Seed Grant Summer 2024 Report

Ashley Cerku

Background

Downtown Main Street. A few images may come to mind, but that image is different for everyone because we all have various experiences and perceptions. Like any historical record, many small towns have a homogenized history—one that is recorded by those in positions of power and lacking in diversity. In some places, there may be political, social, or religious interests as well that shape Main Street. With attempts to revitalize or bring tourists to their downtown areas, some post-industrial small towns are continuing to retell the history told by those in power in order to simply survive. But, this problem is not new. These attempts rely on an idealized past, which prompts issues in creating an imagined sort of Main Street in a historical way.

The problem with developing content to share with tourists is access, specifically accessing a more diverse history. Technology can be used as a bridge between what is already in downtown archives and what tourists are looking to learn about that destination. A digital platform would allow for immersion into Main Street history and would provide an opportunity for the community to share other narratives or heritage artifacts, broadening the historical narrative to include more diverse voices.

Project Description

My dissertation project, titled Memory Lane,is a digital humanities project that employs public humanities, specifically public history and anthropology. The goal of this project is two-fold: (1) provide an example of an approach to immersive educational digital heritage experiences and (2) provide access to heritage through the use of digital methodologies for tourists to engage with that heritage. The question guiding my research is how can we critically integrate what communities already have preserved into a more inclusive and accessible digital public history project?

For this case study, I am using semiotics as a theoretical framework to talk about the different layers there are to a physical cultural space. I will also be using historical photographs to allow for more narratives, potentially competing ones, to come to light and those cultural layers bring about different historical and personal meanings to a space. I chose Romeo, Michigan as a location to investigate the semiotic landscape and these competing histories because of its preserved history, established archives, and development of tourism efforts. These multiple audiences bring about an opportunity to share and understand diverse narratives. My project is still developing, but I will create a public website with the use of different digital tools, including digitized archival documents and historical photographs, augmented reality software, geographical mapping, and a portal for the public to add to the town’s history by sharing their own narratives.

I applied for the DH Seed Grant to help fund my summer fieldwork. I first started by creating a general website that participants could reference if they wanted to know more about my project. I also used it as another way for people to access my survey (which was also distributed via flyers).

I then reached out to every business on Main Street via email–this included finding locations on Google maps, searching their website for their contact information, sending the email, and then keeping extensive records of who I contacted, the dates of any email communications back and forth, and any meetings I scheduled. In total, that started at about 60 emails. However, that number continued to grow from there. I then reached out to the village’s chamber of commerce and DDA board to which I received much interest for me to come and talk at meetings and to host interviews. I have since conducted interviews with the village President, DDA members, Lions Club, business owners, and residents. I also began to digitize historical photographs from some of the interviewees and explored the Library’s online archival database. I had plans to visit the Historical Society’s archives (as their collection is not digitized at this time), but their location flooded over the summer and they are still working on repairs, so that task is still pending.

The interviews have been very enlightening for me, not only as a history buff, but also as a researcher. They provide a space for people to share their personal histories and memories of Romeo. One central question I ask in every interview is “When you hear the name Romeo, what is the first memory that comes to mind?” One participant said “Sundays dinners at my grandmother’s,” another said “the smell of the bakery through their grandparents’ apartment window,” and another said that they remembered being in the local diner feeling the crisp denim of their new blue jeans on the first day they allowed boys to wear them to school. All of these memories and stories matter, and my hope is that this project offers an opportunity to weave these narratives into the larger central narrative of Romeo, offering a more diverse and accessible history.

Outcomes

The intended outcome of this project is to provide a model on how to critically integrate what communities have already done for heritage preservation into a more inclusive digital public history project. With the use of semiotics as a theoretical framework, I am investigating how different narratives and memories help define different social spaces on main street. Through an ethnographic methodological approach, I will continue to research Romeo’s history and tourism efforts to better understand (1) what approaches they have done so far and (2) what information community members and tourists are currently seeking. This will allow for a deeper understanding of how to connect narratives of the past to those in the present. The final product will be a website that spotlights the diverse history and narratives of Romeo, Michigan. The use of digital technologies will help multiple audiences discuss a main street history that is more reflective and inclusive of multiple narratives.

