What's in a Name? Or, Why You Should be Cautious in Comparing Languages...

While driving out the the field the other day, one of the archaeologists with whom I am working asked what the linguistic connection was between Cachuma - a place name from Santa Barbara County - and Kuuchamaa - a similar-sounding place name from San Diego County.

I didn't know the origin of Kuuchamaa, but it is the native name for Tecate Peak, an important sacred mountain that is the spiritual center for the Kumeyaay peoples of southern California and northern Mexico.  Having read up on it, I still haven't a clue as to what the word means, but it is the name of both the place, and of a culture hero - a wise and powerful shaman - said to have once lived in that place*.  The translation of the word appears to be hard to come by, so I am at a bit of a loss.

Cachuma, however, is a bit easier.  Cachuma is the English bastardization of the Spanish bastardization of the Inezeno Chumash word Aqitsumu, meaning "constant signal", which was the name of a village located in the Santa Ynez Valley, near the current location of Lake Cachuma.

So, while Cachuma and Kuuchamaa seem similar at first glance, one appears to be the actual Kumeyaay word, while the other is a rather tortured telephone game version of an Inezeno word.  Now, there could still be some linguistic connection between them, but that seems somewhat unlikely, as Aqitsumu fits in perfectly well with the Chumash language family**, and Kuuchamaa, as far as I have been able to tell (though I am a bit shaky on this) seems to fit in well with the Kumeyaay language, a dialect of Diegeno, part of the Yuman language family.  So, there is no reason to assume a connection, despite superficial similarities.

The words, though similar, refer to different types of things (a sacred mountain/person's name and a village), and there is no reason to assume that they would have similar meanings.  What's more, the version of Aqitsumu that bears the most resemblance to the Kumeyaay word, Cachuma, is also the version that is most divorced from native pronunciation.  Further, the names come from two unconnected languages.

There is, in short, no reason to think that these words are in any way connected, and some reason to think that they are not.

What is interesting about this is that there is no reason to assume a linguistic connection between two groups of people who were separated by only a few hundred miles of space for centuries.   Pseudoscientific language comparisons are often employed by people who wish to show a connection between two completely unrelated groups of people.  It is a favorite approach of those who see the ancient Isrealites landing int he Americas, the Celts taking over parts of the midwest, Medieval Japanese explorers settling Mexico, or Egyptians colonizing South America (yes, there are people who believe every one of these things).

The method is as follows:

Step 1: Find a few words (or sometimes even one) from two languages that have even a superficial similarity

Step 2: Claim that the link between these two populations is proven

Step 3: Ignore everyone who actually knows what they are talking about when they point out that you are a fool.

But, as illustrated, even in a case where two words are both used as placenames, sound extremely similar, and are from groups separated by only a few hundred miles, there is still reason to doubt a connection.  Keep this in mind whenever your wacky neighbor claims that some vague language similarities prove that the native people of New Jersey were actually descended from a clan of Bavarian sausage-makers.




*Kuuchamaa appears to be a manifestation of a messianic religious concept that appeared throughout southern California either shortly before or around the time that the Spanish arrived.  Whether the Kuuchamaa version of the story is the origin for the others, represents a merger of the messianic story with another older religious tradition, or else a spontaneous manifestation of a similar story, I do not know...nor does anyone else as far as I have been able to tell.  It's neat that even after well over a century of research, we still have some mysteries like this to explore in California.

**Chumashan languages were, until recently, thought to be part of the Hokan language family, but that view has now been largely discredited.  As a result, Chumash is an oddity in that it has no known related languages (similar in this respect to the Basque language of Spain) and exists as a linguistic island alone on the California coast.  While this is speculative, some researchers have posited that Chumash may be the last version of the original Native Californian language family, as the other languages in California appear to have come in from elsewhere.  While intriguing, this idea remains speculation until such time as physical or paleolinguistic evidence can be found to back it up.

Calico Hills, California

So, the new father routine has been keeping me busy and occupying much of the time that I used to use to keep this blog.  However, for now I am away from home and working on projects in the Mojave Desert, based out of Barstow rather than Lancaster, this time.

Contrary to popular opinion, Barstow isn't too bad a place - it's not high on my list of vacation spots, but it is a decent enough place out of which to be based.  It beats the hell out of Taft, at any rate.

We finish our work day a few hours before dark, and so I have been using my late afternoons/early evenings out exploring the area.  Yesterday, I headed out to the Calico Hills, an area of interest to me for a few reasons.

There are claims that the Calico Hills was host to a Ghost Dance movement.  The Ghost Dances were religious movements that had begun amongst the Paiute in Nevada and moved out among Native American groups during the 19th century (the best known being the one that sparked the massacre at Wounded Knee).  They varied considerably from place to place, and were often known by names other than Ghost Dance.  The ritual consisted of an extensive dance, coupled with lifestyle changes towards clean living, which would summon the ancestors (or, in some versions, the spirits worshiped by the ancestors) who would wipe the Europeans and their descendants from the Americas.

Needless to say, as often happens with apocalyptic religious  movements, the members of the Ghost Dance cults were tragically wrong.

I have been unable to confirm whether or not there was a Ghost Dance cult involved in the Calico Hills.  It may very well have, there were groups in the general vicinity who had been influenced by the Ghost Dance, but much of what is readily available about the Calico Hills cult comes from half-wit new age "spiritual investigators" and therefore isn't worth the air that the Wi-Fi on which I read about it penetrates.

The area was heavily mined for silver during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The town (now ghost town and tourist attraction) of Calico Hills - about which more will be written in a following post - is partially in ruins and has been partially rebuilt.  However, the tunnels for the silver mines are still present, if falling apart, and make for some interesting viewing.

Another interesting aspect of the Calico Hills is the alleged "early man site" - a site that allegedly has artifacts that date to up to 200,000 years old depending on what dates you accept.  Now, I have not handled these alleged artifacts directly, but having seen photos, I am unconvinced.  They do look like they might be artifacts...or they might be geofacts (naturally occurring rocks broken in ways that make them look like artifacts).Given the dearth of any other evidence of humans or pre-human hominids in the Americas prior to 20,000 years ago (the most reliably dated old deposits date to around 12,000 years ago, though that may be beginning to change), and the ambiguous nature of the Calico Hills items, it seems safe to say that they are likely just geofacts.

