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Colloquium Announcement: Kim Le and Bioarchaeology, Alissa Jordan and Folklore

The Florida Anthropological Student Associations hosts weekly colloquia to showcase our graduate students’ and faculty’s research interests, to give them valuable opportunities to practice or refine their presentation techniques, and to help connect UF anthropologists.

Our third colloquium will be Friday, September 26 at 4pm in Turlington 1208:

Kim Le

“Using growth allometry of long bone cross-sectional dimensions to infer the advent of walking in an archaeological sample of Central Californian Amerindian children”

Coauthor: Christine E. Wall

The transition from crawling to walking results in a body weight shift to the lower limbs. This increased mechanical loading (in the form of bending) on the lower limb long bones is expected to stimulate diameter growth in order to increase bone rigidity and strength. In relating cross-sectional dimensions (rigidity, measured by area moment of inertia; strength, measured by section modulus) to bone length across age groups (newborn to 5 years old), we discerned patterns that may the change in mechanical loading associated with the onset of walking. We used four statistical analyses: ANCOVA, reduced major axis (RMA) regression residuals, rigidity ratios, and bootstrap resampling.CSDs of upper limb (UL) bones increased faster than lower limb (LL) bones in the first year, presumably related to crawling. Relatively high CSD growth rates at 6-9mos and 18- 24mos potentially reflect body weight shift to the LL and a response to more habitual bipedalism, respectively. High rates in the latter age interval were maintained during the 24- 36mos period despite slowed length growth potentially due to weaning stress. LL length growth always outpaced CSD growth, potentially to allow for adult limb proportions. In older children, CSD growth increased in the LL bones, presumably to counteract the increasing bending strain. Similar patterns in the non-weight-bearing fibula perhaps signal the increased use of plantarflexors and evertors as gait matures (i.e., proper heel strike to toe-off sequence as made possible by a few anatomical modifications).

Alissa Jordan

“Chanpwèl Security and Werewolf Metaphysics: Technologies of Magic, Defense, and Diagnosis in Petwo-Kongo and Chanpwèl Vodou Practice”

This paper investigates Vodou things that are enlisted in struggles against werewolves (lougawou) in Central rural Haiti. An assemblage of werewolf fears, treatment protocols, and policing emerge in corporeal witnessing events where known and cherished babies perish after succumbing to standardized symptoms. This places the question of “werewolf tragedies” firmly within the empirical realm across Haiti.
Throughout a brief illness, and even after death, the infant’s body is scrutinized and diagnosed by Chanpwèl societies and Petwo-Kongo ritual experts. The child’s body, visitor’s behavior, and other materials are investigated meticulously: Were the windows of the house closed? Had you barricaded all of the doors with furniture? Were the charms hung right above her cradle? Did strange lights sparkle from the road after midnight? In an effort to save the victim, or at least prevent further attacks, ritual experts explore events which happened to involved persons in dreams, in the past, and in the present—struggling to decipher that strange filament connecting one material happening to another. Although occult diagnosis, treatment, and accusation can be understood through the lens of political economy and social change, what might we also gain by understanding these uncanny happenings as they relate to a broader Afro-Creole metaphysics? And how can we make space for these events and philosophies to critically intervene on “Western” theoretical quagmires of objects, agency, and events? Data for the paper is drawn from 12 months of dissertation research and participant observation in a Vodou household and a Chanpwèl society.