Recent Faculty Activities (2011–2013)
Sallie Han has been
invited to participate in the National
Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on American Material Culture,
to be held July 2013 at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She is one of 18
scholars selected from a national application process to take part in the
interdisciplinary seminar.
Tracy Betsinger
presented four posters at the joint conference of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists and the Paleopathology
Association held April 8 – April 13. The poster, “Caries prevalence and the
late prehistoric Dallas phase: a regional cultural pattern of female maize
consumption in East Tennessee” was part of a symposium that she co-organized.
The other posters, “Burying the child in post-medieval Poland: Prenatal vs.
postnatal remains,” “The misshapen man: A differential diagnosis,” and “Hidden
hematoma: Subadult endocranial bleeding in post-medieval Poland” were all based
on her research on a skeletal collection from 17th-18th century Poland.
Renee Walker has
just published an introductory textbook entitled “Prehistoric World Cultures” (Cognella Press). This text covers the
significant events, developments and cultural changes in world prehistory. The
text provides students with an understanding of changes through time from the
evolution of our species to the development of complex civilizations.
John Relethford’s
recent paper in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology
on the population genetics of the Irish Travellers (see item below) was chosen
as a “Research Highlight” in the December 6 issue of the international science
journal Nature (492:10, 2012).
John Relethford is
the senior author of a paper entitled “Genetic drift and the population history
of the Irish Travellers” published in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology (150:184–189, 2013), with Michael
Crawford of the University of Kansas as coauthor. This paper uses genetic data
from red blood cell markers collected by Crawford in the 1970s to address the
origins of the Irish Travellers, an itinerant group in Ireland. Some have
argued that the Travellers are of Irish origin, and others have proposed that
they are related to the Roma, based on superficial similarity of lifestyle.
Genetic distance analyses show that the Travellers are of Irish origin, and genetic
differences from the rest of Ireland have resulted from genetic drift (random
fluctuations in the frequencies of genetic markers due to small population
size).
Sallie Han has been
elected chair of the Council
on Anthropology and Reproduction, a professional organization of
researchers and practitioners working on issues of reproduction. CAR, founded
in 1979, is one of the largest Special Interest Groups of the Society for Medical Anthropology, with
more than 200 members from the United States and abroad. The group convenes at
the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, and sponsors a
graduate student paper award and a book prize to recognize emerging and
influential scholarship on reproduction. She will be serving as chair-elect
during 2013, then serve a two-year term as chair of CAR.
Tracy Betsinger
co-organized a symposium entitled, “Culture, Morbidity, and Mortality in the
Southeast: Current Research in Bioarchaeology” at the 69th annual meeting of
the Southeastern
Archaeological Conference, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As part of the
symposium, Dr. Betsinger presented the paper “Transpositions, Talon Cusps, and
Supernumerary Teeth: Chewing Over the Meaning of Anomalies of the Permanent
Dentition in Late Prehistoric East Tennessee,” which examined dental anomalies
in a prehistoric population and their indication of genetic relatedness of the
group.
Tracy Betsinger
coauthored two papers (“Designating the Deviants: An Exploration of Mortuary
Traditions at the Drawsko 1 Cemetery Site” and “3D Drawsko: The Possibilities
and Problems with Digitizing the Post-Medieval Crania in Poland”) that were
presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian
Association for Physical Anthropology in Victoria, British Columbia.
Sallie Han
presented a paper entitled “The Chemical Pregnancy: Technology and the Making
of a New Reproductive Experience” at a conference on “Mothering
and Reproduction” presented by the Motherhood Initiative for Research
and Community Involvement in Toronto, Canada, October 2012. The paper
examines the role of technology in the cultural and social making of women’s
reproductive experience. It discusses how the home pregnancy test has affected
the experience not only of pregnancy, but also its loss, especially as tests
now enable the earlier detection of hormonal pregnancies that might not be
physiologically viable
John Relethford was
one of several scientists interviewed for a news story for the August 25th
issue of Science News. This story, entitled “Tangled
Roots: Mingling among Stone Age peoples muddles humans’ evolutionary story,”
discusses implications of recent discoveries of ancient DNA for understanding
the origin of modern humans and their relationship to earlier human groups.
John Relethford has
published the ninth edition of his introductory biological anthropology text, The
Human Species: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology, published by
McGraw-Hill (2013).
John Relethford is
the author of a new textbook, Human
Population Genetics, published by Wiley-Blackwell (2012). This book is
an introduction to the study of population genetics, the mathematical basis of
evolutionary theory, with specific reference to application to human
populations and anthropological questions.
John Relethford has
been appointed to a three-year term on the Editorial Board of American
Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association.
The New York
State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections, has accepted for its
archives the collected papers of William A. Starna (Professor Emeritus,
Department of Anthropology, College at Oneonta; Adjunct Professor Emeritus of
Geography, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON) and Jack Campisi (formerly adjunct
professor, anthropology, College at Oneonta, and Wellesley College). The
collection spans the period from 1974 to 2011 and reflects Campisi’s and
Starna’s research on and duties as expert witnesses for American Indian land
claims, in particular those brought by each of the Iroquois nations in New York
State and Wisconsin, and the research for and preparation of petitions
submitted by over twenty native communities from throughout the United States
for federal acknowledgment as American Indian tribes. In addition, the
collection contains materials on Campisi’s and Starna’s historical and legal
consultancies related to matters of federal taxation of American Indians and
cultural evaluations for environmental damages to native communities as
determined by federal courts, and on disputes over treaty rights in the United
States and Ontario, Canada.
John Relethford has
been elected Chair-Elect of Section H (Anthropology) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He will serve one year as Chair-Elect, one year as Chair, and one year as
Retiring Chair. Click here
for more information from a SUCO news story.
Tracy Betsinger
is coauthor on a paper entitled “Differential visibility of treponemal disease
in pre-Columbian stratified societies: Does rank matter?” in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology (144:185–195, 2011).
John Relethford
published a book review of 99%
Ape: How Evolution adds Up (University of Chicago Press), edited by J
Silvertown in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology (144:331,
2011).
John Relethford is
a coauthor of the second edition of the textbook Human
Biological Variation, published by Oxford University Press (2011). The
other authors are James Mielke (lead author), Department of Anthropology,
University of Kansas, and Lyle Konigsberg, Department of Anthropology,
University of Illinois. The text focuses on the data and methods used by
anthropologists and geneticists to measure and analyze biological diversity in
living humans. Topics include an historical review of studies of human
variation, genetic models of variation, variation in genetic markers of the
blood, variation in DNA markers, other biochemical variations, body and cranial
measures, pigmentation, behavior genetics, and genetic studies of human
ancestry and history. The text is for upper-division courses in human
variation.
