Departmental News

Katie Gerstner, from the Pruetz Lab, received a small research grant to support her dissertation research, “Examining Seasonality and Anthropogenic Effects on Western Chimpanzee Gut Microbiomes (Pan troglodytes verus) in Savanna Habitat.”

This research aims to investigate ecological impacts on gut microbiomes of endangered savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Senegal by examining how anthropogenic and seasonality affects microbial composition patterns in two savanna chimpanzee communities. By elucidating the presence and transmission dynamics of pathogens derived from savanna biomes, this research will fill a missing gap that is needed to fully understand what shapes a healthy chimpanzee microbiome.

Photo is of Katie collecting data in the savanna for the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project.

As a first-generation scholar, Dr. Angela K. VandenBroek's ambitions have always necessitated a patchwork career in parallel to her anthropological education. From customer service through to web development, these professional experiences have been shaped by her growth as an anthropologist and vice versa. This chapter is a reflection, inspired by teaching applied anthropology students at Texas State University, that explores what she learned tacking between theoretical anthropology and applied anthropology and how this tacking became an intertwining praxis at the intersection of design, technology, and anthropology. First, she argues that anthropology is not a career path that can only lead down one of two divergent roads: “academic” or “applied.” Rather, it is a way of thinking; it is a critical and ethical commitment; it is an ability to sit comfortably with intolerable complexity of social life and make sense of it;; and it is a curiosity and engagement with anthropological conversations. Second, she outlines a series of tactics for building a more productive and impactful anthropological praxis from this perspective. She contextualizes these tactics as not merely ways to “get things done” but also as a way of testing, extending, and expanding anthropological understandings of design so that we may also “do some good.”

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The Graduate College and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society at TXST are pleased to announce that six Texas State University students have received the Phi Kappa Phi Love of Learning Award in the 2024 competition. Nationally, 200 students from 108 institutions were selected for the Love of Learning Award this year, with Texas State tying second with Texas Tech University for the most awards received by a single institution.

This $1,000 award helps active Phi Kappa Phi members fund post-baccalaureate professional development pertaining to their graduate studies, ranging from costs associated with doctoral dissertations, continuing education, career development, and travel expenses for teaching, research and/or learning. Since The Graduate College began offering external funding advising services in 2016, nearly 50 TXST graduate students have received this competitive award. External funding coordinators Dr. Andrea Hilkovitz and Dr. Brian Smith encourage all Phi Kappa Phi members to apply for the Love of Learning Award because it can be used to fund many different activities, including travel and research-related expenses.

The 2024 awardees include the following students:

• Stephanie Baker, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Keegan Beane, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Mai Bui, doctoral student in mathematics education
• Kelsey Fox, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Neelam Thapa Magar, master’s student in sustainability studies
• Ainsley Tyler, master’s student in psychological research

Stephanie Baker

Keegan Beane

Kelsey Fox

Thinking about graduate school in Anthropology?  Get anthropology-specific advice and guidance at the How to Get into Graduate School Workshop!  

Moderator: Dr. Augustine Agwuele

November 14, 2024  
4:30 - 5:30pm

Registration Required

The World Neolithic Conference brings together researchers from around the globe to address one of the fundamental transitions in human cultural and biological evolution - the emergence of food production and the associated changes in lifeways, including the origins of villages and cities. The weeklong conference is being held in early November in Şanlıurfa, Turkey, the location of the the Göbekli tepe World Heritage Site. Dr. Kilby is collaborating with Dr. Yoshitaka Kanomato (Sendai University, Japan) and Dr. Andrei Tabarev (Institute of Archaeology and Ethology, Russia) to chair a session on Lithic Technology During the Paleolithic- Neolithic Transition. The full-day session includes 14 presenters from seven countries. Dr. Kilby's presentation is titled, "The Reorganization of Technology" and will address changes in the organization of stone tool technology that accompany the transition from hunting and gathering to dedicated farming in the North American Southwest.

The Anthropology Department is pleased to host two incredible presentations as part of our Speakers Series!  

Dr. Lindsay Smith 
La Varilla Electronica: Community-centered forensics and sensory labor in the Mexican Borderlands.
Friday, November 1, 2024 | 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Online via Zoom

Dr. Héctor Beltrán
Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands
Friday, November 8, 2024 | 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Online via Zoom

Please visit our Speakers Series page for more information on the talks and how to join.

Join us for the Meet the Professors lunch!  Get to know your faculty, find out about research and opportunities in the department, and learn about class options for the Spring!  

Pizza provided.

Friday, October 18, 2024 | 12:00 pm | ELA 245 
 

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Rose Moore (Dr. Christina Conlee advisor), who has received a $2000 scholarship from the PaeloWest foundation for her dissertation project tilted "Stress, Health, and Diet during Wari Expansion: A Bioarchaeological Approach to the Central and South Coasts of Peru Between the Early Intermediate Period and Middle Horizon."

Texas State Anthropology 2024-2025 Speaker Series

Spacetime in Ruins: An Interdisciplinary Archaeology of Place and Migration at the Stagecoach Inn

Trish Markert  
Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Western University

The Stagecoach Inn in D’Hanis, TX sits at the intersection of multiple migrations in 19th and 20th century Texas. It is a limestone and sandstone ruin obscured by brush from the closest county road, but it was once the most prominent and visible marker of a small Alsatian settlement on the Texas “frontier.” The stagecoach line brought a steady stream of travelers between San Antonio and Mexico during the mid-19th century – but rather than these transitory passings-through, this presentation examines the lives of migrants and descendants who called this place home. In this talk, I trace five generations of residents at the inn across several intersecting migration events: Alsatian and German immigration to Texas, the violent displacements of settler colonialism, the forced migration of enslavement, and migration from Mexico amid the Mexican Revolution. Using interdisciplinary methods, I examine the material remains of the structure, the archival traces of its occupants, and narratives of life in the 20th century. Looking outward from its rubble walls, I question how people mark the spacetime of past migrations on the built landscape and what that means for a community-based archaeology of place in the present.

