These "Thin Partitions": Bridging the Growing Divide Between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607325411 ISBN 13: 9781607325413

Publisher: University Press of Colorado, 2017

Synopsis

These “Thin Partitions” explores the intellectual and methodological differences that separate two of the four subdisciplines within the field of anthropology: archaeology and cultural anthropology. Contributors examine the theoretical underpinnings of this separation and explore what can be gained by joining them, both in university departments and in field research.   In case studies highlighting the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration, contributors argue that anthropologists and archaeologists are simply not “speaking the same language” and that the division between fields undermines the field of anthropology as a whole. Scholars must bridge this gap and find ways to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration to promote the health of the anthropological discipline. By sharing data, methods, and ideas, archaeology and cultural anthropology can not only engage in more productive debates but also make research accessible to those outside academia.   These “Thin Partitions” gets to the heart of a well-known problem in the field of anthropology and contributes to the ongoing debate by providing concrete examples of how interdisciplinary collaboration can enhance the outcomes of anthropological research.   Contributors: Fredrik Fahlander, Lilia Fernández Souza, Kent Fowler, Donna Goldstein, Joseph R. Hellweg, Derek Johnson, Ashley Kistler, Vincent M. LaMotta, John Monaghan, William A. Parkinson, Paul Shankman, David Small

About this title

About the Author

Joshua D. Englehardt is profesor-investigador at the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos of El Colegio de Michoacán, a CONACYT Level I National Investigator, and codirector of the Mesoamerican Corpus of Formative Period Art and Writing. He specializes in Mesoamerican archaeology and epigraphy, with a research focus on the development of Mesoamerican writing systems in the Formative period and the correlation of emerging scripts with diachronic changes in material culture. He is also the editor of Agency in Ancient Writing.   Ivy A. Rieger is professor-investigator of cultural anthropology at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí and received her doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder. She primarily specializes in theoretical questions related to practice, belonging, and performance among the Mixtec of Oaxaca, Mexico, where she conducts ethnographic research focusing on fiestas, ritual, memory, and identity among this indigenous group.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

These "Thin Partitions"

Bridging the Growing Divide between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology

By Joshua D. Englehardt, Ivy A. Rieger

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2017 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-541-3

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
Introduction: Speaking the Same Language? Joshua D. Englehardt and Ivy A. Rieger, 
1. Research Collaboration in Mesoamerica and the Pueblo Southwest Vincent M. Lamotta and John Monaghan, 
2. "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time": The Fate of Cultural Evolution in Cultural Anthropology Paul Shankman, 
3. Ontology Matters in Archaeology and Anthropology: People, Things, and Posthumanism Fredrik Fahlander, 
4. Ethnographic Stratigraphies: Mapping Practical Exchanges between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology Ivy A. Rieger, 
5. Archaeological Boundaries and Anthropological Frontiers: A View from South of the Border Joshua D. Englehardt, 
6. Tribes — Chimeras or Chameleons? Kinship, Marriage, Gender, and Hierarchy in Archaeological Theory and Nuer Ethnography Joseph R. Hellweg, 
7. The Ancestral Stew Pot: Culinary Practices at a Contemporary Yucatecan Village Lilia Fernández Souza, 
8. Filling in the Blanks: Archaeology, Ethnography, and the Aj Pop B'atz' Project Ashley Kistler, 
9. The Interface between Anthropology and Archaeology: A View from Ancient Greece David B. Small, 
10. Given a Choice: Integrating Approaches to Choice and Wellbeing in Present and Past Societies Kent Fowler and Derek Johnson, 
Conclusions: Anthropological Pasts and Futures Donna M. Goldstein, 
Conclusions: Anthropology, Archaeology, and the Legacy of Franz Boas; or, "Hello, My Name is Bill, I am an Anthropologist. No wait. I am an Archaeologist. No. Wait ..." William A. Parkinson, 
List of Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Research Collaboration in Mesoamerica and the Pueblo Southwest

VINCENT M. LAMOTA AND JOHN MONAGHAN

In this chapter we examine the relationship between cultural anthropology (which for present purposes we define broadly to include ethnography, ethnohistory, and linguistics) and archaeology in Mesoamerica by comparing it with the relationship of its counterparts in the Pueblo Southwest. Mesoamerica and the Southwest are similar in that the ancestors of the native peoples who live in these regions arrived, for the most part, millennia ago and today's people maintain significant social and cultural links to the past. Towns in both regions have been continuously occupied for hundreds if not thousands of years. The languages spoken in these areas are directly descended from languages spoken before the Common Era. This continuity has extensive material expressions, ranging from art and iconography to technologies. This seems to be a situation that is ideally suited for historical arguments that would make for a robust collaboration among archaeologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and cultural anthropologists.

