Department of Anthropology

  • Featured Faculty: Dr. Stacey Camp

    Featured Faculty: Dr. Stacey Camp

    Dr Stacey CampThe Department of Anthropology is pleased to introduce our new Associate Professor in archaeology and Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) Director, Dr. Stacey Camp. Dr. Camp’s research centers around an interest in how social inequality is manifested and expressed through material culture and the built environment. More specifically, she employs critical race theory to understand how marginalized groups respond to social isolation and discrimination through their consumption patterns. In her first book, The Archaeology of Citizenship, she examined how different marginalized groups, especially migrants, in the United States made claims to nationality and citizenship via material culture. Through this work, she hopes to diversify the stories we tell about the Western U.S., and bring to light elements of its neglected or forgotten past.

    In Idaho, Dr. Camp directed a public archaeological repository, where she began to admire CAP’s creative and unique approach to public outreach. Projects such as CAP’s “MSU dinner”, performed in partnership with Campus Culinary Services and MSU Bakers as well as CAP’s partnership with the MSU Paranormal Society to offer historic haunted tours are just some of distinctive styles of public engagement she admired from afar. Dr. Camp appreciates how CAP facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations between archaeologists and the campus community at large while also demonstrating the continued relevance of archaeology to the modern world. In her opinion, one of the most important features about the Campus Archaeology program is that it gives students who can’t attend field schools outside of the state or abroad an opportunity to gain vital archaeological field school experience at a minimal cost and provides students a very unique opportunity to connect with the history literally underneath their feet.

    Her love for historical archaeology began after attending a field school in Ireland as an undergraduate with Dr. Charles Orser, Jr. of Illinois State University. Orser emphasized doing archaeology for the public good, which is what attracted her to historical archaeology. Camp ended up returning to Ireland to study the representation of the past and archaeological data at government-run museums and heritage sites in 2001, allowing her passions for ethnography, cultural anthropology, and archaeology to merge.

    Growing up in Southern California, Dr. Camp loved studying geology and identifying rocks, an interest that eventually morphed into a love of artifacts and history. Having the opportunity to volunteer at a museum in high school made her decision to pursue Anthropology an easy one. When she’s not at work, she loves hiking, reading and reviewing fiction, and spending time with her two children, husband, and their dog. Before MSU, Dr. Camp was at a small land grant institution in rural Idaho for 9 years so there has been a bit of a welcome adjustment being back around an urban center. She and her family are excited to be at a university with so many resources and events taking place and to be near water and ice rinks again.

    Dr. Camp says that the best part of her job is she gets paid to continually learn new information as well as to adapt to the changing needs of students in the classroom. She has taught thirteen different courses over the last 10 years as a professor, and learned much about human behavior, the past, and different cultures through her various course preps. She enjoys the challenge of learning and integrating new technologies and pedagogies into her classes to keep content fresh and relevant to today’s students.

    Dr Camp excavating at kooskia interment camp
    Dr. Camp excavating at Kooskia Internment Camp

    Dr. Stacey Camp’s current research project involves archaeological and archival research on a World War II internment camp in Idaho, the Kooskia Internment Camp, where first generation Japanese migrants were imprisoned as enemy aliens by the United States government. This project uses material culture to examine how these Japanese migrants coped with incarceration. After two field seasons at the Kooskia Internment Camp, she is working on cataloging and analyzing her data, and has hopes to finish the cataloging process this year, which will allow her to publish her findings. The raw (and published) data can be found on www.internmentarchaeology.org.

    Currently, she is writing an article on race and public health in World War II internment camps and has a commentary on an edited volume of the journal Historical Archaeology concerning World War II internment coming out next year. Also coming out in the next year is a book chapter on databases in historical archaeology.

