Muhammad Abd al‐Rahman (Phillip) Barker: Bridging Cultural Divides through Fantasy/Science‐Fiction Role‐Playing Games and Fictional Religion

“Muslims” and “Dungeons & Dragons” are rarely discussed in the same sentence. However, one of the earliest fantasy role‐playing games, which left a lasting impact on the industry, was the brainchild of Muhammad Abd al‐Rahman (Phillip) Barker (1929‐2012), a professor of South Asian Studies, an expert in Native American languages, and an American convert to Islam. Like Tolkien, Barker created an enormous fantasy world; however, unlike Tolkien, his world was redolent with Native American and South Asian cultural and religious influences. Through this world, he shared with his fans a nuanced understanding of non‐Western societies, cultures, and beliefs – the facets of the human experience that truly constitute multiculturalism. While fictional religion in role‐playing games has been feared and condemned, fictional religion (and occultism) plays a pivotal role in Barker's work; an exploration of his approach towards fictional religion also sheds more light on the question of why fantasy role‐playing games came across as competitors towards religion. Barker's fantasy world brought people of diverse backgrounds together in a beautiful demonstration of how fantasy and science fiction can bring about intercultural and interreligious tolerance in an otherwise intolerant world. Given the centrality of games such as Dungeons & Dragons to American popular culture, an exploration of Barker's legacy can also be seen in the light of the study of the history and contributions of Muslims in America.     

Reclaiming the Land,Reclaiming the Indian: The La Salle Series of George Catlin

In 1847, American painter George Catlin completed a series of paintings depicting La Salle's travels through North America, ostensibly at the request of King Louis-Philippe. This article argues that the La Salle series is an unusually coherent statement by Catlin about the value of the American wilderness and Native American culture for white America. A close examination of the paintings and Catlin's writing exposes the La Salle series as a reclamation project in which Catlin sought to rescue an imagined “pure” past at contact and preserve it in paint in order to make it available and useful to the present.     

Sarah and the Puritans: Feminist Contributions to New England Historical Archaeology

This article analyzes a seventeenth-century adultery case from southern Massachusetts to examine the effects of Puritan colonization on Native American women. As a feminist analysis the article focuses on gendered access to power and considers Puritan strategies for transforming Native American gendered relations. This reading highlights Puritan use of physical punishment and public humiliation to shape gendered behavior. It exposes Puritan efforts to transform Native American men into Puritan patriarchs and to transform Native American women into submissive consorts. It concludes with a series of characteristics that will define archaeological sites that date to the period immediately after New England’s colonization. Arguably, Sarah and the Puritans contributes to history more than it contributes to archaeology because the primary evidence is documentary, rather than archaeological. Nonetheless, this analysis informs archaeological interpretation by revealing the consequences of cultural change on the archaeological record. By demonstrating colonization’s transformative power on southern New England Native American culture, Sarah and the Puritans identifies the context in which many historical period Native American sites were created. Ultimately, this affords an opportunity to gender New England colonization and to examine the archaeological record of that process.     

Re/placing Native Science: Indigenous Voices in Contemporary Constructions of Nature

Since the earliest days of the European Enlightenment, Western people have sought to remove themselves from nature and the ‘savage’ non‐European masses. This distancing has relied upon various intellectual techniques and theories. The social construction of nature precipitated by Enlightenment thinking separated culture from nature, culture being defined as civilised European society. This separation has served to displace the Native voice within the colonial construction of Nature. This separation has also served as one thread in the long modern ‘disenchantment’ of Westerners and nature, a ‘disenchantment’ described so adeptly by Adorno and Horkheimer (1973 ). Unfortunately though, this displacement is not only a historical event. The absence of modern Native voices within discussions of nature perpetuates the colonial displacement which blossomed following the Enlightenment. In his book entitled, Native Science, Gregory Cajete describes Native science as ‘a lived and creative relationship with the natural world ... [an] intimate and creative participation [which] heightens awareness of the subtle qualities of a place’ (2000, 20). Perhaps place offers a ‘common ground’ between Western and Indigenous thought; a ‘common ground’ upon which to re/write the meta‐narrative of Enlightenment thought. This paper will seek to aid in the re/placement of modern Native voices within constructions of nature and seek to begin healing the disenchantment caused through the rupture between culture and nature in Western science.     

