Posted on 02/15/2007 9:36:08 AM PST by blam
Anthropologists Back Native American Claims
The case of Kennewick Man – or the Ancient One – as Native Americans refer to him, dragged through the courts for years before Judge John Jelderks found that he could not be defined Native American under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
A recent case regarding repatriation of even older remains and artifacts from Spirit Cave, Nev., suggests that the Kennewick Man case should be used as a legal precedent and that the remains of Spirit Cave Man are not Native American.
Four University of New Mexico anthropologists have written an article where they suggest that a precedent in Paleoindian human remains is “inappropriate and unnecessary.” They claim that each case is unique and that repatriation determination should be handled case-by-case.
Heather Edgar, Maxwell Museum curator and assistant research professor in anthropology, is lead author on the article titled, “Contextual issues in Paleoindian repatriation: Spirit Cave Man as a case study,” featured in the Feb. 2007 issue Journal of Social Archaeology. Other authors from the Department of Anthropology are Edward Jolie, Joseph Powell and Joe Watkins.
Spirit Cave Man was found approximately 70 years ago on Bureau of Land Management land that is part of an area government documents refer to as “traditional tribal lands,” nevertheless the BLM says the remains are “unaffiliatable.” The Fallon-Paiute-Shoshone filed a lawsuit against the BLM because they consider him their ancestor. Carbon dating determined him to be older than Kennewick Man. DNA testing on both skeletons was inconclusive.
Edgar said that DNA testing is one determiner for affiliation. “Another way is by what artifacts are found with the remains,” Edgar said. Skeletal remains and one point in the hip is all that was found of Kennewick Man.
“Many artifacts or ‘perishables’ were found with Spirit Cave Man because of the arid condition in and around the cave, she said. “There were blankets, a burial shroud, bags, moccasins and a breechcloth,” Edgar said. The items are now in the Nevada State Museum.
Edgar is quick to point out that repatriation is moving away from being a polarizing issue. “This presents an unfair view of anthropology. All four of us who worked on this article think the amicus brief that ruled on Spirit Cave Man based on the Kennewick Man precedent is wrong,” she said. She noted that among them two are biological anthropologists, two are archaeologists, two are natives, two non-natives.
Jolie, who is a member of the Ogalala Lakota, said, “We must balance between respect to the profession and to the past.”
Edgar said that many tribes are beginning to recognize the value in DNA and other scientific testing in helping them piece together their own history.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
This all sounds to me like a real waste of time on everyone's part including my own.
I have enough redman cells in my body to say this: extract some DNA, make some bone casts, do a GPS survey of the site, and rebury with a 500 foot granite pyramid on top and put a $5 admission sign over the entrance.
they lost, we won
end of story
The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas.
Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.
Indeed, Number One, Make it so!
When they say "Native American" don't they mean Indian? My son is seven and he was born in the United States, but on all those forms we have to fill out should I have been putting Native American all this time?
looks like Patrick Stewart
Anthropology trumps science.
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In Alaska the legal term is Native American. The legal world might have nothing to do with common language or everyday reality as we see it; although they use many words that are pronounced and spelled the same as ordinary words, the meanings are often very different.
Four University of New Mexico anthropologists have written an article where they suggest that a precedent in Paleoindian human remains is “inappropriate and unnecessary.” They claim that each case is unique and that repatriation determination should be handled case-by-case.
I have not found anthropologists to be among the best and brightest practitioners of "science", and I use that term reluctantly.
Their entire schtick consists on piling guesses on speculation ad infinitum, and are quite dogmatic about their final conclusions, as well as their high regard for their own work.
I no more see a reason for some anthropologists to use their soft science as the springboard to political control of all other sciences. Certainly no more so than allowing contemporary romanticized native americans to do so, on the basis of superstition alone.
The findings of the original case, the fundamental question, was that modern indians have no more connection to and ownership of the remains from around the last ice age, than European newcomers do!
"The findings of the original case, the fundamental question, was that modern Indians have no more connection to and ownership of the remains from around the last ice age, than European newcomers do!"
Even in the unconfirmed and largely unconfirmable science of anthropology, it is culture as much as DNA that defines "a people" (tribe/"ethnic group). And even the anthropologists cannot define any cultural relationship from 13,000 year old north American remains to ANY culture they claim to identify, past or present, by any scientific process. Until some future knowledge changes that fact, the "remains" should belong to science and not to any particular "tribe".
You left out the
This Way to the Slots --->
sign.
I went all through that list and did not see a haplogroup X.
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