Stones, Bones, Tribes & Scribes

Department of Anthropology, Cleveland State University ~Fall 2005~ Barbara Grale, Editor

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Dr. Ron has Returned from Ethiopia . . . and London, and Trieste, and Venice, and Florence, and Rome, and the Scottish Highlands . . .

Associate Professor Ron Reminick combined his sabbatical with a Fulbright Senior Specialist award last year. This involved both consulting and research at Bahir Dar University in the town of Bahir Dar, which is now a Sister City to Cleveland, formalized in July 2004, when the two respective mayors and a contingent of Ethiopians met at Cleveland’s Empress Tayt’u Ethiopian Restaurant for an elaborate ceremony.

Bahir Dar is a town of 130,000 situated at an elevation of 6,000 feet at the southern end of Lake T’ana, the source of the Blue Nile River. It is a charming town with streets lined with tropical palms and divided, tree-lined boulevards. Everywhere one can smell the aromas of roasting coffee beans, burning incense, and Eucalyptus fires. Here one can see extremes of great wealth and abject poverty, as found in many other African towns. But most everywhere one can also see efforts of development, including drainage pipes and new buildings being erected on the campus of Bahir Dar University.

Dr. Ron’s primary goal was to set up a social science research program at the University that would be facilitated through the internet, sort of like a web-based set of courses on theory and methodology, starting with basic introductory anthropology. This objective was thwarted by the inadequate dial-up communications system, the very heavy teaching schedules imposed by the government, and political issues. Addis Ababa, the capital city, recently established a broadband system that promises to facilitate the web-based courses once broadband gets installed in Bhair Dar. Efforts to organize a series of lectures and workshops on proposal writing and strategies for accessing funding for research were far more successful.

Dr. Ron (center) with a cadre of BDU students

A very exciting series of conferences on culture and globalization, held in the town of Adama/Nazret, south of Addis Ababa, and funded in part by the American Embassy, included government ministers, teachers, artists, and scientists from various regions in the country. Dr. Ron’s presentations included issues involved with how Western technology and ideas affect both traditional and modern Ethiopian culture and society. The discussions were vigorous and at times hyper-critical of Western encroachments on Ethiopian society.

Dr. Ron also launched a research effort on female identity transformation. At Bahir Dar University, out of a student population of 10,000, only 10% are female. These women struggle with their studies, coping with the effects of a system of patriarchal domination involving access to funding and occasional harassment by male students, such as, “Why are you here when you should be in the kitchen with your mother and your grandmother, taking care of the men in your family!” Only a fraction of the women student body graduates.

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Dr. Ron has Returned . . .

Recently, however, several women’s affairs groups have sprung up around the country, encouraged by new constitutional rights granted to women that were established with the present government, which, in 1991, won a very bloody war that had lasted 30 years. With the encouragement of the local Women’s Affairs Association (Setoch Gudday) and the assistance of two English Department faculty, an Ethiopian woman and an American woman, a few women’s support groups were started. They have been met with a great deal of excitement and anticipation.

In these groups of 8 to 10 members, plus the group leader, women simply share their life’s difficulties, conflicts, hopes, and desires, and strategize how to further their education and broaden their consciousness about the nature of their culture and society as it affects them personally. At particular intervals in the support group process, each woman will respond to a projective test consisting of a series of Thematic Apperception cards (TAT), revealing developmental moments in their cognitive and emotional states. Because all of the dialogue is in Amharic, funding will be needed for the painstaking translation into English. Dr. Ron will have the task of analyzing and interpreting the English translations of the TAT.

It is also hoped that a faculty and student exchange program can be realized. The Bahir Dar University end of the plans are already somewhat in place, although political issues need to be resolved that would allow one or two faculty members and one or two students to travel to CSU and become members of our university community.

A support effort by local Ethiopianists is also under way to ship books, computers, and medical supplies and equipment to Bahir Dar and its university. A shipping container at the Ravenna Arsenal waits to be filled. In this regard we are asking for help from the CSU community. For additional information, please contact Dr. Ron at 216-687-2213 or rreminick@hotmail.com.

After Dr. Ron’s work was finished at BDU, he and Wendy trekked in the spectacular Semien Mountains of Ethiopia and climbed the fifth highest mountain in Africa, Mt. Bwahit,

the summit at just under 15,000 feet elevation. They were accompanied by their guide, Semma Amlak, whose name in Amharic means “God listened!” and implies, “And God heard my prayer for a beautiful son.”