Many of the supporters of the early man hypothesis like to point out that the legendary Louis Leakey believed these to be genuine artifacts and not geofacts.  However, becoming familiar with the actual work of Louis Leakey (as distinct from the work of his wife Mary or his son, Richard, both of whom have well-earned good reputations among archaeologists and paleoanthropologists) tends to lead one with becoming impressed with his business/fund-raising acumen, and somewhat less impressed with his skills in archaeology.  In fact, Mary Leakey cited his involvement with Calico Hills as being one of the primary causes of her losing respect for him as a researcher, and a contributing factor to the couple separating.

Regardless, the Calico hills have a weird, almost alien, beauty.  And they made for an excellent place to relax and watch the sunset over the playa below and behind the mountains across the valley.

Morro Rock

Morro Rock, at the mouth of Morro Bay, is a large chunk of volcanic rock, over 20 million years old, a result of long-extinct volcanoes along the California coast.  It is one of the Nine Sisters - a chain of similar large volcanic peaks located in San Luis Obispo County - and may represent locations where the continental plate moved over a volcanic hotspot over the eons. 

Of interest to me, Morro Rock is often held to be a sacred place to both Chumsh and Salinan peoples, and given its looming presence at the mouth of Morro Bay, it would be surprising if it weren't.  Unfortunately, like many elements of Native Californian Religion, the importance of Morro Rock is largely preserved through an oral history that has been damaged due to the impacts of Spanish colonization and the post-Gold Rush Americanization of the region. 

When I was in graduate school, I would pass by Morro Bay and see Morro Rock whenever I drove north to visit family in Modesto.  I always thought that I should stop off some day and have a look, but never did. 

Last Saturday, I had the day to myself, and decided to take a drive out to the area, stopping to spend a good part of the day in the town of Morro Bay itself.  The rock, which was once essentially an island off-shore, is now reachable via an artificial sandbar and walkway.  I drove out and parked next to it, and spent some time walking around the 1/3 or so of the rock that has walkways.  Climbing on the rock is prohibited, as it is a bird sanctuary, and given that large slabs of rock often fall off of it's nearly vertical surfaces, climbing on it is not particularly safe, anyway.

Given the history of the area, it was appropriate that, as I drove by the narrow estuary that is Morro Bay itself, I saw a strange canoe in the water.  My first thought was "hey, that looks like a Tomol" the unique Chumash plank canoe.  As I drove, I came to the boat launch, and saw a sign indicating that there was a meeting of Chumash elders that day, meaning that I had, in fact, seen a Tomol.

This was particularly exciting for me as the Tomol has long been prominent in my mind because there are strong arguments that the advent of the Tomol canoe allowed frequent trips across the Santa Barbara Channel, allowing some rather important trade routes to be more reliably opened, sparking the growth of Chumash culture after AD 1000.  I had seen the canoes hanging in museums and in illustrations, but never in use - but here were two of them being paddled around the bay by a group of Chumash elders.  And here I was, perfect timing, with a camera in my hand.

Anyway, I am very happy that I finally decided to visit Morro Bay.  What's more, I discovered that it is only a 2-hour drive from home (for some reason, I had always thought it was a longer drive), which means that getting out to the beach for a day trip is going to become more feasible for me.

Romanticizing the Egalitarians

As a graduate student, I worked as a teaching assistant as well as a lab instructor, and taught many a student the rudimentaries of anthropology and archaeology. A necessary part of the instruction is explaining the different types of social organization one is likely to encounter in the ethnographic and archaeological records. 

And when you are dealing with alot of idealistic young college students, they tend to become quite enamored with "egalitarian" cultures...pretty much always without having a real understanding of what the term means.

And egalitarian culture is one where everybody is at about the same social level most of the time - someone may become a leader for a short time when their particular expertise or confidence is useful in a situation, only to give way to another leader under different circumstances.  People follow not because someone is a chief or king or any other fixed hierarchical leader, but because that person is able to persuade others to follow them.

There are, of course, many different variations on egalitarian societies.  In some, there may be some degree of formalized leadership, but it tends to be fluid and open to anyone who meets certain requirements (all men past the age of puberty, for example), in others there really are no recognition of leaders, just people who can persuade you to do things.

Naturally, my students would romanticize people who live(d) in these societies.  There was a pervasive notion amongst the undergrads that people who lived in egalitarian societies were inherently more peaceful and led idyllic lives.  One student even informed me that she felt moved to write a paper for another class that compared the (as she saw them) egalitarian and peaceful !Kung San of Africa with our current status-obsessed violent culture, and found us to be quite lacking.

I pointed out to this student that, according to the ethnography on which she was basing her views of the !Kung San, domestic violence was fairly common, and abject poverty the norm.  In other words, there ain't no such thing as Utopia.

What my students never seemed to pick up on is that social organization tends to evolve in place (with the exception of those relatively unusual instances where it is successfully imposed from the outside...even in which cases it tends to e warped to fit local conditions and traditions).  Egalitarian societies are not the product of gentle, enlightened souls who see a better way of organizing, they are the product of a system of resource procurement and use coupled with a low population density that allows such societies to exist without descending into chaos.  Importantly, they only seem to work when you have a society in which there are a small enough number of people that everyone can both keep tabs on each other (to ensure that you are engaged in no wrong doing, and to make sure that you are not aggrandizing yourself) and equally share in the available resources.  As soon as you have a large enough number of people packed into a small enough area, and accompanying resource stress, there is a need for organization in order to distribute what is needed to where it is needed.  In other words, hierarchies, if they haven't formed already, will begin to form.

Now, with our ancestors, it's not clear which came first: did the population density/resource stress require hierarchies to develop, or did hierarchies develop and allow larger population densities to grow?  It's an interesting question, but one that is rather beside the point as far as making judgements go.  Once you have the number of people in the volume of space that occur in modern industrial and post-industrial nations, hierarchies are necessary. 

That's not to say that the hierarchies always work well (they can be inefficient and ineffective) or that they are always nice to live in (ask a 19th century factory work about how much they enjoy life), but they are necessary to allow life to continue past a certain point in human cultural development.  And we're not going to go back without killing off a huge portion of the global population.

If my students had recognized this, then they may have been able to start working towards what they really seemed to want: a society in which there is some degree of social equality even if organizational inequality is necessary - indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries, progress was even made on this front.  But as long as they romanticized these other cultures without recognizing both what allowed them to work, and the shortcomings of these societies, they were going to be dreamers without a viable cause.

