Customer Reviews

Skull Wars : Kennewick Man, Archeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The historical perspective that is the core of David's book makes the positions of the adversaries in the Kennewick Man dispute more understandable. I expected a telling of the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man, and perhaps some suggestions about what the remains mean to theories concerning the peopling of the New World. What I got was a lucid history of the stormy relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists that forms a good part of the background for the Kennewick Man controversy. David goes some distance (maybe too far)to be charitable to all the players in this scientific soap opera. He makes it clear, however, that Native American remains are part of Native American history and identity, not specimens to be mined for cranial measurements and loopy inferences about intellectual capability. I am left with a nagging question that David doesn't address, but is at the center of this controversy: how do we KNOW the affiliation of human remains? Surely NAGPRA can't ascertain affiliation, although it can apparently assign it. In the absence of some rigorous examination of remains by qualified individuals we are left with the prospect of conflicting claims that characterizes "Kennnewick Man: The Soap". If affiliation is determined by legislative fiat or dueling attorneys, we all lose. Classifying remains as Native American because they are found in North America does some violence to common sense - are Toyotas indigenous because we find them here? Vine DeLoria's views notwithstanding, the peopling of the New World remains a story to be told. It is possible that the Americas were peopled more than once by groups from parts of the world that conventional wisdom has long dismissed. David closes his book with the account of a collaborative project in Alaska that offers a real alternative to the disputes surrounding Kennewick Man. Hopefully such cooperation will be a model for archaeological research, and the picture of Native American prehistory that it renders will be more complete because of its inclusiveness. All in all, a superb read that encourages us to examine our motives and to recall the obscenities that have occurred in the past, and almost certainly will occur again, for "Science".

Skull Wars is a superb read - engagingly written and forcefully presented - it has relevance well beyond the anthropological and Native American communities. Thomas'interweaving of history, American socio-political history and the emergence of social sciences as practiced in the US is fascinating. He's packed an amazing amount of research into this volume. I learned much and disagree with little. Coming to terms with the issue of race in this country is still in many ways largely intractable, but made much more complex by issues of class. When compounded with the Native American experience the complexities are even more magnified.

The issues confronted in Skull Wars are particularly germane for those Native American groups that have retained some semblance of generational continuity. Thomas accurately touches on the "top down" weaknesses of the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Thomas clearly articulates that there is not a one-size fits all approach to accommodating and reconciling the concerns of legitimately affected Native Americans and the archaeological community. The positive examples at the end of the book serve as models for much of the country.

I hope Skull Wars reaches the wide audience it deserves. I enthusiastically recommend it.

Dr. Thomas' discussion on pages 57-58 of the Army Medical Museum's role in collecting human remains is misleading. The Museum (now the National Museum of Health & Medicine) was established in 1862, during the American Civil War, to begin the study of military medicine and surgery in wartime. It was not established at the urging of Professor Agassiz. US Army Surgeon General Hammond's orders pertained specifically to collecting the remains of Union and Confederate soldiers, who were overwhelmingly white, to study surgery before the era of x-rays or aseptic surgery. Thousands of specimens were sent into the Museum, including General Daniel Sickles' leg, which he personally had shipped after it was struck by a cannon ball and amputated. The specimens were studied and used to compile the six-volume study, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. After the war, the Museum did expand its collecting focus and collected Indian anthropological artifacts and remains. The artifacts were deposited with the Smithsonian Institution, based on an agreement the Smithsonian proposed in 1869. Human remains were transferred to the Medical Museum, where they were kept and studied side by side with those of American soldiers. The Museum continued collecting Native American remains until the late nineteenth century when the role was returned to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains today.

The star rating was insisted on by Amazon's computer - this note only pertains to Dr. Thomas' pages on the Army Medical Museum.

Michael Rhode, Archivist
National Museum of Health & Medicine

This book is truly a landmark achievement in its breadth of coverage and ananlysis. I am quite surprised to read some of the negative reviews since none of the assertions that are made about "bias" hold for any part of the book. It is no wonder that the Native scholar Vine Deloria Jr., who has been the most ardent critic of anthropolgists, has written a laudatory foreword to the book. I would urge people to read the book in its entirety before passing judgment.

