Graduate student Brian Geyer received a 2019 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) award to investigate how aspects of Kenya tech sector professionals’ identities—including gender, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status—affect their positions of social, political, and economic power in the sector. This March, Geyer will leave for Kenya and split one year between technology innovation hubs in Nairobi and Kisumu. During this time, he will engage with a diversity of educational and professional organizations, such as computer science programs at several Kenyan universities and tech start-ups.

Currently, international development organizations often take a gender-based approach to projects, due to studies that found improvements in women’s lives correlate to advancements in their communities or countries as a whole. However, such programs do not account for other kinds of vulnerable populations and existing issues within their communities or countries. This deficit may unintentionally exacerbate those problems by intensifying them among professional colleagues. In Kenya, the country’s technology sector has enjoyed a lot of attention from venture capitalists seeking international investment opportunities. Development agencies view the sector’s recent and expected growth as an opportunity to contribute to Kenya’s overall development. Organizations are implementing these gender-based improvement projects in Kenya’s tech sector in hopes of lifting the population overall.

However, Geyer is curious how effective this gender-only approach will be at addressing the needs of disadvantaged Kenyans and how the financial investment by venture capitalists will impact existing inequalities. Through his research, Geyer will investigate several questions, including: do women and men hold significantly different tech sector jobs and to what extent might this reflect different desires for these positions; do differences among jobs found in the industry inhibit one’s sense of professional cohesion; and, how does ethnicity and religious affiliation intersect and influence perceptions of professional cohesion. Geyer believes that examining these questions will shed light on more effective ways to address inequalities, such as taking an intersectional approach to targeting people for developmental support. He hopes his research will contribute to understanding the relationship between aspects of identity and power.

Throughout his studies, Geyer has highly valued the support and mentorship from his advisor, Dr. Chantal Tetreault, whose active encouragement of his research and guidance in writing effective grant applications he greatly appreciates. Dr. Tetreault helped him incorporate the community of practice framework into his research for conceptually organizing participants in a meaningful way, given their geographic, ethnic, and organizational diversity. She also advised Geyer on diversifying his practical experience in digital technologies with respect to education and research.

Geyer’s interest in Kenya stems from his Peace Corps service there as a public health volunteer prior to coming to MSU. Through his graduate studies here, he developed a keen interest in technologists and other tech sector professionals through the department’s Cultural Heritage Informatics fellowship led by Dr. Ethan Watrall, as well as through his former graduate assistant position in LEADR—the digital technology education lab, which is a collaboration between the Anthropology and History departments.

Geyer has returned to Kenya several times to conduct predissertation data collection and international development research. In his time there, he has worked with tech professionals at IBM Research–Africa, college students at several Kenyan universities, and tech innovation hubs. He was also hired by the World Bank as a contractor to start a research project in Nairobi. Geyer has greatly benefitted from MSU’s Swahili language courses, facilitated by several Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships.

After completing his PhD, Geyer hopes to remain in academia as faculty or work at a nonprofit continuing his research.

Follow Brian Geyer’s project through his online open field journal: No Mud Huts nomudhuts.matrix.msu.edu

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This fall, the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) led a week-long training course for the Michigan State Police (MSP) on the analyses of human remains in the forensic death investigation. During this course, Michigan police from across the state learned about what information can be gained with forensic anthropology, how the methods involved in examining human remains are used, and how to properly excavate human remains from a burial so that evidence about the case is not lost.

The first two days of the course involved lectures on forensic anthropological methods. These lectures were given by anthropology faculty Dr. Joseph Hefner and Dr. Carolyn Isaac, and PhD students Mari Isa, Amber Plemons, Kelly Kamnikar, and Alex Goots. After the first day of lecture, attendees were assigned a skeleton from the MSUFAL’s donated collection and tasked with estimating the age at death, biological sex, ancestry, and stature of the individual based on what they learned.

After this series of lectures, participants went into the field for a day to learn how to search for clandestine burials and properly recover human remains. Four mock burials had been created the previous spring by burying plastic skeletons with fake evidence. Once the groups of state police located the mock burials, MSUFAL members taught them how to map, photograph, document, and correctly excavate a burial to recover human remains.

On the final day of the course, participants presented their findings from the skeletal analyses and mock cases, discussing the different methodological approaches they took for their specific burial circumstances. As the MSUFAL team and Michigan State Police continue working together in casework across the state, this training will facilitate best practices in cases involving human remains.

