Anthro 269 Quiz 1

The State of Nature

The imagined state of humanity as one with the natural world, prior to the formation of society, order and laws

exists before history, before progress, everything is static, obeying the eternal laws of nature

Theory that defined how Euro-Americans thought of the Americans: remnant of the primitive wilderness that once defined the whole (indigenous people)

Archaeology

a discipline that uses the material traces of human activity to reconstruct past events, cultures, and social practices

Material cultures

our lives as a society is defined by objects.

Archaeological Stratigraphy

The record of accumulated layers of human waste and soil.

--\> gives clues about long term changes that took place across these centuries

Archaeological materials (3)

Artifacts, ecofacts, features

Artifacts

objects worked by humans (ie. stone, tools, ceramics)

ecofacts

natural objects that are associated with human behavior and may have been used or affected by humans (ie. shells, seeds, bones)

Features

nonportable constructions that are manufactured for a purpose (ie. wall, floor)

Archaeological site

any locality that contains some kind of archaeological material, which may represent a single ephemeral occupation, thousands of years of human occ.

Archaeological survey

A process of locating clues that might be indicative of the presence of an archaeological site (ie. satellite imagery, remote sensing)

Excavation

peeling back soil strata to uncover material.

Goal to map out different layers of soils and identify artifacts, ecofacts, and features associated with these layers

Relative Dating

provides a relative sequence of events that produced a site

Absolute Dating

provides absolute date for when an object was produced or deposited

Most useful mode of dating is C-14 dating (radiocarbon dating) but can only date organic materials and only up to 50,000 years

Non-archaeological sources

Textual sources, ethnographic sources, oral history

Ethnographic sources

records of indigenous communities from past 100 years

prehistoric archaeology

meaning without textual sources

By the end of the 19th century, NA Arch started to be seen as a subdiscipline of anthropology.

Franz Boas overlooked ethnographers to go to North America to record the complex cultures and beliefs of indigenous.

Goal was to record the complexity of indigenous cultures because they were transformed by Euro-American society.

17th and 18th centuries Europe

scholars began acquiring massive collections of antiques and natural specimens

one of the primary methods of doing modern science

Natural History

study of the natural world, the precursor to our modern disciples of biology, geology, zoology, etc

Antiquarianism

study of antique human objects, the precursor to modern disciplines like archaeology

Americas around 1800

Defined by concentrations of Euro-American people

Many debates on how specimens of Americas fit within the broader taxonomies scientists developed in the Old World

Thomas Jefferson

In NA, indigenous artifacts and bones were collected as a part of the larger natural history of NA

They were categorized with flora and fauna of the continent

Thomas Jefferson performed excavation of burial mound on his property in 1784

Made conclusions how and why the mound was produced

First to bring a scientific approach to America's precontact past

Categorized Indigenous history as natural history, outlining indigenous people and their past as a part of the natural world, and subject of natural science

Mound Builders Controversy

1845, Squier and Davis excavated prehistoric earthworks. Published Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley

Argued earthworks done by an unknown ancient white civilization

Squier and Davis

This theory of white civilization building the earthworks was popular amongst Euro-American scholars

Natural History Museums

Designed to represent the totality of scientific knowledge about the natural world

Funded fieldwork to go out and acquire more objects

Settling the Mississippi Valley: 1850's Euro-American settlers established states

Forced Indigenous communities west into unincorporated territory

Identified massive evidence of different pre-contact history

Scientific Racism: Analyzing skeletons of evidence of racial difference

Skeletons used to argue humanity consisted of biologically distinct races, each with different levels of biological development, brain capacities, and levels of intelligence

Mostly used to justify slavery, white supremacy, colonization, and imperialism

Social Darwinism

Blumenbach, Linnaeus - said Caucasian skull was most symmetrical and concluded it must be the type created by God. Said diet, disease contributed to degeneration in the non-Caucasian races, but can be undone with proper education.

Samuel Morton

Said race could be correlated with skull size to intelligence. F

Founded the "American School" --\> looted Indian graves for scientific research on skulls

Argued against the single creation theory. Developed view on multiple racial creation (polygenesis). Said various races were created separately and given specific irrevocable characteristics.

Could not find the necessary skulls to trace racial differences.

Craniometry

Scientific analysis of skull size and shape

Believed human skull was resistant to environment and provided accurate measure of brain size and cognitive powers (mental traits).

Morton found American Indians had small cranial capacity that lacked the indicators necessary for learning the arts or sciences so they were impossible to civilize.

Morgan saw human history as a grand progression from simple to the complex

Made conquest of Indian people by Euroamericans seems as an inevitable expansion of civilized people

Believed a group's social, economic, and political institutions derived from inherited mental "germs" under environmental conditions

Social Darwinism/Social Evolution

Euro-American society was deemed most developed and civil, while indigenous societies were ranked savage or barbaric

Justified colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism

Dawes Act (1887)

Goal to assimilate indigenous cultures into American cultures

Forced privatization of Indigenous lands, outlawed indigenous cultural practices

John Lubbock

Argued Darwinian-style natural selection operated on ancient human societies to produce biological and cultural differences.

Basically, humanity was improving - biologically, culturally, emotionally, and intellectually - through natural selection

Salvage anthropology

collection of artifacts/objects/skeletons without consideration

Stevenson collected thousands of traditional pottery and artifacts. Scoured tribes of Southwest for pottery

Social Darwinist approach argued Indigenous societies were doomed to extinction

Assumed they were only authentically 'Indian' when living in pre-contact ways

Justified spread of Euro-American settlers and society into Indig. Territories

Fletcher

Theorized private property had stimulated development of civilized behavior so Omaha people must move from reservations to individually owned self-sufficient farmsteads.

Every competent adult Maha tribal member was granted 80-acre plot

1981 AIM protest at archaeological excavation in Welch, MN

Deloria said archaeologists thought the read Indians were the dead ones

1973 Wounded Knee occupation on the Oglala Lakota Reservation

71 days. Goal to draw attention and challenge substandard living conditions on Native reservations

November 1969 - June 1971 occupation of Alcatraz

Led by "Indians of All Nations"

1886 Treaty of Fort Laramie stated any discontinued use of federal lands will be returned to Native tribes

1978 Longest walk

3000 mile walk to DC to advocate for rights of Indigenous peoples

Franz Boas

Led a successful rebellion against cultural evolutionary theory.

After 20 years of Dawes Act, Morgan's theory of social evolution became discredited