How Not to Talk about India with an Indian

When I was in graduate school, the girlfriend of one of my fellow graduate students came to visit.  She was from India, and while she had lived in the United States for quite a while (her accent was so thoroughly western U.S. in its flavor that had she not told me that she had grown up in India, I'd not have guessed), she was, nonetheless from India. 

One evening, the lot of us went out to a bar near the university, where we spent several hours talking.  Another grad student was there, a guy who we will call Stan, was quite fond of accusing the white students of trying to push our "western narratives" onto other people (in case you're hoping for a heaping dose of irony on that point, he he was of mixed Mexican and Korean ancestry himself, and so was at least not one white student making the accusation to a bunch of other white students...he was, however, from Orange County, and so his frequent claims that we were all affluent and from conservative areas was deliciously ironic).  Indeed, most of us simply avoided any conversation that might turn to cultural differences and the assertion of cultural narratives (which was tough, as we were an anthropology department), and others (myself included) liked to play with him by throwing out bits of statements to see what we could get him to say or do.

Anyway, Stan began talking to our visitor, and in his usual way, he decided to buddy up with her by talking smack about "those evil colonialists."  He was shocked when she didn't agree with him.

In summary, her view was this:  The European colonial powers were basically a bunch of assholes who did some terrible things...but they left behind a physical and legal infrastructure that allowed India to begin excelling when left to its own devices, and the success of many Indian people, herself included, was a direct result of the colonial history.  So, she didn't see colonialism as being an entirely bad thing, in the long run.

Now, you can argue with her position.  I'm not sure that I entirely agree with it, myself.  But she articulated it well (what I wrote up there does no justice to what she actually said, it's a very crude summary), and she was willing to stick with and defend her position. 

Stan was perplexed, and then he was angry.

He would not accept that there might be any benefit from colonial activity.  He had so internalized the notion that colonialism was a purely evil thing, that he could not bring himself to accept that someone whose own personal history derives directly and (given both her and her parent's age) recently from European colonialism might not view it as a strict black-and-white issue.  She didn't say colonialsim was good, but she did say that it had beneficial long-term effects for many people in India.  Again, you can argue against this position, but you can not do so by simply nay-saying it without considering what was being said.

Then, of course, came the thing that made this evening so delightfully and memorably ironic: Stan accused her of attempting to impose her "western narrative" on the people of India.

That's right, the affluent boy from Orange County, who was able to attend a graduate school in a prestigious university system in California, accused someone who was actually from India of imposing a "western narrative" onto India.

The problem is that the strict black-and-white, good vs. evil view of Europe's colonial history and it's modern results is as much a product of western culture and beliefs as were the notions of European exceptionalism, of "white man's burden", of the particular form of greed and avarice that fueled it.  For all of his claims to being somehow non-western, Stan was as western as everyone else there, and he had bought into the late 20th/early 21st centuries western narrative of colonialism.  And just as those he criticized were unwilling to consider native views of history*, he was unwilling to do that very same thing.

The reason that I bring this up is that there is a tendency among many people, often (though not limited to) the political left, to attempt to correct past de-humanization of various groups of people by engaging in activities that are equally dehumanizing, just in a different way.  It is no less condescending to think of the people whose lands were colonized as hapless victims than it is to think that they should be grateful for having been made second-class citizens so that they might be "enlightened" by Europeans.  Similarly, if you object to histories being written by the descendants of the European colonials, you are not improving matters by creating an alternate history that tries to be sympathetic to the colonized while simultaneously ignoring what their descendants have to say on the matter. 

I have written in the past about the refusal of most modern people to really examine our histories as they concern colonialism and groups that we would not lump into the category of "minorities".  We want to create simple narratives with evil, maniacle bad guy colonists and shining, virtuous natives fighting a valiant, if losing, battle against encroaching modernity.  But the fact of the matter is that this is just false.  History is messy, and even horrible events can have good consequences down the road...and, of course, events that we consider good can have horrible long-term consequences.  But, ultimately, whether we are vilifying Europeans or Indians, we are applying a narrative to the situation...and Stan's narrative was just as much a product of his contemporary western political ideologies as the views of the colonial governments were products of theirs. 





A quick note - while I was writing this, I discovered that another blogger by the name of Natlie Reed wrote an excellent post on why the "progressive" notions of "non-western" cultures are just as dehumanizing and harmful as the attitudes that they claim to be trying to correct.  Read it here.





*For the record, most of us routinely worked with native consultants and informants and worked to make sure that we were accurately reflecting what they told us in our work.  Such a method is not without it's own flaws and pitfalls, to be certain, but it is more than Stan was doing in his work.  Again, the irony of it all was astounding.

Primitive Science?

As a graduate student, I read numerous papers and articles which discussed the ability of hunter gatherers and early farmers to gather information and make sense of the resources available within their world.  Most of these provided useful information or perspectives, and I am glad to have read them.  However, nearly all of them made the same assertion - that the observations of these people are science. 

The basic assertion is that the people who are reliant on their environment to get by are extremely observant of it, and capable of making predictions regarding plants and animals, as they need to in order to survive.  This ability is typically referred to as "their science", asserting that it is the equal of "western" science. 

Now, don't misunderstand me.  If you spend much time studying hunter-gatherers and early farmers, you will be struck by just how well honed their observational skills are.  They tend to be keen observers of the behavior/tendencies of plants and animals, and they have to be in order to survive.  And while observation and prediction are vital parts of science, and in these peoples we can see how the raw materials for science are present in the human brain, science itself is another thing altogether.  Science makes use of observation, prediction, and the sharing of ideas amongst peers, and shares these traits with the people discussed in the documents to which I refer, but it also makes use of numerous methods intended to root out observational bias, including structured studies, peer review, regular discussion and review of findings, and vigorous debate among a huge audience regarding findings. If it lacks these elements, then it really isn't science.  But that doesn't make it somehow inferior, as it serves a somewhat different purpose and therefore should be expected to be different.

When part of a scientific exercise, observation of nature carries a certain amount of baggage and intention which is different from the baggage and intention of someone who is observing for the purposes of survival.  Hunter gatherers are generally not concerned with how their observations fit into broader theoretical models, such as evolution, any more than a field biologist is concerned with starving should they fail to catch their quarry.  A different set of needs, assumptions, and purpose are carried by the two different types of observers, and these influence what they observe and how they observe, making their activities different, even though they share many similarities and may be in many ways complimentary.

