Search

In this era of industry deregulation, gutting of environmental protections, and science denial, environmental justice applied anthropology is more important than ever. There is growing ethnographic research into the ways people organize themselves and take action to protect their families and communities from toxins while demanding accountability from polluting industries and the state. When students encounter this literature in university curricula and when service-learning projects are part of coursework, the experiences they gain can inform their personal lives long after the semester ends. Five anthropologists share experiences teaching environmental justice ethnography courses. Their pedagogy addresses critical questions of ethical research and student positionality.

As households move up the sanitation ladder, health risks presumably decline but the corresponding technologies may require increasing operation and maintenance costs. One critique of the ladder is that it prioritizes technology and could be improved if it included a functional approach to monitoring, such as including aspects of environmental sustainability that consider resource recovery. Using analyses of data obtained from semi-structured interviews, surveys, and field observations, this study examines the functional transition toward improved sanitation technology as a household moves up the sanitation ladder with the added function of resource recovery (from pit latrines to composting latrines). The study took place in six indigenous Ngäbe communities in Panama. The results reveal that of 103 pit latrines studied, 88% were completed and in use, but only 35% were operated appropriately. Approximately 60% of pit latrine owners reported that they would use composting latrines, with compost as the primary perceived benefit. Barriers to adoption include lack of prior experience, user disgust of working with excrement, and the perceived amount of work required for operation. Overall, these findings indicate the importance of establishing demonstration projects and culturally aligned training for more complex sanitation technologies that enable resource recovery. The results have broad implications for understanding sanitation technology transitions in rural and indigenous settlements in other world regions.

Recent infrastructure failures in the United States have brought attention to the ways and extent to which water security is unevenly distributed in urban areas. For many marginalized commu...

Isolation valves are critical for reliable functioning of water distribution networks (WDNs). However, it is challenging for utilities to prioritize valve rehabilitation and replacement given it is often unclear if certain valves are operable in a given WDN. This study uses the Gomory-hu tree of the segment-valve representation (or dual representation) of WDNs to obtain logical implications of inoperable valves (i.e., which segments would be isolated and merged unnecessarily due to valve inoperability). Multi-objective optimization is then used to identify the critical valves based on selected attributes (e.g., social vulnerability, flow volume) of segments that would be unnecessarily isolated as a result. This study developed three multi-objective formulations: first, deterministic; second, accounting for uncertainty; and third, accounting or both uncertainty and likelihood of failure of pipes within segments. Identified critical valves are compared between the three developed formulations and a method considering only a single objective. Results demonstrated that the multi-objective optimization provided additional information that can be used to discern valve importance for utilities in comparison with using a single objective. Further, though there was overlap between the results from the three formulations, the third formulation provided the most insight without overwhelming decision-makers with a large number of identified valves.

The environmental legacies of sugarcane cultivation at Betty’s Hope were created over a period of three hundred years and involved massive transformations to the landscape. In this chapter, erosion/productivity simulation is used to generate a baseline model of change over time and then historical records and geoarchaeological analysis of soils are used to evaluate the model. It is concluded that contemporary soil degradation at Betty’s Hope is a mosaic of effects including long-term sugarcane monocropping as well as the recent cessation of agriculture, which caused rapid destabilization of already vulnerable landscapes. Using an historical ecology framework, this research demonstrates the importance of long-term perspectives for understanding soil health.

This paper examines physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils and sediments from landforms in eastern Antigua, West Indies, to better understand the long-term consequences of colonial plantation agriculture for soil health. Plantation farming played a central role in the history of Caribbean societies, economies, and environments since the seventeenth century. In Antigua, the entire island was variably dedicated to agricultural pursuits (mostly sugarcane monoculture) from the mid-1600s until independence from the United Kingdom in 1981, when most commercial cultivation ceased. Today’s soilscapes are highly degraded, although it is unknown what the role of the island’s plantation legacy has played in this process. Our research combines geoarchaeological survey and sampling, sediment core analysis, and historical archival research to model the initial and cumulative impacts of the plantation industry on the island. We focus on the region surrounding Betty’s Hope, the island’s first larg...

