Anthropologist Profile: Dr. Chelsea Carter, Applied and Research Medical Anthropologist

 

Dr. Chelsea Carter

 

To describe Dr. Chelsea Carter in one word is difficult, but if forced to do so that word would be: phenomenal.  Carter, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, has established herself as one of the premiere medical anthropologists in the discipline.  Her passions lie within breaking down barriers faced by Black individuals within the American healthcare system, but she has also been instrumental in overcoming obstacles placed upon her and other young anthropologists as they advance the concepts of what it means to be an anthropologist.  Today’s blog post will discuss Dr. Chelsea Carter’s experiences and career further, including her on-going applied anthropological research projects.

 

Dr. Chelsea Carter was born and raised in St. Louis.  She reported that she went to predominantly White schools, wherein she was exposed to primarily Eurocentric subject matter.  She felt stifled in this environment, but she was able to explore her interests further upon enrolling in an introductory anthropology course at Emory University.  She felt a connection with the material, particularly the questions concerning cultural differences and diversity.  She was being exposed to ideas and ways of being that were different from what she had grown up learning, and she was excited to learn more.  She ultimately majored in Anthropology and Spanish at Emory, eventually becoming a recipient of the Majorie Shostak Award for Excellence in Ethnographic Writing and the Heart of Emory award.  She went on to graduate with high honors.

 

After graduating with her undergraduate degrees she eventually returned to St. Louis and enrolled in the anthropology graduate program at Washington University.  It was here that she earned her master’s and Ph.D., while also simultaneously earning her Master’s in Public Health.  Her research focused on Black patients’ experiences with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the brain and of which there is no cure.  Earning those degrees did not come easy.  In an interview with the American Anthropological Association Carter got candid about the challenges she faced during her time as a graduate student.  These challenges included “family health emergencies, advisor changes, an unsupportive academic community, and an abusive relationship.”  With the support of friends, family, anthropology mentors, and her therapist she was able to overcome here hardships and graduate in six years, a monumental feat in and of itself without the added obstacles.

 

Currently, Carter is employed at Yale University as an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.  She was previously employed as a Postdoc at Yale prior to landing her academic position.  When she is not teaching she is working on turning her doctorate into a book, which focuses on Black American patients with ALS and their experiences within the medical system, particularly as they face issues related to race, gender, class, and bias.  She is also involved in several other medical anthropology projects, including the Black Genome Project out of St. Louis, of which she is a Co-Principal Investigator. 

 

The purpose of the Black Genome Project is to survey Black populations throughout St. Louis and the greater metro area to understand their views of their genetic information and the impacts of genetic studies on individuals and their communities.  The project leaders seek to educate Black community members about genetic information and genomic data, specifically how it is used within healthcare and how they can utilize this information to better their own health and well-being.  There are additional goals of the project, such as seeking to destroy myths concerning race as a biologically supportable concept and educating people about the role this idea plays in medical racism and bias.  Ultimately, the Black Genome Project seeks to empower Black communities in having greater stewardship in their genetic data and research related to those data and their health.  This is in line with Carter’s own personal and professional goal for herself as anthropologist: “Overall, our goal should be to support positive societal change and liberation for historically marginalized people worldwide, whether or not we are situated within the academy.”

 

Works Cited

Black Genome Project. Black Genome Project. 2021. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

Carter, Chelsea. "Career Spotlight: Chelsey R. Carter." 21 February 2023. Anthropology Careers and Employment (American Anthropology Association). Electronic. 26 November 2024.

—. Chelsea Carter. 2020. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

Applied Anthropology: Dr. Elgin Klugh & the Laurel Memorial Cemetery Project

Dr. Elgin Klugh (Source: Coppin State University)

 

Dr. Elgin Klugh did not intend on pursuing anthropology when he was an undergraduate student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was from a twist of fate that he enrolled in a cultural anthropology at sister institution Spelman College, which launched his subsequent career in applied anthropology.  This blog post will delve more deeply into Dr. Elgin Klugh’s applied anthropological work as it relates to the now completed Laurel Memorial Cemetery Project.

 

Dr. Elgin Klugh is an Associate Professor and Department Chair at Coppin State University, an Historically Black College & University in Baltimore, Maryland.  He came to work at Coppin after he completed his Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology at University of Southern Florida in 2004.  He was drawn to the field due to his desire to better understand race and ethnicity in the United States, which he felt he could better explore though advanced anthropological training.  With research interests in heritage, cultural landscapes, community revitalization, and genealogy he has managed to establish himself not only as a researcher but advocate for African American populations in the greater Baltimore area.