Future Directions

I plan to finish conducting interviews and scanning archival documents and historical photographs by the end of this semester. I am also currently drafting three publications about this project—one examining semiotic landscapes through an anthropological lens, one on the digital humanities approaches used, and one about Romeo, Michigan as a case study—which will add to pertinent literature in these fields, demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach to creating digital public history projects, and inspire others to become more involved in heritage preservation efforts. Over the holiday break and into the beginning of the spring semester, I will be creating the website. The goal is to have it available to the public by May or June 2025, as that will be after defending the entire dissertation project.

Memory Lane will be a digital heritage and public history project that promotes access to multiple narratives about different social spaces on Main Street. Because of the integration of ethnography, public history, digital heritage, and tourism, this project will critically analyze how to better integrate erased or contradictory narratives and mitigate homogenized approaches to tourism in post-industrial small towns.

Seed Grant Summer 2024 Report

Taylor Elyse Mills and Gregory Rogel

Background

With the overturn of Roe v. Wade and current, continued reports of forced sterilization of immigrant women in recent years, our timely project aims to track and map the history of legal precedent that has enabled the forced sterilization of women (and those who gestate) of color in the United States and U.S. territories, with particular emphasis on migrant/immigrant and Indigenous communities. The history of this grave reproductive injustice is under-researched in philosophy, bioethics, and in law. By bringing these disciplines together, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the legal system’s colonial pathways for forced sterilization, and the unique impact it has had on Latinx immigrant and Indigenous communities.  Our project seeks to serve as powerful a research testimony that can bridge the gap between policy discourse and the lived experiences of the Latinx and Indigenous communities, fostering a more empathetic and nuanced approach to immigration policy and enforcement.

For the 2024 summer term, we had the following goals:

1. Gather data in legal and biomedical contexts to aggregate under-researched and scattered statistics about the history of sterilization in the United States.
2. Visit prominent archives such as the Center for Oral History Research at Cal State Fullerton and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center to gather additional data, particularly from a narrative perspective, about the lives and experiences of those who have been sterilized.
3. Research and draft an overview of the history of sterilization from political, legal, and biomedical perspectives to use as the starting point for a publication.
4. Begin constructing a map with the collected data to tell the story and impact of sterilization in the United States through stories, caselaw, and statistics.

Project Description

As stated, the overarching project aims to bridge the gap between policy discourse and the histories and experiences of communities impacted by sterilization. Addressing this gap is important since immigration policies are consistently contentious and in need of reform. In particular, this project draws from historical data and narratives to inform the present because forced sterilizations are continuing to happen today, especially with detained Latinx women.

For this summer, we tackled this goal primarily through data collection from various sources. In addition to legal research, we were committed to archive research in efforts to humanize the data through testimonies. In doing so, we aimed to explicate and then map the intricate web of social, economic, and political elements that exacerbate health disparities within these communities stemming from decades of forced sterilization.

First we gathered as much data as we could from publicly accessible resources and legal databases like Westlaw. Collecting data from these legal and statistical report sources proved challenging because the data is not available in raw formats. For example, we would find an approximate number of sterilizations occurring in a particular state, but no breakdown in years or demographics. The process was rather piece-meal but eye-opening about the fact that our project is necessary as the first intersectional, multidisciplinary effort to tackle this problem.

Next we visited the archives at the Center for Oral History Research at Cal State Fullerton, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and the Human Betterment Foundation archive at Cal Tech. We focused on gathering additional data, particularly narrative accounts, about the experiences of individuals who have been sterilized. The process entailed reviewing and analyzing various documents, piecing together information to construct an understanding of the Eugenics movement. Throughout this endeavor, we maintained detailed records of our findings while adhering strictly to data privacy protections, ensuring the ethical handling of sensitive information.