Thomas has put the Kennewick controversy in historical perspective and he has done so with utmost respect for native sentiments. As Deloria has said in the foreword, this is an excellent companion to S. J. Gould's classic "The Mismeasure of Man."

Perhaps the only concern I have with the volume is that it has too many chapters and is often too discursive. Nevertheless a much-needed and refreshing voice in anthropology.

David Hurst Thomas has produced an amazing book in Skull Wars. It is at once a serious scholarly history of the relationship between archaeologists and Native Americans and at the same time a good read, accessible to an informed public. Thomas tells it like it is when it comes to this history. As he points out it is a history that archaeologist cannot be proud of. He does an excellent job of demonstrating how the colonial context of archaeology shaped the actions of scholars to bad ends, often despite their good intentions.

Those individuals who call for a more balanced account of this history only wish to deny or cover up the ugly truth. Thomas is if anything too kind to many of the key figures of early archaeology and in the recent Kennewick controversy. As Thomas argues archaeologists need to learn from this history and not simply hide behind naive good intentions. Thomas demonstrates how informed archaeologists can work with Native American people to build common ground and interests. He shows us how we can go beyond the controversy to link good intentions with good actions.

I cannot verify or deny Thomas' comments on the Asatru religion but the reviews that react so negatively to them are focusing in on only a couple of paragraphs in the book. These comments have little to do with the overall point of the book or its content. Virtually no professional archaeologists accept the idea that there is evidence for Norse or other European settlement or exploration in North American much before AD 900 or that these explorations extended beyond the east coast of Canada. Even the theory advanced by a few archaeologists that paleolithic Solutrian peoples from the Iberian Peninsula may have crossed the arctic ice to become the North American Clovis culture has been recently dismissed in American Antiquity.

As a professional archaeologist and a scholar who has written extensively on relationships between archaeologists and Native Americans I welcome this readable account. It is a book that should be read by anyone interested in North American archaeology and I hope that it will become required reading of all archaeology students.

David Hurst Thomas' book Skull Wars provides an important service in detailing the historical reasons for mistrust of archaeologists and anthropologists by Native Americans. Whether or not you agree with his views about the repatriation of skeletal remains and artifacts, Hurst Thomas' book is worth reading for understanding the divide separating Native Americans and those who study them.--Mark Rose, Managing Editor, Archaeology

Indiana Jones famously said that archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. Caucasoid skeletal remains, and ancient artifacts (predating the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age) that have more in common with findings at sites of ancient people found in Europe than anything Asian or typically "Native American", may force archaeologists to totally reconstruct the settlement prehistory of the western hemisphere. First, a few terms. "Caucasiod" does not mean "white", since we can have no notion of the skin pigmentation of someone who lived 12,000 years ago. And when ancient artifacts appear that are similar to ancient artifacts in Europe, we do not mean "Europe" as we know the term, but only the physical geographical region where present-day Europe is. And the reason I put "Native American" in quotes is because, by anyone's model, they are not indigenous to the western hemisphere but only, by current models, the earliest immigrants to the Americas.

But they may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas. Therein lies the political dilemma and potentially explosive controversy discussed in _Skull Wars_. Though the book is engaging and interesting, it focuses too much on trying to be even-handed on both sides. Of course everyone today has much sympathy for the plight of "Native Americans". Occasionally there can be some justice to it (Cortez surely was no worse to the Aztecs than the Aztecs to the Toltecs) but overall they have received pretty shoddy treatment. Darwinism is much to blame for this, as it fit in very nicely with nineteenth century preconceptions of progress and racism; charts were made putting human beings on a chart of evolution (naturally, with Europeans on top).

But sympathy with that nonsense, however deep, must not be able to alter the scientist's search for fact. If it is a fact that people who lived where Europe now is migrated to the Americas before or simultaneously with Asian people who became the "Native Americans", it should be known; if it is not a fact, that shoulc be known. The only way to do it is to study the bones. Yet "Native American" groups claim that all ancient human remains found in the Americas are their ancestors, and given a respectful burial like "Native Americans" and hidden from the prying eyes of scientists. This may be somewhat true. DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe. So some "Native American" tribes may have been founded by early European migrants, or perhaps the Asian and European migrants intermarried in many cases.