After this Ethiopian excursion, Dr. Ron and Wendy traveled to Trieste, where Dr. Ron and his Italian colleague, Antonio Palmisano, spent a week initiating a collaboration on a book that will be about profiles of Ethiopian culture.

Then it was off to Venice, Florence, and Rome (magical cities) for pasta, wine, cheese, and gelato! Their final destination was the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland, where they spent a week meditating, studying, and working in the gardens of this spiritual community.

Word from the Bone Lab

Dr. Bob Mensfoth

Howdy, folks! Well, it took a year and a half, but we finally finished the first phase of our forensic study on patterns and types of adult craniofacial trauma that characterize 3,000 early 20^th century individuals from the Hamann-Todd collection at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The first phase of the study focused primarily on identification of various types of trauma (gun shot, stabbing wounds, blunt force, etc.) and evaluations of the extent to which such injuries were minor to severe and whether or not they were minor healed injuries or serious perimortem insults related to the cause of death.

The next phase of the study will consist of statistical analyses of the relationships between various forms of trauma and the age, sex, and ancestry of affected individuals. At the same time we plan to begin photographing various traumas to document the types and range of severity for various injuries. The digital photo archives will be supplemented with descriptive text and demographic information that can be transferred to DVD for distribution to teachers and researchers dealing with the forensic sciences and forensic anthropology.

CSU anthropology students who assisted in data collection for this project include Aaron Liwosz, Paul Deegan, and Vince Delgado. In particular, Vince devoted a significant amount of time and effort to this project over the last academic year and during the summer. Thanks to all the students who have assisted me with this research thus far. I hope to get back to the project in the summer or fall of 2006.

House Bill funds approved by the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Faculty Development funds came in real handy for supporting student projects in the biological anthropology lab last year. We were also able to purchase several new casts of some of the newer fossil human ancestors. The latter include high quality replicas of Kenyapthecus platyops (3.5 mybp) and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 mybp).

A brand-new book dealing with the social and ecological complexities of Archaic Period adaptations to riverine habitats in the eastern U.S. hit the market on October 1^st. The book, Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky, represents a major effort on the part of editors W.H. Marquardt and Patty Jo Watson. It was published by the University of Florida Press (Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies, Monograph No. 5), Florida Museum of Natural History. My contribution is a chapter titled “Paleodemography of the Skeletal Population from Carlston Annis (15Bt5),” Chapter 20, pp. 453-487. CSU anthropology alumna Stephanie Belovich, PhD, also contributed a chapter on Archaic Period fracture epidemiology titled “Fractures in the Carlston Annis Shell Mound Skeletal Population,” Chapter 22, pp. 505-514.

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The Bone Lab

Back in the spring of 2004, Drs. Richard Chaco and David Dye organized a symposium presented at the Society of American Archaeologists meetings in Montreal, Canada, dealing with human trophy-taking behaviors in the Americas. Since then they have organized an edited volume of those studies which will be published as a book titled The Taking and Displaying of Human Trophies by Amerindians. My chapter for the book is “Human Trophy Taking in Eastern North America During the Archaic Period: Its Relationship to Warfare and Social Complexity.” In September we received word that Kluwer Press has accepted the book for publication with a fall 2006 release date expected.

Over the past year, my colleagues at Kent State University, Drs. Richard Meindl and Owen Lovejoy, and I have collaborated on two research papers presented at international professional conferences. Both efforts were invited and accepted for publication as book chapters to be published in 2006. The first paper, “Overcoming Biases in the Paleodemographic Record: Estimating Mortality, Age Structure, and Annual Growth, with an Example from Northern Ohio, 9^th to 11^th Centuries A.D,” was presented at the 2004 Annual Meetings of the Canadian Association of Physical Anthropologists (CAPA) in London, Ontario in October 2004. It will be published as a chapter titled “Advances in Paleodemography” in the upcoming second edition of Bioanthropology of the Human Skeleton, edited by A. Katzenberg and S. Saunders, University of Calgary, Canada.

The second study, “The Paleodemography of a Fishing-Hunting-Gathering Village from the Eastern Woodlands, USA,” was presented at the XXV International Population Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Tours, France on July 19, 2005. This paper will be published as a chapter in New Advances in Paleodemography: Techniques, Data, and Patterns, edited by Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel, published by Springer-Verlag Press.

In August, I co-chaired a conference session on bone biomechanics with Serkan Inceoglu, a new PhD affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic and CSU’s Department of Engineering. The symposium was one of many presented at the 20^th Congress of the International Society of Biomechanics and the 29^th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Biomechanics that were held at Cleveland State.