There is increasing global interest in the adoption of sustainable wastewater systems due to the significant human and environmental health benefits of properly treating wastewater effluents prior to being discharged into surface waters and local communities. Research demonstrates that wastewater infrastructure is sustainable only when multiple stakeholder groups are involved. Here we draw on the principles of integrated environmental resources management and sociocultural analyses to develop a framework for rapidly assessing stakeholder involvement in a proposed centralized wastewater project in Placencia, Belize. We demonstrate this framework by analyzing survey responses to measure stakeholder involvement and discuss the model’s utility to inform groupings based on similarity in engagement. We employ Brainerd-Robinson similarity coefficients to rapidly assess stakeholders’ involvement and produce a consensus score. We then evaluate the goodness of fit between these scores and correspondence analysis scatterplots. We conclude that Brainerd-Robinson scores provide a rapid means for determining relevant groupings of stakeholders, particularly in resource-scarce settings. Nuanced stakeholder groupings can inform researchers, policy makers, development workers, and community organizations about ways in which individuals are engaging with a project, providing a way to target suitable initiatives to promote sustained involvement.

This research examines the chemical impacts to soils caused by the industrialisation (mechanisation and mass production) of sugar and rum manufacturing in the Caribbean during the eighteenth and ni...

Chemical analysis was undertaken at Chan b'i, an Early Classic (300–600 CE) ancient Maya submerged salt works to find activity areas not apparent from artifactual materials recovered from excavations. Chan b'i is one of 105 salt works located underwater in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize where wooden buildings are preserved due to mangrove peat matrix. The acidic peat (pH 6) preserved wood and other botanical remains, but is not conducive to the preservation of bone. Consequently, the artifactual record may be biased against the preservation of animal food remains and human burials, which are typically found at Maya settlements. In this study, we use inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) to evaluate if there is evidence of other activities in addition to the salt production. The present study extends soil chemistry research to underwater archaeological sites. The results of chemical patterns indicate activity locations inside and outside of wooden architecture not shown by the artifactual remains.

This report describes the results of a geochemical analysis using a mild acid extraction and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy of 198 samples from plaster surfaces at the palace complex at Actuncan, a prehispanic Maya city located in a karst landscape of western Belize. Archeologists working in the Maya region of Central America often refer to many different kinds of building complexes as “palaces” without a clear understanding of how they functioned. Often, the rooms inside these structures are devoid of features and artifacts, making it difficult to infer how they were used. Geochemical characterization of inorganic residues on plaster floors as a means of prospecting for activity areas is therefore critical for studying the function and meaning of ancient Maya palaces. At Actuncan, due to the high degree of preservation of many of the floors, overlying plaster surfaces were able to be sampled, thus informing not only how the buildings were used, but how their uses changed over time. Multivariate quantitative modeling and spatial interpolation of the chemical data demonstrate that a variety of domestic, ritual, and possibly administrative activities took place in the palace complex, a finding that challenges previous assessments of palaces as primarily royal residential compounds.

One of the consequences of rapid tourism expansion is abrupt pressure on local keystone resources such as water and energy. While novel wastewater technologies have been designed to close resource cycles and thereby diminish resource stress, little research has been undertaken to assess the coupled social, economic, and ecological components of system sustainability and resiliency in these areas. As a result, local decision makers often lack scientific information needed for making evidence-based and context-sensitive choices about new technologies. Involved stakeholders also lack resources to develop appropriate interventions to address human-environmental changes and unintended consequences. This article employs a grounded approach to sociocultural data analysis to critically examine how human perceptions and practices related to water, wastewater, and energy management in a rapidly growing tourist destination on the coast of Belize enable and constrain decision making with regard to technology adoption. Ethnographic research on the Placencia Peninsula in Belize focused on discerning perceptions of acceptability for the recovery of resources such as energy and nutrients from wastewater, local perceptions of health risks and benefits of such recovery, as well as how economic and environmental advantages of these processes intersect with local demands. Research reveals that local understandings are grounded in cultural practices, historical events and processes, contemporary political and economic issues, and variable awareness of environmental change. This study also reveals that the greatest barriers to the adoption and sustainability of new technologies include sharing technical and economic information broadly and providing opportunities for legitimate multilevel stakeholder participation in decision-making processes.