Virtual Forum: Archaeology and Decolonization

In this forum, patiently achieved through months of cyber-work, participants Nayanjot Lahiri (India), Nick Shepherd (South Africa), Joe Watkins (USA) and Larry Zimmerman (USA), plus the two editors of Arqueología Suramericana, Alejandro Haber (Argentina) and Cristóbal Gnecco (Colombia), discuss the topic of archaeology and decolonization. Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology in her capacity as Professor at the Department of History, University of Delhi. Her books include Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered (2005) and The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992). She has edited The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000) and an issue of World Archaeology entitled The Archaeology of Hinduism (2004). Nick Shepherd is a senior lecturer in the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, where he convenes the program in public culture in Africa. He sits on the executive committee of the World Archaeological Congress, and is co-editor of the journal Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress. In 2004 he was based at Harvard University as a Mandela Fellow. He has published widely on issues of archaeology and society in Africa, and on issues of public history and heritage. Joe Watkins is Choctaw Indian and archaeologist Joe Watkins is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He is 1/2 Choctaw Indian by blood, and has been involved in archaeology for more than thirty-five years. He received his Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma and his Master’s of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Anthropology from Southern Methodist University, where his doctorate examined archaeologists’ responses to questionnaire scenarios concerning their perceptions of American Indian issues. His current study interests include the ethical practice of anthropology and the study of anthropology’s relationships with descendant communities and Aboriginal populations, and he has published numerous articles on these topics. His first book Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice (AltaMira Press, 2000) examined the relationships between American Indians and archaeologists and is in its second printing His latest book, Reclaiming Physical Heritage: Repatriation and Sacred Sites (Chelsea House Publishers 2005) is aimed toward creating an awareness of Native American issues among high school students. Larry J. Zimmerman is Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Native American Representation at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. He is Vice President of the World Archaeological Congress. He also has served WAC as its Executive Secretary and as the organizer of the first WAC Inter-Congress on Archaeological Ethics and the Treatment of the Dead. His research interests include the archaeology of the North American Plains, contemporary American Indian issues, and his current project examining the archaeology of homelessness. Originally published in Spanish in Arqueología Suramericana 3(1), 2007     

The Rise,Fall, and Transformation of Native American Cultures in the Southeastern United States

The culture area of Southeast United States saw the rise of the most complex societies in Native America north of Mexico before European contact. Many of these societies developed with matrilineal kinship systems. Some built impressive mounds. The “Southeast” volume of the Handbook of North American Indians presents numerous chapters that reconstruct the prehistory, history, and cultures found in this region and chronicle the European exploration and colonization that impacted the region's cultures. The differences between the prehistoric and postcolonial cultures are so great that they appear as different cultural traditions.     

“‘I just don’t ever use that word’: investigating stakeholders’ understanding of heritage”

Abstract

Understanding the value of heritage sites for diverse stakeholders requires both paying attention to the fields of power in which the sites operate and applying methodologies that are open to user-defined paradigms of value. In the U.S., official discourse often frames the value of heritage sites associated the deep Native American past as archaeological sites, an interpretation that is consistent with settler colonial ideologies. This narrative generally obfuscates connections between the heritage of the sites and contemporary peoples, and it effaces the history of colonialism and dispossession. A study of stakeholder-defined heritage at two contested sites in the central Midwest revealed both congruencies and conflicts among diverse constituencies’ articulations of the sites’ value. At Mounds State Park a proposed dam and reservoir ‘Mounds Lake’ project would inundate a large portion of the site. At Strawtown Koteewi, Native American tribes have made repatriation claims under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).The study also problematised the term ‘cultural heritage’ as it is understood and used by the different constituencies, particularly for culturally and historically affiliated Native Americans. It also highlighted the positions of the constituencies within the broader fields of power implicated in these contested sites.     