The Anthropology Department hallways have been unusually quiet this semester because Dr. Bob has been on leave. We welcomed back anthropology alumni Dr. Marc Abramiuk (’96) and Jennifer Way (’99) to cover his courses.

A former participant in the Maya Mountains Archaeological Project (Peter Dunham), Marc earned bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and mathematics at CSU, master’s degrees in the same disciplines at York University in Toronto, Canada, and the doctorate in archaeology at University College London in London, England. Marc is teaching ANT 101 Human Biocultural Evolution. He will also offer ANT 293 Cognitive Archaeology in the spring.

As an undergraduate anthropology student, Jennifer collaborated with Dr. Bob on numerous research projects that resulted in several publications and presentations at professional meetings. Jennifer earned the MS in health sciences at CSU and has taught human gross anatomy and physical anthropology at CSU, Case Western Reserve University School of Dentistry, and the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine. Jennifer is teaching ANT 310 Human Osteology.

Southwest Field Experience

Dr. Jeff Williams

Anthropology majors Bob Grunau, Michele Penney, Peg Thompson, and Amy Wish participated in the 2005 Southwest Field Experience on the Ramah Navajo reservation in northwestern New Mexico this past summer. The group worked with a Ramah owned and operated enterprise called First Worlds Telecom, Inc. We were contracted to work with First Worlds to help them develop and administer a survey that would collect basic information about public services, such as electricity and telephones, as well as people’s knowledge about computer access in the area and their ideas about how they cold use modern telecommunications technology to better their lives. The Ramah region is one of the most poorly served regions for telephone and cell phone service in the nation. Cell phone reception on the reservation is non-existent, although more than 50% of the reservation population owns a cell phone. First Worlds Telecom plans to introduce broadband connectivity to the reservation and region within the next year.

The students received generous financial support from the CSU Student Government Association, which covered a considerable portion of their expenses. The Ramah Band of Navajos provided housing for the group in the teacher’s dormitory facilities in Ramah town. This is the same town where the ranch of Evon Vogt, who wrote Tortillas of the Gods (ANT 303 with Phil Wanyerka), still operates. During our stay we made several trips to Gallup for laundry, food, and western wear, and we even spent an entire day going back and forth to Albuquerque just to eat barbecue at the famous Rudy’s.

A highlight of our trip was when the Maria family hosted a traditional Navajo meal of Navajo tacos and Navajo cake at their homestead. The extended family extending from the family matriarch, Mary Maria (in her early 90s), were all there, and the women provided a lesson in making fry bread (from scratch) for all the students, both men and women. In spite of what appeared to be a disastrous beginning, Amy Wish won the fry bread-making contest. A cultural highlight of the event was Mary singing “Amazing Grace” in Navajo, demonstrating the incorporation of Evangelical Christianity into traditional Navajo culture.

Darnell Maria and his mother Mary Maria with field experience participants

Amy Wish, Bob Grunau, Michele Penney, and Peg Thompson

We were also privileged to be able to attend ceremonies at Zuni Pueblo that celebrated the legal victories concerning Salt Lake. Tribal leadership from almost all of the tribes of New Mexico attended, and a group of Zuni dancers and singers performed. The legal victory was over a mining consortium that had planned to begin strip mining in the area of Salt Lake on the Zuni Reservation. Salt Lake is the home of Salt Woman, an extremely important figure in the religion of most of the tribes of the Southwest culture area. Salt Lake is still an important pilgrimage site, especially for the

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Southwest Field Experience

Navajo, who believe that when a baby first laughs, his/her maternal uncle must give him/her a handful of Zuni salt to sprinkle as a blessing for those who experience the laughter. After the public events, we were able to participate in a wonderful Zuni feast of fried chicken, Zuni mutton stew, Zuni green chili stew, salad, Zuni bread, and chocolate cake. Before that, we had eaten Zuni fry bread hamburgers! It was a real cultural and gastronomical extravaganza.

We also traveled to Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona and spent two nights in a hoogan, the traditional Navajo home, and hiked the main trail down to the canyon floor. One Friday night we traveled to Lukachukai, Arizona to see a rodeo sponsored by the Navajo Nation Rodeo Cowboys Association. When we left the rodeo grounds about 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night, we thought it would take us about three hours to get back to Ramah, New Mexico. Instead, we didn’t get back until about four in the morning, and we had an 8:00 a.m. training session on G.I.S. scheduled. Most of the group stayed up all night, figuring it was too late, or too early, to go to bed. Needless to say, we weren’t at our sharpest for the G.I.S. training. But everyone felt that the loss of sleep was worth the experience of a rural rodeo in the heart of the Navajo reservation.

