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Abstract Oral history indicates that a large wooden trough held in storage at the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology was a component of the saltpeter mining operation in Mammoth Cave in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, worked largely by enslaved persons. We used multiple heritage science methods, including radiocarbon wiggle-match dating, tree-ring dating, scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM–EDS), and optical scanning, combined with historical research, to examine the trough. Our analysis supports the oral history of the trough as an artifact of the mining system in Mammoth Cave. This case study illustrates how heritage science methods can provide corroboration for the origins and biographies of poorly documented historical artifacts. 

Abstract There is a growing consensus that global patterns of modern human cranial and dental variation are shaped largely by neutral evolutionary processes, suggesting that craniodental features can be used as reliable proxies for inferring population structure and history in bioarchaeological, forensic, and paleoanthropological contexts. However, there is disagreement on whether certain types of data preserve a neutral signature to a greater degree than others. Here, we address this unresolved question and systematically test the relative neutrality of four standard metric and nonmetric craniodental data types employing an extensive computational genotype–phenotype comparison across modern populations from around the world. Our computation draws on the largest existing data sets currently available, while accounting for geographically structured environmental variation, population sampling uncertainty, disparate numbers of phenotypic variables, and stochastic variation inherent to a neutral model of evolution. Our results reveal that the four data types differentially capture neutral genomic variation, with highest signals preserved in dental nonmetric and cranial metric data, followed by cranial nonmetric and dental metric data. Importantly, we demonstrate that combining all four data types together maximizes the neutral genetic signal compared with using them separately, even with a limited number of phenotypic variables. We hypothesize that this reflects a lower level of genetic integration through pleiotropy between, compared to within, the four data types, effectively forming four different modules associated with relatively independent sets of loci. Therefore, we recommend that future craniodental investigations adopt holistic combined data approaches, allowing for more robust inferences about underlying neutral genetic variation. 

This dissertation investigates the knowledge sharing that occurred in the Vesuvius Challenge, a $1 million dollar innovation contest designed to advance the research of Professor Brent Seales to virtually unwrap and read carbonized papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum. Through a content analysis of the Discord channel chats posted by Vesuvius Challenge contestants and stakeholders, the study reveals the existence of several aspects of a community of practice and the operation of the Vesuvius Challenge as a boundary practice. It also presents findings regarding how that development impacted the level of knowledge sharing that occurred in the highly competitive environment. Finally, it suggests that communities of practice operate as effectively in virtual spaces as they do in face-to-face environments, although computer mediated communities of practice manifest some additional features not delineated in traditional communities of practice literature. Discord chats from two channels, #papyrology and #general, were examined qualitatively using deductive qualitative analysis and thematic content analysis approaches. Previously identified concepts from communities of practice theory were used as a theoretical framework and, along with concepts from other virtual community participation and knowledge sharing literature, served as sensitizing constructs for the deductive and inductive coding analysis of the chats. This dissertation work adds to the literature regarding communities of practice by describing the qualities of a purely online community of practice and by proposing a coding scheme for measuring the existence of a community of practice. It is also the first study to examine the effectiveness of innovation contests in a new environment, that of academic research, and to explore how the typical features of communities of practice may encourage collaboration in such competitive environments.