Dr. Jessica Yann believes everyone should have a right to their own history. 

Yann, Program Manager for Michigan State University’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) program and a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, completed the first-ever human Ancestral remains repatriation to The Bahamas. 

“To see how important this return was to the people of The Bahamas, to know that their cultural heritage is back where it belongs, and that I was a part of it, is incredibly humbling,” Yann said. “I’m glad to have been able to facilitate it.”

While reviewing a collection donated by the Chamberlain Memorial Museum in the 1950s, Yann discovered human ancestral remains from The Bahamas. As with most collections, Yann knew the provenance of the items, but how they were originally acquired remained unclear. Although NAGPRA applies only within the U.S., Yann applied its principles to help initiate the return of Ancestral remains to The Bahamas.

After several phone calls, Yann connected with Dr. Grace Turner, senior archaeologist at the Antiquities, Monuments, and Museums Corporation (AMMC) in Nassau, to facilitate the return.

On Oct. 28, 2024, Yann was welcomed to The Bahamas by Prime Minister Philip Davis and completed the repatriation of the ancestral remains. During her three-day visit, she witnessed the island community celebrate the return, displaying the remains in the country’s Parliament building and opening them for public viewing.

“It’s a moment where part of our past, held far from our shores for nearly a century, has finally returned home,” Davis said in his address. “Thanks to this collaboration between Michigan State University’s Arts and Collections Department and our own Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation, we mark a historic first for The Bahamas: the return of ancestral remains from an international institution.”

Yann noted that Caribbean islands have been looted for centuries, and the AMMC has worked hard to track their collections. This particular one was previously unknown to them, now providing access to new information about their history.

“They don’t have a lot of good data on the Lucayan people, the island’s indigenous inhabitants, and these were Lucayan remains, which added to their understanding of the first people to inhabit the island,” Yann said.

A key component of Yann’s role is auditing collections to identify items eligible for repatriation under NAGPRA. According to nagpra.msu.edu, NAGPRA is a U.S. federal law passed in 1990 that requires institutions receiving federal funding to inventory their collections, consult with federally recognized Native American and Native Hawaiian tribes, and repatriate human remains and associated funerary objects, unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to those with a legal right to them.

By auditing these collections, Yann can trace how these items were acquired, even before they reached MSU’s campus. If an item is found to be NAGPRA-eligible and was not obtained with permission, Yann works with Tribes to complete the repatriation process.

“If there was no consent for a collection to be removed from its original location, we either need to get consent to keep it or return it,” Yann said. “We are recognizing that archaeologists aren’t the sole authority on the past — many people should have a say in how the past is understood.”

Yann explained that individuals working with NAGPRA agree that Tribal items should be repatriated to their communities of origin. This was not always the prevailing view.

“We’ve seen a shift in archaeological practice to treat these Ancestral remains as people who should be returned to the appropriate communities,” Yann said. “NAGPRA and doing this work continues to be important because it’s about social justice, human rights, and correcting the wrongs of the past.”

Yann hopes this return to The Bahamas will inspire others to review their collections and follow suit.

“We need to put cultural heritage back into the hands of the descendants of the people who created it. They have a right to it,” Yann said. “By hoarding someone else’s history, we make it inaccessible to them, and by gatekeeping their history, we perpetuate colonial injustices.”

Yann is passionate about this work because she believes in reconciling the wrongs of the past. Through communication with Native American Tribes and other Indigenous communities worldwide, Yann continues to learn and seek guidance on handling culturally sensitive items.

“There’s a lot of space for collaboration, engagement, and improving our collections management by having these conversations,” she said. “Michigan State University will do everything we can to ensure that those who created cultural heritage have access to it and the right to it.”

By Louise Henderson

Dr. Mindy Morgan, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and an affiliated faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, is Michigan State University’s College of Social Science Access Champion honoree. During November, Native American Heritage month, the college celebrates the contributions, culture and history of Indigenous peoples in America. Morgan focuses her research on language ideologies surrounding the preservation, transmission and reclamation of Indigenous languages in Native communities. 

Click here to read about Morgan and her work.

Kehli Henry, Ph.D., is Michigan State University’s Access Spotlight honoree. During the month of November the college celebrates the diverse history, culture and accomplishments of our Native American and Indigenous community members. There are over 500 federally recognized tribes across the country including a dozen in the state of Michigan, each with its own unique set of shared traditions, language and customs. Henry is a proud Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe woman), and as a researcher who has worked closely with Native American communities striving to increase awareness and improve access to a wide range of public services and programming, she is a shining example of an Access Spotlight. 

Click here to learn more about Henry and her work.

By Louise Henderson

The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Dr. Joe Hefner has been awarded $2,062,069 from the Department of Justice for a project entitled MOSAIC: Unifying Methods of Sex, Stature, Affinity, & Age for Identification through Computational Standardization.