This assertion that the activities of hunter-gatherers and early farmers is a type of science (or, as it is often formulated, "their science") appears to come from a desire to make the people being studies or described seem more intelligent or noble than is often assumed, and to put their activities on intellectual par with "western" institutions.  This came, at least in part, in reaction to centuries of Europeans and their descendants viewing all non-Europeans as somehow primitive.  This assertion that the activities of hunters and gatherers was intended to show that these people are not primitives, but are, rather, quite sophisticated in their interactions with their environments.

The problem is that this is essentially the imposition of a "western" model onto people who live and think in very different ways.  To assert that their activities qualify as science is to impose a particular frame of reference onto them which they would not recognize as part of their activity, and is, ultimately, just as condescending as to insist that their activities are "primitive".  Just because observations are sophisticated, well-made, and intelligently considered, does not automatically make them science, as science requires another rather specific set of accompanying features.  Moreover, to refer to them as science is to ignore the context in which they occur, to ignore the way that the people engaged in the activities view them, and, in short, to be a poor anthropologist.  Moreover, the desire to "bring them up to our level", however well intentioned, is still steeped in the notion that we as western observers must ennoble the pursuits of other people in order to make them worthwhile (or at least show them to be worthwhile), which is about as condescending an attitude as one can take.

Hunter-gatherers are not generally engaged in science, not even "their science", and that's fine.  They are engaged in the necessary observation and predictive activities for their circumstances.  Recognizing that they are using well-honed intellectual abilities to pursue a goal is sufficient, and it shows them to be sophisticated, intelligent, and anything but primitive.  There is no need to impose an outside way of viewing the world onto them in order to accept that they are showing the very traits of intelligence that make us all human.

Native American Ancestry, or Lack Thereof

First off - I will be away in the field for the next week, and therefore I probably won't have any site updates unless I am able to scare up an internet connection, I may not post any updates this week other than this one.

In the meantime. here's something to consider...

Last week, NPR's show Talk of the Nation had a segment on the issues surrounding individuals declaring that they are of Native American ancestry (to hear it, listen here or go here for a transcript).  There's a number of issues surrounding this, but there are two that I find particularly interesting.

The first issue is that of the interests that different federally recognized Native American groups have to accept or reject individuals as members of their tribe and/or organization.  This is often an issue with tribes that own casinos, as people come out of the woodwork claiming to be members in order to secure a share of the casino's money.  Depending on where you are, the more prevalent issue may be individuals who are legitimately part of the tribe being rejected or dropped from the membership roles, or people who are not part of the tribe trying to be listed as such (some of whom really believe themselves to be, and others of whom simply think that it is a good way to get money).  For a variety of reasons, I'll not say too much on the topic, except to note that I know of people who were dropped from the register who were, legitimately, of the appropriate ancestry...but that I have also known a large number of people who have tried to be accepted as tribal members who had no more a claim to Native American ancestry than the British exchange student who lived upstairs from me in college.  There is a tendency for people to see the behavior of whatever group they are most familiar with as the norm as far as accepting or rejecting members goes, but there is actually alot of variation, for both good and ill, in how these matters are handled.

The second issue is the matter of people claiming Native American ancestry when such claims are dubious at best.  One thing that a guest on the show brings up is that there seems to be a pattern of these claims that a great-grandmother specifically on the mother's side is a member of a Native American group (usually, though not always, Cherokee).  While there are many, many people in the U.S. with Native American ancestry, there seem to be many, many more that simply want to be.  I don't know what to make of the claim that it is usually a great-grandmother on the mother's side (well, the great-grandmother makes it essentially an unverifiable claim as the individual is usually dead, and claims of poor record keeping can be made, but why on the mother's side?), but my own experience has been that people often claim Native American ancestry because they want to be seen as somehow magical, or special, and figure that associating themselves with a group that they have insultingly simplified and/or romanticized.

There's another, interesting and bothersome, issue also brought up in the interview: the tendency for some to claim Native American ancestry, and to sell "spiritual" services based on these claims.  This may include people running for-profit "sweat lodges" at a heavy fee, or selling magical items allegedly of "Native American Origin!"  Generally, these individuals may actually be Native Americans, or they may simply be claiming to, but either way they are cashing in on the racist notions that most people have about alleged Native American mysticism.

Anyway, give it a listen, it's an interesting show.

New Age Energy vs. Anthropology and History

In a recent argument regarding Reiki, the person with whom I was arguing (who is fully convinced of the efficacy of Reiki*) made a number of supporting claims.  There were the usual citing of anecdotal claims and dubious readings of situations, and claims of big pharma cover-ups, of course, but in the middle of it there was the following claim (paraphrased by me, but close enough to the original that the claimant is unlikely to take any issue with it):

"All cultures have some form of energy healing, which makes the claims of Reiki practitioners credible!"

Really?  All cultures do, eh?

No.  Not really.

There are numerous problems with this claim - not the least of which is the notion that a commonly held belief is inherently true (AKA, the bandwagon fallacy).  Let's start with the first one - the imposition of the concept of energy onto the practices of cultures that would not have recognized the concept itself.  Most New Age beliefs tend to refer to mystical energies, but the problem here is that energy is well defined within physics (go here for a good explanation of what it is, or here for a good explanation coupled with how it is abused by New Agers), but not within the various New Age schools of thought.  In fact, my own experience has been that pursuing the New Age definitions of energy invariably results in either non-answer deflections ("well, you see, energy is vibrations!" "Huh?") or muddled nonsensical answers that collapse in upon their own weight. 

The problem, I suspect, is that because energy is not a physical object, but rather a potential for work/force, a property of physical objects (so, kinetic energy is the energy of an object in motion, electrical energy is the energy of electrons moving through an object, thermal energy is the heat generated by a chemical reaction within an object, etc.).  Because energy is physical in nature, but as a property does not manifest as an object itself, people tend to view it as a weird, ethereal thing, even though it is really a very simple concept that is quite clear once properly explained.  It is similar to quantum physics - a very real subject of scientific study the name of which is routinely employed by people who want to push their made-up crap.

So, the first problem with the claim that every culture has some form of energy healing is the fact that the term "energy healing" as used by New Agers reveals a deep ignorance of what the term energy means, and a replacement of its real definition with a hazy "mystical force" definition.