2006 Southwest Field Experience at Zuni

Next summer’s field experience will focus on the restoration of the Old Zuni Mission (Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zuni) that was built by the Spanish early in the 17^th century.

There is a surprising lack of concrete historical documentation regarding the mission in spite of its early importance in the Spanish occupation of the Southwest. The mission was an important site in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the resident priest was killed and parts of the church were burned. The mission was restored at several points in its history but has been closed to outsiders for quite some time due to controversy over the life-sized katsina paintings that decorate the interior walls of the chapel. Our work will include collecting oral histories related to the Old Mission from the Seowtewa family (the artists who painted the katsinam) and other members of the community.

In preparation for the field experience, ANT 385 The Anthropology of Tourism, will be offered during spring semester. The course examines the tourist and travel industries from an anthropological perspective. Students who are interested in participating in the 2006 summer field experience should plan to enroll in this course in the spring.

For additional information, please contact me at 216-687-2386.

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Words on Stones: News About Linguistic Anthropology & Archaeology

Phil Wanyerka

It has been a very exciting year! I was hired as a Visiting Assistant Instructor to strengthen our linguistic and archaeological programs in the Anthropology Department. This is a joint appointment in Anthropology and Modern Languages, so I’m teaching in both departments. This semester I’m teaching the popular ANT 171 Native Civilizations of the Americas, ANT 347 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing I, and MLA 116 Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of Mesoamerica. Spring courses include ANT 447 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing II (a follow-up course for those students wanting more glyphs!), ANT 303 Cultural Anthropology, and MLA 341 Modern Maya Culture.

An article I wrote, “Epigraphic Evidence of Macro-Political Organization in Southern Belize: A View from the Early Classic Period,” was published in the edited volume titled Archaeological Investigations in the Eastern Maya Lowlands: Papers of the 2004 Belize Archaeology Symposium. This volume was published by the Institute of Archaeology and the National Institute of Culture and History, Belmopan, Belize. In addition, a short article about a new carved monument, co-written with former CSU alum Keith Prufer, will be featured in the December issue of the journal Mexicon. Even more exciting is the fact that I’ve been told by the editor that a photograph of this new stela will appear as the cover for that issue!

Uxbenká Archaeological Project

The research front has also been quite busy and active. I and two colleagues, Andy Kindon of West Valley College, and Keith Prufer of Wichita State University, have begun the Uxbenká Archaeological Project (UAP), a long-term archaeological and epigraphic reconnaissance of an Early Classic (AD 200-500) Maya ruin known as Uxbenká. Located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains of Belize, Uxbenká is perhaps best known for its Early Classic stelae that record the names of several prominent Early Classic historical rulers from the great lowland site of Tikal.

Keith Prufer in tomb

Funded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., the first year of the UAP was an enormous success.

In addition to mapping ten major architectural groups and producing a comprehensive series of new site maps, we located two new carved

stelae and several new carved monument fragments. The most important discovery of the 2005 field season, however, was the discovery of

Stela 23, which we found on our first day in the field after a workman directed us to a new monument found alongside a looter’s pit in the main stela plaza.

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Andy Kindon with Total Station

Linguistic Anthropology and Archaeology

Stela 23 appears to be the earliest dated monument in all of southern Belize! Although broken, the fragment contains an unusual and truncated calendrical date of August 25, 455. What makes this new stela even more exciting is that it contains a possible lunar reference to a “New Moon.” This is really exciting, for in modern Yukatek sources b’iha’an tu ch’een uh can be translated as “the moon has gone to its well,” so this appears to be a literal reference to the moon not being visible. This unusual reference to the “New Moon” is only recorded on one other monument, La Milpa Stela 7, which dates to the 8^th century. The reference on Stela 23 is about 400 years earlier.

Phil Wanyerka with Stela 23

We hope that next year’s season of major excavations will uncover the rest of what appears to be a perfectly preserved text and image, as can be seen by the foot just above the text, clearly visible in the line drawing of Stela 23 shown at right (courtesy of Peter Mathews).

We are indebted to Jack Sulak of Cleveland Hts., our photographer, for his role in documenting the 2005 field season. Jack and I shot more than 2500 images, most of which were of the carved texts. I think I can safely say that we now have the largest image archive of any project in southern Belize! Jack’s photograph’s have been a tremendous asset to the project, for many of them reveal details that are no longer visible on the monument today.