Friday, October 11, 2-3PM | Online via Zoom 

 Get the Zoom link on Canvas

Graduate student, Caroline Story (advisor, Dr. Agwuele), has been invited to present her master’s thesis, "A critical approach to understanding Naija," at the birthplace of American anthropology, Columbia University. The conference will be hosted by the Teachers College’s Language and Social Interaction Working Group from October 18th-19th.

Congratulations to Theresa De Cree (Dr. Wescott advisor), Kelsey Fox (Dr. Hamilton advisor), and Ivanna Robledo (Dr. Herrmann) who were each awarded a $180,000 National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellowships! Excellent work everyone. Below you can find the titles of their specific projects.  

Theresa De Cree  
Defining the Properties of Osseointegrated and Ingrowth Bone Around Orthopedic Medical Devices and Their Effect on Fracture Risk in Elderly Populations: A Forensic Anthropological Perspective

Kelsey Fox 
Enhancing Equitable Forensic Identification: An Evaluation of Pelvic Morphology for Parity Detection and Age Estimation in Unidentified Skeletal Remains

Ivanna Robledo 
A Multi-Method Genetic, Craniometric, and Isotopic Approach to Estimating Geographic Origin of Unidentified Latinx Remains

Dr. Kate Spradley, co-PI, and research collaborators have just been awarded $2,062,069.00 for a grant titled “MOSAIC: Unifying Methods of Sex, Stature, Affinity, & Age for Identification through Computational Standardization” from the National Institute of Justice. Dr. Courtney Siegert will serve as senior personnel as this project builds on her dissertation research. The award will be split among five universities and Texas State will receive a subcontract award for $311,000.00 including three years of financial support for a PhD student in the Applied Anthropology PhD program. 

Please attend the 18th annual Texas Association of Biological Anthropology conference here at Texas State on Saturday, November 2, 2024. This is a great opportunity to meet biological anthropologists from all around our great state and get an idea of what people are researching. Abstracts are being accepted until October 18th. Student tickets are only $10! Check out the TABA website and feel free to contact Dr. Cunningham if you'd like any further information.

So how smart are lemurs, exactly? How do we even start to figure that out? Meet Ray Vagell, researcher and graduate student from Texas State University who uses SMARTA (a custom-designed touch screen system) to study how lemurs solve problems at the Duke Lemur Center. The podcast also discuss the fun – but mysterious – fact that only female ruffed lemurs have color vision. Ray also uses SMARTA to study ruffed lemur vision, and how his research has become enrichment for some ruffed lemurs who love pushing and playing with the device. Sometimes they even find ways to cheat the system! 

Congratulations to Amy Reid ant The Veterans Curation Program, run out of CAS, who received an award for $281,357 for their FY25 VCP session!  The funding will be used to hire four new student Veterans and for two returning assistant lab managers, Robert Curran and Katharine Lukach. 

The VCP provides employment and vocational training for recently separated veterans using archaeological collections administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Veterans working in the CAS laboratory are being trained in data entry, report writing, photography, scanning technologies, and many other transferable job skills.  The veterans are helping the Corps rehabilitate archaeological collections and associated records for long-term curation and future research. 

The Anthropology Department will host their annual Graduate Student Open House on Friday, October 4, 2024 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.

Students interested in pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. at Texas State should attend to learn more about our graduate degree programs, course offerings, subdisciplines, academic Centers, and more.  

Registration information and a schedule of events can be found on the Graduate Open House page. 

Dr. Jill Pruetz's Lab members are heading to the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists (ASP) in Rivera Maya. 

Raymond Vagell 
Talk Title | Not All Those Who Pace Are Stressed: Pacing In Captive Ruffed Lemurs (Varecia spp.) Could be An Excitement Response Towards An Enrichment 

Katie Gerstner and Carson Black 
Talk Title | Insights into Wild Chimpanzee Gut Microbiome Composition: Methodological Approaches and Implications for Understanding Primate-Environment Interactions

A scholarship endowment named for Dr. Kent Reilly's has established and is open for donations.  The scholarship is for MA students studying the indigenous symbol systems and/or archaeology of the Americas. The aim is to give at least one $1000 scholarship a year with a preference for out of state students so they can get in state tuition. Donations can be made through University Advancement. 

Join us as we celebrate with service, food, drinks, dance, and music the life for Dr. Frank Kent Reilly, III.  

Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 1:00 - 5:00 pm 
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church  
6000 FM 3237 
Wimberley, Texas 78676

Congratulating to Dr. Jodi Jacobson who has been awarded $304,531 from The United States Department of the Interior and the National Park Service for the project, “Archaeological Inventory of the Rio Grande Corridor.” This project is a four-year agreement with Big Bend National Park and will include National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 110 survey and inventory of archaeological and historic resources for segments of land along roughly 100 miles of the Rio Grande within the Park and will provide multiple opportunities for students.

Congratulations to Amy Reid who has secured a two-year agreement with TxDOT in the amount of $306,630. The agreement is to provide curation services and will allow CAS to continue receiving new collections from TxDOT’s contractors, rehabilitating additional legacy collections, and providing long-term care and access of TxDOT collections for research and public education.

Congratulating Dr. Jill Pruetz who is the recipient of a Regents’ Professor Award, which honors professors who demonstrate a record of distinguished teaching, research or other scholarly activities, and service at the local, state, and national levels. It is the highest honor in the Texas State University System.