EARLY COLLABORATION

The early archaeologists and cultural anthropologists working in these areas certainly maintained a high level of professional interaction. In Mesoamerica, Robert Redfield's work in the Yucatán, which helped to define the peasant as a social type, was facilitated by his archaeological colleagues who were excavating the nearby site of Chichén Itzá (Redfield 1941). Alfonso Caso, the archaeologist and jurist, was the founding head of the agency in Mexico concerned with the health and welfare of contemporary indigenous people, the Instituto Nacional Indigenista. During his time as director he employed hundreds of cultural anthropologists. Scholars known for their archaeological work also carried out pioneering ethnographic studies. Sir Eric Thompson, for example, the distinguished archaeologist of the Classic-period Maya, did fieldwork among the Mopan Maya and published what remains one of the handful of ethnographic monographs on this group (Thompson 1930). The idea that archaeologists could carry out ethnographic research can be traced to Tozzer (1907) and prefigured ethnoarchaeological studies, of which there are a number of examples (e.g., Parsons 1990, 2001). By the same token, Boas carried out archaeological work in West Mexico. Students of ancient art and writing have also carried out research among speakers of indigenous languages. We would probably have little understanding of the place sign in Mixtec script, for one prominent example, if it were not for research among contemporary Mixtec people: Mary Elizabeth Smith (1966) determined that the Codex Colombino, a masterpiece of indigenous literature, was set in the coastal region of Western Oaxaca. She traveled by mule and foot to many Mixtec communities (there were few roads in the 1950s and 1960s) and asked people the Mixtec names of present-day towns, archaeological sites, and features of the landscape. Combined with documentary evidence, she was able, in this way, to place the events depicted in the Codex Colombino in a geographical space (see Smith 1966). Even the original Mesoamerican culture area definition was based on both archaeological and ethnographic observations (irchhof1968:24–25).

A similar level of association between early cultural anthropology and archaeology can be found in the Southwest. Scholars such as Frank Hamilton Cushing and Jesse Walter Fewkes worked on both sides of what would later become a more clear-cut divide between archaeology and cultural anthropology. Research often had a direct-historical character. Fewkes, for example, working in the Hopi region in the late 1800s and early 1900s, attempted to track Hopi clan migrations in antiquity by matching oral traditions to the many archaeological sites that dot the Hopi landscape (Fewkes 1900; cf. Bernardini 2005). While Fewkes was himself a prolific excavator, he acquired a nontrivial portion of his ethnographic data via Alexander M. Stephen, a former soldier who recorded information on Hopi culture in the 1880s to 1890s while living at First Mesa (Parsons 1936:xx–xxi) — a partnership that prefigures a more formal division of labor between the subdisciplines. A decade or so later, the American Museum of Natural History's Huntington Survey to the Southwest, launched by Clark Wissler in 1909, included scholars tasked with collecting ethnographic, linguistic, and archaeological data on Southwest cultures (e.g., notably, Nelson 1916), in what was originally envisioned as an integrated anthropological project; however, the ethnographic and linguistic components were ultimately discontinued in favor of archaeological research, in part because of archaeology's greater potential for public appeal (Snead 2005:33–35).

Such concerns notwithstanding, cross-fertilization continued in subsequent decades. Two classic, mid-century Pueblo ethnographies — Mischa Titiev's (1992 [1944]) Old Oraibi: A Study of the Hopi Indians of Third Mesa, and Fred Eggan's (1950) Social Organization of the Western Pueblos — both included at least brief sections on archaeology. Both authors conducted fieldwork for their respective studies at Hopi in the early 1930s under the supervision of Leslie A. White. Titiev (1992:96–99) proposed that factionalism, as documented at Oraibi, was likely an important factor in the dissolution of Pueblo communities in the past, and might therefore explain patterns of village abandonment reflected in the archaeological record. Eggan (1950:123–133), on the other hand, sketched out the archaeological sequence in the Hopi region, as it was known at the time, to provide time-depth for his study of Hopi social organization — to give "some perspective on the chronology involved in the development of the modern Hopi social structure" (Eggan 1950:131). Eggan's views on archaeology were likely informed by his extended visits to the Peabody Museum's excavations at Awatovi on Antelope Mesa (Eggan 1950:vii), where he sojourned for several weeks at a time in 1937 and 1938, traded notes with director J. O. Brew, and "helped dig" (Davis 2008:60). Notably, the Awatovi project also produced the well-known collaboration between architectural historian Ross G. Montgomery and archaeologists Brew and Watson Smith on the excavation and interpretation of the seventeenth-century Franciscan mission at Awatovi, which was partly destroyed, as they argue, in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt (Montgomery et al. 1949).