To aid in the identification of unknown human remains, forensic anthropologists are often called upon to create a biological profile, or an estimation of the unknown individual’s age, biological sex, population affinity (i.e., ancestry), and stature. The data collected to develop a biological profile typically includes both metric and nonmetric/morphological data from across the entire skeleton, and these data are then analyzed using a variety of analytical methods. These methods are each based on different subsets of data (e.g., cranial metrics for population affinity estimation versus innominate morphology for sex estimation), with multiple methods available to estimate each parameter of the biological profile. However most currently available methods analyze only a single data modality (metric v. nonmetric), focus on only a single skeletal element (e.g., cranium v. innominate), and can only estimate a single biological profile parameter. This leaves forensic anthropologists with a bewildering array of methods that may produce idiosyncratic results, with no evidence-based way to determine how differing results should be weighed or reported. Further, fragmenting methods by individual biological profile parameters ignores the realities of human skeletal variation, creates a priori assumptions about which data provide information for which parameter, and fails to account for interactions between sex, population affinity, age, and stature.

MOSAIC, or Methods of Sex, Stature, Affinity, & Age for Identification through Computational standardization, is a proposed non-proprietary computer program that will produce a holistic estimation for all biological profile parameters. This program will use a machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) system built using a large database of contemporary skeletal data. The innovations of MOSAIC are (1) the creation of a dataset that encompasses trait and measurement data from the entire skeleton that spans multiple biological profile methods (“matched data”) and (2) the use a robust ML/AI approach to uncover new patterns of interaction within the data, while minimizing variability between practitioners. Preliminary data show that the alpha version of MOSAIC significantly outperforms the most commonly used methods to individually estimate sex and population affinity, as well as a combined sex and population affinity estimation. The use of a reference sample of matched data and non-partitioned approach addresses pitfalls in traditional approaches, while also standardizing the analytical process of biological profile estimation.

By Ethan Watrall

New faculty member Dr. Madeline Mackie’s work at the La Prele Mammoth site is featured in this quarter’s American Archaeology magazine. The approximately 12,900-year-old site contains the remains of a butchered Columbian mammoth and at least four camp areas thought to be associated with the animal’s butchery. The presence of an associated camp is particularly notable as there are only two other proboscidean (mammoth and their kin) butchery sites in North America where camps have been identified. In addition to stone tools and animal remains, the site has produced a suite of artifacts including a bone bead and needles, some of the oldest south of the Pleistocene ice sheets, and a large stain of ocher, a natural red pigment. The site is helping archaeologists understand what life was like for the Ice Age residents of the continent.

Link to online version of the article: https://www.thearchcons.org/la-prele-creek-dig-finds-clovis-camps-oldest-bead-in-north-america/

By Ethan Watrall

Dr. Gallin was the first Western anthropologist to do a Taiwanese village ethnography, and he and his wife continued to research and publish on Taiwan during their career and after retiring. The lifelong study of Taiwan culminated in the Gallins receiving Honorary Taiwanese citizenship in 2006. The Annual Endowed Bernard Gallin Lecture in Asian Anthropology series was named in Dr. Gallin’s honor after his retirement from the Department of Anthropology.

Dr. Gallin is survived by his wife and MSU Professor Emerita of Sociology Dr. Rita Gallin, sons Marc and Peter, daughter-in-law Patricia, nieces, nephews, and a wide circle of family and friends.

For Dr. Gallin’s faculty profile, click here.

For Dr. Gallin’s online memorial, click here.

Department of Anthropology Associate Professor Dr. Elizabeth Drexler announces the publication of her new book, Infrastructures of Impunity: New Order Violence in Indonesia, available now from Cornell University Press.

From the publisher’s website: In Infrastructures of Impunity Elizabeth F. Drexler argues that the creation and persistence of impunity for the perpetrators of the Cold War Indonesian genocide (1965–66) is not only a legal status but also a cultural and social process. Impunity for the initial killings and for subsequent acts of political violence has many elements: bureaucratic, military, legal, political, educational, and affective. Although these elements do not always work at once—at times some are dormant while others are ascendant—together they can be described as a unified entity, a dynamic infrastructure, whose existence explains the persistence of impunity. For instance, truth telling, a first step in many responses to state violence, did not undermine the infrastructure but instead bent to it. Creative and artistic responses to revelations about the past, however, have begun to undermine the infrastructure by countering its temporality, affect, and social stigmatization and demonstrating its contingency and specific actions, policies, and processes that would begin to dismantle it. Drexler contends that an infrastructure of impunity could take hold in an established democracy.

The book is available directly from the publisher here. Use the code 09BCARD for 30% off.

Discovery gives insight into campus history, provides educational opportunities

In summer of 2023, workers from Michigan State University Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, or IPF, were installing hammock posts close to student residence halls near West Circle Drive when they encountered a hard, impenetrable surface under the ground.

Believing it to be either a large rock or building foundation, IPF called MSU’s Campus Archaeology Program, or CAP. After cross-checking old maps, campus archaeologists determined that it was the foundation of the first observatory on MSU’s campus, constructed in 1881.

“The campus archaeology program is designed to protect and mitigate our below ground heritage here at MSU,” said Stacey Camp, director of CAP and associate professor of anthropology at MSU, “We collaborate with IPF on construction projects and we are involved in preplanning stages to ensure that if they potentially hit an archaeological site, we can protect it in some manner.”

