Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American WestIn 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River a 9,300-year old skeleton was found that would become the impetus for the first legal assault on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The Kennewick Man, as it came to be called, put to test whether the American Indian tribes of the area were culturally affiliated with the skeleton as they claim and their oral traditions affirm, or whether the skeleton was affiliated with a people who are no longer present. At the same time, another 9,000-year old skeleton was found in the storage facility of the Nevada State Museum, where it had gone unnoticed for the past 50 years. Like the Kennewick Man, the Spirit Cave Mummy also brought to fore the question of cultural affiliation between contemporary American Indian tribes of the western Great Basin and those people who resided in the area during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Cultural anthropologist Peter N. Jones tackles these contentious questions in this landmark study, Respect for the Ancestors. For the first time in a single work, the question of cultural affiliation between the present-day American Indians of the American West and the people of the distant past is examined using multiple lines of evidence. Out of this comprehensive study, a picture of continuous cultural evolution and adaptation between the peoples of the ancient past and those of the present-day emerges from the evidence. Further, important implications for the field of anthropology are discussed as a result of this benchmark study. Anyone working in the American West today will benefit from this book. |
Contents
| 5 | |
| 15 | |
| 21 | |
A Brief History of the Kennewick Man and the Spirit Cave Mummy | 27 |
The Plateau and Great Basin Culture Regions | 33 |
Ethnographic Evidence | 75 |
Biological Evidence | 85 |
Genetic Evidence | 97 |
Early First American Subsistence Lifeways | 126 |
Plateau and Great Basin Archaeological Synthesis | 132 |
Summary of Archaeological Evidence | 148 |
Oral Tradition Evidence | 165 |
Migrations Diffusions and Subsistence in American Prehistory | 179 |
Synthesis of the Evidence | 191 |
Anthropology and American Indians | 197 |
List of Figures | 222 |
Common terms and phrases
adaptations Adovasio Alaska American Indian anthropology archaeological data archaeological record Basin culture region basketry Beringia biological affiliation Bonnichsen California changes climate Columbia Plateau Columbia River contemporary American Indian Cordilleran Ice Sheet craniometric cultural affiliation data indicate dating dence dental Early Holocene environment epistemological praxis Erlandson ethnographic example extinction Furthermore genetic giant glacial Greenberg groups human Kennewick Kroeber Lake Late Pleistocene lifeway pattern linguistic evidence Madsen mammals Middle Holocene migration mtDNA NAGPRA Nevada North America Northern Paiute Northwest Coast noted Numic expansion hypothesis optimal foraging theory oral tradition evidence oral traditions Oregon paleoenvironmental Penutian period Pinus Plains Pleistocene and Early Pollen records population praxis of epoché prehistoric present-day American Indians Quaternary Quaternary Research question of cultural Rocky Mountains Sahaptian samples similar skeleton Smithsonian Institution southern Southwest specific Spirit Cave Mummy studies subsistence lifeway theory tion tundra Tuohy University Press Valley Washington western