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  • PhD Student Andy Upton receives Wenner-Gren

    Andy Upton, Phd Candidate
    Analysis of cooking jars and serving plates from the Star Bridge Mississippian town site at the Western Illinois Archaeological Research Center

    Andy J. Upton has been awarded three prestigious grants to assist in the completion of his dissertation research. In 2017, he was awarded the American Anthropological Association Archaeology Division Student Membership Award; a Wenner-Gren dissertation fieldwork grant for “Modeling Networks of Interaction, Identification, and Exchange through Mississippian Period Pottery in the US Midwest,” and a National Science Foundation Archaeology Program Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for “Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Network Relationships in Intercultural Contact.” In 2016, he was awarded the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund Individual Grant for “Factionalism, Migration, and Conflict in the Late Prehistoric Central Illinois River Valley” and in 2015 he won the Chicago Field Museum Elemental Analysis Facility National Science Foundation Subsidy Grant for “Factionalism, Migration, and Conflict in the Late Prehistoric Central IL River Valley: A Pilot Study using LA-ICP-MS.”

    Andy’s dissertation research looks at how network relationships among complex and smaller-scale societies are restructured by migration. Mr. Upton feels that archaeology is well suited to explore the complex sociocultural formations resulting from intercultural contact because it captures transformations in relationships between communities following contact. His work contributes to the broader social and intellectual theory by enhancing the understanding of the impact of migration on social structure, which is an important analytical issue due to the prevalence of migration induced by war, climatic instability, economic insecurity, and social unrest in both contemporary and prehistoric settings.

    His dissertation project, under the direction of Dr. Jodie O’Gorman, examines the role network interrelationships play as indicators of how both local societies and non-local migrant peoples approach intercultural social and economic relations. In particular, Andy’s research addresses the role of the ceramic industry, circa A.D. 1300, and how the in-migration of an Oneota tribal group restructured social relationships in a mostly Mississippian chiefly society across the Middle to Late Mississippian transition in the Late Prehistoric central Illinois River valley (ca. A.D. 1200-1450). This research is an outgrowth of the ongoing collaborative research of Dr. O’Gorman and Dr. Michael Conner, Dickson Mounds Museum of the Illinois State Museum.

    How these communities negotiated multicultural regional cohabitation is another important and relevant aspect of his work. Through his work, Andy hopes to model social networks through clay resource acquisition and the exchange of cooking and serving pottery. Networks of communication are identified based upon the stylistic decorations on pots as well as their form, exhibiting shared relationships of learning and the transmission of culture through time. By providing a dynamic and multi-faceted view on social structure, Andy’s dissertation research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of social and economic transformations resulting from cultural contact.
    Currently, Andy works as the Program Coordinator for the Graduate School at the University of Cincinnati where he lives with his wife Sarah and their dog Avey. Andy hopes to defend his dissertation in 2018.

  • Congratulations Graduates!

    Congratulations to all of our December 2017 graduates. Pictured below, our PhD grads, from left to right: Fayana Richards, Kelly Colas, Dr. O’Gorman, Ryan Klataske, Adam Haviland, Dr. Tetreault, Sharmin Sadequee, Dr. Louie, and Dr. Morgan

    MSU anthropology PhD graduates
    (left to right) Fayana Richards, Kelly Colas, Dr. O’Gorman, Ryan Klataske, Adam Haviland, Dr. Tetreault, Sharmin Sadequee, Dr. Louie, and Dr. Morgan

  • Message from the Chair: Dr. Jodie O’Gorman

    Dr Jodie O'GormanFall Semester 2017 has come and gone, final grades are in, and MSU is under a blanket of snow. It was a busy and exciting semester. As I reported in the last newsletter, Dr. Fredy Rodriguez-Mejia joined the faculty in August as an undergraduate teaching-focused Assistant Professor. This fall he organized the First Annual Anthropology Undergraduate Symposium and Showcase, and it was a fantastic success. On December 7th, twenty undergraduate students with posters or PowerPoint presentations talked with faculty, graduate students, fellow undergraduates, family and friends about their research. They filled the Erickson Kiva and the excitement in the room about doing anthropology was palpable. We are definitely making this an annual event and I hope it will draw even more students and supporters in the future. Other changes are in the air as well. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Stacey Camp to the faculty (see story on page 5). Dr. Camp will be taking over the Campus Archaeology Program as Dr. Lynne Goldstein, founder of that program, retires in 2018. We have also started the search process for an environmental archaeologist to round out the archaeology program as Dr. William Lovis retires in August 2018. The department has also hired Dr. Marcy Hessling-O’Neil (2012 PhD), who teaches in anthropology and advises in the Peace and Justice Studies Program, to provide grant support for our faculty and graduate students. Grants are critical for the success of our faculty and graduate students, and there are some exceptional examples of this kind of work in this newsletter. Also important for enriching the research and learning opportunities in the department is the generous support provided by our alumni and others through your generosity. We now have several targeted giving funds, please see the descriptions of these on page 6 and consider how you could help our students realize their passion in anthropology.

  • MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab

    (left to right) PhD students Mari Isa, Elena Watson, and Alex Goots in the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab working on the NIJ-funded research project focused on blunt force trauma to adult crania.

    The MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, directed by Dr. Joseph Hefner, provides some of the best forensic anthropology PhD training in the country thanks to the program’s incredible research, teaching, and service opportunities. Under the supervision of Dr. Todd Fenton, Dr. Joseph Hefner, and Dr. Carolyn Isaac, graduate students gain experience conducting public service forensic work and teaching undergraduate courses. The laboratory’s unparalleled research, primarily funded through the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), contributes to forensic sciences, biomechanical sciences and law enforcement worldwide.

    Over the past decade, Dr. Todd Fenton, has received three large grants totaling over $1.7 million dollars from the NIJ. These grants have funded several research projects that are interdisciplinary, cross-college collaborations with co-PIs Dr. Roger Haut, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Feng Wei of the Department of Radiology through the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory. The work has also provided excellent opportunities for our own forensic anthropology PhD students (Mari Isa, Alex Goots, and Elena Watson) who are actively involved in the current project. Over the past decade, several past and present MSU Anthropology graduate students have worked on the preceding interdisciplinary skeletal trauma research endeavors including Caitlin Vogelsberg, Emily Streetman, Carolyn (Hurst) Isaac (PhD 2013), and Nick Passalacqua (PhD 2012). These projects address significant gaps in forensic science by providing experimental data and analytical recommendations for interpreting blunt cranial trauma.

    PhD student and Dr. Todd Fenton work in the MSU forensics lab
    PhD student Mari Isa and Dr. Todd Fenton work in the forensic lab

    The collaboration between the two laboratories grew from a natural intersection between the Forensic Anthropology Lab’s role as a consulting laboratory for law enforcement agencies and medical examiner’s offices across the state of Michigan, and the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Labs’ research on joint trauma. As anthropologists and engineers collaborated to determine the most likely causes of injuries in forensic cases involving complicated skeletal trauma, the need for research specifically addressing this issue became clear.

    Their current project combines data from biomechanical experiments, computer modeling, and fracture pattern analysis to predict and document how variables like the location of an impact, the shape of an implement, or the energy of a blow affect patterns of cranial fracture. The goal of the project is to provide forensic practitioners with better tools to make scientific assessments about the circumstances of an injury based on cranial fracture patterns.

    Dr. Joe Hefner, who joined the department in 2014, has also been awarded NIJ and other funding for his research on craniomorphic forensic standards. With the help of his graduate students, Kelly Kamnikar and Amber Plemons, and recent innovations in our laboratory, standard definitions and illustrations of traits that can be seen by the eye and observed without measurements (macromorphoscopic) have been created. These standards are intended to reduce subjectivity and inter- and intra-observer error within databases used for forensic sciences. Creating this standard database necessitates large scale data collection so our researchers have traveled around the country and as far away as Khon Kaen, Thailand for this project.

    The research being conducted addresses significant gaps in forensic science standards by: (1) correlating ancestry and the appearance of certain cranial traits in large and globally-diverse samples; (2) establishing a database (The Macromorphoscopic Databank, MaMD) of modern, forensically-significant populations; and, (3) developing appropriate statistical methods for the identification of ancestry in an easy-to-use computer program.