Then we began researching the history of eugenics and sterilization from our respective disciplines in philosophy, bioethics, and jurisprudence. The process was like a puzzle in which we would put together time period pieces together to see a larger image of the social, economic, political, and medical forces at work to produce this history.

Finally, we began mapping our findings. The majority of this stage involved discussions about what mapping platform we wanted to use because each platform offers different types of impacts. We decided that because we wanted our project to, as much as possible, put the communities’ voices at the forefront of telling this narrative, that Storymaps was our best avenue.

Outcomes

1. Preliminary Analysis
   Our preliminary analysis has revealed potential patterns in the historical practice of sterilization, disproportionately affecting women of color. For example, documents from institutions across the country indicate a widespread embrace of eugenic ideas, with many signaling their eagerness to learn more about or participate in these endeavors. This preliminary work lays the foundation for a more comprehensive analysis of how these historical practices have shaped and potentially continue to influence contemporary reproductive rights issues, especially among marginalized communities.
   
2. Article Draft
   Though not complete, we have a first draft of the major sections of a paper we will submit for publication. In this respect we were able to pull together the research we had conducted in our respective disciplines to craft a multidisciplinary narrative about the history and current concerns about sterilization in the United States, with particular attention to Latinx immigrant communities.
   
3. Preliminary Mapping
   Once we decided on using Storymaps, we began plotting some points to tell the story of sterilization from a multidisciplinary, multigenerational perspective. The map is still being developed but we are pleased with the direction that the map is going in.

Reflections and Future Directions

Our research has encountered unexpected challenges in accessing detailed historical medical records due to stringent privacy protections. We underestimated the extent of these privacy concerns and the requirement for IRB approval to examine sensitive personal data. We hope to obtain the IRB soon. Once obtained, this information will significantly enhance our understanding of how these practices were implemented and discussed at an individual level. This will also allow us to finalize our research paper and digital map project.

Seed Grant Summer 2024 Report

Gillian MacDonald and Morgan Fox

Background

Inspired by more recent developments in the field of network science and early modern studies, Networking is a nascent open access digital repository of code and data specifically related to relationships and networks of people in Scotland during the Revolution. The recent publication of Tudor Networks and Stanford’s Mapping the Republic of Letters project are important contributions to the growing field of network analysis in the early modern world. These datasets have asked important questions about early modern communication systems and social networks. The communications revolution between 1450 and 1700 transformed the capacity for Europeans–and those in the British Isles–to communicate and engage with each other. Gutenberg’s printing press and the network of universities around Europe provided useful channels for books, ideas, and letters to travel from country to country. During the late seventeenth century, the evolution of newsletters and newspapers allowed information to travel more quickly along those networks. Historians have argued in the past that relationships and group dynamics are important in reconstructing moments of watershed. One particularly important way of visualizing this is through social networks.

A network approach allows us to focus our attention primarily on the interactions within any given system – whether that be a world of letters, journeys etc. The bigger the data however, the harder it is to deal with. Our database is one corpus of letters–there are 600 letters–centered around one particularly important figure at the time, George Melville, Lord Melville the Secretary of State for Scotland. The letters exchanged in this period are more than just networks of correspondence; people were bound together through community, print, and dialogue. Exchanging letters in a period of chaotic and often violent warfare was even more complex. Context is everything in understanding people, groups, identity, and behavior in the early modern world. Given this, understanding the relationships is paramount to visualizing the data. Behavior, relationships, and identity changed over the course of the Revolution and Networking Letters of the Revolution sought to trace those changes and connect historical networks with visual interpretation by building a new database and visual representation of the interconnected nature of communication. In the last 25 years, there has been a noticeable shift from historical records remaining piecemeal or fragmented in boxes in archives to a sea of digitized images and texts in the form of PDFs or PNGs. A number of manuscripts are now available online, including the Leven and Melville Papers. Our goals in this project were to:

• Visualize the world of communication from a corpora of letters.
• Understand communication patterns during conflict and a regime change.
• Parse group dynamics and information distribution from a chaotic period of transition.
• Democratize the pursuit of knowledge and expand the potential for research in this area of research.

