Applied Anthropologist Profile: Kerri Klein, Applied Anthropology Graduate Student & Founder of the Burial Hill 3D Digitization Project

Kerri Klein photographing a tombstone at Burial Hill Cemetery (Source: Anya Gruber)

 

Archaeology focuses on the study of the material culture to understand lifeways and cultures of the past.  Archaeological evidence can be used to support already documented historical evidence, or it can serve as the sole piece of historical evidence.  Sometimes it can be both.  This is the case for the Burial Hill Cemetery site in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Situated on the ancestral lands of the Wampanoag Indians and the former site of early colonists’ long since abandoned settlement this cemetery is a great source of historical and archaeological information pertaining to both known and yet to be discovered and/or investigated histories.  This information, however, is at great risk of loss through natural and man-made forces, which is in part why applied anthropology doctoral student Kerri Klein initiated the Burial Hill 3D Digitization Project.

 

Klein, who is from the area, was always interested in learning more about her community’s local history, leading her to pursue a preservation project of the Burial Hill Cemetery.  The cemetery had only been recently (as of 2015) been listed under the National Register for Historic Places, which encouraged greater attention and emphasis on the cemetery’s preservation, but up until that point the cemetery had undergone damage from both natural and man-made forces.  Klein decided to pursue her doctoral studies in applied anthropology under the supervision of Antoinette Jackson, an anthropologist at the University of South Florida.  Jackson is also the founder of The Black Cemetery Network, an organization committed to protecting historically Black cemeteries.  Klein drew upon Jackson’s work to begin documenting and preserving the cemetery’s tombstones through photographs in order to utilize the photogrammetry method, which is a means of using 2-dimensional photographs to recreate 3-dimensional (3D) images and models.     

 

Klein’s interests eventually grew into the Burial Hill 3D Digitization Project.  Klein was inspired to pursue this project when she working at the site and was approached by a blind woman and her daughter.  They wanted to know where a specific memorial at the cemetery was located, which Klein guided them to.  She realized that the pathway was inaccessible for individuals with mobility or sight issues, such as was the case for the blind woman who requested her assistance.  The mother and daughter managed to get to the monument, thereby learning and enjoying the history and information associated with it.  This experience inspired Klein to want to increase the accessibility to the site, particularly for those who could not access it due to mobility/ability challenges or who lacked the financial means of getting to the cemetery.  This project also serves an additional purpose: it preserves the tombstones for study by scholars and members of the public.

 

Klein’s project began in 2021 and requires her to photograph all 2300 gravestones present at the site.  The scope and size of the cemetery is too large of an undertaking for just Klein, so she enlists the aid of family members and volunteers associated with the Friends of Burial Hill organization.  She trains volunteers to take the necessary photographs, which must be taken from several angles to recreate the three dimensional models of the gravestones, using their own phones, making it an easy and worthwhile project for those interested in the cause. 

 

As the cemetery is the final resting place for various historical figures, including but not limited to Plymouth Colony governors, notable Revolutionary activists, and important Wampanoag individuals, there is a wealth of historical and cultural information recorded among the tombstones.  Furthermore, the cemetery holds information concerning individuals who have not been well documented, such as African Americans military personnel and civilians interred at the cemetery.   The preservation of their stories and information is key to aiding in discovering, learning, and reinforcing accurate historical narratives concerning not only the area but American histories.  Klein hopes that these untold stories can get the necessary attention required to entice researchers to investigate these neglected histories further, as well as provide greater insights into other subjects, such as the work of stonemasons, the names and histories of the residents throughout the period of use of the cemetery, temporal trends in cemetery use and mortuary styles, epidemic trends, linguistic trends, religious studies, and more.

 

Klein’s work is already paying off as several tombstones have been fully digitized and 3D models available on the project’s website.  Hopefully, her continued efforts, along with the hard work of dedicated volunteers, will lead to more and greater historical information being learned and shared.

 

References

CAS Chronicles. (2022, January 21). 3D DIGITAL PRESERVATION OF HISTORICAL CEMETERY OF EARLY AMERICANS . Retrieved from CAS Chronicles: https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/hub/2022/3d-digital-preservation-of-historical-cemetery-of-early-americans.aspx

Gruber, A. (2023, March 30). Can Digitizing Gravestones Save History? Sapiens.