    Dr. Carolyn Isaac, an MSU PhD alumni, joined the department and MSUFAL in 2019. She is a recipient of an NIJ grant to develop a database of cranial vault fractures of known age. By documenting the histological environment at specified times with associated gross, radiographic, and histologic information, she established phases of cranial fracture healing. The goal of this project is to generate baseline empirical data on the cells and tissues involved in fracture healing at different stages and to provide forensic practitioners with a method to estimate the age of a healing fracture. Such estimations can aid in determining whether an injury contributed to death,
    whether there are multiple injuries of various ages indicting a pattern of abuse, and may directly contribute to the manner of death classification (homicide, suicide, accident, natural, or indeterminate).

    MSU graduate students work on forensics in Thailand
    Amber Plemons, Dr. Joe Hefner and Kelly Kamnikar collecting cranial data in Thailand

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  • Professor Ethan Watrall Co-PI on $1.47 Million Grant from Mellon Foundation

    Professor Ethan Watrall Co-PI on $1.47 Million Grant from Mellon Foundation

    dr watrall in front of a book caseThe Department of Anthropology is very pleased to announce that Professor Ethan Watrall is one of the Principal Investigators that has been awarded a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  The project, entitled Enslaved: People of the Historical Slave Trade, is collaboration with MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (where Watrall serves as Associate Director) and the Department of History.  The $1.47 million grant will fund the first 18-month phase of a multi-phase plan to build and launch an online platform that will link and provide access to millions of pieces of data about that transatlantic slave trade drawn from multiple universities, cultural heritage institutions, and scholarly projects. The platform will provide unprecedented search and data visualization tools for historians, historical anthropologists, and historical archaeologists interested in the transatlantic slave trade.

    The platform will be completely open and free to use by scholars and members of the general public.

    Dean Rehberger, (Director of MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences; Interim Chair, Sociology ADA Liaison; Associate Professor, Department of History) will lead the project along with Walter Hawthorne (College of Social Science, Associate Dean; Professor, Department of History) and Ethan Watrall (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology).

    Watrall is internationally recognized for his experience and expertise in the domain of digital heritage and archaeology.  Most recently he was Director (with Professor Lynne Goldstein) of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Institute for Digital Archaeology Method and Practice and Co-Director (with Professor Candace Keller from the Department of Art, Art History, and Design) of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Digital Archive of Malian Photography.  He is Currently Co-Director (with Professor Jon Frey from the Department of Art, Art History, and Design) of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded ARCS: Archaeological Resource Cataloging System. In addition, he directs the Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Program and the Fieldschool in Digital Heritage (both of which live under the umbrella of the Department of Anthropology’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative)

    old slavery billboard

    The full press release from Michigan State University can be found at http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2018/msu-uses-15m-mellon-foundation-grant-to-build-massive-slave-trade-database/

     

     

     

    Click here to read the Spring 2018 newsletter.

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  • MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab Brings Closure to Families

    MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab Brings Closure to Families

    Dr. Joe Hefner of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab, housed within the Department of Anthropology, was recently featured on ABC 12 News, a local Mid-Michigan subsidiary. When human remains are found by the Michigan State Police, they are brought to the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab for identification, as was the case this fall when remains were found in both Saginaw and Flint. Hefner and his team of colleagues and graduate students work tirelessly to create a biological profile of the unidentified individual so that comparisons can be made to existing medical records. These comparisons allow both a positive identification of the body to made and a cause of death determined so that the family can be notified. Their job “is to provide closure for the families first and foremost,” says Hefner.

    To watch the full interview on ABC 12, click here.

    This is not the only job of the lab however. Contained within the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University, their facility is a teaching area where students come from far and wide to learn forensic and human remain identification techniques. Dr. Hefner and his colleagues hold teaching and research positions as well as the work they do for the Michigan State Police and other law enforcement agencies. The graduate students that work in the lab with him also attend the university full time as anthropology graduate students, completing Master’s and PhD.s and hold part time assistantships as teaching assistants for classes across the university in areas like anatomy, biology and anthropology.

