Department of Anthropology

Thousands of Central American families are fleeing from violence in their own countries and seeking protection in the US. However, once they enter the country they are immediately confined in temporary holding cells – also called hieleras (iceboxes) due to their extremely low temperatures, where they undergo violence and neglect. The hieleras become the site where the categories of the asylum-seeker, the immigrant, and the criminal become conflated. Asylum-seekers entering the country also enter an already existing racialized structure where Latina/o subjects have been criminalized. This article analyzes the hieleras through a Foucauldian and a transnational feminist lens, and argues that these holding cells work as a site for punishing border crossers and deterring them (and others like them) from pursuing the asylum process; which are displays of both sovereign power and disciplinary power.

Prostitution in feminism is always the object of a strong polarized debate, most of which is concentrated on the definition itself. It is considered a synonym of violence, as the abolitionists claim, or an occupational choice, as the regulationists claim. As a result of this debate, ideological positions have crystallized into laws regarding prostitution in different countries. At one end of the spectrum we find the abolitionist model in Sweden, where laws abolish prostitution and where the client is fined or incarcerated, but never the prostitute. On the other end of the spectrum we find the Netherlands, where prostitution is considered to be a job and sex-workers are protected by Dutch labor legislation, consistent with the regulationist model. This paper critiques both the models in Sweden and the Netherlands through an exploration on how their laws affect the women who work in prostitution. However, the paper also considers arguments that either model would be a better means of securing prostitutes’ rights than the widespread family of models (including in the U.S) that criminalize prostitutes. My analysis of weaknesses and strengths of each model with respect to their impact on the
lives of women will propose the possibility of formulating alternatives. This paper thus contributes to the larger debate on prostitution without becoming trapped by the dichotomy that is often presupposed within feminist discussion.

This article aims to make an approach to cultural practices of past societies through the study of physical evidence appearing in the skeletal remains. These cultural practices are part of those practices that perform body modification intentioned with social, cultural or religious reason. In turn within these focus analysis on those body modifications made in life that leave their mark on bone tissue allowing further study and analysis.

Teeth are the highly mineralized body structures, and resistant to most of the taphonomic processes. Due to their high level of preservation and the high amount of information that is possible to obtain from them, they are considered one of the most important remains for study in collective burials. Al-Addeiseh site from the Palestinian Bronze Age is a useful example that shows the importance of teeth as a source of knowledge in mass graves. This site contained a collective grave, with at least 16 individuals of all ages. Between the remains 17 fragments of mandibles with their associated teeth, 3 fragments of maxilla with their associated teeth, 13 decontextualized teeth (not linked with any osteological structure as a consequence of postmortem loos) and 9 infant teeth were found. These remains give information about the individuals' health in the last years of their lives; 2 teeth also give information about the condition of health during the growing period associated with a metabolic nonspecific disorder. The observed modification in tooth wear also give information about diet and the use of teeth in this population, allowing obtaining inter-and intra-population information. The difficulty of obtaining information from collective graves could, therefore, be reduced if we obtain all the evidence that teeth can give us.