Building resilience in critical infrastructures for smart and connected cities requires consideration of different types of interdependencies. Previous research has mainly conceptualized three types of interdependencies including cyber, physical, and social. To develop resilient and sustainable design, operations, and managerial strategies, domain knowledge for each infrastructure along with its organizational characteristics needs to be integrated with those of other infrastructures. In this review paper, an infrastructure-oriented approach is taken to systematically examine different types of interdependencies and resilience quantification techniques for water, transportation, and cyber infrastructures. Design, operations, and managerial strategies are identified and categorized into short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans that can potentially improve the resilience and sustanability of the underlying infrastructures. Future research needs, in terms of resilience metrics, interdependency, and strategies, are discussed.

Brownfields redevelopment creates opportunities for enhanced environmental conditions, improved physical and mental health, community cohesion, and economic prosperity. However, brownfields cleanup and recycling projects sometimes fail due to a lack of community engagement. Recent research suggests that such failures can stem from a lack of equitability in the planning process, especially when it comes to decision making. This paper examines issues of equitability in a recent brownfields redevelopment project in Tampa, Florida funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project focused on an underserved and under-resourced community with long-term environmental burdens and health disparities. Our ethnographic research shows that, while the project engaged in multiple and intersecting efforts to include a diversity of community voices in the decision-making process, ultimately structural and organizational power imbalances in sustainability transitions influenced participation in redevelopment initiatives. This study suggests that attending to issues of power articulated through expressions of local and authoritative knowledge about environmental cleanup and redevelopment can lead to deeper levels of community engagement.

Rum, a by-product of sugar production, has been a key element of social, cultural, political, and economic processes in the British Caribbean since its invention in the early seventeenth century. However, little is known about the social and ecological impacts of its manufacture. This chapter draws on the formal techniques of life cycle assessment (LCA) to better understand the consequences of rum production for human and environmental health. Drawing on archaeological research at the British sugar plantation, Betty’s Hope, in Antigua, the authors outline how different aspects of the production process, including raw material extraction, materials processing, and manufacture as well as the generation of wastes created unique environmental legacies that persist today. The authors conclude that British rum production was internally economically sustainable in terms of the production process but was not socially or environmentally sustainable. Given the unique configuration of British rum production, the authors suggest that similar industries in other parts of the Caribbean may have only had a life cycle of approximately one century, with social and environmental burdens contributing to the decline of individual industries.