The next problem is that it's not at all clear that energy healing beliefs are all that common.  Many New Agers will refer to shamanic practices geared towards manipulating a person's energy to remove illness as a form of energy healing.  However, as described by ethnographers ranging from Claude Levi Strauss to Alfred Kroeber to J.P. Harrington and Franz Boas, these practices were geared towards removing illness-causing agents, not energies.  These agents might have been spirits, but they were at least as likely to be thought of as physical objects (for one example, Levi-Strauss documented cases where shamans claimed that bits of blood mixed with other objects were the causes of sickness).  Similarly, both anthropologists and journalists working in rural Asia have documented cases of local healers claiming to pull physical objects out of an individual in order to heal illness.  In other cases, shamans and healers fought to stave off illness caused by sorcery. 
So, many of the cases that get cited as "energy healing" are, in fact, viewed by the practitioners not as energy healing in the New Age sense, but as the removal of physical objects causing illness.  In those other cases, where spirits or sorcery are viewed as the cause, a reading of the actual anthropological literature demonstrates that the people who engage in these practices do not see spirits or magic as vague "bad vibes" in the way that so many New Age healers do, and that the claim of these being energy healing is a post-hoc rationalization and imposition to try to bring their beliefs into line with those of the New Age believers, and not an acceptance of the actual practice as viewed and experienced by the actual people doing it.

If we look into European history, we likewise see a mix of magic, spirit/demon beliefs, and physical causes for illness.  Folk beliefs often cited witchcraft as a cause of some illnesses, and depending on the tradition being examined, witchcraft might include anything from simple folk magic to attempted deals with spirits and demons, but, again, not some fuzzy, ill-defined "energy."  Early European medical doctors were often dependent on the concept of the "humors" - blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm.  While the concepts surrounding the humors often ranged into the mystical, they were, nonetheless, real physical things that could be manipulated by physical means (fr example, bleeding a patient), and not "energies." 

Even in east Asia, where so many New Agers get inspiration for claims about "healing energies", the notion that this was a common belief is a bit dubious.  Certainly, the notion of Chi (or ki, or qi) as currently used seems to meet it, but it is itself a term that has had many different definitions throughout history (read up on it here), and the notion that it was an "energy" as opposed to something else post-dates European contact, and historically it has even been thought of as a building-block of physical matter, rather like many similar concepts held by Greek philosophers.  Prana is a similar concept with a similar history.  So, even here, where we have the closest approximation to New Age energy, the history of the concept doesn't quite line up with what the Reiki practitioner with whom I was arguing claims. 

Are there cultures which do have beliefs that have rough similarities ot New Age "energy healing" practices?  Yes, there are.  But, again, they line up roughly, not precisely, and the New Age tendency is to tend to force the "energy healing" concept onto these beliefs and practices rather than take them as they are.  Moreover, while these types of concepts are not unheard of, they are FAR from universal, and someone who claims that every culture has them is someone who has demonstrated that they are disinterested in the practices of other cultures.  






*For the uninitiated, you lucky bastards, Reiki is the practice of waving one's hands over someone to manipulate their "energies" [in keeping with it's Asian origin, this is usually referred to as "ki", "qi", or "chi", and heal them*, with some people doing actual massage, which does have limited but real therapeutic value, and claiming to be doing Reiki simultaneously.  Though often claimed to be an "ancient healing art, Reiki is, in fact, quite modern, dating to the 1920s.  However, its adherents are usually very clear that it comes from Asia, which, as with so many culture-porn related things, seems to give it an aura of mysticism in their minds.

Computers, Encyclopedias, and Status

As a graduate student, I read an article about a small, isolated fishing village in southeast Asia, where changes to the world's economy brought a relative increase in local wealth.  What did many of the fishermen in this village do with their new-found money?  they bought televisions.  This seems straightforward enough to most of us - the village was isolated, and the purchase of a television would allow the villagers to hear about life in the outside world, to become more connected to events outside of their small town. 

Unfortunately, there was no electricity to power the televisions.  Now, the reaction to most people who hear of this is something along the lines of "wow, those foolish third-world fishermen!  Buying televisions that they can't use!  What rubes!"  In fact, I had a similar reaction when I had read that part of the article.  The reason for this reaction, though, is that those of us who live in a wired world where television, radio, and the internet are ubiqituos fail to grasp and aspect of life in this village that I suspect many of our grandparents and great-grandparents might have been in a better position to understand.  That the television wouldn't work without electricity was beside the point.  The televisions were status objects - ownership of them signaled to other villagers that the person with the television had both sufficient funds to purchase a television and that they were, in this way, more like the higher-status people in the more affluent parts of the world.  The purchase of the television wasn't about being able to watch it, it was about being perceived as the sort of person who owns such a thing.  The point wasn't to watch television programs, but rather to gain the status inherent in the ownership of the television.

Viewed in this way, the behavior of the villagers ceases to be a story of naive hicks who don't know nuthin' 'bout this here 'lectricity, and becomes the more accurate story of people living in a community where social status is vitally important and maintained in part through the ownership of goods that signal status.

And lest you think that this is a tendency relegated to villages in southeast Asia, consider the mania that we as a culture have over useless crap and sub-optimal materials that have a particular designer label, political affiliation or meaning, or are associated with a high-status individual or lifestyle (status here not necessarily meaning wealth or socio-economic standing, but rather a lifestyle to which members of a group or sub-culture aspire).  We may not buy televisions for places that are off-the-grid, but we engage in the same sorts of materials.  Even groups that pride themselves on throwing off the shackles of consumer culture engage in it.  Labels such as "organic", "free range", "natural", "spiritual", and "holistic" have often dubious meanings, but are applied to products and services in order to appeal to the desire for in-group status of people of a progressive political bent just as brand names such as "BMW" and "Versace" appeal to the more traditionally status conscious.  At times it's not even a label, as such, but rather an association: hemp as opposed to cotton because of the political associations of a hemp purchase, for example*. And of course the Right-wing crowd, traditionally religious people, the Skeptic movement, etc. all have their own version.  The motivation to purchase many items or services is motivated less than a need for that item or service or even the perceived good of doing so (in many cases, the purchase may even be counter-productive if actually analyzed) than we are by the desire to be seen by others (and even see ourselves) as the "type of person who buys/uses/likes" the thing in question.  As such, we are not so different from the villagers purchasing unusable televisions.