 

It was these very interests that encouraged him to partner with faculty at the University of Baltimore in the Laurel Memorial Cemetery Project.  He and his faculty collaborator initially saw this as an opportunity for their students, particularly those with interests in history, environmental sciences, cultural resource management, and archaeology, to get applied experience in the field.  The purpose of the Laurel Memorial Cemetery Project was to document and memorialize an African American cemetery that had been razed in 1958 for the construction of a shopping complex.  As Klugh, his faculty collaborators, and the students began their work in 2014 they quickly realized that there were a lot of inaccuracies in the historical record about what really happened in 1958.  According to the records there were 300 “burials” that had been moved, but the reality was that it was not the actual burials that were moved.  Just the headstones.  Plus, the cemetery had anywhere from 14,000 to 40,000 burials, not the mere 300 previously recorded.  This meant that the project was far larger than initially perceived, and collaborators and student participants from other area colleges and universities, including Community College of Baltimore County, Towson University, and Morgan State University, were enlisted in the work.

 

The project was completed in three phases.  The first phase, which began in 2015 and was completed in 2017, involved archaeological work.  Students were led by archaeologists at the University of Baltimore in excavating an open field adjacent to the shopping center to assess if there were any remaining burials on the property.  These were discovered.  Additionally, noninvasive techniques, including remote sensing with a magnetometer and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), were employed to scan the parking lot and other areas inaccessible to traditional excavations.  These, too, demonstrated evidence to burials that had not been moved prior to the construction of the shopping center.

 

The second phase employed Klugh’s expertise.  Historical and ethnographic research was conducted, which involved three separate areas of inquiry.  Historical research was completed to understand the use and eventual razing of the cemetery, along with research on who had been buried in it over the 100 plus years the cemetery had been used.  Lastly, there were oral histories collected from members of the community and family members of deceased individuals interred at the cemetery.  One of the things that Klugh noted was the loss of collective memory of the cemetery, as well as the sparsity of historical records on its existence.  This underscored the need to document the cemetery and its loss to redevelopment to remember the people who had lived and then been buried at the cemetery, as well as document the historical injustice against these individuals and the African American communities of the area. 

 

Various local community members were involved in the project, and they report great satisfaction in learning about their histories and the cemetery.  This participation lent itself well to the final stage of the project, which involved erecting a memorial at the site.  The memorial would act as a place marker for what had once existed but was now lost.  It would also serve as an educational tool.  The memorial was erected in part through grant money Klugh and his collaborators secured.  Additionally, Klugh and others coauthored a book on the project, which came out in December 2024.

 

Now that the Laurel Memorial Cemetery Project is completed Klugh is focusing his attention on community development and revitalization in the urban areas around Coppin State University.  This new project is on-going, but it serves his other interests and fulfills his purpose as an anthropologist.  According to Klugh: "Anthropology is the venue through which I am able to align my curiosities and my passion with my professional life. As an applied anthropologist, I am interested in ways that anthropological knowledge can be used to improve lives and communities.”  So far it is safe to say that Klugh is doing just that through his previous and current projects.

 

Works Cited

American Anthropological Association. Elgin L. Klugh, PhD, Associate Professor, Coppin State University. 2024. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

Coppin State University. Faculty: Elgin Klugh, PhD; Professor and Chairperson. 2024. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

Klugh, Elgin. "The Laurel Cemetery Project of Baltimore." 18 January 2019. National Association for the Practice of Anthropology. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

Klugh, Elgin. Why Anthropology? Elgin Klugh Irma McClaurin. 1 June 2024. Electronic.

Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project. Project Overview, Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project. n.d. Electronic. 26 November 2024.

 

Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Rapa Nui island at sunset with moai statues along the coast (Google Images)

 

 

If you have seen images of colossal stone heads on an island or near an ocean then you a familiar with Rapa Nui (aka, Easter Island).  This remote island is located off the coast of Chile, and it was once the home to a thriving cultural group.  Unfortunately, that cultural group was wiped out before any appropriate chronically of their lives, histories, beliefs, etc. were recorded, leaving them and the island shrouded in mystery.  This blog post will provide information about what is currently known about the Rapanui Polynesians who once occupied the island.

 

Rapa Nui is a unique island located off the coast of Chile. The island formed out of an extinguished volcano.  This resulted in the island bedrock being very porous, thereby making it difficult for freshwater resources to exist.  There are very few that exist on the island today, although limited archaeological evidence suggests that the current environment is far sparser than it was in the past.  It is unclear if this was the case or not given the lack of evidence that can be recovered from the island.  Regardless, the environmental conditions and isolation of the island from other habitable locations did not stop Polynesians from settling on the island around 400 CE.  They brought with them several domesticates, such as chickens, sweet potatoes, taros, yams, and more.  They also brought with them their language and culture, which are like other Tahitian and Polynesian languages and cultures throughout the Pacific. 

 

Over time, the Rapa Nui established a chiefdom level society.  Lands were divided among clans.  The people maintained an agrarian lifestyle, and they managed to thrive on the island for several centuries.  Between the 12^th and 17^th centuries they quarried volcanic stone from Rano Raraku, a volcanic depression of the eastern side of the island.  The quarried stone was used to construct the large colossal stone heads that the island is best known for.  These are called moai, and their specific purpose has not been precisely identified yet.  They are known to exist in three locations on the island, including Rano Raraku and along roads within the island interior and along the coasts.  Most recently, scholars conducted a study of these coastal moai and concluded that they may have served a purpose in helping the islanders collect fresh water.  Because of the porous bedrock water does not stand on the island surface, and it instead flows through the island back into the ocean.  The coastal moai appear to be in locations where the fresh water flowed into the ocean, and during low tides these underground waterways are visible as they dump the island’s collected water into the ocean.  These could have been markers for the islanders to know where to collect that freshwater before it was lost to the ocean. 