INTRODUCTIONSustainable water management (an organizational mode that preserves the renewability of the resource and equitable access to it) in less developed countries is fast becoming one of the greatest environmental challenges of the twenty-first century (UNICEF and WHO 2011). The United Nations Human Rights Council recently passed a global resolution (Resolution 64/292) declaring "safe and clean drinking water and sanitation" a basic human right (cf. Bakker 2007; Mirosa and Harris 2011; UN 2010), and calling on states and international agencies to supply financial resources, technology transfer, and capacity building to provide for safe and accessible water and sanitation. Meanwhile, in Honduras, government agencies charged with overseeing water and sanitation have largely failed to meet the demands of growing metropolitan areas (Balthasar 2011). Private sector participation in water and sanitation services in periurban regions of the country has also experienced significant challenges and setbacks (Phumpiu and Gustafsson 2009). Community-based interventions in rural sectors by outside development organizations seeking to design treatment and delivery of potable water have also been largely ineffective (Fogelberg 2010). Even self-organized efforts by communities in different residential contexts have been unsustainable (Casey 2005). Why are communities in Honduras struggling to obtain safe and clean water?In this article, we take a holistic look at the social, economic, ecological, and engineered contexts of gravity-fed water systems in the Palmarejo Valley, a predominantly rural sector in northwest Honduras, with the greater goal of identifying key barriers to long-term sustainability of water provisioning. In doing so, we apply a systems-based perspective employing a grounded-theory and mixed-methods approach to cultural analysis (e.g., Billgreen and Holmen 2008; Loker 2003; Wells et al. 2014), which allows us to view water management as a socioecological system (Bennett 1976) that couples human behaviors and perceptions with the biophysical environment. This perspective resembles what geographers and other social scientists increasingly refer to as the "hydrosocial cycle" (Linton 2014; Sultana and Loftus 2012; Swyngedouw 2009), which "attends to the social nature of [hydrological] flows as well as the agential role played by water, while highlighting the dialectical and relational processes through which water and society interrelate" (Linton and Budds 2013:1). After describing the household and community contexts of water management systems in Honduras, we present the results of our emerging work in the Palmarejo Valley, where we have conducted interviews with valley residents and community leaders, mapped cultural and environmental features using GPS, and performed water quality tests to measure levels and isolate sources of heavy metals and bacterial contamination.We have observed that community-based approaches commonly employed in development projects in this region may not be appropriate in all contexts due, in part, to the scale at which they operate. While the utility of the concept of scale has been debated (Leitner and Miller 2007; Marston et al. 2005; Moore 2008), we find it useful in our research for characterizing the sociospatial constructs that actors develop and deploy in different political and economic contexts to influence how individuals, organizations, and institutions manage resources (see Herod 2011; e.g., Goodman et al. 2008). Here, our emphasis is not on spatial categories, per se, but on the social processes that constitute them (Marston 2000) and the connections that link them (Latour 1993). The social construction of scale can thus be seen as a material expression of power relations (MacKinnon 2010). Water, in particular, is increasingly subject to "scale challenges" (Cash et al. 2006), because it moves across social and natural landscapes-or waterscapes (Budds and Hinojosa 2012)-that crosscut multiple scales (Norman et al. …

Ulúa-style marble vases played important social, political, economic, and religious roles in southern Mesoamerica during the seventh through eleventh centuries A.D. However, most such vessels known to archaeologists are part of looted collections or else were unearthed before the advent of modern archaeological practices. As a result, little is known about the context, use, and chronology of these objects. Recent investigations at the site of Palos Blancos in northwest Honduras discovered an Ulúa-style marble vase in an undisturbed mortuary context. Excavation of the burial context, along with bioarchaeological and stable isotope analysis of the human remains, suggests that the vase was placed as an offering, possibly to an ancestor of the residential group. Phosphate and pollen studies indicate that the vase once held a corn-based beverage . Radiocarbon dating of four charcoal samples from immediately below and adjacent to the vase yielded a range of dates from the beginning of the Late Classic period, ca.A.D. 600-800. Through analyses of the context and contents of the vase, this research contributes to a more holistic understanding of the use and meaning of Ulúa-style marble vases in southern Mesoamerica.

Patios and plazas represent two of the most common types of open space found at ancient Mesoamerican settlements. Patios tended to serve as areas for household activities, while plazas were commonly the focus of community wide religious and political rituals. With the aid of geochemical prospection of sediments and plasters, archaeologists have been able to successfully identify and characterize these spaces at many archaeological sites in the Maya region of southern Mesoamerica. However, in communities located adjacent to the Maya world where cultural interactions between different ethnic groups were highly complex, it is difficult to understand the use, management, and meaning of open spaces, which often shifted over time. While geochemical studies in the region have been useful for detecting the locations of activity areas in open spaces, the structure and composition of these activities often remain challenging to interpret because they represent a palimpsest of different practices over time. In this paper, we examine the interplay of chemical residues with other sediment properties, including organic matter and potential hydrogen, with the greater goal of increasing the interpretive potential of geochemical data for understanding activity spaces at the site of Palmarejo in northwest Honduras (ca. AD 600–900). Using a mild acid extraction procedure and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry, we chemically characterize anthrosols from a formally defined open space at the site, and analyze the data quantitatively and spatially using interpolation with Kriging. We then compare the spatial patterns of the chemical elements to the distributions of soil organic matter (loss-on-ignition) and soil pH (glass electrode), and evaluate the results with excavation data from the space. While the results are not straightforward, our research leads us to conclude that the area under investigation most likely served as a venue for ritual activities, a finding that is consistent with similarly structured areas in the community and the broader region. These results lead us to advocate for more integrated analyses of multiple sediment properties in archaeological prospection of complex spaces.

