Class Divides: An Ethnographic Study of Social Service Workers in Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2021-01-06) McKellar-Harries, Kennerley
Drawing upon narratives collected from those working in the fields of social work and child and youth work, this thesis examines the relationships forged between middle-class social service workers and low-income youth and their families. The focal site in this study is a subsidized housing complex, including a small non-profit run community center, located in a mid-sized Ontario city. Both semi-structured interviews and personal reflection were used in the collection of data. This work draws upon the existing body of literature on class and youth, with particular focus on class-based differences in values and parenting styles. Through examination of the naturalization of middle-class practices by participants, it becomes possible to re-examine relationships with working class and poor communities, and to find ways to best serve them.
A Comprehensive analysis of Dental Remains from the Early Bronze Age I site of Wadi Faynan 100, Jordan
(University of Waterloo, 2020-12-14) Tucciarone, Julia
Five looted Early Bronze Age Tombs were excavated at the site of Wadi Faynan 100, Southern Jordan, in 2019. While archaeological site looting is a common problem worldwide, the lack of research utilizing commingled and fragmented burial assemblages is an inherent bias in bioarchaeological research. This preliminary study uses dental anthropological methodology to learn as much as possible about the individuals buried at Wadi Faynan 100 despite their fragmentation and commingling due to looting, specifically by calculating minimum number of individuals (MNI), recording nonmetric traits, dental wear, tooth development for age-at death, and pathology (enamel defects, caries, and calculus). Results yielded an MNI of 14 using teeth alone and tooth development indicated a large proportion of subadult individuals, particularly in Grave 3. Nonmetric traits were not conclusive but not out of place when compared to other Jordanian archaeological populations. Dental wear rates were quite low, possibly a result of the age profile of the population, and pathology showed a high rate of linear enamel hypoplasia, suggesting childhood stress in the population, an extremely low caries rate and a low calculus rate, which again may be a result of the ages of the individuals. Overall, this research demonstrates the ability to use even fragmented and commingled assemblages to learn about individuals in the past, and guide future research projects.
Connaissance and Savoir-Faire: A Chaîne Opératoire Perspective on the Lithic Industries at the Iler Earthworks (AaHr-22), Essex County, Ontario
(University of Waterloo, 2019-05-27) Lawson, Andrew
In a chaîne opératoire or ‘operational sequence’ conceptual framework, reduction technologies are recognized as an entangled, stepwise enactment of human knowledge (connaissance) and skill (savoir-faire). Through this model, as discussed in Chapter One, lithic assemblages may be situated within sets of Indigenous traditional knowledge marked by lifelong engagements between practitioners and their materials. In Chapter Two, this study adopts a coupling of the chaîne opératoire theory with an attribute-based analysis of extant primary and secondary sourced lithic materials recovered from the Late Woodland Iler Earthworks (AaHr-22) in Essex County, Ontario, in an effort to illuminate embedded stone economizing behaviours such as raw material acquisition and core reduction, as well as object manufacture, use, and discard.
Crossing the Cuesta: A GIS Analysis of Intra-Site Settlement Patterns at the Mt. Albion West Paleoindian Site (AhGw-131)
(University of Waterloo, 2018-01-19) Pilon, Amelia Kathleen
Excavated by Archaeological Services Inc. (ASI) between 1998 and 2004, the Mt. Albion West (AhGw-131) Early Paleoindian site is one of only a handful of Late Pleistocene sites in Ontario. Situated adjacent to the Red Hill valley on the Niagara Escarpment in Hamilton, Ontario, this site produced four discrete artifact concentration areas. While the tools recovered from this site were thoroughly analyzed, comparatively little attention has been given to its settlement patterns. Settlement pattern analysis is especially important in Ontario Paleoindian research given the material constraints presented by hunter-gatherer mobility and environmental factors not conducive to preservation. In this thesis, the four activity areas from Mt. Albion West are analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with an eye toward interpreting the site’s function(s) and significance within the broader Early Paleoindian settlement system.
Cultural Knowledge Systems: Synthesizing our knowledge of knowledge using grounded theory
(University of Waterloo, 2011-05-20T18:20:14Z) Baker, Katreena
Many applied academics, within and outside anthropology, have called for the incorporation of cultural knowledge in public policy and decision-making, and for the “bridging” of knowledge systems in knowledge coproduction. Yet critiques of the academic treatment of cultural knowledge have indicated that research has focused on the content not the epistemologies of cultural knowledge systems. To what extent does the social science literature characterize knowledge systems as systems? Does the literature on cultural knowledge systems provide us with tools for translating cultural knowledge? Conclusions derived from this thesis research (a grounded theory approach to an academic literature sample) indicate that substantial work has been done to characterize cultural knowledge epistemologies. However, language used to describe knowledge systems is inconsistent, and analyses of social structures are patchily developed. In an effort to synthesize the literature, I have compiled the best practices and methods used by academics in hopes of influencing future cultural knowledge systems research.
Developmental Defects in Ancient Context – Causations of Cleft Palate in the Athenian Agora
(University of Waterloo, 2016-01-21) Adams, Alisha
This research looks at the infant cleft palates recently identified in the Athenian Agora. This assemblage provided the opportunity to expand the ways which bioarchaeology may study developmental defects which affect the skeleton. A biological, historical, and archaeological study was undertaken in order to analyze cleft palate in the archaeological record, and to understand and identify possible causation factors in the ancient environment. Based on this research, the prevalence of cleft palate in the Athenian Agora, estimated from modern perinatal infant mortality rates and cleft palate prevalence showed that the cleft palates in the Athenian Agora may have been the result of syndromic etiologies. The shape of the palate as well as deviations along the line of the cleft are discussed as possible support for a syndromic etiology of the infant cleft palates.

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