In this dissertation, I consider a theoretically driven methodological approach to the study of ritual in archaeology. Inspired by a renewed materialist perspective, the project employs a comprehensive series of methodologies in a study of ancient Maya ritual. Through excavations of two funerary shrines of an elite residence in the city of Palenque, it considers each discrete context not as a “ritual deposit” but as an ‘event.’ Each ‘event’ was comprehensively sampled in order to recover the residues and traces of past actions, and of the various materials brought together in a moment of heightened relationality. The inclusion of multiple macroscale and microscale archaeological methods together not only identifies residues of materials previously undetected, but also employs a microhistorical approach. Micromorphology of ‘events’ shrinks the time frame of analyses and presents archaeological stratigraphy as lived, generational, time. Paleoethnobotanical, zooarchaeological and micromorphological analyses combined with a single context excavation strategy resulted in the recovery and identification of periodic ritual events carried out in honor of the dead.

The ancient residence under consideration, known as “Group IV,” was materially rich and politically well connected. The leading members of the house were recorded in texts in the residential group as well as in the main palace, thus providing additional lines of evidence to pull from in order to explore the ritual life of the generations of Maya that lived, died, and were buried in what is suspected to be a founding residence. This work not only provides a general framework for archaeological approaches to the study of ritual in the past, but also provides important information for Maya studies in particular. Few studies in the Maya area have been fortunate enough to have a residence with the names of its occupants, as well as accompanying well-dated, fine-grained stratigraphic resolution that coincides with occupation of the residence within the span of a human lifetime.

All youth have the capacity to thrive during adolescence by actively seeking internal and external resources to navigate the core developmental tasks characterizing this pivotal transition. Positive Youth Development (PYD) theories emphasize the role of adolescents’ self-regulation and relational context in supporting this process, leading researchers to investigate which person-by-environment interactions confer optimal benefits. However, few empirical studies have explored PYD trajectories among ethnic/racial minority samples, including Latinx youth of Mexican-origin, leaving gaps in our understanding of specific individual, familial, and sociocultural factors enabling youth of color to flourish. Furthermore, research integrating cultural influences and neurobiological development within PYD trajectories in youth exposed to adversity are scarce. This dissertation aimed to address these gaps by investigating: (1) whether the Five Cs model of PYD accurately reflects PYD in Latinx youth, (2) the extent to which cultural orientation promotes Latinx PYD, (3) whether PYD factors moderate the impact of family stress on adolescent stress physiology, and (4) the moderating role of adolescent demographics within these associations. Study 1 provides robust evidence supporting the Five Cs model of PYD in Latinx youth, highlighting ethnic pride and cultural values as potent promoters of PYD for Mexican-origin youth. Study 2 reveals differential associations between family stress exposure and adrenocortical regulation based on adolescent gender and endorsement of the Five Cs, suggesting a potentially stronger biological link between the Five Cs and adrenocortical functioning in adolescent girls compared to boys. Taken together, these studies offer a culturally-sensitive and neurobiologically-informed understanding of PYD pathways and resilience processes unfolding in the lives of Mexican-origin youth, underscoring the importance of integrating across bioecological and relational systems when conducting PYD research.

This dissertation analyzes the last four books of an influential, fourth-century CE, Christian text, the Historia Ecclesiastica (History) written by church historian and bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima. Rather than approaching this Patristic text through a literary lens, my dissertation seeks to understand and re-visualize how the History produced and was a product of the geography of the ancient Mediterranean. By annotating books seven through ten of the History and visualizing the data through digital tools, I show that the universalizing rhetoric of the text was, in fact, geographically localized and masked the contingent nature of the text’s production. In order to achieve these goals, I first contextualize the city of Caesarea Maritima by locating it within Eastern Roman networks. Through this process I emphasize the non-Roman historical influences on the city and argue that Caesarea’s strategic use as an administrative city and military base must inform our understanding of the city in the fourth-century CE. As a city with logistic importance to the Roman Empire, Caesarea was not (as is often assumed) a backwater city on the Roman periphery. After developing context for Caesarea, I then analyze the geographical components in books seven through ten of the History. With the use of data sets (presented through tables and maps) I argue that Eusebius’ idea of where the Roman and Christian worlds came together was a winnowing, localized region: the Roman East. By doing so, I frame the History as a work embedded in its Eastern Mediterranean context and join the ranks of scholars who argue not only for a more nuanced understanding of Eusebius and his work in context, but also those who work to show how canonical texts have long been used to reinforce power dynamics in the modern world.

Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animals due to the link between blood feeding and disease transmission. Amino acids (AA) from a blood meal are required for initiation of egg development, a process that is central to reproductive cycles. Reproduction is governed by alternating peaks of two important insect hormones: Juvenile Hormone III (JH) and 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E). The vitellogenic, 20E-controlled phase of a reproductive cycle occurs after a blood meal and is characterized by the massive production and uptake of yolk protein precursors (YPPs). Microarray studies of the female fat body, a site of YPP synthesis, have revealed that nearly half of the genes in the Aedes aegypti genome are differentially regulated in discrete waves during the vitellogenic phase of a reproductive cycle. We have determined the regulatory factors responsible for each wave of up-or down-regulation by a combination of RNA interference (RNAi) and in vitro fat body culture (IVFBC) techniques. This study contributes to our understanding of temporal regulation of transcription during reproduction and uncovers a unique role of Ecdysone receptor (EcR) as a transcriptional repressor. Transcriptional activation of the main YPP gene, vitellogenin, is directed by the 20E/EcR regulatory pathway and has been methodically worked out by molecular methods. However, transcriptional repression by the EcR regulatory pathway and the mechanisms by which it occurs remain a mystery. We examined the role of components of the 20E/EcR signaling cascade in transcriptional repression of a group of genes, as well as epistatic relationships of implicated pathway components using RNAi, IVFBC and cycloheximide (CHX) assays. We also addressed the involvement of co-repressor and promoter elements in 20E/EcR transcriptional repression using RNAi techniques, luciferase transfection assays, bioinformatics analysis and electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA). The results of this study illuminate the complexity of gene regulation in the female mosquito during reproductive events. A detailed understanding of the nuances of gene expression during mosquito reproductive cycles is essential for development of novel strategies to control mosquito-borne disease.