Description

This project is a marriage of early modern Scottish history and computational data science. It brings together methods of network science, prosopography, and traditional early modern political history surrounding communication. We applied for the Seed Grant to begin working with the data and create an open-access project that scholars and researchers interested in the project can access and visualize the world of communication during this moment in history. Phase one required turning qualitative data into quantitative data. We started by recording all of the pertinent data from the PDF version of the Leven and Melville Papers [Figure 1].

We then turned this data into spreadsheet data, here we used categories: Id, Sender, Receiver, Location from, Location to, Latitude and Longitude, Type and Date. This allowed us to parse the networking data in the form of nodes and edges. The data was then cleaned using OpenRefine to split up latitude and longitude and keywords into different columns; we also made sure there were no blank tiles and duplicates. After creating a master spreadsheet information file, we then set about creating different sheets for different visualizations including people, places, keywords, nodes, and then edges (relationships). We were able to get all the data from the 600 letters contained in the digitized copy of the Leven and Melville papers into the csv file [Figure 2].

After some experimentation with different tools, we decided to create visualizations using Python’s networkx library, Leaflet.js maps, and the data visualization tools Flourish and Gephi.  Nodes represent important data points such as people, events, and groups; edges represent the connective tissue between those nodes and help illustrate the relationships between them. We also experimented with directional, radial, and regular network graphs.

Outcomes

Given the large dataset of Network Letters, it allowed for exploratory data analysis and investigation on different digital tools to identify the best representation of the relationships presented in the papers. One of the main tools we ended up using was the programming language Python; which contains a large number of libraries that extend the capabilities of the language, allowing for complex visualizations of the Network Data. These visuals were created on Jupyter notebook, which is an open-source software for interactive computing. In addition, we experimented with tools such as Leaflet, Flourish, and Gephi for further analysis of the letters.

Networkx Library

The networkx library enables us to make network graphs to explore patterns and structures within our data. Our project implemented the Girvan-Newman algorithm, which is used to detect communities (occurrence of a group of nodes that are more densely connected/or betweenness centrality). This is done by importing network algorithms and by iteratively removing edges that are on the shortest paths. Then the nodes are given corresponding colors to highlight their community. This algorithm is important for understanding the network graph because a node with higher betweenness centrality (shortest path importance) would have more control over the network, due to the fact that more information will pass through that node.

This quarterly visualization shows just how connected the people in this corpus of letters were over the course of three years. Lord Melville is depicted by the large purple node present in each diagram as both a sender and a receiver of letters – since he is either the letter writer or letter receiver in 510 of the 600 letters within the corpus. Lord Melville has the highest infrastructural role in the network, followed by the Duke of Hamilton (High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament), his successor the Earl of Crawford, and then the monarch himself. This is unsurprising since the monarch and their principal secretaries tend to be the same epistolary hub. The quarterly graphs also show how correspondence became a very crucial part of the information network during warfare.

Leaflet

We were also able to create a leaflet map generated through Jupyter notebook by using the Python library Folium; a wrapper around leaflet.js to create interactive maps. The map was initialized by applying the coordinates from the network data to create a base map. We then constructed markers that are represented by the senders and receivers of letters that contain a popup with additional information when the marker is clicked. Furthermore, the use of the tool “MarkerCluster()” allowed the map to handle many markers by grouping them into clusters, granting us the ability to view different group dynamics. The visualization shows dense networks of letters across several kingdoms – Scotland, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France – most concentrated in Edinburgh and London. This disproves the notion that the King had either no idea or was not interested in the northern kingdom.