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Boozhoo-Aaniin. I am currently in my senior year majoring in Anthropology with a minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. My academic interests lie in the intersection of physical anthropology and museum studies, with a focus on the status of NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) remains in museum collections and Indigenous community–museum relationships.

Last summer, I worked on the North American Human Remains Care and Curation Project at the Field Museum of Natural History as the Mullins-Martin North American Biological Anthropology Intern. During my time at the Field, I performed osteological analysis on approximately 150 catalogue numbers of Indigenous human remains from throughout the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, I helped photograph and rehouse the individuals and their associated funerary objects. This ongoing project is designed to standardize human remains catalogues in a digitally accessible format, such that Indigenous communities have increased access to NAGPRA materials and repatriations can be more easily facilitated. This internship not only strengthened my osteology skills, but gave me insight into the realities of NAGPRA in museum institutions, and the challenges Indigenous communities face in righting the wrongs done to their cultures and ancestors.

My internship at the Field is in part due to the host of opportunities given to me by MSU and the Department of Anthropology. The most influential among these was the chance to participate in graduate level coursework, providing me greater exposure to various sub-fields and allowing me to build my skill set. My professors for these graduate courses, Dr. Todd Fenton and Dr. Heather Howard, are also my academic mentors. Their willingness to move outside their specializations and help me build my own path of study is a testament to their exceptional scholarship and dedication to their students.

It is difficult for me to recollect when I became interested in anthropology, but I feel studying what makes us human, both in body and in action, is what drew me to this major. The evolving nature of the discipline and the willingness of its practitioners to work outside their sub-fields to collaborate and create dynamic bodies of knowledge fits with my varied interests. As an Indigenous individual and citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, anthropology gave me the space to blend my research and career interests with my desire to remain close to my Anishinaabe heritage and Anishinaabewaki.

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This past May and June, the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) hosted a 4-week undergraduate archaeology field school on campus. Fifteen undergraduate students were enrolled in the course; thirteen undergraduates were from MSU or MSU alumni and the other two students commuted from the University of Michigan, Flint.

The goal of this field project was to find artifacts in association with an historic homestead located next to Holmes Hall on the corner of Shaw Road and Hagadorn Road. The property was once occupied by the Toolan family from 1870 until approximately 1920. The property was rented out to several different families in the 1940s. In June of 1953, warranty deeds show that the Toolan family sold the property to MSU. Between 1953 and 1965, MSU demolished the homestead in preparation for the construction of Holmes Hall, which was built in 1965.

Over the course of the field season, we excavated three 2×2 meter excavation units and two 1×1 meter excavation units. Artifacts recovered from the field school that date to the time period in which these families occupied the landscape include a Phillips Milk of Magnesia cobalt blue glass bottle fragment dating from 1900 to ca.1915; an aqua glass mineral water/soda bottle with an applied finish dating from 1875 to 1920; a 1937 mercury Dime; and a lapel pin from The Home Insurance Company that was founded in 1853. Another curious and exciting archaeological find was a small ceramic fragment featuring a logo used by MSU between 1925 and 1955. The project culminated in a public archaeology outreach day where students could share what they found and what they learned from excavations.

Students learned archaeological field methodologies, archival research, artifact dating and identification, and how to use digital tools and tablets to document and record archaeological data. MSU Archives gave students a tour of the many historical resources on campus. Jerry Wahl, Campus Arborist, trained our students in how to excavate near and around tree roots as to avoid killing our campus’ historic and contemporary trees. Undergraduate student Mary Murphy did a workshop on artifact illustration for our field school students. Jack Biggs, a current PhD student in our program, taught our students photogrammetry and artifact 3D modeling. Munsell, who makes soil color books used in archaeological fieldwork and is a Michigan-based company, visited our site and showed field school students and staff how to use their new Munsell CAPSURE Color Matching Tool. This tool is a small hand-held device that identifies different colors of soil.

The field school would not have been a success without the dedicated time and effort our staff and volunteers put into training our students. Jeff Burnett, a current PhD student in the Department of Anthropology, served as the field school’s teaching assistant and was an immense help to the project. Campus Archaeologist and current PhD student Autumn Painter put a great deal of time into making sure this project and several other projects taking place on campus during the summer were successful. Campus Archaeology Staff members Jeff Painter, Amber Plemons, and Jack Biggs, GIS intern and MSU undergraduate David Mainero, MSU undergraduate Andrew Taylor, and alumni Louis Kelley and Amy Hair also helped in teaching and training our undergraduate field school students. Thank you to Infrastructure, Planning, and Facilities (IPF) and MSU Archives for their continued support of Campus Archaeology.

