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Title: Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity by David Hurst Thomas, Sarah Colley ISBN: 0-465-09225-X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Skull Wars
Comment: 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".
Rating: 5
Summary: Skull Wars tells it like it is
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Factual, biting and rivetting style
Comment: As an author myself, one of the kindest remarks about my work was paid by a detractor. She had written that "Davis' words may be factual, but they are biting, irreverent and at a total disregard for social ideals.." "Skull Wars" puts me in mind of this same quote, only I am hardly a detractor. Thomas's style IS biting. His "no holds bared, this is the plain truth" writing may well ruffle some eurocentric feathers. And it may well upset more than a few Arianists. So what? His work is direct, lucid, and to the point. His willingness, and in some areas blatant will for the disregard for political correctness must be applauded. This is a great bit of writing. Period. In an age of "warm and fuzzy, let's all get along at any cost", too many Americans have forgotten (or are ignorant of) the bloody history of our forefathers. I have often remarked that the Native people's biggest mistake was not burning those three ships right into the sea.
This is an excellnt example of an interesting page turner brimming with facts in favor of social-political agendas. A must for all historians.
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Title: Ancient Encounters : Kennewick Man and the First Americans by James C. Chatters ISBN: 068485936X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 07 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory by Thomas D. Dillehay ISBN: 0465076696 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 19 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race, and the Story of Kennewick Man by Roger Downey ISBN: 0387988777 Publisher: Copernicus Books Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes by Frans De Waal ISBN: 0801863368 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: The First Americans : In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery by James Adovasio, Jake Page ISBN: 037575704X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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