In 1742, an outpost of English royalization was established on Roatan Island off the north coast of Honduras. The community, Augusta, housed a mix of English settlers and local indigenous Miskitu peoples. While the settlement was occupied for a brief span of only 7 years, the material record of the community provides insight into early English-Miskitu interactions during the process of English “royalization,” or the strategies deployed by monarchies to engender loyalty to a state. In this article, we discuss the concept of royalization from an agent-centered perspective and then describe the results of our four field seasons of archaeological investigations at Augusta, which have unearthed mixed deposits of English and Miskitu material culture. We argue that such deposits indicate that Miskitu labor and identity were entangled with English lifeways and lifestyles, and that these entanglements reveal some of the ways in which the process of royalization was adapted to the unique social and natural landscapes of the western Caribbean.

Annette Weiner's theory of inalienable possessions, while bridging important gaps between meaning and materiality in archaeological studies of labor, gives short shrift to the potential role of landed property in constituting regimes of value. This chapter responds by exploring how archaeologists can study the social, political, and economic consequences of the inheritance of cultivated landscapes from estate ancestors. Drawing on Weiner's framework for “keeping-while-giving” and Parker Shipton's notion of “ideologies of attachment,” the chapter examines the ways and extent to which Maya families deployed agrarian rituals to embed identity in wealth and secure its intergenerational transmission. An archaeological case from pre-Hispanic Honduras is used to evaluate these ideas with data on settlement, land use, and ritual economy.

Exploring the implications of a recent discovery in NW Honduras, this paper considers the ethical dilemma that arises when an archaeologist's responsibility to disseminate information conflicts with her/his commitment to protect cultural resources. We suggest that applied archaeology that benefits local communities among which investigations are conducted is a first step toward developing long-term solutions to conservation and stewardship challenges.

This chapter outlines innovative research directions for an archaeology of global environmental change. It is argued that by triangulating environmental challenges along the axes of culture, power, and history, archaeologists can contribute key evidence about socioecological dynamics that is required for understanding where human societies stand relative to larger cycles. By surveying recent articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), some of the various ways in which archaeologists have contributed to addressing global change problems are explored. The survey reveals that archaeologists are increasingly working as part of interdisciplinary teams to integrate long-term human–environmental data into contemporary ecological modelling efforts by drawing on the related fields of cultural ecology, political ecology, and historical ecology. The chapter also provides an example of this kind of research using a case study that considers Neotropical anthrosols and fire ecology in swidden agroecosystems.

Theoretical frames for modeling prehispanic Mesoamerican economies have been informed mostly by political economy or agency approaches. Political economy models examine the ways in which power is constructed and exercised through the manipulation of material transfers, mainly production and distribution. Research along these lines emphasizes regional redistribution, wealth and staple finance, debt and reciprocity, and regional integration through core/periphery relations. Agency models, on the other hand, explore the social aspects of manufacture, circulation, and consumption to infer the processes by which power is negotiated and contested. Work using this framework focuses on the manner by which meaning and value are assigned to, and become fixed in, social valuables, as well as the moral and emotional dimensions of allocation and consumption. Political economy and agency approaches are converging in Mesoamerican research to forge a new, hybrid theoretical construct, “ritual economy,” which strikes a balance between formalist and substantivist views by considering the ways that belief systems articulate with economic systems in the management of meanings and the shaping of interpretations.

The prehistoric Hohokam conducted a great variety of activities in the spaces between their villages, including social gatherings and ceremonial observances as well as economic and subsistence practices. Recent full-coverage pedestrian survey along the middle Gila River in central Arizona indicates that nonresidential sites are more numerous and cover considerably greater area than residential settlements. Unfortunately, in the Hohokam region researchers are not always able to distinguish residential sites from activity areas based on features observable on the surface. In this study, quantitative measures of artifact density and diversity of surface collections from artifact scatters are used to distinguish residential sites from nonresidential sites. This is accomplished by assessing the extent to which their assemblages resemble artifact collections from known habitations, campsites, or specialized or diverse activity loci. Differences in artifact density and diversity enable many ambiguous artifact scatters to be classified into these general functional site types. Knowing the distribution of site types relative to elements of the natural and cultural landscapes can provide insight into past social and ecological or economic behaviors not offered by site-specific approaches. The study concludes that considering both the physical and cultural dimensions of landscapes significantly increases the research value of nonresidential sites for understanding the use and meaning of spaces between villages.