The leaflet map above displays a cluster of markers highlighting various historical locations in which the letters were exchanged. The map makes evident key figures and places from the data as we see a large distribution between London and Hampton Court emphasizing Melville’s significant role during this time. Additionally, the map is interactive and will soon be available for dynamic exploration for the user to see a general view of the data or zoom in for micro details such as who sent and received letters at specific locations.

Flourish + Gephi

Flourish is an interactive data visualization tool that permits complex visuals through a wide variety of templates. By simply importing the network data into a desired theme, Flourish creates a detailed visualization where we can further analyze relationships displayed from the letters. Flourish also allows us to customize and fine tune our data and graphs for more specified results. Figure 5 or the radial network of Melville’s correspondence shows that his network was widespread but generally concentrated with other high-ranking ministers and military officials.

Figure 6, our directional map, shows the breadth of the network of letters. It also shows that the Leven and Melville corpus contains letters not specifically directed to Melville and intercepted letters or anomalies. Many of the networks were two ways but this is an incomplete view of the social network because as stated in the manuscript letters themselves many were destroyed or stolen in the period.

Gephi visual shows the complicated web of communications that took place in this short span of three years. The randomized graph shows the degree of connectivity between certain nodes. For example, Melville has heavily weighted edges with Crawford (79), Hamilton (44), John Dalrymple (42), Tarbat (34), Lockhart (33), and King William (18). This is not very surprising since Crawford, Hamilton, and John Dalrymple are crucial members of the Scottish administration, Tarbat was a Jacobite convert to the Williamite cause, Lockhart is the Solicitor General for Scotland and William is the newly installed monarch. All of the data (csv files, visualizations etc) are now housed in an open-access GitHub repository. The repository is open to the public so that other scholars can access the material.

Future Directions

Networking Letters of the Revolution is a nascent prototype project with potential to grow considerably. Melville and Leven’s corpus of letters alone constitute approximately 650 pages of material and there are several manuscript counterparts. Future directions in this project include adding manuscript letters not currently held within the Leven-Melville papers, expanding upon the range of correspondence. We also aim to integrate other key members of the network to offer a more comprehensive view of the data. Furthermore, expanding the project to encompass the entire letter network during this three-year time frame would provide meaningful and in-depth insights on the complex interconnections between people’s lives during early modern society.

Seed Grant Summer 2024 Report

Aubree Marshall

Project Background

Food plays a complex role in our daily lives. In addition to providing us with the nutrition we need to nourish our bodies, food access and choice reflect many different cultural practices and ideologies, which in turn can affect health for better or for worse (White, 1999). Thus, many archaeological studies focus on the intersection of diet and social organization to determine how and why this relationship varies within and between populations, as well as to identify and interpret dietary shifts resulting from technological, environmental, and social changes.

Archaeologists have attempted to reconstruct the diet of ancient individuals in a multitude of ways, both indirectly and directly. Examples of indirect methods include analyses of faunal and floral remains recovered from archaeological contexts and analyses of residues on pottery and tools. These methods allow scientists to accurately identify which species were consumed by ancient populations but do not distinguish individual diets, making the sources of dietary variation difficult or impossible to determine (White, 1999). Direct analyses of skeletal remains can provide evidence of dietary variation at the individual level but do not identify the specific foods eaten. For instance, stable isotopic analyses of teeth and bones allow us to determine an individual’s place in the food chain, identifying the general source of their dietary proteins and carbohydrates (Sponheimer and Cerling, 2014). Paleopathological analysis provides an additional direct line of skeletal evidence by identifying lesions associated with metabolic disruptions or consumption of cariogenic foods (Ortner, 2012). These methods allow researchers to compare individual diets and identify variations present. However, neither can identify the specific components of diets.