I thought about this today as I read this article on the demise of Encyclopedia Britannica's print edition.  While many people are either praising or demonizing this as a triumph of Wikipedia's "open source" model vs. Britannica's so-called "closed source" approach, the article makes a pretty compelling case that this has far more to do with the use of material goods to build and maintain status (my words, not the authors) than it does with any sort of technical or social aspect of Wikipedia. 

When I was a kid, by which I mean from the time I was born until I graduated from high school, computers were not ubiquitous.  Most people that I knew did not own a computer, as they were seen as being of little practical use for most people up until I was a teenager, and even then the internet didn't become a tool of widespread common use until I was in my twenties.  Thinking back, when I was in high school, those of us with computers in our home were small in number, and our parents usually viewed the computer as an educational investment - though they were often unclear as to how exactly it was supposed to aid in our educations.  However, they wished to be seen as the sorts of people who would invest in their children's education, and as such would buy the trappings of such a thing even if they didn't understand precisely how it was supposed to help us.  By contrast, the encyclopedia had long been seen as an investment in education (though there is research from the publishers themselves that indicates that the books were rarely opened and my own experience is that many people weren't quite clear how, precisely, to use them as reference tools) and as such were common in households without computers, and even most of those with them, provided that the adults of the household wanted to see themselves and be seen by others as the sort of people who invested in the children's education..

In the time since then, computers have become more widespread, and better understood.  Nowadays, it's a rare parent who doesn't have some understanding of how a computer can contribute to their child's education, making the purchase of a computer a widely agreed upon educational investment, meaning that someone wanting to be seen as the sort of person who makes such an investment can buy the tools that actually and clearly achieve this end. 

In the end, the computer may have won because it conveys the status that a set of encyclopedias once did, but simultaneously also is an tool that people know how to use and, importantly, want to use in a way that perhaps they did not want to use an encyclopedia..



*Yes, I know, there are applications for which hemp is ideally suited.  However, it is abundantly clear that many, perhaps the majority of, hemp purchasers buy the products because they are "making a statement", and gaining status within their peer group, rather than for practical reasons.

Early Avocational Archaeologists

I am working on a project right now where I have to deal with an archaeological site that was first recorded by a man named Oscar Noren. 

Noren was a rancher and farmer who lived in the San Joaquin Valley during the early 20th century, and who became interested in the native peoples of the area.  He began to travel throughout the region, looking for archaeological sites, but also, importantly, getting to know the people of the area.  He collected a huge amount of anthropological and archaeological data, organized it in a usable fashion, and left behind some excellent notes that are still used by archaeologists in the region, all without the benefit of any formal training in anthropology or archaeology.  Noren's ties to the native community are solid, and he is still remembered fondly by the members of the community who interacted with him in their youths.

Most parts of California have someone like this - the avocational anthropologist who, out of sheer curiosity, was able to provide a base from which regional archaeologists, ethnographers, and ethnohistorians have since worked.  Their reputations have fared differently depending on their methods and their approaches - those who tended to go digging without consultation with the Native communities have generally been though poorly of by both the Native peoples of their regions as well as by modern anthropologists; those who simply collected folklore and language information uncritically have provided a useful record, but one that can be very difficult to use as it often contains contradictory and confusing information; many were engaged in other ideological work that colored their view of what they were doing - I have read a few entries by itinerant preachers who also did amateur archaeology in the late 19th and early 20th century, and while they can provide very useful information, their disdain of the people whose remains they examined often shines through in not only the tone of their writings but also the information that they deem worth recording.

But, faults, and all, this work oftne provides information about both archaeology and ethnography which is not at all available today due to the effects of erosion, as well as cultural change.  These accounts are greatly valuable.

Noren's work, which I have only recently become acquainted with, is particularly fascinating.  From what I have seen so far, he seems more interested in observation and interaction with people than in deep interpretation, which makes his work very usable for a modern anthropologist.  Moreover, because he made an effort to build and maintain ties with the Native San Joaquin community, I encounter people regularly who knew him and can fill in the occasional gaps in his information.  It's really a fascinating exercise.

The modern equivalent of these folks is found in local archaeological societies and archaeological clubs - groups of people actually interested in the real past, who have a desire to read, study, record, and discuss their work in a solid, defensible way.  While I know of nobody who currently has the ability to record the volume of information as these early avocationalists, mostly because of changes in land ownership to social norms, the spirit is still there, and it's something that I think needs to be nurtured. 

The Politics of Ethnicity Names

Growing up in the late 70s and the 80s, I was fed a diet of media in which the native peoples of the United States were referred to as "Indians", while simultaneously being told in school that the proper, respectful term was "Native American."  The term "Indian" of course comes from mistakes that early European settlers had made regarding where they thought they had landed.  They believed that they had found the islands then known as the Indies, hence the people living on them were Indians.  Even after they realized that this was incorrect, the term "Indian" stuck for quite a long time.

Still, as a kid, I was informed that the proper term was "Native American", and any use of the term "Indian" in school was corrected.  My grandmother, the one Native American person with whom I had regular contact, never voiced an opinion one way or another on the matter, so I went with it and used "Native American", feeling a bit uncomfortable when someone, usually someone older than I, used the term "Indian."  Throughout college this continued to be the primary term used to describe the peoples of the Americas, and even into graduate school.

Then I began working with Native Americans on a regular basis.  You can imagine my shock when they referred to themselves, consistently and with few, if any, exceptions, as "Indians."  How they reacted to me calling them "Native Americans" varied greatly - most don't react one way or another, a few react negatively (I have been told on a few occasions "no, we are INDIANS!"), and a few react positively (feeling that the use of the term "Indian" is fine for themselves and their fellows, but those of us who they do not recognize as being part of their community should use the term "Native American" or, where I work, "Native Californian").  It's probably little surprise that I took to using more specific terms (referring to people as Chumash, Yokut, Miwok, Ohlone, and so on, terms which never seem to elicit a negative reaction). 