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Over the course of the past few years, Dr. Mindy Morgan (left) has been exploring the history of anthropology and engaging in new conversations regarding our disciplinary past. Dr. Morgan is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and affiliated faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program, as well as the Graduate Program Director for the Department of Anthropology, specializing in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology.

Dr. Morgan’s recent work grew from her larger investigation into the periodical Indians at Work, which was published by the Office of Indian Affairs in the 1930s and contained articles authored by bureaucrats, tribal members, and anthropologists. Dr. Ruth M. Underhill, an anthropologist trained by Franz Boas at Columbia University, was one of these contributors.

Dr. Morgan first wrote about Dr. Underhill’s contributions to anthropological debates at the time in her 2017 article “Anthropologists in Unexpected Places: Tracing Anthropological Theory, Practice, and Policy in Indians at Work,” which was published in the esteemed journal American Anthropologist. During this time, Dr. Morgan also helped coordinate a roundtable for the American Anthropological Association meetings in Minneapolis that allowed her to think more deeply about the ways in which Underhill participated in both the production and circulation of disciplinary knowledge in the early 20th century.  Dr. Morgan’s recent article, “Look Once More at the Old Things: Ruth Underhill’s O’odham Text Collections” which appears in Histories of Anthropology Annual (volume 13), grew out of the paper for the roundtable.

In her new article, Dr. Morgan looks at the ways in which Underhill’s collection of O’odham songs and texts in the early 20th century was taken up by others decades later, and reinterpreted according to the needs of the contemporary community. Many of the songs collected by Underhill for her seminal work Singing for Power were retranslated and republished in the 1970s by several O’odham community members working in collaboration with an anthropologist. Their work, Rainhouse and Ocean: Speeches for the Papago Year, does not just reproduce Underhill’s text but extends them by offering new insights and analyses of the songs. A later edition of Singing for Power was issued that carried an introduction by Ofelia Zepeda, an O’odham linguist and scholar working within the language revitalization movement of the early 1990s. This movement sought to ensure the survival of languages at risk of disappearing.

Dr. Morgan looks at how these various processes of texts extracted from their original contexts not only bring new meanings, but new opportunities for transmission and circulation. A central argument in the article is that Underhill’s manner of both collecting and representing the song texts was prescient and indicated her own belief that these texts would and should continue to circulate among the O’odham community for generations to come.

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The Department of Anthropology is pleased to welcome Dr. Gabriel Sanchez, who joins us as a Research Associate after completing his doctorate in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Sanchez is part of the inaugural class of the College of Social Science Dean’s Research Associate Program. This program promotes an inclusive scholarly environment, in which outstanding scholars in the social sciences support the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the academy.

Dr. Sanchez became interested in anthropology during his first semester of community college following his discharge from the United States Army. He was attracted to the field and its study of the human experience and culture, especially of marginalized communities. The next semester, Dr. Sanchez applied for a variety of jobs and was hired as an archaeological technician for the United States Forest Service. In this position, he met the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and became an intern at the THPO office. These experiences shaped his interest in indigenous archaeology and collaborative research.

During his undergraduate education at the University of Oregon, Dr. Sanchez earned a position in the McNair Scholars program, a federal initiative to increase the attainment of advanced degrees by underrepresented students. As a first-generation student raised in rural California by a family of undocumented farmworkers, he believed it was important to receive an education to better his life and that of his family. Dr. Sanchez was particularly drawn to conducting field and laboratory research in environmental anthropology that could provide benefits for indigenous collaborators and federal and state agencies.

An indigenous and environmental anthropological archaeologist, Dr. Sanchez investigates human-environmental relationships from the Terminal Pleistocene and throughout the Holocene. Long-term environmental data from archaeological sites have relevancy beyond archaeology by providing historical baselines that can inform modern resource management and stewardship through the documentation of historical ranges of variability. Currently, Dr. Sanchez is collaborating with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and California State Parks to investigate the native range of California’s endangered salmon species, which are vulnerable to extinction or extirpation. This research will define which salmon were native to coastal streams to help resource managers prioritize stream protection, restoration, and water allocation, as well as inform land-use practices.

At this time, Dr. Sanchez is mentoring nine MSU undergraduates in archaeological methods and laboratory analyses of two archaeological sites he excavated with students from the University of California, Berkeley, and stewards from the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Together they hope these data will provide information to help define which salmon species used specific coastal streams and, through genetic analyses of ancient and modern salmon, identify the stocks that should be used to guide the restoration of these species. In this role, Dr. Sanchez enjoys training undergraduate and graduate students in field and laboratory methods, archaeological method and theory, and community-engaged research strategies. Dr. Sanchez recently published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports that investigates ancient stewardship of California’s marine and estuarine fisheries through selective harvesting techniques, such as gill nets.