Steinberg, J. (2014, June 19). Plymouth Burial Hill 3D View of Excavation Unit 3. Retrieved from The Fiske Center Blog: https://blogs.umb.edu/fiskecenter/2014/06/19/plymouth-burial-hill-3d-view-of-excavation-unit-3/

 

A Profitable Partnership: Anthropology & Adidas

When people think about what sorts of degrees are needed to enter into any business industry they more often than not think of the obvious options: business degrees.  While this remains true there are various other ways that individuals interested in working in business can go about doing so.  Most recently, social scientists, particularly anthropologists, have been in high demand, outpacing the demand for individuals with traditional business degrees.  Various businesses, such as Intel, Microsoft, and Google, are hiring anthropologists to help them better analyze and understand consumer data.  This is because anthropologists bring a skill set that teases out more specific and detailed information that large, traditional methods and data sets cannot pick out, making anthropologists and other related social scientists valuable and in demand resources.  Today’s blog post will focus on one such profitable partnership between anthropologists and the athletic business giant Adidas.

 

Founded in 1949 Adidas has and continues to remain a competitive company in the creation and marketing of athletic and sporting goods and attire.  From the company’s founding they drew inspiration from various well-known athletes, many of whom received sponsorship and endorsements from the company to help market their products.  Adidas’s design and marketing teams were driven by the idea that competition and athletic prowess drew consumers to their products, and until the early 2000s this idea dominated their mission.  This all changed, though, when VP James Carnes observed everyday people wearing athletic attire outside of the gym.  They were wearing athletic attire while at the coffee shop, while jogging, on their way to yoga class, and more.  Carnes was perplexed by this because he expected his brand to be on athletes, not nonathletic individuals, leading him to investigate this matter further. 

 

Carnes’s curiosity led to Adidas hiring ReD Associates, a Copenhagen-based consultancy that employs a range of individuals not with business degrees but social science and humanities degrees to dig deeper into consumer patterns and trends.  ReD’s anthropological team trained the Adidas designers in anthropological methods, particularly cultural anthropological methods such as participant observation and interview methods.  The ReD anthropological team also reached out directly to consumers and asked them to take pictures of what motivated them to work out and wear athletic wear.  The ReD anthropological team realized a consistent theme among the surveyed participants photos: they wanted to look sexy based on sociocultural beauty standards.  From an American perspective this promotes a body image of a thin, athletic physique.  Ultimately, this led the ReD anthropologists to conclude that consumers did not want to perform athletically for the purposes of having a competitive edge that enabled them to win; they worked out to maintain a healthy lifestyle and meet the demands of the American beauty norms.

 

Executives at Adidas realized that they had misjudged a large consumer base, which they were underserving.  They concluded that they did not just have to market to athletes.  They could and should market to the everyday person who wanted to work out to be healthy and beautiful, thereby necessitating a different type of athletic wear and gear.  Adidas stepped up and created their athleisure wear line to meet this consumer demand, making huge profits in the process.

 

The relationship between Adidas and ReD Associates did not stop there, though.  About a decade later they worked together again, this time to determine how best to create athletic shoes for soccer players.  ReD’s anthropological team interviewed German soccer players to figure out what they needed out of a shoe, realizing a shoe that enhanced performance, particularly speed, was needed.  Soccer shoes were not necessarily built to support that.  The players required a running shoe that was built to assist them in maintaining performance levels to enhance their speed, but these types of shoes are not conducive to the rigorous footwork required of soccer playing.  Adidas took this information and designed a running shoe that could be used on the soccer field, which they debuted in 2010.  The soccer teams that adopted these new hybrid shoes were pleased and impressed, crediting them with giving them the competitive advantage that secured them various wins.  The biggest win was scoring the most goals at the World Cup that happened that year (which to readers unfamiliar with the World Cup is the paramount international competition that any soccer player or team can participate in, demonstrating the positive impression players had on these shoes).

 

Ultimately, Adidas’s success has inspired companies across various industries to rethink their approaches to creating and marketing their products.  They could no longer rely on their preconceived notions of what the customer wanted and needed; they needed to learn what the customer wanted and needed by better understanding the sociocultural and biocultural environments they exist in, be it for work, pleasure, health, etc.  They began to rethink and revolutionize their previous market survey approaches, which were faulty because they relied on closed-ended questions that limited the scope of information that could be collected from consumers.  They also ran on the assumption that consumers were always truthful in their responses, which is unrealistic, particularly when consumers are surveyed about topics that they feel can and will present them in a negative way if they were completely truthful.  Anthropological methods could bypass these issues by enabling companies to really understand their consumers’ needs and wants, thereby creating and marketing products that they actually want and will use.  This leads to happier and satisfied customers and greater profit margins for the companies.

 

Works Cited

Baer, D. (2014, March 27). Here's Why Companies Are Desperate To Hire Anthropologists . Business Insider.