One underutilized resource that can aid researchers in reconstructing ancient diets is dental calculus. Dental calculus is mineralized plaque on the surface of the tooth (Hardy et al., 2009; Tromp et al., 2017) that is formed during life as a result of interactions between saliva and gingival crevice fluid and colonies of microorganisms living in the mouth (Lieverse, 1999). Thus, because calculus cannot be formed after death, the microparticles inside of the matrix are those that would pass through the mouth in life (Lieverse, 1999). These mineralized deposits survive well in the archaeological record and the microfossils trapped within dental calculus uniquely allow the identification of specific foods that individuals consumed.

The use of DC in dietary studies complements previous dietary studies, including stable isotopic research, by providing a more nuanced view of an individual’s access to foods without the need to destroy human bones or teeth. Analyses of DC can provide information on not only diet, but also on food preparation (García-Granero, 2020), disease (Weyrich et al., 2017), occupation (Chan et al., 2022), and long-distance trade (Blatt et al., 2011).

One notable finding comes from Hardy and colleagues (2013), who found evidence of medicinal plant use in Neanderthal DC, allowing the researchers to learn more about the potential medicinal knowledge of Neanderthals and ailments that would not have affected their skeleton. The finding of medicinal plants in DC opens a new door for understanding accessibility to resources, types of non-skeletal affecting ailments the individual may have had, and works towards the reconstruction of traditional knowledge.

One drawback of this work in Mesoamerica comes from a lack of published and easily searchable microbotanical medicinal plant databases (one notable exception is the Phytolith Project, University of Missouri). When travel is impossible, or access to labs to conduct specialized research is unavailable, databases provide an accessible and affordable way for students and professionals alike to start and continue research. Additionally, multiple projects can be conducted with the same dataset, allowing us to better understand the sample in question.

While medicinal plant use has surely changed over the centuries, understanding what these plants are used for today is an integral first step for asking health and care-related questions in antiquity. As a part of my dissertation, I will be creating a microbotanical medicinal plant database by collecting microbotanical images from several previously published sources and adding my own reference collections.

Project Description and Outcomes

I applied for the DH Seed grant so that I could begin working on the outline and structure of this online database. Once I created a wireframe, and because of my previous experience working with GitHub, my original plan was to build this database using GitHub pages. However, after discussing this with several people, I realized that GitHub was not the best place for hosting a database. From here, I made a lateral move to MSU Domains, where I started a WordPress site (images below).

At this point, I was hopeful that I had found my database. I included about 11 new phytolith shapes, but with each new item I added, I realized that I didn’t quite love how each category was turning out:

So, I went back to the drawing board. I realized that, instead of basing the items by shape, it was best to do it by plant species. Then, after talking to a few key people about my project and the long-term vision for it, it became clear that one of the best sustainability options was to host my project through H-Net. This is how I decided to apply to H-Spaces, an initiative that aims to expand access to content management and plug-ins for different projects and data visualizations. I’m excited to be a part of the first cohort, and to get additional advice as to what I should consider when creating this project and how to improve it. With that said, I am once again at square one with the creation of the database itself. But in the meantime, I stayed busy collecting much of the data that I will need for my database.

The first part of my data collection included going through previously published books (especially Arvigo, 1993) and articles that discussed medicinal plants in the region. I was able to complete two separate books, review several articles, and review notes from a previous medicinal walk that I took in the summer of 2023 with Mr. Antonio at Elijio Panti National Park in San Antonio, Belize. In addition, I was able to talk a little bit with other Belizean individuals during the summer of 2024 and learned more about some of the local vegetation. I collected all of this information in an Excel spreadsheet, which included the plant name (scientific, English, Spanish, Creole, Mopan Maya, Kekchi Maya, Mennonite, and Garifuna), plant family, traditional use, research results, and how they relate to dental health if they did. The spreadsheet can be seen below.

After this was completed, I was able to work in the MSU Herbarium as a part of the Natural Science Collections Summer Professional Internship to digitize their Central American and South American medicinal plant collections. In this process, I learned a new skillset, was able to see what plants were already available at the herbarium, and what plants still needed to be collected. I am still working on digitizing the plants, but once completed, I will apply for a permit to collect the compiled list of plants not available at MSU and bring them here.

