This thesis explores the influence of dental pathology on postmortem tooth loss in order to draw conclusions about the factors that contribute to tooth loss and the biases that may result from missing data. One of the most prevalent concerns in the li . . .

Changing access to critical resources can impact subsistence strategies and alter socio-political relationships between groups of people in pursuit of the same resources within the environment. In prehistoric northeastern California, large bodied arti . . .

Accurate information as to how taphonomy effects skeletal material with varying degrees of structural integrity and density is vital to current understandings of preservation. Interaction effects can assist with research design, as well as excavation . . .

Degenerative joint disease, otherwise known as osteoarthritis (OA), is one of the oldest and most common pathologies affecting the human skeleton. Although it is not the only marker of stress that can be viewed on the human skeleton, it is certianly o . . .

Stature forms a key component of the biological profile in bioarchaeological studies. It is used to study changes in body proportions across populations through time, and often serves as a proxy for stress during growth and development. Problematicall . . .

Focal studies of large skeletal collections have the potential to provide more comprehensive and intricate understandings of the populations that produced them. While large-scale initial analyses are vital to the overall interpretations of skeletal co . . .

The primary goal of bioarchaeology is to learn about the life histories of past populations from the information recorded on the skeleton. Commingled skeletal assemblages present a significant obstacle to this goal; hindering the assessment of the dem . . .

To serve the community they intend to represent, contemporary museums must be relevant to both current and future visitors. One such way to retain and attract a visitor base is through the application of simple technology to permanent and temporary ex . . .

The Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology at California State University, Chico, has a permanent collection that comprises over 2,000 ethnographic objects from around the world. The museum’s limited space results in the majority of the permanent coll . . .

This thesis investigates the inclusion and exclusion of cultural information within museum exhibitions at space and science centers, aerospace museums, planetariums, and public astronomical observatories in California, Oregon, Washington, and British . . .