Jess the Avocado. (2022, January 25). How Anthropology and Adidas Design Shoes Together. Medium.

 

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Dr. Jesse Goliath, Assistant Professor & Forensic Anthropologist & Archaeologist

Dr. Jesse Goliath (Source: Grace Cockrell)

 

The early 2000s saw the rise of various television shows centering around criminal investigations. These programs inspired scores of individuals to pursue careers in forensic sciences, including a young Jesse Goliath, who found a niche that combined his interests in history and science: forensic anthropology. This blog post will discuss Dr. Jesse Goliath's career as a rising faculty member, researcher, and applied anthropologist. 

 

Goliath hails from Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in West Virigina.  Growing up he enjoyed visiting museums, consuming content related to criminal investigations, as well as anything involving science and history.  His passions drove him to seek a career where he could successfully pursue both, and with the rise of criminal investigation television shows, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Goliath’s interests were piqued but not fully satisfied.  He found the fulfillment he was seeking in anthropology, specifically forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology.  He attended the University of Notre Dame, earning his Bachelors in Anthropology in 2007.  He followed this up by pursuing graduate work in both anthropology and anatomy at Ohio State University, successfully earning his PhD in 2017.

 

Goliath realized having a rigorous education was not enough to help him secure employment.  He realized that experience was also necessary.  He volunteered to consult with the Franklin County medical examiner’s office and the Columbus (Ohio) Police Department as a forensic anthropologist and archaeologist.  The majority of the cases he worked involved unhoused individuals, but this experience did lead him to be involved in a dangerous case involving a drug cartel when he and his colleagues located the dumping ground of the cartel’s executed victims.  The danger associated with this investigation gave him pause, and he decided to pursue safer employment options.

 

He next took a position Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in locating and identifying MIA/POWs overseas.  While he enjoyed this work he realized that he missed teaching and research, which were not options in this position.  This led him to take a position as an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University.  In this role he teaches a variety of classes, maintains an active research agenda, and consults for local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.

 

In the two years he has been at Mississippi State University he has worked on seven forensic anthropology and archaeology cases, including the widely publicized Felecia Cox case.  Her brother-in-law left a written confession that he requested be read after he was executed by the state of Mississippi (for a different case he was found guilty of).  In his confession he admitted to killing Cox and left a crudely drawn map concerning the location of where he buried her body almost a decade and a half earlier.  Through the use of ground penetrating radar and assistance from Cox’s family Goliath and his associates were able to locate and recover her remains.  Goliath noted that it was difficult seeing the emotional responses of the family, but he was glad to provide them with the closure they desperately sought and needed.

 

It was through these cases that Goliath realized the need for a state-wide database containing information of both missing persons and the biological profiles of unidentified deceased individuals.  A federal database already exists, but individual states are not mandated to contribute data to it, leading to gaps in information that is critical to both law enforcement agencies to help them resolve cases and families of missing individuals to understand what happened to their missing loved ones.  Goliath and his Mississippi State University colleague Jordan Lynton Cox moved forward with the research necessary to create and implement the Mississippi Repository for Missing and Unidentified Persons, which launched in November 2023.  This database makes information concerning missing persons and the biological profiles of unidentified deceased individuals available to the public, which can then be used by either law enforcement personnel or members of the public to help resolve open cases.  Goliath cited a need for this database to alleviate the backlog of unsolved cases and help with victim identification, particularly for People of Color.

 

Goliath’s short career has had a very promising start, and it is expected that he will continue to his successes that will benefit his students as well as the public at large.  This is said because his research concentrations are in improving current forensic methods and analytical techniques, and his focus on overlooked but important issues within the field means that these areas will receive the attention and resolution they need.

 

References

Goliath, J. (2022). About. Retrieved from Jesse R. Goliath, PhD, RPA: Skeletal Biologist/Forensic Anthropologist: https://www.jessegoliath.com/

Lassetter, S. (2023, Summer). Closure. Mississippi State University Alumnus.

Nicholas, S. (2022, October 31). Jesse Goliath. Retrieved from Mississippi State University: https://www.msstate.edu/our-people/2022/10/jesse-goliath

Nicholas, S. (2023, November 1). MSU anthropologist hopes to crack Mississippi cold cases with help from new online database. Retrieved from Mississippi State University: https://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2023/11/msu-anthropologist-hopes-crack-mississippi-cold-cases-help-new-online?fbclid=IwAR0aUOrY0Lo4iyoRNaPqfSHnKBggLwvo0qx1AbzjiVGEY1hb7rk1A7At4pE