On my last day of work in Belize, I found two large monument fragments that matched up to another known stela base. Stela 6, as it is now known, features a poorly eroded portrait of a standing Uxbenká king holding a “Double-Headed” Serpent Bar, which is a well-known emblem of dynastic royal power. We have submitted grant proposals to both FAMSI and the National Science Foundation, and we feel confident that we will receive further funds to continue the UAP for the next several years.

Jack Sulak (UAP Photographer)

Linguistic Anthropology & Archaeology

Many thanks to Dr. Earl Anderson, former Interim Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, for his support of the UAP by giving us a small grant to help defray the enormous costs of running an archaeological project in a foreign country like Belize. With gas prices in Belize hovering around eight to ten dollars a gallon, Dr. Anderson’s support was a tremendous help to our project. In addition, the UAP would also like to thank and acknowledge several local donors whose overall support enabled us to purchase a used truck for use in Belize. If it were not for all of this support, our first season of the UAP would not have been so productive.

Local Events

This fall I organized a unique symposium entitled The Ohio Mayanist and Precolumbian Research Symposium, held in September in conjunction with the Maya Hieroglyph Weekend, which is part of the annual K’inal Winik Festival. I brought together seven noted Precolumbian scholars from around the state of Ohio to showcase some of their latest research in New World archaeology. Papers were presented on work by Ellen Bell (Kenyon College), Kevin Johnston (Ohio State University), Sue Bergh (Cleveland Museum of Art), Laura Martin (CSU), Peter Dunham (CSU), Marc

Abramiuk (CSU), and yours truly.

I especially want to thank Dr. Gregory Sadlek, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, for his wonderful welcome and introductory remarks to the participants of the symposium and to the audience of Peter Mathews’ keynote lecture later that evening. Thanks, too, to all of the participants for a fascinating day of exciting lectures. The symposium was an enormous success, and I hope to organize another for next year’s K’inal Winik Festival.

In addition to the symposium, I also helped organize and co-direct this year’s Maya Hieroglyph Weekend, which featured noted archaeologist and epigrapher Dr. Peter Mathews of La Trobe University. This was Peter’s second consecutive year as the presenter for the two-day hieroglyphic workshop. This year’s topic was, “What’s in a Name?: Names and Naming Practices of the Classic Maya.” With students and participants from both the local area and points around the country, this year’s workshop was a great success! Thanks to Laura Martin, Director, and Nadine Grimm, Project Director, of the K’inal Winik Cultural Center, and our student volunteers Jenny Huth, Barry Newton, Hyacinthe Raven, and Kelsey McMullin. Without the support of our students, none of these programs would be possible.

Last, but certainly not least, thank you to David Milenius for his wonderful donation of books and journals to the Department of Anthropology. David contacted us and asked if we would be interested in some old books and journals. I said yes and promptly drove over to his house to pick up several boxes of books and journals that are now being used by students in my glyph course as well as my course on the peoples and cultures of Mesoamerica. Anyone interested in donating any of their old archaeological books or journals to the Anthropology Department may contact me or Barbara Grale at 216-687-2414 and we will make arrangements to pick them up.

Stones, Bones, Tribes & Scribes

Department of Anthropology 0010-0388-01

Cleveland State University

2121 Euclid Avenue CB 119

Cleveland, OH 44115

Native American Studies at CSU

A new interdisciplinary minor in Native American Studies has been developed by the Departments of Anthropology, English, and History and is going through the university approval process this fall. Anthropology will provide the “home” for the minor. We expect that students will be able to pursue the minor beginning in fall 2006.

In addition to courses already available that deal with Native Americans, defined as including the First Nations peoples of North, Middle, and South America, several new courses will be offered. ANT 210 Introduction to Native American Studies will provide a topical introduction to the study of political, cultural, and social issues facing Native Americans. ANT 250 Cowboys and Indians: Images, Identities, and Representations will look at the identities and representations of these two groups that have been opposed in American ideology since the conceptualization of the American West. The course has been developed by Jeff Williams in conjunction with his research into cowboy and rodeo culture in the American Southwest. He is writing an article for the Journal of the West calling for a field of Rodeo Studies, which brings together the many strands of scholarship on rodeo. ANT/LIN 349 American Indian Languages will be a linguistic survey of the indigenous languages spoken north of the Rio Grande. One focus of the course will be on issues of language revitalization and maintenance for speakers of American Indian languages.

The Anthropology Department is also pursuing external funding for a permanent visiting faculty position in Native American Studies to be held by a Native American scholar. We are hopeful that our proposals will be well received and we can look forward to adding a new faculty member in the Department soon.

Stones, Bones, Tribes & Scribes is a publication of the Department of Anthropology,

Cleveland State University, an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity institution.