Past or present? Differentiating California prehistoric native American remains from forensic cases: An empirical approach

The goal of this project is to provide additional data and statistical analyses for differentiating between prehistoric/historic Native American remains and modern forensic cases that may be potentially confusing. Forensic anthropologists often receive requests from local law enforcement to infer whether skeletal remains are of forensic or non‐forensic significance. Skeletal remains of non‐forensic significance are commonly of Native American ancestry, but the empirical methods common for determining Native American affinity from skeletal remains have not been established for California prehistoric/historic Native Americans. Therefore, forensic anthropologists working in California lack empirical methods for not only identifying prehistoric California Native American remains, but also differentiating them from modern/forensic populations whose skeletal attributes are similar. In particular, skeletal remains of Latin American US immigrants of indigenous origins are becoming more present in the forensic anthropological laboratory, and can exhibit the same suite of skeletal traits classically used to identify Native American affinity. In this article, we initiate an investigation into this issue by analyzing both craniometric and morphoscopic data using a range of statistical methods for differentiating prehistoric Northern California Native Americans from modern Guatemalan Maya. Our discriminant analyses results indicate that by using nine craniometric variables, group classification is 87% correct. In addition, seven morphoscopic variables can predict group classification correctly for 77% of the sample. The results suggest that it is possible to differentiate between our two samples. Such a method contributes to the efficient and empirical determination of temporal and geographic affinity, allowing for the repartriation of Native American remains to their tribes, as well as the accurate analysis of forensically significant remains. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hinton Rowan Helper's the land of gold and the evolution of race relations in California

The California Gold Rush of the mid‐nineteenth century attracted a multitude of prospectors from around the world, bringing together a vibrant mix of ethnicities and cultures. Historians have argued that race emerged as the most important mark of identity in California as whites labeled and eventually excluded ‘inferior’ races. Hinton Rowan Helper's The Land of Gold documented his three‐year trip to California in the early 1850s, recording his reactions to ‘others’ in detail. Helper has been portrayed as the archetypal white racist on the California frontier. This essay challenges that view, contending that he was more preoccupied with culture and behavior than race. It evaluates Helper's comments on, first, Native Americans, second, the Chinese, and finally, his wider reactions to California and the construction of whiteness.     

Tracking Fish and Human Response to Earthquakes on the Northwest Coast of Washington State,USA: A Preliminary Study at Tse-whit-zen

Evidence of large earthquakes occurring along the Pacific Northwest Coast is reflected in coastal stratigraphy from Oregon to British Columbia, where there also exists an extensive archaeological record of Native American occupation. Tse-whit-zen, a large Native American village dating between ～2800 yrs BP and the historic era, located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, was excavated with exceptionally fine stratigraphic control allowing for precise comparison of these natural and cultural records. Here we report on the ～10,000 fish remains from one 2 × 2 m excavation block; this assemblage spans the timing of one seismic event, allowing study of changes in relative taxonomic abundance through time that may coincide with earthquakes or other environmental changes. Results indicate a wide variety of fish taxa were used throughout the dated occupation. Comparisons of fish use before and after one earthquake event shows a decline in salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.) and an increase in herring (Clupea pallasii), shifts consistent with earthquake-related habitat loss. This serves as a pilot study for a large-scale collaborative project that is drawing on the range in animal types (invertebrates, mammals, birds, and fishes) to assess human response to gradual and abrupt environmental change at Tse-whit-zen.     

Questioning Whether Thomas Jefferson Was the “Father” of American Archaeology

In Notes on the State of Virginia (1787 [1954]), Thomas Jefferson described a systematic investigation he conducted of a Native American burial mound near his home at Monticello. Based upon this early excavation and Jefferson’s report of the contents of various layers he observed in the mound, authors of introductory archaeological textbooks frequently refer to Jefferson as the “father” of archaeology in the United States. While Jefferson’s methods anticipated modern archaeological techniques, this essay questions the extent to which he was a disinterested observer of what his dig uncovered. Because his conclusions were rooted less in understanding Native American cultures than they were in extinguishing them, perhaps archaeologists should look for another person to be accorded the title of “father” of their discipline.     