What accounts for the continued use of the word within Native American circles?  Well, ask ten different members of the community,a nd you'll likely get ten different answers as to why they still use the term, but there are a few common reasons that I have come across.  One is that the term was long something of a term of abuse (hence the reason why Native American became the more polite term), but through using it and claiming it, many people feel that they have taken the sting out of it.  Another related reason that I have encountered is that many people within the native communities feel that they have earned the term through centuries of being saddled with it and having to deal with European views of all native peoples being pretty much the same, and always treated as inferiors.  Another reason that I have heard is that each group had their own term for themselves, and that they consider the term "Indian" and the term "Native American" to be equally arbitrary, and are simply a bit annoyed at the desire of non-natives to switch terms.

Regardless, watching this play out has been rather interesting, and has provided a valuable lesson in how different individuals and groups place often wildly different values on the ethics and politics of how ethnic terminology develops.

I have also learned that few people, if anyone, minds when you refer to their particular group by its proper name.  So, that's probably the biggest practical lesson here.

Flaked Glass and Date Designation

A short while back, I wrote about the problems associated with assuming that sites containing historic-era artifacts are necessarily related to Non-Native American use of a location.  While it is true that, as of the mid-19th up through the early 21st century, Native Americans were a distinct minority among the European, Asian, and African-descendant settlers who occupied California, they nonetheless remained a present and active community (or, rather, set of communities) within California (and the United States more broadly).  And, contrary to what a surprisingly large number of people seem to think, Native American communities have historically been very open to adopting new technologies and practices from other cultures - this is, in fact, a common human trait - and as such, after urbanization began in the American west, it becomes much more difficult to differentiate a Native American home from a non-Native American Home. 

In an area such as the southern Sierra Nevadas, where I currently do much of my work, it becomes a bit more difficult to differentiate Native and non-Native sites.  Many of the towns in this area have large Native American populations, many descended directly from the people who occupied the same locations a century or more ago.  And European settlement was slower in this area than in other parts of California, resulting in the Native peoples of the area being better able to adapt to a slow creep of Euro-American settlement rather than the sudden rush brought on by the Gold Rush and, earlier, by the establishment of a local Spanish mission.  Moreover, the culture of the settlers had changed over the course of the 19th century, so while the Native peoples of this region still had numerous problems with the settlers - some of them quite horrific in their own right - they were not quite the same as the trauma experienced by those in the central Sierras and also along the coast. 

As a result, it is not unheard of to find Native American village sites that were known to be occupied as late as 1914 and with histories stretching back centuries, in the hills and mountains of this region.  What this means is that the people of the area were making use of tools and goods that are typically associated with non-Native settlements, creating sites that are a mix of artifacts typically thought of as historic, as well as those typically thought of as prehistoric.  The problem is that for most archaeologists, and I have to confess that I have been one such myself, we tend to assume that the presence of metal, glass, concrete, etc. are indicators of "historic" (that is, non-Native) settlement and land use, while the presence of flaked stone, ground stone, and similar materials is evidence of "prehistoric" (that is, Native) land use and settlement.  As a result, we tend to describe sites that have both "prehistoric" and "historic" traits as being "mixed component" - we assume that they were occupied at two different periods of time by two different sets of people - both Native and non-Native.

I had to reflect on this while I excavated a site this last week that had been recorded as a mixed-component site.  It contained bedrock milling features and flaked basalt and obsidian, and it also had metal and glass artifacts in fairly large numbers.  Although I am aware of the problems associated with assuming two different settlements of the area, I had nonetheless fallen back into the habit of thinking of these types of materials as representing just that...until one of the field techs walked up to me with a piece of amethyst glass (a distinct type of glass that usually dates to the late 19th and early 20th century) that had been bifacially flaked - that is, someone had taken the glass and very carefully knocked flakes of glass off of it in a distinct pattern to make the larger shard into a cutting and scraping tool.  This is not a behavior one sees from non-Native Californians, but Native Californians were masters of producing flaked stone/glass tools, and I have seen many examples of them being produced from bottles, porcelain, and thick old window panes.

Suddenly, this site looked different.  We now had pretty convincing evidence that Native Californians were living here and making tools during the late 19th and early 20th century, which was the same period during which the other historic artifacts had been deposited here.

Now, there is still some evidence from the distribution of artifacts to suggest that there was a dump of industrial materials here after the site was used by the Native Americans who made use of the milling stations and flaked the stone and the piece of amethyst glass.  But it was nonetheless a valuable lesson to be reminded that the Native Californians never left, and that we should be cautious in assuming that a site, or site component, doesn't belong to them simply because it has glass, metal, and porcelain.  In fact, when we make that assumption, we buy into and perpetuate the belief that Native Americans are of the past and not part of the modern world, though they very clearly are still here and still part of the world that you and I inhabit.

Gender, Sex, and Where They Don't Meet

My partner, Kaylia, has many friends who are part of the transgender community.  These are people who don’t fit the traditional gender roles in that they are living as members of the opposite sex, are undergoing medical procedures to change sex, don’t find themselves fitting into either male or female sex roles, or are biologically not clearly male or female to begin with.  The tendency in society in general (and here in Fresno in particular) is to treat these people with confusion, fear, and/or skepticism as to their gender or lack thereof.  Natalie of the Skepchick blog argues, with a good deal of success, that this is due to a discomfort that people have with having their notions of gender challenged.  While I agree, I think that it also comes from a basic miscomprehension of what, exactly, gender is to begin with.  Gender and sex are not the same thing, and this seems to be at the root of much of the problem.

I was first introduced to the concept of gender as something other than a synonym for biological sex during my freshman year of college.  This was a difficult concept to wrap my head around, having grown up in a time and culture in which we are in many ways obsessed with observing, reinforcing, challenging, and critiquing a binary male/female idea of gender.  The notion that there might be more than two genders simply did not compute because we only formally recognize two genders that roughly correspond to one’s genitals*.  While even my own culture’s notions of gender don’t quite line up with biological sex, the insistence otherwise tends to blind one to this and make it difficult to conceive of the idea that there may be more than two genders.

And yet there are, in fact, multiple genders observed across time and across cultures.

First, a little clarity and definition…

Gender is not the same thing as sex.  Sex is biological, based on whether or not a person possesses a Y chromosome.  This, obviously, determines your genitalia, but also impacts things such as your overall physical build and, to an extent, the way in which hormones influence aspects of your behavior and socialization.  Gender is the social role that is ascribed to you based primarily on your sex.  However, gender takes things into account that are based on socialization and not just biology – the tendency to socialize boys into an interest in sports and girls into an interest in shopping, for example – but because gender and sex are interrelated, we tend to conflate them.  And so we have a number of, frankly bizarre, research papers on the evolutionary roots of why women like shopping and wearing pretty clothes or why men like football and watching wrestling, papers that rarely really deal with the fact that they are conflating gender roles with biological sex.  There may well be biological influences on these interests, but they are largely cultural rather than biological.  Gender takes the biology into account, but covers it in a heavy dollop of social norms, cultural context, and the flotsam and jetsam of history.