True, if it is a fact Europeans arrived here first, or simultaneously, with Asians, it may be exploited. Since there were no obvious European descendants here by 1492, some may make a case that the "Native Americans" slaughtered the actual first inhabitants. This is an ugly side issue, not based on any discernable fact, and should not interfere with the establishment of American anthropological chronology. Certainly both sides in the fight over Kennewick Man and his ilk have a claim to right -- and to wrong. But the only way to keep the incident from looking like a political cover-up is to study Kennewick Man and his peers, to discover fact, no matter what particular group does not like it. Indiana Jones would want to study the bones for facts, but would not presume to interpret what they said about Truth.

"Skull Wars", which tells this story pretty well, was nevertheless premature since the court case about who should have custody of Kennewick Man has not been decided, so there's no proper resolution. We await the revised edition.

History id the record of those event and people that happened in our past and the history are usually slanted to the side that the author wants you to believe. Most of these books I find hard to read so when Skull Wars arrived I was ready for another slanted look into American history, I was wrong, very wrong.

In one this years best readings, I found myself engrossed by how well the author was able to make his point and deliver hard facts to back up every statement. His look into the controversy that started in July 1996 in Kennewick, Washington is one of the most compelling books I have ever read.

Follow along and look into how the discovery of a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in the Columbia River could create a stir in major anthropological and archaeological circles that may rage well into the 21st century.

David Hurst Thomas has written a book that gives you another look into not only American History, but also far more importantly Native American History and for that he should be congratulated. Check out Basic Books website for more titles, you won't be disappointed.

The question of whether the 9,400 year-old skeleton of Kennewick Man belongs to Native Americans indigenous to the Northwest, or to the possibly greater interests of science has become one of the most controversial and perplexing issues of our day. In this dispute Thomas has taken the high ground in presenting his fellow archeologists' point of view, but also in admirably presenting a long history of evils archeology has done unto Native Americans. In support of the NA position Thomas chronicles how archeologists, operating under a "scientific racism", lied to the Indians, cheated them, and dug up tons of bones, often of very recent ancestors, and shipped them to museums in the East and in Europe. In this light Native American rage at the idea of disturbing even 9,400 year-old bones of a possible ancestor is understandable. Further, the Umatilla tribe's claim that "our oral history goes back 10,000 years" gives credence to their claim to the Kennewick bones and is substantiated by Thomas's telling of local Indian legends regarding Crater Lake (once Mount Mazama). These legends clearly relate events that occurred 7,600 years ago. Thomas presents a strong case for the NA position, and concludes that the anwer to this and other disputes between archeologists and Native Americans rests on "a relationship based on mutual respect and consensus." The courts have now ruled in favor of the NA desire to forever inter Kennewick Man. However, Thomas has presented ample evidence that the pursuits of science should persevere. Amerindians, migrating from Beringia 11,000 years ago, did occupy much of North America for the first time, but there is growing evidence that they did not occupy all of the Americas alone or even for the first time. Tom Dillehay's exhaustive work at Monte Verde, THE SETTLEMENT OF THE AMERICAS, documents a people who thrived in southern S. America before Beringia migration was possible. Walter Neves' discovery of the earliest known American, E. Brazil's 11,500 year old "Luzia", became all the more profound when Neves' tests, and independent morphologists' confirmations, found that Luzia's teeth and skull exhibited the characteristics of South Pacific Islanders. Discoverer James Chatters described Kennewick Man as having the morphology of a European, but he could as easily have been a Polynesian. We need to know. NA origin myths are very old but so are Central and South American myths which describe their founding as from across the sea. And the great spheres of Costa Rica, described in ATLANTIS IN AMERICA:Navigators of the Ancient World, show that an ancient seafaring culture existed in Central America many thousands of years ago.

Any student or professional in the field of anthropology needs to add this book to their collection. It reads like a novel and is packed with enough information to inspire further reasearch on many different subjects. An excellent resource for much more than learning about the Kenniwick man, it draws insight into the struggle between science and the native american conflict. This book will be an excellent reference for years to come.