6. WHAT'S IN A CONCEPT? THE KINETIC EMPIRE OF THE COMANCHES

This essay revisits the main themes and arguments put forward in The Comanche Empire: indigenous agency; spatial reorientation in the writing of colonial histories; the composition of the Comanche empire and its impact on the history of North America. It also responds to a number of specific issues raised by the roundtable participants: differences and similarities between indigenous and Euro‐colonial power regimes; balancing of culture‐specific frameworks with broad‐gauge political economic analysis; linkages between indigenous agency and indigenous sovereignty in colonial encounters; the question of periodization in writing Native American and colonial histories. Finally, the essay points to new ways of understanding, conceptualizing, and comparing nonterritorial nomadic empires by introducing the concept of “kinetic empire,” which refers to a flexible imperial organization that revolves around a set of mobile activities and relies on selective nodal control of key resources.     

Controlling Acculturation: A Potawatomi Strategy for Avoiding Removal

Abstract

It was not until recently that the focus of archaeological and historical studies has taken attention off the disappearance of Native American culture and focused on evidence that demonstrates multiple strategies used by various Native American groups to sustain themselves in Euro-American society during and after initial European contact. These contemporary analyses demonstrate that while the recognition of power relations within contact relationships is critical to interpreting the views of Native Americans towards Euro-American goods, it is also necessary to note that in the effort to avoid assimilation and removal, these goods often took on significance beyond their utilitarian functions. This article draws from these new theories in an attempt to argue how evidence uncovered from archaeological investigations of three Potawatomi sites in the Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois region reveal significant evidence of how varying ways of viewing commodities led to differing forms of resistance among the Potawatomi during the Removal period.     

Frequency of Complete Cleft Sacra in a Native American Sample

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current understanding of the variability of complete sacral clefts in human populations by presenting new data on a large prehistoric and historic Native American skeletal sample (n = 1943). Results are examined by age, sex, time period, and regional distribution and compared with reported frequencies of complete sacral clefts in other modern, historic, and ancient populations. In all, 1.6% of the sample exhibited complete sacral clefts, including 2.1% of males and 1.1% of females. Although males exhibit a frequency twice as high as females, this difference is not statistically significant. However, within the Alaskan sample, the sex difference was significant (p = 0.002), with 3.4% of males and 0.5% of females exhibiting complete clefts; these differences may be related to mechanical influences during growth and development in males. Differences among age groups are not significant. Regional comparisons among Alaska, Eastern Woodlands, Great Basin/Northwest/California, Great Plains, and Southwest showed no significant differences overall, but Alaska (2.2%) and Great Plains (0.5%) do show a significant difference (p = 0.024). No significant differences were found between prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic/recent samples, suggesting a lack of a secular trend in frequency of complete sacral clefts in Native American populations. One individual exhibited an enlarged canal, which may be indicative of a more severe condition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Native American Women in a Contemporary World

Most scholarly literature of Native American peoples and cultures focuses on the ill effects that colonialism has had on their societies and cultures. However, recent scholarship explores the creative adaptations that Native Americans have made to modern life. There is also more research on the lives of women. Finally, current research is often conducted as a collaborative venture, with the scholars/editors giving up some of their power and authority to their Native American collaborators. This review discusses two recent books, Grandmother's Grandchild and Blood and Voice, that reflect this new scholarship.     

May Games and Noble Savages: The Native American in Early Celebrations of the Tammany Society

This paper discusses the May Day celebrations of the “Sons of Saint Tammany,” an American holiday fraternity under the patronage of an historical Lenape (Delaware) Indian chieftain, which incorporated many Native American performative elements. Beginning in Philadelphia in the colonial period and quickly becoming a vehicle for republican sentiments, the Tammany idea spread to many other east coast cities. The May Day revels of the Society reached their heyday in the early years of the new nation (Federalist period). Two trends in the use of Native materials are identified, the “vaudevillian” and the more serious ethnographic. The latter led to incidents of what can be called “carnivalesque diplomacy,” with native American delegations to the U.S. capital. Dr Samuel Mitchill's elaborate mythopoetic oration for the New York chapter in 1795 is taken as an end point for the creative appropriation of Native American elements. New York's Tammany Society would eventually evolve into the famous political machine of the Democratic Party, leaving behind the original May Day idyll and Indian masquerade.     

