Journal of Undergraduate Research

Corinda Kelly, John Clark (Anthropology) and Shane Baker (Office of Public Archaeology) In the Fall of 2001 the Museum of Peoples and Cultures (MPC) located at BYU received a donation of a very highly valued collection of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts as well as several artifacts from the ancient Middle East. According to the American Association […]

Lisa Dione Booher and Dr. Julie Hartley, Anthropology With an ever-increasing immigrant population, schools across the nation are being forced to mold their programs to fit the needs of students who do not know the local language and culture here in the United States. These students’ future rests on their success in these matters. If […]

M. Bryan Wheeler and Dr. Gene Ware, Anthropology In the Middle Ages, the cost of writing materials was so prohibitive that scholars often scraped the text from the parchment of a book and copied new writings over the old text. Centuries later, modern scholars often have more interest in the barely discernible, earlier texts. Multispectral […]

Spencer Walsh and Dr. Julie Hartley, Anthropology Ceremonial exchange plays a significant role in Fijian ritual and can be viewed as an activity that seeks to promote the health and prosperity of the community. An example of this is the annual ritual of the isevu sarau, or the offering of the first fruits of the […]

Cady Waldrom and Dr. Joel C. Janetski, Department of Anthropology An important aspect of the archaeological record is the stone tool technology that ancient people incorporated into their life. Different tools such as projectile points, bifaces, scrapers, drills and choppers enabled ancient people to perform necessary daily tasks. Raw materials for making stone tools consist […]

Chelsea Shields and Dr. William C. Olsen, Anthropology During my time as an international student at the University of Ghana and volunteering at a school for mentally handicapped children, I uncovered a large lacuna in non-western mental retardation research and decided to return the next year as BYU’s Ghana Medical Anthropology field study facilitator. I […]

Megan Rae Petersen and Dr. David P. Crandall, Anthropology How is one to maintain and preserve a dying culture? The Himba tribes of Namibia are facing such a crisis. Globalization continues to displace more and more their traditional way of life. The once deep-seated traditions of the ancestors are being replaced with drunkenness, the wearing […]

Michael Jones and Dr. John Hawkins, Anthropology Among two Ki’che’ Pentecostal congregations, I examine conversion as a process for reconstructing one’s disrupted symbolic system or world view. This reconstruction is effected through rituals revealed in ritualized recitation of one’s conversion narrative and in the examination of group interaction. I explore three aspects of the conversion […]

Kirstin M. Johnson and Dr. Julie Hartley, Socio-Cultural Anthropology Thousands of years ago the ancestors of the Tongan people brought with them a tree that would harvest bark prime for making cloth. Since then, Tongan women have exploited the resources of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera) to produce a bark cloth they term ngatu. […]

Patricia Fifita and Dr. William Olsen, Anthropology For the importance of this paper, ethnobotany is defined as the study of interactions between plants and people, particularly the influence of plants on human culture. The study of medicinal plant knowledge is an issue of increasing importance and definite urgency, especially as various indigenous peoples around the […]