Library Award for Undergraduate Research

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    Evidence of Environmental Change Events and Resulting Cultural Adaptations in the Archaeological Record of Iceland
    (2017-02-14) Loiselle, Hope; Pavao-Zuckerman, Barnet; Hambrecht, George; Anthropology
    Evidence of environmental change events can be seen in the archaeological record of Iceland. How populations adapted to these events, depended much upon their wealth status and resource availability. A faunal assemblage from the site of Skálholt was analyzed, revealing a meat-based economy. Since Skálholt’s wealth status is unique in Iceland, it likely insulated the site from the negative impacts of the Little Ice Age. Comparative analysis with other sites across Iceland reveals different adaptation strategies, such as increased reliance on marine mammal hunting. Other environmental events like deforestation are also evident in the archaeological record of Iceland through palynological evidence.
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    Mosquitoes in the Field: Malaria, Farmers and Culturally-Induced Evolution
    (2015-02-15) Gabb, Matthew; Downey, Sean; Anthropology
    Ever since Charles Darwin’s revolutionary book "On the Origin of Species" was published in 1859, evolution via adaptation and natural selection has dominated the life sciences. Since the 1980s, a complement to genetic selection has been developed: Niche construction theory. Niche construction is the coevolutionary feedback loop in which organisms make modifications (ecosystem engineering) to their local environments (niches)—usually as a non-genetic adaptation—and in which these self-modified environments then exert an evolutionary pressure back onto the organism. This paper seeks to show that niche construction is not a product of natural selection, but rather an independent evolutionary process in its own right, challenging the idea that humans cannot affect their own evolution.
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    An ‘Economic Man’ in Every Society: An Overview of Economic Anthropology and its Cross-cultural Development as a Discipline as it Relates to the Notion of the ‘Economic Man’
    (2011) D'Ippolito, Michelle; Stuart, William Taft; Anthropology
    This paper will give an overview of economic anthropology both in terms of the history of ideas and the philosophy of science. It will look at how the field has developed from several distinct philosophies in economics to the multifaceted approaches within the field today. The first section will look at the roots of the field and the major philosophies and proponents of those philosophies. The second section will look at the more recent trends in terms of how they draw on the earlier philosophies and the new elements they incorporate. The final section will look at how the multifaceted approaches in the field have allowed for new avenues of study. In particular, this section will look how these multifaceted approaches have made the definition of the “economic man” more cross-cultural.