Showing papers in "Journal of Anthropological Research in 1994"
TL;DR: Foraging with adults might have been a better strategy for!Kung children as discussed by the authors, who would have had to walk far from dry season camps to acquire much food and risk getting lost if they wander unsupervised into the bush.
Abstract: Children of the hunting and gathering !Kung San seldom foraged, especially during the long dry season. In contrast, children of Hadza foragers in Tanzania often forage, in both wet and dry seasons. Because we have argued that the economic dependence of !Kung children has important consequences, we must try to understand why they did not forage. Experimental data on foraging by !Kung adults and children show that children would have had to walk far from dry season camps to acquire much food. Interviews suggest that !Kung children risk getting lost if they wander unsupervised into the bush. Thus, foraging without adult company was a poor option for !Kung children. Foraging with adults might have been a better strategy. We calculate the benefits to a !Kung mother if her oldest child accompanied her to the nut groves. Because of the high processing costs, a child's work time was most profitably spent at home cracking nuts.
95 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the theoretical basis of the Wittfogel's model and tried to clarify exactly what the author claimed about the determinative role of irrigation in social formation.
Abstract: Karl Wittfogel's writings on the evolution of irrigation systems are examined in light of his distinction between hydraulic and hydroagricultural systems. Wittfogel recognized that different hydraulic conditions allowed for the development of different types of irrigation systems: hydraulic societies have tended to develop in massive riverine environments, while hydroagricultural societies have tended to develop along smaller water sources in regions where geographical features hydraulically compartmentalized the countryside. Robert Hunt's recent refutation of Wittfogel's model is examined in light of Wittfogel's own writings about the size and density of hydraulic and hydroagricultural societies. It is argued that Hunt's critique of Wittfogel's model fails because it ignores the specific variables which Wittfogel postulated as primarily influencing the administrative character of irrigation societies. ISSUES OF IRRIGATION and power have played an important role in the development of materialist cross-cultural theory building ever since Marx and Engels first recognized that the irrigation-based economies of Asia had evolved differently from those of the feudal and capitalist West (Krader 1975). In the late 1950s and 1960s, Karl Wittfogel's "hydraulic" theory strongly influenced anthropological theories of state formation. Though Wittfogel's theory of the hydraulic state and "Oriental despotism" were partly derived from Marx and Engels's writings, Wittfogel's theories must be seen as having distinct epistemological and political roots. In the last few decades, Wittfogel's theories have been summarily dismissed by critics who claim that small-scale irrigation societies have evolved around the world without developing into the hydraulic states purportedly predicted by Wittfogel. I believe that Wittfogel's critics have unfairly ignored much of his thought by not addressing his distinction between hydraulic and hydroagricultural societies.1 This paper reexamines the theoretical basis of Wittfogel's model and tries to clarify exactly what Wittfogel claimed about the determinative role of irrigation in social formation. Robert Hunt's (1988) critique of Wittfogel's model is examined in light of Wittfogel's writings on hydraulic density and his distinction between hydraulic and hydroagricultural economies. Specifically, it is shown that Hunt's dismissal of Wittfogel's theory due to the localized management exhibited by many contemporary irrigation systems is premature.
89 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the future of anthropology depends in part on sustained reflection on and extended empirical inquiries into violent processes, and they place emphasis on the potential that a strengthened anthropology of violence would have for growth in general theory about societies.
Abstract: THIS ESSAY ARGUES that the future of anthropology depends in part on sustained reflection on and extended empirical inquiries into violent processes. It places emphasis on the potential that a strengthened anthropology of violence would have for growth in general theory about societies. I return to this assertion toward the end. In the bulk of my essay, I discuss certain-in some cases sketchy-anthropological contributions to thinking about violence. I base my discussion on three assumptions. First, we need theories about violence which are as cross-culturally applicable as possible. Second, we should attempt to build a perspective on the use of violence upon a notion of actions as constituting the \"raw material\" of society. To put it another way, I am seeking a perspective on violence which aims primarily to understand violence as performance, i.e., as violent action. Third, we need to understand violence by understanding the perspective of the perpetrator. Some research into violence yields limited understanding because it is too focused on the victim.1 If we are to understand violence as performance, we must look for the motives and the values of the user of violence.