The utility of hand and foot bones for the determination of sex and the estimation of stature in a prehistoric population from west-central Illinois

This study focuses on hands and feet as indicators of sex and stature for Native Americans, hitherto relatively neglected in this regard. The study was performed on a large, well-preserved prehistoric skeletal sample from west-central Illinois. Discriminant functions are presented which determine sex with accuracies exceeding 87%. Those functions are then tested on three other Native American samples and found to have similar high degrees of accuracy. The utility of hand and foot bones for estimation of femur length (and subsequent inclusion in stature estimation equations) is also explored. While indirect estimation of stature is determined to be possible in this manner, it is suggested that these and other stature estimation techniques that have large standard errors may be of limited archaeological or forensic value. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Situating middle class identities: American college women of South Asian descent

This article explores the ways in which American college women of South Asian descent discuss their positioning as middle class. The article analyses participants' talk around class as evidence of embeddedness in American class discourses and a complex and contradictory scheme of identification that implicates other identities like gender, race and culture. Respondents often articulated class using the American Dream, where the social capital their parents immigrated with is left unexamined in favour of a narrative of ‘rags to riches’. Young women also used other constructs like ‘stability’, ‘race’ and ‘resources’ to make reference to class, but also to participate in an American discursive silence around it. Finally, the notion of a drive towards professionalism as an immigrant goal is examined, and it is suggested that this serves to further deflect discussions of class. This article synthesises theories of diaspora, ‘translocational positioning’ and habitus, and examines the production of American class discourse as a performance of an American middle class habitus.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 4. August 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 4 Front cover SELF-EXCLUSION Locked gates, fences and razor wire symbolize the closed borders and exclusionary nature of ethnonationalism. They also raise questions about what it means to be inside those locked gates. In this issue, Joyce Dalsheim considers the dynamics underlying ethnonationalism in the latest Israeli elections. Back cover INDIGENOUS AMERICA AND ENGLISH HERITAGE This ink and watercolour image by the English painter John White from the late 16th century depicts dancing Tupinambá Indians, based on an earlier account by a French traveller to Brazil. White's watercolours, like those he composed when he lived among Algonquians in eastern North America, have been celebrated for their elegant naturalism. At the same time, Europeans widely associated the Tupinambá with cannibalism. White's careful lines therefore capture tensions that were inherent in the English imperial gaze, where the fascination with Native American lifeways, adornment and commodities existed alongside underlying assumptions about violent conflict. More often than not, ethnographic curiosity led to appropriation and dispossession. In 17th-century London, feather headdresses, admired for their lustre, found their way into cabinets of curiosities or into imperial performances like court masques. Torn from their original contexts, such objects were repurposed to endorse an aesthetics of empire that involved both a visibility and erasure of Native American artefacts and peoples. In this issue, Lauren Working considers what English heritage would look like if Native Americans were integrated more fully within it. She explores the opportunities that exist for using history, anthropology and objects to shed light on the complex, often troubling legacies that emerged out of the first moment of empire in England. Acknowledging the entangled nature of Native American and English histories can become a means of conveying multiple but intersecting narratives and perspectives, weaving indigeneity into the story of Englishness and opening up new possibilities for collaboration, museum display and reconciliation.     

Remedial agents: missionary physicians and the depopulation of Hawai'i

This article examines the activities and perspectives of nineteenth-century American missionary physicians in the Hawaiian Islands. The physicians' attitudes toward Hawaiian morbidity and depopulation are viewed in relation to the greater missionary community's role in the political transformation of the island nation. The article argues that missionary physicians monitored and reported on Native Hawaiian depopulation (a result of introduced western diseases) while simultaneously advertising the islands' benefits to American consumptives, imperialists, and others. Mission doctors also failed to respond effectively to the greatest epidemiological crisis Hawai'i had ever faced: a venereal scourge with a resulting blight of Native Hawaiian infertility. As a result of these and other factors, American hegemony in Hawai'i by midcentury was a foregone conclusion.