DR. DEBRA KOMAR, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, was awarded funding in October 2006 to aid research on 'The Use of Material Culture to Establish Ethnic Identity in International Investigations of Genocide.' Successful prosecution of genocide requires that victims constitute one of four protected groups: national, religious, ethnic, or racial. Establishing victim identity in prior trials has been largely presumptive, based on untested methodology, or relied on positive ID of the victims.

'Beyond Interactivity: Applying Dynamic Systems Theory to the Study of Great Apes and Humans,' April 15-18, 2004, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia -- Organizer: Barbara J. King (College of William and Mary). This workshop brought together eight anthropologists and psychologists who study the social behavior of primates using dynamic-systems theory (DST). Participants shared an interest in studying social behavior, cognition, and communication by looking at dyads, triads, and groups as systems of internally related parts.

Preliminary abstract: It is widely hypothesized that early agriculturalists have reduced craniofacial features relative to hunter-gatherers because agricultural foods and processing technologies resulted in decreased masticatory loading demands for prehistoric farmers. The geographic scope of this subsistence-driven craniofacial reduction (SDCR) hypothesis is global: dispersed agricultural transitions produced convergent changes to craniofacial morphology. Yet studies testing SDCR are restricted to comparisons of local groups.