87 citations
TL;DR: The anthropological declaration of crisis seems a minor industry or subgenre in its own right, and though perceived crises are a continuous feature of all disciplines, anthropology's current state is magnified because it is apparently at once political and epistemological as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: IT DOES NOT AKE LONG for an anthropological outsider (such as myself, a literary theorist) circa 1994 to figure out that anthropology is today in a state of crisis, a crisis notable commentators have termed variously \"epistemological worrying,\" \"genuine malaise,\" an \"unprecedented wave of challenges,\" \"morbid fascination,\" grumpiness, even virulence,\" or, perhaps most accurately, \"the nervous present.\"2 Indeed, this anthropological declaration of crisis seems a minor industry or subgenre in its own right, and though perceived crises are a continuous feature of all disciplines, anthropology's current state is magnified because it is apparently at once political and epistemological. The political crisis stems from the recognition that anthropology, long seen as the champion of those Others no other academics would touch, had been at the same time implicated in colonial domination and its modern transformations for as long as it had existed. Anthropological insiders as well as outsiders (e.g., Leiris 1950; Asad 1973; Said 1989; and, tackling post-Writing Culture ethnography, D. Scott 1992) have been instrumental in making this charge. The second and perhaps related epistemological crisis has different roots, and stems largely from the realization that anthropologists produce not truth but texts (cf. Crapanzano 1986:51; and many more), texts inescapably fictional in the sense of \"a thing made,\" and texts hence eminently deconstructible. To understand this crisis it is necessary first to recall, in a story by now familiar, that at certain times and places past, anthropology viewed itself as an objective science of a knowable world,3 and though that perception was generally qualified in some way, the notion that anthropologists could ideally produce a full and accurate account of a people under study greatly motivated and justified the profession. Though anthropology had always been open to charges that it was not in fact \"scientific,\" it always possessed two reliable defenses: either it would attempt greater scientificity, or it would assert a specifically anthropological mode of knowledge based on interpretation. Anthropology's
41 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study concerning the maladaptiveness of a belief system is presented with respect to food avoidances among horticulturalists and Pygmy foragers living in the Ituri Forest of Zaire.
Abstract: A rigorous case study concerning the maladaptiveness of a belief system is presented with respect to food avoidances among horticulturalists and Pygmy foragers living in the Ituri Forest of Zaire. Results indicate that only one of the four ethnic groups suffers any selective disadvantage from these cultural beliefs. Furthermore, the reduction in fitness, which occurs primarily through compromised fertility in women, is probably less than 5 percent for most affected individuals. Thus the degree of maladaptation is relatively small. Those who exhibit costly food avoidances often lack access to the culturally designated teacher of such beliefs. They must therefore turn to other individuals to learn their beliefs, and thus acquire relatively many taboos. While the nutritional cost of this system is quite small for most people, the human costs of hunger and of conformity to this potentially oppressive social system are not negligible for those who are its primary victims.
38 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between agricultural production and grain and cattle exchange is examined in the context of the Gusii populations in the highlands of western Kenya and the Luo population in the Lake Victoria basin.
Abstract: The tribal economies of precolonial East Africa can only partially be understood within theories of food production which stress self-sufficiency, production for use, and risk aversion. The level of food production in tribal economies is not determined solely by an inherent orientation towards subsistence but also involves the possibility of converting food into wealth and relationships of social dependency. The relationship between agricultural production and grain and cattle exchange is examined here in the context of the Gusii populations in the highlands of western Kenya and the Luo populations in the Lake Victoria basin. The use of cattle as prestige goods for bridewealth payments sustained a regional exchange system, high population densities, and intensive cultivation in the highlands. Production was organized to meet the culturally defined exchange objectives of social reproduction and the political economy.
34 citations
TL;DR: The authors contextualize Spanish missionary texts from the colonial period in the New World as a collection of observations whose meaning is for the most part apparent; the challenge has been to "cull" the texts for relevant and reliable data, discarding whatever is suspect or problematic ("excessively" connotative).
