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Anthropology student
wants to take knowledge home
By Linda Thornton,
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/living/65808277.html
Condensed by
Native Village
 New
Mexico: In 10th grade,
Daniel Pedro knew
that he wanted to be an
anthropologist. He also knew
that as a Zuni, he could not
touch human
remains – a common task for
physical
anthropologists.
“It was kind of a barrier,”
said Pedro, now a 20-year-old
freshman at the University
of New Mexico-Gallup. “I had
to find a way to work around
it.”
Pedro began to look for that
way by participating in New
Mexico's
Supercomputing Challenge.
The challenge teaches middle and high
school students how to use
computers to
analyze, model and solve
real world problems.
Pedro's idea was to study
the faces of living Pueblo
peoples for
consistent similarities. He
would then apply that data
to
identify and repatriate
skeletal remains. “My goal. … is
to make it easier for
anthropologists to figure
out which tribe/pueblo the
remains belong to on the
computer, instead of
disrespecting Native customs
and damaging the skull,” he
said.
UNM Curator of Human
Osteology, Heather Edgar,
was impressed by Daniel's
inventive approach to
problem solving, so she
advised and
encouraged
his project. She also gave
him a medical diagram of a
human skull with which to
start his studies.
 “We need a Native
perspective in anthropology,
and especially a perspective
that comes from working with
living communities,” Edgar
said.
Pedro’s unique project soon
attracted several other
advisors and mentors.
“They were impressed by the
fact it was a student who
wanted to do this kind of
work, and a high school
student and a Native
American at that,” Pedro
said.
Pedro used the computer to rotate
human skulls side
by side and compare them in different
profiles. His goal
was to find a way to determine
which tribe or pueblo a
skull might belong to with
only minimal handling.
The
result was an entry for the
Supercomputing Challenge
called “Scan of the Past.”
“He learned a lot about the
mathematics of 3D computer
graphics and the rotation
and scaling of 3D objects on
the computer,” said Irene
Lee from Santa Fe Institute.
For this phase of his
project, Daniel received the
Judges’ Choice Award for
“Integrating Computation
into Anthropology” from the
Supercomputing Challenge.
The second phase of his work
was on a new version of
“Scan of the Past.” With
help from Steve Guerin of
Redfish Group, Pedro
constructed a proxy data set during his
senior year.
He then used facial data
from 15
 landmarks
on the faces of 45
individuals. The set allowed
him to practice
techniques and
classification for use in
real world data.
“It was great to have help
from so many mentors,” Pedro
said. “I had wondered if my
project would be taken
seriously because this was
something really new.”
After graduating from high
school in 2008, Pedro
enrolled at UNM-Gallup.
Last year he worked at A:shiwi A:wan
Museum and Heritage Center
in Zuni to learn about
caring for exhibits and
working with photo
collections. He
also made a presentation
during the
Conference on Archaeoastronomy
of the American Southwest.
His topic was an interactive
computer model of the Chaco
Canyon Sun Dagger site.
Daniel says that Native
Americans “did marvelous
things,” and that, when studying
historic sites, “It’s best
to listen to Native American
oral traditions about what
happened at these sites. If
we can integrate these
traditions with what we can
learn from modern
technology, we can create
another level of thinking.”
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