Archaeology's Story of American Indian Origins

The utility of the culture area concept is greatest for pre-Contact American Indian cultures.

Still has a tendency to lock cultures in time

Unfortunate use of the term prehistoric

Prehistoric implies that people were without a history until it was written by the white man.

Some archaeologists seem to believe this

Pre-Contact might actually be a better word

Two ways to get at the distant past

Archaeology

Oral tradition

Both have strengths and weaknesses

American Indians distrust the stories archaeologists tell.

Archaeologists question the historicity of oral tradition.

Knowing the past

Archaeological stories are not Indian stories of their own pasts.

For Indians archaeological stories are told by the conquerors and colonists

This does not invalidate the stories archaeologists tell.

Truth vs. validity

The stories may overlap, but often do not even deal with the same things.

Knowing the past

Archaeology is a western discipline using western approaches to knowing, western ideas of time and western notions of logic.

To know the past, you must excavate, analyze & interpret

Stories are a construction of pasts based on material evidences discovered and interpreted by archaeologists.

Stories are not always about people but contain discussions of objects and a people’s use of  tools.

But archaeologists need to remember that objects are not people!

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

The primacy of material culture and context

The things people leave behind

Artifacts, ecofacts, ideofacts

The crucial importance of context

Artifacts demand explanations

—if it’s there, it requires and explanation

Artifacts don’t lie

—but they don’t speak for themselves

The linear nature of time

Literacy vs. orality

Written word places emphasis on linearity

Past and future are emphasized because present is fleeting and continually “gone”

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

Archaeology and Linguistic partitions of

the past

For archaeologists, the past is the key to the future.

Time has many possible paths into the future, influenced by our pasts.

For Native Americans, the cyclical nature of time

Time has no start or end

All is essentially the present

Actors and places may change but natural laws remains the same

The ‘present’ pastFor Indians, the past is the present, is the future, is the past

Time

For Native Americans, the cyclical nature of time is apparent everywhere.

Time is repeated, with different actors and locales, but follows a sequence of "god-given," natural law. Stories about it provide exemplars for present behavior.

Note Well:

This does not mean that Indians don’t understand chronological time!

Winter counts and calendar sticks

The nature of oral tradition

Rendering of time is not essential.

Historicity is not central.

What is learned of natural law is crucial.

“[Archaeology,] by its very nature must challenge, not respect, or acknowledge as valid, such folk renditions of the past because traditional knowledge has produced flat earths, geocentrism, women arising out of men's ribs, talking ravens and the historically late first people of the Black Hills upwelling from holes in the ground.“

Ronald Mason

As some archaeologists see oral tradition:

‘… [O]ral accounts have been inevitably changed in context of transmission because the traditions include myths that cannot be considered as if factual histories, because the value of such accounts is limited by concerns of authenticity, reliability, and accuracy, and because the record as a whole does not show where historical fact ends and mythic tale begins…’

As the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sees oral tradition in the Kennewick/Ancient One case:

Whose story is the truth?

Only that of the Indians because truth is always based on faith, not evidence.

Archaeological stories are based on evidence and only seek validity.

Archaeologists should never say they have the truth about the past.

For Indians to accept archaeological stories as true, they would have to give up their own oral traditions about their past.

To do so would be to pound another nail in the coffin of their cultural identity.

‘My ancestors, relatives, grandmother so on down the line, they tell you about the history of our people and it's passed on and basically, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that archaeology don't mean nothing. We just accept it, not accept archaeology, but accept the way our past has been established and just keep on trying to live the same old style, however old it is.’ Cecil Antone (Gila River tribes)

The result: ‘archaeology don't mean nothing.’