Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Anthropology

First Committee Member

Debra Martin

Second Committee Member

Karen Harry

Third Committee Member

Barbara Roth

Fourth Committee Member

Susan Johnson

Number of Pages

51

Abstract

The La Plata Population represents a series of Ancestral Puebloan sites along the La Plata River outside Farmington, New Mexico dating from 600-1200 CE. Past research has argued that several captive females in this population experienced impairment due to illness or trauma. Entheseal changes can reflect experiences of hard labor, and so provide insight into adaptations to mobility impairments as well as the physical impacts of captive labor on the body (Henderson et al 2013). Measurement of entheseal changes utilizing the Coimbra method has demonstrated that sexual and class divisions of labor existed in the La Plata community, with captive females performing different habitual labor than age-matched in-group females and males. Consideration of entheseal changes, mortuary context, trauma, and pathology through a dis/ability lens will provide more nuanced understanding of the experiences of captivity as well as how captivity itself could be a disabling identity.

Keywords

Ancestral Pueblo; Bioarchaeology; Disability; Entheseal Changes

Disciplines

Biological and Physical Anthropology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Friday, May 15, 2026


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