ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The Arizona Anthropologist is a competitive high-quality annual journal designed, reviewed and published by an editorial board of graduate students in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. The open access archives are made available as a collaboration between the Arizona Anthropologist and the University of Arizona Libraries.

QUESTIONS?

Visit https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/arizanthro for more information about this journal, or contact the editors at arizonaanthropologist@gmail.com.

Recent Submissions

  • Arizona Anthropologist Number 16, Winter 2005

    University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005
  • Editor's Introduction to Issue #16

    Valado, Martha Trenna (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005)
  • The Steel Dog in the Canadian Arctic: A Historical Case Study of Technological Change

    Pavri, Eric Hoshang; University of Arizona (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005)
    During the "Snowmobile Revolution" of the late 1960s, the snowmobile largely supplanted the dog team as the main form of transport in the Canadian Arctic. This essay draws from historical and ethnograpphic sources to investigate practical advantages and disadvantages to adoption of the new technology, and then considers whether this episode of rapid technological change resulted in "cultural loss" in Arctic communities. While it is clear that widespread adoption of the snowmobile technological complex (machines, fuel, tools, skills, knowledge) caused significant changes in life in the Far North, it also appears that the meanings and values associated with traditional subsistence hunting were generally not lost, and in some cases were reinforced during this period of technological transition. Finally, drawing on various academic traditions such as the Social Construction of Technology school, ecological models of convergent cycles, postmodern critiques of modernization and development, and the appropriate technology movement, the essay then questions simplistic notions of cultural loss by considering the common evolution of culture and technology.
  • Person and Place in Preclassic Maya Community Ritual (400 BC - AD 300)

    Bachand, Bruce R.; Bachand, Holly Sullivan; University of Arizona; University of California, Berkeley (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005)
    Preclassic Maya centers were vibrant stages of performance where communities gathered to reaffirm and redefine themselves. Ceremonial pyramids and plazas were tangible and powerful receptacles of past and present forms of community identity. Archaeological remains enable us to develop a multi-generational sketch of public ritual life in the Maya lowlands from 400 BC to AD 300. Transformations in public performance and community participation corresponded with a series of modifications to ceremonial precints. Public architecture in many communities became increasingly less accessible to a large audience of observers. The artistic imagery associated with these buildings also changed markedly - initially depicting zoomorphic or masked beings and ultimately culminating in the portraiture of real historic personages. Concomitant with these changes were pronounced innovations in ritual interment as certain community members began to be entombed in and around public architecture. Taken together, these features suggest Preclassic Maya communities altered their ritual practices to accommodate emerging social realities and inchoate political identities.
  • Computer Recycling: Networks and Possibilities for Expansion in Tucson, Arizona

    Perin, Jodi; Altrichter, Mariana; Cudney-Bueno, Richard; Gulick, Jennifer; Hershdorfer, Mary; University of Arizona (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005)
    Sociological and anthropological studies have shown that while most individuals express concern with the state of the natural environment, this concern translates into pro-environmental behavior only in certain social contexts (Derksen and Gartrell 1993). With this in mind, our paper considers computer recycling in Tucson, Arizona by examining people's attitudes and knowledge level of computer recycling opportunities and investigating the current local institutions and networks that exist to recycle computers. In a broader sense, this helps to place electronic refuse such as old computers in the context of wider U.S. material culture and to consider the cultural implications of these objects. As a response to various citizens' initiatives to begin and expand computer-recycling programs in Tucson, Arizona, the authors conducted a study of computer recycling in this city, which was then presented to interested parties in December of 2001. This paper is adapted from our final report. Our results suggest that the demand for used computers within Tucson currently exceeds the supply, due largely to a lack of awareness of and incentives to participate in local computer recycling programs. However, we see possibilities for solidifying computer-recycling programs if communication barriers are surpassed.
  • The Arizona Anthropologist: History, Heritage, and Prospects

    Murphy, John T.; University of Arizona (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 2005)