Abstract: Researchers have tended to view Spanish missionary texts from the colonial period in the New World as a collection of observations whose meaning is for the most part apparent; the challenge has been to "cull" the texts for relevant and reliable data, discarding whatever is suspect or problematic ("excessively" connotative). It is suggested that missionary texts, like modern ethnographies, may be fruitfully analyzed by pursuing the cultural-historical, rhetorical, and institutional contingencies that governed missionary perceptions and representations of the New World. The utility of contextualizing missionary discourse is exemplified by an analysis of Fray Alonso de Benavides's "Memorials" of 1630 and 1634.
20 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that significant progress in the study of Dene religion will be possible when investigators gain experiential knowledge in the course of engaging in Dene ritual processes "in coactivity with their enactors".
Abstract: This paper reviews and finds insufficient the explanations so far advanced for the generally recognized lack of progress in the description and analysis of Dene, or Northern Athapaskan, religion. The paper argues that significant progress in the study of Dene religion will be possible when investigators gain experiential knowledge in the course of engaging in Dene ritual processes "in coactivity with their enactors." The epistemological significance of this view, held by the Dene and espoused by a number of anthropologists, leads to the integration of the anthropologist's experiences into the ethnographic description and thus to narrative ethnography.
20 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of this key idiom in political mobilization through a study of the performance of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the 1988-89 municipal election campaign in Natzerat Illit, a predominantly Israeli new town in Galilee.
Abstract: Palestinians tend to imagine themselves primarily as a community of loss and deprivation. The role of this key idiom in political mobilization is examined through a study of the performance of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the 1988-89 municipal election campaign in Natzerat Illit, a predominantly Israeli new town in Galilee. While not of the honor and shame variety, the political agenda adopted by the Palestinian actors tended to emphasize pride rather than resources. Their use of the rhetoric of redemption and collective honor was linked to styles of leadership which stress assertive willingness to challenge dominant Israeli personalities representing power structures which marginalize and racially stereotype the Palestinians. Palestinians displayed consistent disregard of the extent to which the lofty rhetoric used by aspiring Palestinian politicians failed to match their tangible achievements once in office. The claims of evenhanded rationalism made by Western democratic statism are thus made quest...
18 citations
13 citations
TL;DR: In the early fifties, no one questioned the coherence of the field, the Boasian four-field approach, or the necessity of the broad training it encompassed.
Abstract: TODAY, MANY ANTHROPOLOGISTS ask whether anthropology has a future. Others see the discipline in a stage of disintegration and fragmentation into myriad subdisciples, subspecialities, and interest groups, all of which emphasize their differences and uniqueness rather than what they have in common. Perhaps only the foolhardy would try to contemplate the future of anthropology. Whether anthropology has a future depends to a large extent on whether the parts into which the discipline is fragmented still have some common epistemological base. This paper will explore the current anthropological scene in an attempt to answer that question. No one entering anthropology in the early fifties questioned the coherence of the field, the Boasian four-field approach, or the necessity of the broad training it encompassed. In 1953, it was possible, and deemed appropriate, to summarize everything known in the field in a single encyclopedic volume, Anthropology Today, edited by A.L. Kroeber. But even at that time, no uniform theoretical approach dominated the field. Though different theoretical approaches existed, there was general agreement on anthropological concepts and their meanings, on the topics of concern, and on the basic techniques to be used in the discipline. Most agreed that the concept of culture was central to the definition of the field, but there were hundreds of definitions of this concept (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952). In retrospect, we now recognize that anthropologists at that time paid little attention to how anthropological knowledge was produced. Neither the relationship between the fieldwork and the final ethnography nor the effect of the fieldwork situation on the individual anthropologist were considered important opics. Nor did anthropologists attend to the political (colonial) context of the fieldwork and its situation in an ongoing history (see Smith, this issue). The decade ended with the Darwinian centenary and the promise of a growing body of cross-cultural generalizations about human behavior.
TL;DR: In this article, differences in lithic technology provide a better method for distinguishing the remains of highly mobile groups from those of sedentary populations, and they analyzed assemblages from limited-activity sites within the Homol'ovi area of northeastern Arizona are then analyzed to evaluate whether mobile groups were present during periods when the area is assumed to have been inhabited by a sedentary population.
