Anthropology Times

The Neandertals and Modern Human Origins
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 193-218 (Volume publication date October 1986)
Eric Trinkaus
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I read this article based on the title after having come across a rather fluffy piece in the Guardian titled “Should We Clone Neanderthals?”An article of the same title, but with a more serious discussion can be found at Archaeology (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”).

The New York Times has an article discussing the analysis of the Neanderthal gene sequence and the extent to which Neanderthals may have interbred with humans, Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans, with some scientists saying that interbreding was relatively insignificant and others saying that it may have had noticeable impact on the evolution of modern non-African humans. Writing in 1986, Trinkaus mentions this same discussion. From reading the NYT article, it seems the introduction of genetic evidence has heightened this discussion, but hasn’t interjected the clarity one might expect.

I was most interested in Trinkaus’ discussion of some of the details of the origins of modern humans such as possible connections between changes in upper limb morphology and advantageous changes in tool use and tool development. Further reading of this type would probably make my B-List of things to read.

Eric Trinkaus’ has a wikipedia page. When googling Trinkaus, his page on Rate My Professor came up in the results. It seems that the vast majority of the review articles are written by people who teach somewhere. Before now, I had never thought of looking them up at Rate My Professor.

That’s it for now.

Kind thoughts,

S.

Analysis of Style in Artifacts
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 125-142 (Volume publication date October 1983)
Stephen Plog
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I never got around to looking at the content of this review and the last side-by-side (making a note to go back and do that.) Still …

The question of what can be said about the depth and type of interaction between groups that share similar styles seemed to taunt the imagination. Plog and Hegmon mention studies involving analysis of how styles are produced and distributed in living cultures and what could be gleaned from those studies to help the understanding of style variation and distribution in prehistoric cultures. They both also discussed what could be said about the level of exchange between groups based on the level of style they shared, whether whole patterns or parts of patterns or similarities in the thickness of lines for example. I started to wonder whether analyses of the relationship between shared language traits and level of interaction between cultures might be instructive with respect to variation and exchange in artifacts. It’s one of those weeks where I haven’t poked around on the net as much. Next week will likely be the same.

In reading these reviews on style, I kept thinking about the styles of being human. What are my human styles? What style of human am I? Particularly I thought of one of the habits of my recently deceased friend. He was quite good about going toward people in distress. He didn’t avert his eyes or avoid contact. He offered to listen, to interact, to hug, to share information. He was so beautiful in this way.

Several times this week I saw this mother who appeared to be in general distress. I wanted to talk to her, but I was so worried about being a bother or having nothing useful to say or share that I felt paralyzed in her presence. (What a thing it is to feel at once disconnected from my own existence while being so obsessed with the particular and small details of it.) Her children were lovely and sweet to each other. Her daughter looked eight or nine, but being the oldest of four she was quite focused on being a big girl and a strong girl for her mother and her siblings. In the time it took me to set aside my own angst, they were gone.

Kind thoughts,

S.

Archaeological Research on Style
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 517-536 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Michelle Hegmon
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

This review caught my eye because it was written by a woman in archaeology. It seems I’ve been bumping into the work of Mary Leakey all over the place, so I had female archaeologists on the brain. Michelle Hegmon teaches at Arizona State University. A high school classmate of mine completed her doctoral work in archaeology at ASU. I’ve been wanting to ask my former classmate about her current work. This whole little bit of kizmet may just prompt me to call her up.

Hegmon says that there is enough agreement among archaeologists as to what style is to be able to have meaningful discussions across various theoretical perspectives. She writes that there is basic agreement that “first, style is a way of doing something and second, style involves a choice among various alternatives.” Disagreement comes with discussion of the finer details, but Hegmon’s discussion left me with the impression that disagreements about style are still in some kind of kinder, gentler phase of academic dispute. Though one camp may mostly reject the perspective of another, they each are able to see value and sometimes even analytical usefulness in the rejected view. Or it could just be that Hegmon’s diplomacy is showing.

Hegmon mentions another Annual Review article on style written in 1983 by Stephen Plog titled “Analysis of Style in Artifacts.” I didn’t get a chance to read that one this week. I will read it next week and see what I come away with having read both. I do like the general movement away from considering style simply in relation to patterns of formal variation and toward considering that style also may include cultural and functional components. I look forward to reading what Plog has to add to the discussion of the problems in considering the cultural/functional components when looking at the archaeological record. It’s so easy for bias and wild storytelling to creep in. Hegmon writes of the “long, and sometimes notorious” practice among archaeologists of “correlating styles of material culture and social groups, such as the European Neolithic Beaker Folk and Hohokam Red-on-Buff Culture.” Naming and framing can go a long way toward creating a less than accurate view of the archaeological record. Hegmon writes that “no longer is the association between material culture and living cultures taken for granted. Instead, the archaeological interpretation of cultural identity is an active topic of research.”

Until next week?

Ever yours,

S.

What’s New in African Paleoanthropology?
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 17: 391-426 (Volume publication date October 1988)
Russell H Tuttle
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

Mr. Tuttle made for a spirited read. I don’t think I’ve read as many pop culture references in any other review. In speaking about how some “attempts to erect novel genera” often failed and resulted in the groups being lumped together, he wrote that the new genera (Bodvapithecus, Graecopithecus …) were lost “faster than Zsa Zsa changes mates.” He goes on to refer to the trend of splitting/creating new genera as “splitomania.” In closing out a discussion of hotly contested issues he writes, “For now, recalling our radio days, only ‘The Shadow knows.’” When writing on whether the individuals unearthed at Hadar represented more than one species, Tuttle makes use of a Biblical reference: “ Truly, that a flash flood sealed two species of hominids (and few other vertebrates) together in Hadar sediments is scarcely more likely than our finding righteous Israelites among Pharaoh’s finest under the Red Sea (Exodus 14).” Perhaps adding to this vibe was the fact that Tuttle refers to himself in the first person. The writer of the previous review, also published in 1988, did the same. Was all this a trend in the 1980s?

The section that discusses the Laetoli footprints is titled, “The Laetoli Trails: Facts, Fabrications, Phantoms and Folderol.”

folderol: (from Wiktionary)
1. (uncountable) Nonsense or foolishness.
2. (countable) A decorative object of little value; a trifle or gewgaw.

Tuttle writes about an academic dispute in this section. He had been invited by Mary Leakey to study the Laetoli prints. He writes that(Tim) White and (Gen) Suwa “bumptiously” accused him of academic shenanigans regarding his conclusions about the footprints.

bumptious: Obtrusively pushy; self-assertive to a pretentious extreme. (From Wiktionary)

Others join in with “invidious” public statements and “umbrageous” sources. Tuttle’s language and style in this section left me LOL. It seemed such a good example of the academic dispute language and style that I noted when reading Dean Falk’s review (“Hominid Paleoneurology” and the Dispute That’s All Inside the Taung Baby’s Head).

invidious: Prompted by or expressing or adapted to excite envious dislike or ill will; offensively or unfairly discriminating. (From Wiktionary)
umbrageous: Having shade; shady. (From Wiktionary)

I read in a short bio that Tuttle’s interest include social prejudice in physical anthropology. That interest seemed apparent in this review in several instances including a short remark regarding “man the hunter.” He writes that “observations of hunting, meat-eating, tool-making, and tool-assisted foraging by chimpanzees … and documentation that females are more adept and persistent tool-users, slew the ‘man the hunter’ hypothesis, which, in retrospect, appears to be little more than a corporate male fantasy.”

So, it’s late and I don’t really have a pithy way to wrap this up, so I’ll leave it. Perhaps I will try again next week to write a little earlier.

Ever yours,

S.