A RECENT DIVIDE

Despite the trajectory established by early Mesoamericanist scholars, today collaborations between contemporary archaeologists and cultural anthropologists have been rare and only a tiny percentage of the cultural anthropologists working in the region interact on a scholarly level with archaeologists. It is true that some regional and subregional annual conferences include sessions dedicated to archaeology and cultural anthropology, but even here the level of scholarly interaction tends to be low. Archaeologists are certainly readers of ethnographic accounts. Cultural anthropology in this situation becomes relevant to the archaeologist to the extent to which it can document survivals or practices with ancient pedigrees that might be of use in interpreting the precolumbian period. The ethnographic work that is cited by archaeologists tends to be work that focuses on material culture, religion, and cosmology. For a real cultural anthropologists, the archaeological work on societies that existed thousands of years ago, while interesting, has little relevance for understanding the lives of people today.

This divide can be seen by comparing the two synthetic overviews of the region published in the 1940s and 1950s. Both were designed to identify common problems as well as summarize existing scholarship. The first, The Maya and Their Neighbors, was dedicated to Alfred Tozzer, who, as mentioned, carried out important archaeological work in the Yucatán, but also conducted an ethnographic study of the Lacandon (Hay et. al. 1940). This volume fits squarely within the Boasian four-field tradition. There are chapters authored by the archaeologists Sylvanus Morely, Robert Wauchope, A. Ledyard Smith, and Eduardo Noguera, among others, and chapters by Ralph Linton, Clyde Kluckhohn, J. Alden Mason, Oliver LaFarge, and William Duncan Strong, all cultural anthropologists. In the final chapter, "Conclusion: The Present Status of Americanist Problems," Alfred Kroeber organizes his review of the debates and problem areas for the study of indigenous societies of the Americas in four sections respectively titled "Biological Anthropology," "Ethnology," "Linguistics," and "Archaeology."

The second volume, Heritage of Conquest, published in 1952 (and reprinted in 1968), was the result of a Viking Fund Seminar. It contains no contributions by archaeologists. There is not even an entry for archaeology in the index. This volume was put together by a younger group of scholars led by social anthropologists based at the University of Chicago. The leaders of the seminar apparently believed it was necessary to restrict participation to ethnographers, since they were attempting to define areal themes and problems of an ethnological nature. However the volume does not completely escape the fact that a central premise of the seminar — that there is a place called Mesoamerica — was an artifact of the Boasian four-field tradition. The volume even begins by reprinting the classic 1943 article by Paul Kirchhoff (1968) "Mesoamerica: Its Geographic Limits, Ethnic Composition, and Cultural Characteristics." In this, as noted earlier, he defines Mesoamerica as a type of civilization, and based his analysis, to a large degree, on archaeological evidence. If one looks closely, most of the things he identifies as distinguishing Mesoamerica from other culture areas are things that originated in the prehispanic period (Kirchhoff 1968:24–25). In the preface, Sol Tax states the Kirchhoff paper "served as a basis for discussion" and praises the work for defining the culture area, noting that the term Mesoamerica "is now firmly a part of the scientific vocabulary" (Tax 1968:9). Moreover, in several places in the volume, participants in the seminar spent time discussing the sixteenth century and earlier periods.

It is often said that the fraught (or altogether absent) relationship between cultural anthropology and archaeology dates to the period when cultural anthropology became increasingly influenced by hermeneutics, Marxism, and postmodernism, and when archaeology developed in a more positivist direction. The argument holds that beginning in the 1950s these trends have made cultural anthropology and archaeology, at best, indifferent to one another, and at worst, epistemologically incompatible. Volumes such as Heritage of Conquest and the later Heritage of Conquest: Thirty Years Later (Kendall et al. 1983), published by the next generation of cultural anthropologists working in Mesoamerica, could be taken as evidence that supports this argument.