 

It is imprecisely known how the moai were moved throughout the island.  They vary in size and weight, with the largest being 10 meters in height and weighing close to 50 tons.  The hundreds (although some scholars say 1000s) of moai from the island could not have been moved easily, leading various scholars to question how they were moved.  Several hypotheses have been put forward and tested, but this debate remains.

 

As does the debate about the fall of the Rapanui Polynesians.  When Dutch colonists encountered the Rapanui Polynesians on Easter Sunday in 1722, which is how the island got its second name (Easter Island), the Dutch said they encountered several hundred islanders.  Scholars believe that either the Rapanui Polynesians were responsible for their own collapse through environmental degradation by overusing their resources.  This ignores the role of Europeans in the extermination of much of the remaining population, who were central to spreading diseases that killed off many of the Rapanui Polynesians.  Those who did not die from disease were killed through enslaved labor. 

 

Bibliography

Dapcevich, M. (2018, October 11). Scientists Believe They Have Finally Discovered What Easter Island's Statues Were For. Retrieved from IFL Science: https://www.iflscience.com/scientists-may-have-just-discovered-what-easter-islands-statues-were-for--50105

Lipo, C., Hunt, T., & Haoa, S. (2012). he ‘Walking’ Megalithic Statues (Moai) of Easter Island. Journal of Archaeological Science.

Pakandam, B. (2009). Why Easter Island Collapsed: an answer for an enduring question. Unpublished Report.

Pitts, M., Miles, J., Pagi, H., & Earl, G. (2014). Hoa Hakananai'a: A new study of an Easter Island statue in the British Museum. The Antiquaries Journal, 291-321.

Van Tilburg, J. a. (1987). Symbolic stratigraphy: Rock art and the monolithic statues of Easter Island. World Archaeology, 133-149.

Anthropology as a Holistic Discipline: Archaeolinguistics & Ancient DNA Analyses Crack Origins of Transeurasian Languages

Anthropology is a holistic discipline, meaning one must understand all the anthropological subfields to truly understand what it means to be human.  Despite this there has been a push for anthropologists to specialize in one, maybe two, subfields.  Typically, this results in sociocultural and linguistic anthropological studies, and physical/biological anthropological and archaeological investigations.  More recently, though, there has been greater collaboration among anthropologists, bridging the divide and leading to truly holistic studies.  These collaborations have enriched our understanding of human history, including identify the origins of Transeurasian languages.

 

Transeurasian languages include a wide diversity of languages spoken throughout eastern Asia, including but not limited to Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages.  For a long time scholars were unsure if these languages shared a common proto (parent) language, or if they were simply a variety of languages that borrowed from each other over time.  This question was a contentious debate among linguistics until recently due to the collaborative research completed by linguistic, archaeological, and paleogenetic scholars out of the Max Plank Institute. 

 

These scholars opted to use multiple lines of evidence to explore this linguistic matter.  They drew upon historical linguistic, archaeological, and ancient genetic evidence.  They studied common vocabulary among the modern languages of this language family, statistically analyzing them for similarities and differences.  They then compared these results further with previously documented historical evidence of vocabulary spoken within these languages in the past.  They discovered a key aspect of language change within these languages was due to the introduction of specific vocabulary related to agriculture, specifically terms related to agricultural crops and technologies.

 

They also examined the archaeological evidence.  They discovered the migration patterns of ancient people within the geographical space where Transeurasian languages are spoken.  They also chronologically mapped when these groups adopted new agricultural patterns, be it new domesticates or technologies.  This helped expose the origins of the Transeurasian languages further.

 

A final key to this issue was the study of ancient DNA recovered from 19 ancient individuals who resided in the region.  The ancient DNA results showed biological relations among individuals which matched linguistic clusters.  This meant that people who spoke similar or the same languages were related to each other.

 

Ultimately, these researchers were able to conclude that Transeurasian languages developed from one proto (parent) language.  This was the result of the multiple lines of linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence demonstrating that there was first a group of Neolithic millet farmers who resided in the Liao River Valley (China) who spoke the proto-language.  Over time these proto-language populations migrated northwest and settled in new areas.  This resulted in the language these groups spoke changing, which were the result of new agricultural products and technologies being introduced and adopted.  As new contact with different groups of people occurred (due to trade, a latent result of the adoption of agriculture and evolution of social groups) the languages changed further, leading to the great diversity of Transeurasian languages spoken today.

 

References

Robbeets, M., Bouckaert, R., Conte, M. et al. Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages. Nature 599, 616–621 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04108-8