The observatory discovery gives insight into how scientific observation, as well as life on campus, has changed over the last 140-plus years.

“It gives us a sense of what early campus looked like in the late 19th century,” said Ben Akey, MSU campus archaeologist and anthropology doctoral student. “The original campus observatory was built and used at a time when Michigan Agricultural College — what would become MSU — was a radically different institution with only a handful of professors and a relatively small student body.”

“It gives us a sense of what early campus looked like in the late 19th century,” said Ben Akey, MSU campus archaeologist and anthropology doctoral student. “The original campus observatory was built and used at a time when Michigan Agricultural College — what would become MSU — was a radically different institution with only a handful of professors and a relatively small student body.”

Akey’s role entails collaborating with IPF to keep up with campus construction projects, researching any discoveries and supervising crews of students participating in on-campus archaeological dig sites. Working closely with MSU Archives, Akey conducted most of the research to confirm that IPF’s discovery was indeed the foundation of the first campus observatory. They also drew on the book “Stars Over the Red Cedar” by Horace A. Smith, professor emeritus in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy for additional information.

“I did a lot of reading to learn more about the first observatory: its history, how it was used and what the building itself might have looked like,” Akey said.

Astronomical observation at MSU: Then and now

Located just behind what is now Wills House, the first observatory on MSU’s campus was built by Professor Rolla Carpenter. An 1873 graduate of Michigan State Agricultural College, Carpenter returned as a professor and taught a wide variety of courses, including mathematics, astronomy, French and civil engineering.

Real-world experience: Field school and summer digs

While most students who work with campus archaeology are anthropology majors, some — like Webb — have backgrounds in other areas of study. In addition to Webb, the observatory dig crew included students majoring in classical and romance studies and forensics.

“Having students from majors outside anthropology gives us a different perspective on what we’re finding in the ground,” said Camp. “We feel really lucky to have a wide variety of knowledge on our dig sites.”

Akey said working on a dig site, such as the first campus observatory, helps prepare students for careers in archaeology.

“CAP provides an essential venue of professional training for both graduate students and undergraduates in archaeological fieldwork in analysis,” Akey said.

One training opportunity is an undergraduate field school led by CAP. Most archaeology and anthropology programs require fieldwork, which is often done overseas and can often be costly. Every other summer, MSU hosts a field school that gives Michigan students who are interested in archaeology, but may not have the financial resources to travel abroad, an opportunity to do hands-on work on an actual site.

For the upcoming field school in 2024, CAP is planning to focus on the first observatory site.

“Next summer, we’re planning to run an undergraduate archaeological field school where students can enroll for credit and get experience excavating the foundation of the first observatory on campus,” Camp said. “We anticipate having 18 to 20 students work on the project and get great experience doing archaeology.”

Camp said seeing students develop an interest in connecting the past with the present energizes her.

“I love watching students connect with artifacts and try to tell a bigger story about humankind with those objects,” she said.

Connecting past and present

Akey said they appreciate the unique opportunity to learn more about MSU’s campus history while developing skills that will serve them beyond the completion of their Ph.D.

“One of the things I value most about archaeological work is kind of building a sense of connection to landscapes and people,” they said. “With a campus this old, there’s a lot of historic materials, archaeological materials that would be disturbed by all the ongoing construction on campus. Because of our partnership with IPF, those objects are not disturbed, and we get a chance to document and analyze some of them. It’s a pretty cool job.”

Camp was initially drawn to archaeology as a tactile way to interact with history and gain new perspectives.

“Archaeology gives us a bit more knowledge about how people lived in the past, how they did things differently and how maybe we could do things differently in the contemporary world as well,” she said.

Webb sees this firsthand through his work at the observatory and on archaeological dig sites.

“In my job working outreach at the observatory, I meet people who graduated from MSU many, many years ago who come and see the work that we’re doing, and they’re very proud to see how campus has grown,” he said. “I have even more insight into the campus’ evolution after learning about the first observatory and the history of scientific observation on campus.”

Camp said she feels honored to connect MSU’s past to its present through her work with CAP.

“MSU is a passionate and dedicated community,” she said. “Spartans are very invested in this campus and its history, and being able to share a little bit of my knowledge with people is very rewarding.”

View more images from the dig site here.

Department of Anthropology Associate Professor Masako Fujita, Director of the MSU Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research, is looking for mid-Michigan breastfeeding mothers to volunteer for an upcoming study, “Exploring Human Milk Immune Specificity.”

Qualifying volunteers will be asked to:

• Come to Michigan State University East Lansing campus, if possible, with baby – about 2 hours
• Pump about one ounce of milk (in a private office) and give blood drops via finger stick
• Answer questions and have their body measurements taken
  We ask volunteers to pump milk at campus, rather than donating frozen milk, to be sure that all the immune factors in milk are still active when we take it into the lab. Participants will receive a $35 Amazon gift card. For more info please email masakof@msu.edu.