Abstract: Upham (1984) proposes that prehistoric populations frequently oscillated between mobile and sedentary adaptive strategies and then uses this idea to reinterpret abandonments in the American Southwest. In areas where limited-activity sites are common, he argues that many of these sites represent the remains of hunter-gatherers rather than sedentary agriculturalists. This paper suggests that differences in lithic technology provide a better method for distinguishing the remains of highly mobile groups from those of sedentary populations. Lithic assemblages from limited-activity sites within the Homol'ovi area of northeastern Arizona are then analyzed to evaluate whether mobile groups were present during periods when the area is assumed to have been inhabited by sedentary populations.
TL;DR: In this article, a clear understanding of the deteriorating status of women in the agricultural labor force and the interrelated problems of food shortage in Nigeria, the historical changes that have occurred with regard to land ownership, food production, and the position of women farmers in three communities in Ondo State are examined.
Abstract: To gain a clear understanding of the deteriorating status of women in the agricultural labor force and the interrelated problems of food shortage in Nigeria, the historical changes that have occurred with regard to land ownership, food production, and the position of women farmers in three communities in Ondo State are examined.
TL;DR: The social constructionist approach taken by Watson and Goulet in their recent paper on the belief system of the Dene Tha is critically examined in this article, where it is argued that rather than shedding light on Dene tha ritual beliefs and their practical uses, the effect of the social constructionists perspective, here as elsewhere, is the imposition of arbitrary and unwarranted designations on the ethnographic facts.
Abstract: The social constructionist approach taken by Watson and Goulet in their recent paper on the belief system of the Dene Tha is critically examined. In arguing that Dene Tha reality is "socially constituted," Watson and Goulet's paper displays many of the characteristic assumptions of social constructionist analysis: in particular, the use of a dichotomy between an empiricist and a constructionist conception of knowledge and a claim that knowledge is structured into epistemologically equivalent "socially constituted realities." These assumptions are shown to take their plausibility from basic confusions about the term "reality." It is argued that rather than shedding light on Dene Tha ritual beliefs and their practical uses, the effect of the social constructionist perspective, here as elsewhere, is the imposition of arbitrary and unwarranted designations on the ethnographic facts.
TL;DR: The rapid growth of conservative Protestantism in North America since the 1970s has affected all strata of contemporary society as mentioned in this paper, and this religious revival also challenges the Hutterites, one of the oldest communal groups in the Western world.
Abstract: The rapid growth of conservative Protestantism in North America since the 1970s has affected all strata of contemporary society. Social scientists have tended to focus their investigations on how this religious movement has impacted mainstream churches. However, this religious revival also challenges the Hutterites, one of the oldest communal groups in the Western world. The Hutterites have long been known for their communal lifestyle, uniformity in religious belief, and success in maintaining strong commitment to their colonies. A crisis has arisen as numerous members reject the basic Hutterite tenet that communal living is essential for salvation. Many have embraced a contemporary, conservative Protestant interpretation of Christianity in which a "personal relationship with Christ" is emphasized. This conversion is manifested in the way most Hutterite converts change from being emotionally reserved to being outspoken. The article explores the religious change among Hutterites in terms of the cultural co...
TL;DR: In this article, an examination of the context in which archaeology is practiced in Ecuador demonstrates that two current ethical concerns within the discipline, conservation of the archaeological record and the recognition of local cultural autonomy, often conflict with one another.
Abstract: An examination of the context in which archaeology is practiced in Ecuador demonstrates that two current ethical concerns within the discipline--the conservation of the archaeological record and the recognition of local cultural autonomy--often conflict with one another. Under circumstances where only one ethical concern can be adequately addressed, archaeologists face a difficult decision. Because each archaeologist reacts differently to such a decision, it is not possible to construct a universal archaeological ethic. Ultimately, this situation derives from the fact that archaeology, and the study of the past in general, can play a crucial role in the construction of cultural identity.
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TL;DR: In a follow-up article, Hunt as mentioned in this paper pointed out that Price is interested in the evolution of the state and wants to hold on to the hydraulic hypothesis in that process, which is contrary to what most scholars think.