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  • Congratulations Dr. Ryan Klataske!

    Dr. Ryan Klataske defends his dissertation.The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce it’s newest PhD., Dr. Ryan Klataske.

    We are proud to see Ryan come to the completion of his graduate school career here at MSU after the successful defense of his dissertation on December 8th. The department faculty and staff wish Ryan and his family all the best as he moves forward with his professional career.

    Dr. Klataske’s dissertation entitled Wildlife Management and Conservation on Private Land in Namibia: An Ethnographic Account documents the use of common property as a tool for wildlife management and conservation on private ranchland in Namibia. Based on 13 months of ethnographic research, it examines how and why groups of white ranchers have used common property as a tool for managing common-pool wildlife across boundaries of private land. These arrangements and the territories they govern are called freehold or commercial conservancies. His work suggests that common property offered not only a tool for conservation, but also a strategy for survival in post-apartheid southern Africa. By working together, these ranchers attempted to construct a new niche for themselves based on the conservation and sustainable use of African wildlife. Since the early 1990s, freehold conservancy members have transformed their relationship to wildlife and each other, contributing to the conservation of wildlife and habitat on private land. Yet, despite their accomplishments, many ranchers see their efforts as failing or falling short. Their disillusionment stems from the politics of land, fear of a potentially predatory state, and an insecure sense of belonging.

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  • Dr. Lovis named editor for Midwest Archaeological Perspectives Series

    Dr. William LovisDr. William (Bill) Lovis has been named the inaugural Editor for a new book series, Midwest Archaeological Perspectives, launched by a partnership between the Midwest Archaeological Conference, Inc. and the University of Notre Dame Press.  The series will include the most compelling and current works of archaeological narrative and insight for the American Midwest region, exploring standing questions from new vantage points, and innovative new questions arising from the deployment of cutting edge theory and method.

    The American Mid-continent, stretching from the Appalachians to the Great Plains, and from the Boreal Forests to the Gulf of Mexico, is home to a rich and deep multi-ethnic past that even after 150 years of exploration continues to fascinate scholars and the public alike. Beginning with colonization by the first Native American big game hunters, through the origins of domestic food production and construction of the largest earthen monuments in North America, and ultimately the entry of multiple colonial empires and their varying interactions with native populations, the story of the region is an exciting one of changing cultural and environmental interactions and adaptive strategies. The diverse environments that characterize the region have fostered a multiplicity of solutions to the problem of survival, ranging from complex sedentary agriculturally intensive societies to those with highly refined seasonal resource strategies keyed to timed movement and social flexibility.

    For more information about this series, check out the Midwest Archaeological Perspectives page here.

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  • LEADR lab featured in the State News

    LEADR labThe Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR) was recently featured in the State News, highlighting Anthropology graduate and undergraduate students. This lab is a collaboration between the Department of History, Department of Anthropology, and MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences to allow students to engage with digital tools and technologies and to learn new digital pedagogies. It is open to Anthropology and History majors and those who have a course hosted in the lab.

    LEADR, located in Old Horticulture Hall, is changing the way social sciences and humanities are traditionally researched, turning text-heavy publications into documentaries, turning podcasts, photographs and diagrams into 3-D models or interactive maps. Basically, the program veers away from traditional historical and anthropological research and switches to modern, digital, innovative platforms.

    “It’s given me the ability to be digitally literate,” anthropology senior Hannah Trevino, said. “In one of my classes I learned how to code, which allowed me to maybe not do it proficiently in my own setting, but I can at least speak the language.”  Trevino didn’t know how to utilize technology tools before her class as few have prior experience with these kinds of digital resources before utilizing the lab.

    “It’s not just a paper that is read by the student and the professor and then is thrown in the trash, but they’re projects that contribute to ongoing discussions about history, culture and heritage,” the director of the lab, Brandon Locke said of the projects created here.

    LEADR represents the Department of Anthropology’s commitment to thoughtful digitally inflected work in anthropology and cultural heritage.

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