In this context it is worthwhile to revisit the well-known 1938 paper by Julian Steward and Frank Setzler, "Function and Configuration in Archaeology." Julian Steward of course went on to define the field of cultural ecology and helped to train the generation of ethnographers who formed the political economy school in contemporary anthropology. Frank Setzler was a curator at what would become the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and went on to do important work on the prehistory of the American Southeast. The paper is notable for its pioneering call for an archaeology geared toward "problems of culture process," (Steward and Setzler 1938:7; O'Brien et al. 2005:27–28). But their comments on the state of the relationship between cultural anthropology and archaeology could almost have been written today: "within the last few years archaeology and ethnology are, in many respects, growing rapidly apart" (Steward and Setzler 1938:3). The reason for the breach, they felt, was that the historical reconstructions of the archaeologist were incompatible with the goals of the functionalist and culture and personality schools that had become so influential in British and American sociocultural anthropology (Steward and Setzler 1938:4). The divorce was not the fault of cultural anthropology alone: archaeologists' seemingly narrow concern with "techniques," for example, for measuring and quantifying objects, at the expense of broader interpretive goals more in line with anthropology, also contributed to the growing divide (Steward and Setzler 1938:5–6).

Seventy-five years ago then, well-informed observers at the center of the disciplines felt that archaeology and cultural anthropology were "growing apart" for theoretical and methodological reasons. This was long before cultural anthropologists were reading Hans-Georg Gadamer, Antonio Gramsci, or Judith Butler, and long before archaeologists were reading Karl Popper, studying bone chemistry, or analyzing the use-wear on stone tools. This makes us suspicious of the idea that the reason there is currently a low level of collaborative research in Mesoamerica is due to a theoretical divergence. Even if one allows that the breach caused by functionalism and the culture and personality schools was reinforced by later theoretical developments, how does one explain the fact that archaeological work over the past 75 years has been informed the same ideas that have shaped cultural anthropology? The notion of the segmentary state has its origins in British structural functionalism, the very school which Steward and Setzler identified as causing ethnology and archaeology to grow apart. Today's post-processual archaeology has its roots in many of the ideas and trends that have been influential in contemporary cultural anthropology. The history of anthropology is defined by the rise and fall of any number of theoretical schools. Could it be that it is just too easy for intellectuals, who are enamored with ideas in the first place, to view the correlation between the waxing and waning of a conceptual scheme and the state of the relationship between subdisciplines as causally connected? There are certainly things within functionalism, or culture and personality or positivism or hermeneutics, that might make collaboration difficult. But, we have seen, there are elements in these theories that may facilitate it too.

COLLABORATION IN PRACTICE: THE PUEBLO SOUTHWEST

At this point we want to turn to the Pueblo Southwest, where the relationship between archaeology and cultural anthropology exhibits a more collaborative dimension. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, processual archaeology, originally formulated by Lewis R. Binford (1962)and drawing inspiration from the work of cultural anthropologists White and Steward, brought questions concerning the organization and evolution of past societies to the center stage after decades of culture history in archaeology and inspired a generation of "new" archaeologists in the Southwest. Studies by Longacre (1968) and Hill (1968), which attempted to reconstruct postmarital residence patterns of prehistoric pueblos through analysis of the spatial distribution of ceramic design elements, featured prominently in New Perspectives in Archeology (Binford and Binford 1968), the first major compendium of processual archaeology. The volume, which developed out of a symposium held at the AAA in 1965, included comments on the papers by six cultural anthropologists: Richard B. Lee, Irven DeVore, Morton H. Fried, Edward P. Dozier, David F. Aberle, and Marvin Harris. Harris (1968:359–361), in his comments, attempted to steer archaeologists away from reconstructing cognitive phenomena, such as descent rules, and suggested that archaeological reconstructions need not be constrained by units of analysis derived from then-contemporary cultural anthropology. Dozier (1968:352–353), on the other hand, encouraged scholars to look beyond kinship organization for evidence of nonkinship units, such as sodalities — a particularly salient comment for archaeologists working in the Pueblo Southwest, where religious sodalities are prevalent. Southwesternists Dozier and Aberle also contributed comments to Longacre's (1970) edited volume, Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607325411
• ISBN 13: 9781607325413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 310
• Editor: Englehardt Joshua, Rieger Ivy