Abstract: David H. Price has several objections to my 1988 article in this journal. I disagree with almost all of his objections and will spell out exactly why. His final point of disagreement with me concerns my measuring of the charter of authority for several large irrigation systems. My results in 1988 are strongly counterintuitive, and I will take this opportunity to expand on the reasons for my interpretations of the observations. Basically, Price objects that I set up Wittfogel's hydraulic hypothesis as a straw man for my study and mismeasured a number of cases in my original sample of fifteen. Each of these objections is the result of Price's careless reading, most certainly of my writing, but also of some of the other irrigation literature. Price is interested in the evolution of the state and wants to hold on to the hydraulic hypothesis in that process. He correctly notes that some scholars think that the hydraulic hypothesis has been refuted. Price makes the mistake almost everybody else has made, of reading the hydraulic hypothesis as an irngation hypothesis. For example, Price refers to "hydraulic societies," whereas "irrigation societies" appears twice in the next paragraph, along with "centralized irrigation" and "decentralized irrigation." As I wrote in 1988, William Mitchell had pointed out the confusion fifteen years earlier (Hunt 1988b:336). Price should read Mitchell (1973), reread Wittfogel, and then rethink his evolutionary project. The role of water in the evolution of the state is an old one and worth thinking about again. It treats two questions-the agricultural surplus due to irrigation (V. Gordon Childe) and the organization of labor for hydraulic works (Karl Wittfogel). The size of the agricultural surplus made possible by hydraulic agriculture needs careful empirical attention. The labor question is now generally regarded as closed. I suggest that we might want to reopen it. Wittfogel's hydraulic state certainly had to deal with flood control, as well as with irrigation. Almost every anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian who has dealt with the issue has concentrated on irrigation. I have argued that flood control may have been extremely important in Mesopotamia (Ur III, c. 2200 B.C.E.; Hunt 1988a). We know a fair amount about irrigation organization and virtually nothing about flood control. We may find that a return to the labor aspect of the hydraulic hypothesis in the evolution of the state will be productive. Price claims that the topic of my 1988 Journal paper is the evolution of the
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on aspects of the interpretation of artifact scatters that are entailed by Steadman Upham's adaptive diversity model and Lisa C. Young's logistical mobility model.
Abstract: One regrettable gacy of ersatz deductivism incontemporary archaeology that has been particularly difficult to eradicate isthe idea that matching expectations of hypotheses with characteristics of archaeological phenomena constitutes a valid form of hypothesis testing. In view of the complex histories of archaeological data, this approach takes unwarranted risks in attributing interassemblage differences to single sources, such as variation i prehistoric mobility patterns. These points are illustrated by focusing on aspects of the interpretation of artifact scatters that are entailed by Steadman Upham's \"adaptive diversity\" model and Lisa C. Young's \"logistical mobility\" model. Archaeologists study variability in the archaeological record and evaluate its implications for ascertaining aspects of the cultural past. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the history of Southwestern archaeology is a chronicle of how various hypotheses about prehistoric cultural phenomena have arisen and been tested. In this spirit, Steadman Upham (1984) hypothesized that variation in regional percentages of \"limited-activity sites\" was attributable to variation in the extent to which late prehistoric populations periodically became highly mobile (i.e., greater mobility in certain areas produced more limited-activity sites there). Unconvinced, I showed (Sullivan 1987a) that factors other than mobility, such as differences in survey intensity and how limited-activity sites are defined, could account for regional variation in limited-activity-site percentages-the key data that Upham used to support his adaptive diversity model. Neither addressing my arguments directly nor rejecting alternative interpretations, Upham has persisted, nonetheless, in asserting that regional variation in limited-activity-site percentages faithfully records variation in prehistoric mobility (Upham 1988; Rushforth and Upham 1992:52-67). Dissatisfied with Upham's methods, Lisa C. Young proposes that variation in regional proportions of limited-activity sites is referable more to the \"degree of logistic mobility\" than to the \"presence or absence of mobile populations,\" as Upham suggested in 1984. Thus, for Upham, differences in the frequency of limited-activity sites emerge as initially sedentary populations alternate between sedentism and high residential mobility, whereas for Young, they are a measure of the extent of logistical mobility within sedentary populations.
TL;DR: In this article, the implications of Chayanovian analysis, the New Home Economics, and anthropological household studies for understanding relationships among reproductive and productive activities in farming households are explored.