In addition to digitizing the plants available at the MSU Herbarium, I have also begun a checklist through the Consortium of Midwest Herbaria with the previously published information that I have collected. The checklist is not visible to the public yet but will be once more of the species are digitized.

Why was this such an important part of my project? Not only will I know exactly what plants will need to be collected in the field, but knowing what plants are already available in Michigan is incredibly important because not all of the plants we’re digitizing have had their microbotanicals analyzed. I will be working with the herbarium to collect small samples to dry ash in an attempt to identify any microbotanicals of medicinal plants that have not already been published.

Future Directions

When I submitted my DH Seed Grant application, I was hoping to collect data, build the framework of my website, include at least thirty samples into the website, and begin creating K-12 lesson plans for educators. However, almost nothing worked to plan with this project.

While I do not have all of the deliverables that I hoped for, I do have an extensive amount of plant information that can be directly uploaded to the database once it is created. In the immediate future, I am excited to work with H-Net Spaces to further develop my ideas for the project and to get it off the ground. Once off of the ground, I will include lesson plans that will be available for educators to use in their schools if they find that they fit into their curriculum, as well as interview data once collected. Interviews are planned for the summer of 2025.

As I mentioned before, the long-term goal of this research is to create an open-access digital database and a handbook for people to reference. Information for each plant will include the plant image, associated microbotanical images, medicinal uses, recipes where available, and interview information. This resource will be helpful to both researchers and educators interested in medicinal plants in Mesoamerica and in understanding the past lived experiences of the individuals utilizing those plants. My dissertation article associated with this project will describe the process leading up to the creation of the database along with the medicinal plant information gathered based on the interviews. This paper will provide a framework for community-engaged work in the region as well as the methodology regarding prepping plants to create a microbotanical reference sample.

References

Blatt, S.H. (2007). Biocultural Implications from Scanning Electron Microscopy of Prehistoric Human Dental Calculus, Ohio. The Ohio State University.

Chan, A. M., Brady, J. E., and Scott Cummings, L. (2022). Blue fibers found in dental calculus from Maya sacrificial victims. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 32(6), 1310–1314.

García-Granero, J. J. (2020). Starch taphonomy, equifinality and the importance of context: Some notes on the identification of food processing through starch grain analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science, 124, 105267.

Hardy, K., Blakeney, T., Copeland, L., Kirkham, J., Wrangham, R., and Collins, M. (2009). Starch granules, dental calculus and new perspectives on ancient diet. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(2), 248–255.

Hardy, K., Buckley, S., and Huffman, M. (2013). Neanderthal self-medication in context. Antiquity, 87(337), 873–878.

Lieverse, A. R. (1999). Diet and the aetiology of dental calculus. Int. J. Osteoarchaeol., 9(4), 219–232.

Ortner, D. J. (2012). Differential Diagnosis and Issues in Disease Classification. In A. L. Grauer (Ed.), A Companion to Paleopathology (pp. 250–267). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Home | Phytolith Project, University of Missouri. Accessed March 27, 2024, https://phytolith.missouri.edu/.

Sponheimer, M., and Cerling, T. E. (2014). Investigating Ancient Diets Using Stable Isotopes in Bioapatites. In Treatise on Geochemistry (pp. 341–355). Elsevier.

Tromp, M., Buckley, H., Geber, J., and Matisoo-Smith, E. (2017). EDTA decalcification of dental calculus as an alternate means of microparticle extraction from archaeological samples. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 14, 461–466.

Weyrich, L. S., Duchene, S., Soubrier, J., Arriola, L., Llamas, B., Breen, J., … Cooper, A. (2017). Neandertal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred using ancient DNA preserved in dental calculus. Nature, 544(7650):357-361.

White, C. (Ed.). (1999). Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.