We tend to think of gender as being divided into two for a very simple reason: humans are generally divided biologically into male and female.  The different physical capabilities - due largely to the necessities of child-baring and rearing and to a lesser extent to general physical builds – results in different social roles being ascribed to men and women within any given society.  And so, on the surface, it seems that we should expect there to be two genders in every society corresponding to biological sex.  That is, we should expect a set of socially/culturally-constructed roles and expectations that correspond with biological sex to break into two – male and female – if this is what biology actually demands. 

But scratch the surface and think about it for a few minutes and it becomes clear that this isn’t, in fact, what biology actually demands.  First off, it should be said that biological sex is not really the simple binary that we tend to conceive of it as being.  Humans generally divide into male and female, but don’t absolutely.  There are a number of physical traits (from hermaphroditism to a range of genetic conditions and even a few anomalies) that can and do result in individuals who do not clearly fall into either the male or female gender.  Then, of course, there’s the issue of sexual orientation – itself a rather complex and often murky subject that is typically so mired in social context that it is difficult (though not necessarily impossible) to clearly tease out the underlying biology – which can lead to a person not comfortably fitting into the procreation duties imparted to the gender role that corresponds with their biological sex.  And, of course, there is the fact that there appear to have always been individuals who find that they fit better into a gender role other than the one that corresponds with their biological sex – while it is tempting to think of transgendered people as being a product of modern society and medical technology, the fact is that the ethnographic literature is filled with information about this phenomenon across time and culture, implying that it is something inherent to humanity and not a product of current western culture.

So, what we are left with is the realization that two genders doesn’t actually quite work.  Even with loose gender roles, it doesn’t cover all of the bases.  Now, of course, the majority of people within any society appear to fit the male or female role…but there are enough that don’t that it is unlikely that you will find a culture that actually strictly observes the notion of two genders.

Third, fourth, fifth, etc. genders are well-documented.  Off of the top of my head, there are the Hijras of the Indian Sub-Continent, Sworn Virgins of the Balkans, ‘Aqi of the Chumash, Winkte of the Lakota**, ZapotecMuxe of Mexico, and the list could go on for pages (and actually does so here).  In these cases, the majority of people fit within the male/female genders, but a sufficient number of people do not that additional gender roles evolved.  In addition, things such as a shortage of men or women may produce additional gender roles that allow the surplus of whichever sex is overabundant to take on the roles of the other.  Many of these gender roles have ritual/religious functions, as is the case with the Hijra, as well as the vestal virgins of antiquity, but membership in the gender is not limited to participation in the ritual functions and is all-encompassing of the individual’s role in society, and as such should not be confused with a solely ritual position. 

To many, perhaps most, of my readers, these groups will sound strange or exotic – genders beyond male and female will likely seem to be derivatives of the religious beliefs and practices of other cultures, and something that has nothing to do with good ol’ rational Western culture (many people would also add either "post-Enlightenment" or "Christian" in there). 

These people would be wrong.

Though they are not often discussed in textbooks, if one begins looking at the primary historic sources, evidence of people who don’t fit into either the male or female roles are pretty clear within western history.  The most lurid (and therefore most often discussed) examples are male prostitutes (both ritual/temple based and otherwise) who took on roles similar to, but separate from, women.  However, there are many other examples of individuals and even small communities rejecting gender roles altogether, or else of people living as members of other genders (sometimes for limited purpose – such as women acting as men to join armies or take on positions of power – but often because the individual simply seemed to be comfortable as a member of the opposite gender, or even outside of gender norms altogether).  This has been common throughout western history, even if little acknowledged.

Then, of course, there are the examples of additional genders existing, but only being semi-acknowledged.  For example, if one reads many of the primary sources from the 16^th century, people will be very clear that women are to have specific, prescribed roles within society…except for Queen Elizabeth.  She may be a woman, but she’s a queen, so the rules don’t apply to her, you see.  In other words, the Queen does not fit the gender of “woman”, she is instead a “queen” and therefore has her own set of rules and expectations, some of which are derived from her sex (such as bearing an heir - which Elizabeth did not manage to do), and some of which are derived fromt he social or political demands of the day. 

Likewise, Catholic priests and nuns, while linguistically described using the standard binary gender pronouns and associated language, don’t really fit their gender roles either.  The terms used for them – Father for priests and Sister for nuns – are the terms for family and not prospective mates, linguistically put them off-limits sexually, rendering them functionally neuter***.  Further, they are expected to be detached from the family and work roles reserved for both men and women within society at large.  While they are not generally acknowledged as such, this arguably makes them a third and fourth gender within western society. 

Given this context, the rise of a transgender community and movement is not some strange anomaly or a product solely of modern western culture.  Rather, it is the contemporary western manifestation of a tendency common in human populations for as long as we have records of human populations.  Certainly, modern medical technology allows for new manifestations, such as having one’s appearance and even sex (or aspects of sex) physically changed, but the underlying reasons appear to have existed throughout history. 

P.S.  Some time back, I read a magazine article, I believe it was in Time, though I cannot recall with certainty, in which the journalist stated that despite claims to the contrary, anthropologists have never found a culture with a “third gender”.  To this day, I am uncertain as to whether this journalist was conflating gender and biological sex, was ignorant of what anthropologists have actually found (which leads one to wonder why they would write such a blatantly un-researched statement), or was ignoring anthropological data for some personal or political reason.

*Minds out of the gutter, people.

**It is common for people to refer to third-gender or transgender people of the Native American groups as “berdaches”, but this is likely a term that was largely applied by European explorers and colonists and a term of abuse, rather than the term actually used within that culture.  Plus, it attempts to apply a broad term to a phenomenon that is expressed and handled different from culture-to-culture, and as such is probably not a particularly useful term.

***Which didn’t stop many from acting on their sexual impulses, certainly.  But the fact that they did so was considered a violation of their role, while it would not be a violation if they were normal men and women.