Outside of work, Dr. Sanchez enjoys playing music from the genre Son Jarcho—Afro-Indigenous music from southern Mexico born out of the Spanish colonial era. He also appreciates exploring the state of Michigan with his wife, Janae, and they are eagerly awaiting the birth of their daughter who is due in March.

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Dr. Mara Leichtman is an Associate Professor of Anthropology affiliated with the Muslim Studies Program, African Studies Center and Asian Studies Center. Dr. Leichtman specializes in sociocultural anthropology and the study of religion, migration, transnationalism, humanitarianism, and economic development.

One of Dr. Leichtman’s research projects, which culminated in her book “Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal,” investigated the location of Shi’i Islam in national and international religious networks, the tension between Lebanese and Iranian religious authorities in West Africa, and the making of a vernacular Shi’i Islam in Senegal. This work has prompted several new avenues for scholarship and collaboration, one of which is Dr. Leichtman’s recent publication.

This past September, Dr. Leichtman and co-editor Dr. Rola El-Husseini (Lund University) published a special journal issue entitled “The Shi‘a of Lebanon: New Approaches to Modern History, Contemporary Politics, and Religion” in the Islamic Studies journal Die Welt des Islams. The idea for this collaboration grew out of the realization that there had not been a recent collection bringing experts of Lebanese Shi’ism into dialogue with one another. This interdisciplinary issue assembles the latest research within history, religious studies, and the social sciences and is inclusive of emerging scholars. Most scholarship begins with the social and political awakening of Lebanese Shi’a in the 1960s that led to the establishment of the political movement Hizbullah in the early 1980s. This volume spans the early 20th century to the present, and aims to broaden knowledge about Lebanon by focusing on lesser known historical periods, revisionist historical accounts, and understudied topics. Such understudied topics include Shi’i schools, involvement in the Lebanese Communist Party, ecumenicalism and gender reforms in Shi’i Islamic political thought, and transnational ties between Hizbullah, Iran, and Syria.

Dr. Leichtman and Dr. El-Husseini’s introduction makes a case for the concept of “Arab Shi’ism,” and, more specifically, “Lebanese Shi’ism.” As social scientists, they posit that historical, political, and sociocultural distinctions between Iran and the Arab world have become more pronounced since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Yet Iran tends to be a primary area of emphasis of the growing sub-field of “Shi’i Studies.” Furthermore, whereas Islamic studies scholars often focus on theological texts, which prioritize the writings of male religious scholars, social scientists are interested in the overlapping of religious, secular, ethnic, gendered and nationalist modes of identification and belonging. Thus the special issue is also a call for a more inclusive Shi’i Studies that encompasses a wider range of disciplinary fields, historical periods, and contemporary lived experiences of Shi’a outside of Iran—and in particular the unique situations of minority religious communities.

Another development from Dr. Leichtman’s first book is a new research project entitled “Humanitarian Islam in Kuwait: Transnational Religion and Global Economic Development in Africa.” She is particularly interested in the interconnection of Islamic organizations in the Middle East and Africa, where South-South relations are understudied. Dr. Leichtman began this project as a visiting Fulbright Scholar at American University of Kuwait during 2016–2017. Her fieldwork of case studies examining Sunni and Shi’i charities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Tanzania and Senegal was funded by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, West Africa Research Association, and MSU’s Humanities and Arts Research Program.

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Assistant Professor Dr. Kurt Rademaker is the Principal Investigator of a 3-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Archaeology project entitled, “Social Adaptation in a Highly Varied Spatial Environment,” which will close next year. This project focuses on some of the earliest archaeological sites known in South America to learn about the timing of initial settlement, the routes used to settle various ecological zones, and the formation of social connections between zones.

At the end of the last ice age, hunter-gatherers successfully colonized nearly every ecological zone in the western hemisphere within a few thousand years. In South America, these environments included the hyper-arid Pacific coast where fisherfolk exploited the bounty of the sea, and the rugged Andes up to 4500 m (approx. 14,800 feet) above sea level where camelid hunters lived in base camps in highland oases. These coastal and highland sites are connected through shared raw materials and artifacts, but whether the sites were made by one group moving between coast and highlands or multiple groups settling in both areas is unknown.

