Spider Woman Walks This Land: Traditional Cultural Properties and the Navajo Nation (Contemporary Native American Communities) [Paperback]

Kelli Carmean (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0759102449 | ISBN-13: 978-0759102446 | Publication Date: September 2002

Spider Woman Walks This Land is a lively and accessible introduction to issues of traditional cultural properties and cultural resource management among native peoples in the United States. Describing her work with the Navajo Nation, Carmean shows how specific geographical locations contain significant cultural and religious meaning to the Navajo people. With historical and contemporary examples, Carmean demonstrates that cultural value of the sacred geography can be in direct opposition to the need to modernize, including building roads, power lines, housing, and a variety of natural resource extraction activities that can earn much-needed money for the tribe. She evaluates the dilemma of "sustainability" common to many traditional societies as well as to the Navajo Nation, as they undergo the tremendous cultural changes that accompany industrialization and seek a balance between continuity and change. Spider Woman Walks this Land is a useful introduction for undergraduates and an interested general public.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Spider Woman Walks This Land by Kelli Carmean is one of the best books we've read on Native American sacred geography, its meaning and preservation. (Sacred Sites Newsletter, Vol. 13.1 (Fall 2002) )

Carmean has written an excellent introduction to Navajo culture and the real-world problems facing cultural preservation of archaeological sites and traditional cultural properties. Using the Navajo Nation as an example, the author clearly illustrates the conflict between federal legislation and and Navajo worldview. Carmean includes coverage of applicable federal laws in language easily understood by undergraduates. (K. F. Thompson Choice )

Laura Gilpin's excellent photographs of mid-twentieth century juxtaposed with the author's turn-of-the-century pictures add to the appeal of the volume...the book, much more than a travelogue and not far from an ethnography of present-day Navajo life, will interest those looking for data on cultural change as seen through the eyes of a visitor new to Navajoland. (David M. Brugge Jnl Of The Royal Anthropological Inst. Vol. 9 No. 4 Dec 2003 )

This unique and enjoyable volume provides the reader with a dynamic human dimension to a critical aspect of cultural resources management. All too often, anthropologists treat traditional cultural properties as a dry intellectual exercise, but not Kelli Carmean. She brings them alive. Her journal entries are a particularly effective way of showing how cultural resources management is applied anthropology that directly affects peoples' daily lives. The balanced perspective, as well as the tone and level of intellectual engagement, make this an excellent source book for undergraduate and graduate classes. (Roger Anyon )

About the Author

Kelli Carmean is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Eastern Kentucky University. Her research interests are in traditional cultural properties, North American, Latin American, and Mesoamerican archaeology, and ethnographic and archaeological household studies. She has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Yucatan, Peru, and Israel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Altamira Press (September 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0759102449
• ISBN-13: 978-0759102446
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010

Archeology professor unearths a novel way to reach the public
Tom Eblen - Herald-Leader columnist

Consider the archaeologist's challenge: Figure out how people lived and their societies worked centuries ago, based on little more than what remains of their bones, their buildings and a few timeworn artifacts.

And then there is the unknowable: What were their joys, sorrows, hopes and dreams?

"There are so many bigger questions out there," said Kelli Carmean, an archaeologist, anthropology professor and chair of Eastern Kentucky University's Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work.

Kelli Carmean, an anthropology professor at Eastern Kentucky University, wrote Creekside: An Archaeological Novel. Carmean, 50, wrote a conventional archaeology book, Spider Woman Walks This Land: Traditional Cultural Properties and the Navajo Nation, in 2002 that drew on her research into Native American cultural anthropology.

But she wanted to do more, and she needed another vehicle to do it. So she recently published Creekside: An Archaeolog ical Novel (University of Alabama Press, $27.50)

"The tools of archaeology are really good, but they can't re-create individual lives," Carmean said. "So I decided to use fiction to try to imagine some of these things and tell people more about archaeology and why this is important."

Creekside weaves together two fictional stories, separated by two centuries.

The first story is about Virgil and Estelle Mullins, a young 18th-century couple who leave family in Virginia to cross the mountains and settle in the wilderness of Central Kentucky. Over three generations, the family experiences joys, hardships and tragedies common to people in those times. Before the Civil War, descendants abandon the farmstead for urban life.

The second story is about Meg Harrington, a 21st-century archaeologist who is working with students to excavate that pioneer farmstead. They must work quickly because bulldozers will soon turn it into a subdivision called Creekside.

Carmean faced the usual challenges of writing historical fiction: creating characters with whom readers can identify and rich, interesting plots grounded in historic accuracy. But with a twist.

As chapters go back and forth in time, the reader learns details of the pioneer family's life that the archaeologist can only speculate about: the violence and accidents that left disfigured bodies in graves; deeply personal stories behind bits of ceramic and jewelry found buried in the soil.

Carmean wanted to explain something about archaeological excavation techniques and artifact analysis. "It's an effort to bring the public into archaeological thinking and processes," she said, adding that it bears little resemblance to an Indiana Jones movie.

Although Carmean's research has focused on Native American cultures, she decided that her first novel should tell the story of white settlers because readers could more easily identify with them. She is working on a second novel about Native Americans who populated Kentucky long before it was "discovered." That novel's working title is The Village at Muddy Creek.

Creekside explores the tension between preservation and development. Carmean is passionate about preventing destruction of archaeological sites so they can be studied into the future. The more we know about the past, she said, the better we can understand the present and gain insight for the future.

Preservation is problematic because it often comes down to money. Archaeologists usually have few resources to work with, and ancient and historic sites are usually destroyed to make way for well-financed development.

The academic culture of archaeology, which is focused on data collection rather than storytelling, often hurts archaeologists' ability to communicate their values. "We're not providing the general public with what they hunger for," which is the humanity of our ancestors, Carmean said. "We have the tools, but we just haven't done it."

Carmean hopes Creekside will help change that. "You have to write about it in such a way that people will pay attention to it," she said. "You have to make them want to take a more active role ... and educate themselves about the scale of the destruction around us, the destruction that accompanies modern life.

"We lose something with each site destruction," she said. "The past and vestiges of the past are important because they enrich our communities. They help us understand more about the human condition."