When Anthropologist Frank Hibben set up a trust to fund scholars in the UNM Department of Anthropology before he died in 2002, he wanted to find a way students who intended to pursue graduate degrees in Southwestern Archaeology, Anthropology and culture could be reimbursed for living expenses as they learned. The trust has donated $1.5 million to the Anthropology Department over the last five years as dozens of anthropology students have used the scholarships to complete their degrees.
This spring four UNM Senior Hibben Legacy Scholars are preparing to graduate.
Hannah Mattson Fretwell’s doctoral research is archaeology. Her work focuses on ornaments as socially valuable objects.
She is comparing the meaning and use of ornaments from Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruin. She is examining the physical qualities that distinguished ornaments of different meanings and use at Chaco during its most active years (ca. A.D. 950-1130) and comparing them to those from Aztec Ruin after the collapse of the Chacoan system (ca. A.D. 1150-1250). She is particularly interested in how closely the occupants of Aztec Ruin identified themselves with the preceding Chacoan culture.
Phil R. Geib is doing his doctoral in archaeology, researching war during the Early Agricultural Period in the North American Southwest.
His research into simple societies (ca. 2000 B.C. – A.D. 500) examines Basketmaker II materials from the Colorado Plateau. He is assessing the need for land or food against the role of status competition as a motive for war. His work also examines the competition within groups for status and dominance.
Geib is assembling new and existing data that relates to explaining war in this particular case, and by extension to an understanding generally of the causes of war.
Dorothy Larson’s doctoral work in archaeology explores cultural identity in Albuquerque during the transition from the Late Developmental to the Coalition Period.
She is interested in whether changes to ceramics in the Albuquerque area occurring around AD 1100-1250 resulted from the migration of new people into the area from the Santa Fe region or from shifting social identities or alliances between local people and northern groups.
Larson’s award included a public service element and her work involves an exhibit at Maxwell Museum and a website that will target middle and high school students. She is working with the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement, Inc. (MESA) to develop an archaeology curriculum for a six-week summer enrichment program for MESA students.
Lavinia Magdalena Nicolae’s doctoral work in Ethnology explores the kinship, politics and identity in New Mexico’s same sex marriage debate. She is documenting ways in which New Mexican gay, lesbian and transgender individuals and couples negotiate their identities and display their intimate relationships.
She says her project seeks to demonstrate how political and legal interpretations about kinship and sexuality affect the way citizenship is negotiated between the state of New Mexico and its lesbian, gay and transgender constituents.
She argues that the marriage debate reveals how categories of normalcy and belonging are produced from public definitions of kinship and sexuality and how the definitions are used to normalize and codify or socially marginalize and legally deny, specific incarnations of relationships and families.
Media contact: Karen Wentworth (505) 277-5627; kwent2@unm.edu