Dr. Rademaker has been leading an interdisciplinary, international team of senior scientists and students to study the functional relationships of these linked Paleoindian sites located at the coast and highlands dating between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. This project includes archaeological exploration of remote desert areas between the coast and highlands to discover additional sites in the settlement system, excavations of these sites, and analyses of uncovered materials and artifacts using cutting-edge techniques. By determining the age and season of occupation of each site, and by teasing out behavioral indicators from the excavated material remains, the team will learn whether the coast or highlands were settled first and whether there was one or multiple groups of people living in these areas. The findings from this research will contribute to understanding how humans have adapted to live in some of Earth’s most challenging environments.

This past summer, Dr. Rademaker also began a new field project in the central Peruvian Andes, supported by a Faculty Initiatives Fund from the MSU College of Social Science. Dr. Rademaker’s team conducted new archaeological excavations at two limestone cave sites located at about 4300 m (14,000 feet) elevation and dating back at least 11,000 years. These two sites were originally excavated in the 1970s and 1980s by teams of U.S. and Peruvian researchers, but due to violence associated with the Shining Path terrorist group, international scientific projects in the Andes abruptly ended. Despite a subsequent return to peaceful conditions within the past 30 years, archaeological work there has not been reinitiated until now.

Over the next few years, Dr. Rademaker will head an interdisciplinary team for this project, including some of the original site investigators from the 1970s and 1980s and students from MSU and Peru. Together they will conduct new archaeological and environmental research in this region using the latest innovative methods. Located in central Peru where rainfall is abundant, vegetation is lush, and animals are numerous, these sites in the Puna of Junín appear to be the residential bases of hunter-gatherers who settled the difficult high Andes at the end of the last ice age. The team is re-dating the sites and studying site formation processes ahead of planned re-analysis of legacy collections and further fieldwork. Ultimately, this research will shed light on the history of biocultural adaptations and environmental change in the high Andes.

To learn more about Dr. Rademaker’s research, visit his working group’s website: paleoandes.com

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The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce Dr. Todd Fenton (Professor of Anthropology) as our new Department Chair. On behalf of the Department, we would like to thank previous Chairperson Dr. Jodie O’Gorman for her years of invaluable service. Dr. Fenton looks forward to continuing this legacy and building on this strong department.

Dr. Fenton has served as a faculty member with the Department of Anthropology since 1998 and is a renowned forensic anthropologist. Over his career, Dr. Fenton has developed an internationally recognized PhD program focusing on forensic anthropology and established the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) as a premier consulting, research, and training laboratory. One aspect of his career of which Dr. Fenton is most proud is the great success of his graduate students, who have received high honors and earned top academic and non-academic positions in the field of forensic anthropology. As Director of the MSUFAL for eight years, Dr. Fenton engaged in and managed over 500 forensic anthropology cases with local medical examiner offices and law enforcement agencies, helping the community and providing instrumental experience for his students.

Dr. Fenton’s research involves projects that seek to better understand the biomechanics of cranial and long bone fracture. The knowledge gained from this experimental research has critical implications for accurate analyses in forensic death investigations. To support this research, Dr. Fenton and a team of interdisciplinary colleagues received three large National Institute of Justice grants. In addition to forensic work, Dr. Fenton has ongoing collaborative bioarchaeological projects in Italy, including the study of skeletons excavated from an early Middle Ages cemetery in the ancient city of Roselle.

For the past four years, Dr. Fenton carried out departmental duties as Associate Chair. During one of those academic years, he was awarded an MSU Academic Advancement Network Leadership Fellowship, in which he had the opportunity to shadow Dean Rachel Croson of the College of Social Science. In these roles, Dr. Fenton saw the profound and significant impacts an administrator can have for improvement. He sees being Chair of this department as an opportunity to help the faculty, staff, and students in achieving their goals and to fulfill the great appreciation he has for the Department, College, and University.

Moving forward together, Dr. Fenton is committed to fostering an inclusive, safe, and welcoming departmental environment where all faculty, staff, and students are valued, respected, and celebrated. Dr. Fenton aims to improve the sense of community within the Department and ensure effective communication that strives for maximum transparency balanced with appropriate levels of confidentiality. He also intends to cultivate a more diverse and all-embracing environment while working to increase the number of under-represented faculty members and PhD students. Dr. Fenton is resolved to be a strong advocate of the Department to the administration and is determined to obtain the resources necessary for its continued success.

Dr. Fenton greatly enjoyed his years of mentoring PhD students in forensic anthropology and is now excited to work with current and incoming students across the Department to help them develop their academic and leadership skills and become the next generation of anthropologists.

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