Recent chemical analyses of ancient anthrosols in Mesoamerica and elsewhere demonstrate the explanatory value of these investigative techniques and also point out some of the problems that challenge interpretive capabilities. This paper presents the results of phosphate and heavy metals analyses of soils in residential areas at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and offers some preliminary interpretations of the patterns obtained. After a brief review of recent studies of soils in archaeological contexts, we discuss some of the merits and problems with using different sampling designs and with obtaining reference samples that help model distributions of chemical concentrations. To aid in interpreting domestic activities, soil analyses are combined with archaeological data produced from both large-scale clearing and smaller test units. In this way, phosphate concentrations implicate refuse disposal areas, and heavy metal signatures and their patterning suggest that urban Maya houses may have been painted with metal-based mineral pigments. Varying, relative proportions of phosphates and heavy metals in midden deposits indicate the probability of classifying such features according to chemical signatures. We argue that this combined approach offers greater clarity in discerning activity patterns in residential environments than investigations that do not incorporate soil chemical analyses.

Incised-engraved pottery and clays from the Malpaso Valley region of northwest Mexico are chemically characterized to investigate the nature of residential organization of the capital settlement, La Quemada, during the Epiclassic period, ca. A.D. 600-900. Scanning-electron microprobe analysis of 115 pottery and 10 clay samples from settlements in the valley, and from middens associated with the civic-ceremonial core of La Quemada and flanking residential terraces, identifies locations of pottery production and indicates patterns of pottery circulation. The distribution of pottery at La Quemada, manufactured in specific outlying settlements, suggests that the social composition of the polity was reproduced in microcosm at the site, and that activities in civic-ceremonial zones involved a greater degree of separation among social groups than those in flanking residential areas.

Production systems have long been an important subject of archaeological research in Mesoamerica. Studying how and why people formed particular groups and how those groups allocated labor and resources helps us to identify the social, economic, cultural, political, and even cosmological constraints and pressures that motivate people to make things. Driven, in part, by object-hungry museum directors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, early excavations in Mesoamerica often focused almost exclusively on recovering and analyzing only the most exquisite and intricately fashioned goods—“luxury items” or “prestige goods.” But by the mid-twentieth century, the zeal to acquire and study luxury items was matched by comparable efforts to collect and consider quotidian or utilitarian materials, which revealed a great deal of detail about the daily lives of ancient Mesoamericans. Recent work on both kinds of goods has made important contributions to understanding how production is organized and for what ends. This article provides a selective and critical review of this literature, summarizing important findings and suggesting future directions.

Ritual economy is a theoretical approach for understanding and explaining the ways in which worldview, economy, power, and human agency interlink in society and social change. Defined as the “process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meaning and shaping interpretation,” this approach forefronts the study of human engagement with social, material, and cognitive realms of human experience. This chapter explores the theoretical roots of ritual economy and how they are expressed in this volume's contributions, which ground the discussion in actual case studies applied to both capitalistic and noncapitalistic settings across a number of different cultural contexts. By knitting together two realms of inquiry that often are sequestered into separate domains of knowledge, ritual economy exposes for analysis how the process of materializing worldview through ritual practice structures economic behavior without determining it.

This chapter examines the historical relationship between Honduran Lenca worldview and how ecological resources are managed through ritual practice. The way in which the Lenca conceive of the biophysical environment is an active process of meaning-making that takes place through their interaction with the environment. The Lenca codify this relationship in the compostura, a complex set of ceremonial performances linked to economic practices that mediate human needs and desires with those of the ancestors who animate the landscapes surrounding households and communities. Through an examination of contemporary, historical, and archeological cases in western Honduras, this chapter explores how ritual economy shapes, and is shaped by, environmental worldview.