Abstract: This paper explores implications of Chayanovian analysis, the New Home Economics, and anthropological household studies for understanding relationships among reproductive and productive activities in farming households. Data on labor recall, household membership, and farming practice are analyzed from households in a community in Benguet Province, Philippines. These households include some which practice traditional rice and root farming and others which plant commercial vegetable crops as well. Variation among these households demonstrates a correspondence of three-generation extended families with traditional farming practices and of active recruitment of adult labor with households practicing commercial farming. These households appear to vary in the degrees to which they commit to productive or reproductive activity, and most may actively coordinate these two endeavors through management of household membership and choices of productive strategies. I suggest that attention to the relationships among m...
TL;DR: Watson and Goulet as discussed by the authors argued that Schutz's analysis of the phenomenology of daily life and multiple reality has no relevance to their ways of understanding things. But they also pointed out that these notions are products of the efflorescence of Western scientific culture and of habits of thought foreign to the Dene Tha.
Abstract: When the point of one's remarks has been so spectacularly missed the first time, considerations of economy of effort are in order; therefore my response will be brief. First, Watson and Goulet are correct, \"empiricism\" is my term; it does not appear in their original paper (Watson and Goulet 1992). What does, however, is their description.of Dene Tha beliefs and practices as involving \"canons of evidence,\" \"pools of indicators,\" and so forth. If these notions are products of \"the efflorescence of Western scientific culture and of habits of thought foreign to the Dene Tha,\" why employ them? I thought that was my question. Second, Watson and Goulet appear to be claiming that since \"dreams and visions are utterly prosaic\" to the Dene Tha, then Schutz's analysis of the phenomenology of daily life and multiple realities has no relevance to their ways of understanding things. But prosaic visions are still visions; if Dene Tha notions are adequately translated in this way, then, by definition, there is something about the experiences so identified which sets them apart from mundane, nonvisionary experience. It is clear from Watson and Goulet's account that the Dene Tha do treat dreams and visions as (in certain crucial respects) special kinds of experience. Indeed, that surely is the basic point of their paper! Third, Watson and Goulet are also correct in their suggestion that I have never encountered a Dene Tha. But to find problems concerning the grammar of concepts and the logic of arguments responded to by reference to who has done fieldwork and who has not-who has possession of \"facts\"only confirms my suspicion that the real empiricists here (the fervor of their denials notwithstanding) are Watson and Goulet. Fourthly, and finally, I agree that there is good ethnomethodology and bad ethnomethodology.
TL;DR: Young's analysis of lithic assemblages in the Homol'ovi region is a careful attempt to document the presence of gatherer/hunters in an area that was occupied and abandoned by agricultural groups over a period of 750 years.
Abstract: It has been a decade since "Adaptive Diversity and Southwestern Abandonment" (Upham 1984) was published in the pages of this Journal. Since that time, the concept of adaptive diversity has enjoyed a mixed reception. The idea that mobile, gathering and hunting populations occupied the landscape contemporaneously with sedentary village agriculturalists in certain parts of the Southwest has led some archaeologists to a constructive reexamination of data and interpretations. Although this idea was developed specifically for the prehistoric Southwest, the concept of adaptive diversity has now been used in other culture areas where it informs new explanations of culture change (e.g., Simms 1986). But the adaptive diversity model has also been criticized by a few archaeologists because of the way frequencies of limited activity sites (among other data) were used to support argumentation in the original article. Such criticism is fair, perhaps even warranted, but frankly, I am surprised that the idea of adaptive diversity continues to garner special attention, since the developmental frameworks of Southwestern prehistory require recourse to serial and contemporaneous adaptive diversity to describe the occupational histories of many regions. I am gratified, however, that this concept and my 1984 article have stimulated yet another innovative and thoughtful examination of the Southwestern archaeological record. Lisa Young's analysis of lithic assemblages in the Homol'ovi region is a careful attempt to document the presence of gatherer/hunters in an area that was occupied and abandoned by agricultural groups over a period of 750 years. Her approach to the idea of adaptive diversity is novel, and her tentative conclusion about the presence of gatherer/hunters offers mild substantiation for the hypothesis that nomads coexisted with village agriculturalists at different times during the Homol'ovi occupational sequence. Young is to be congratulated for devising the analytical methods she employs and for working through the uncertainties of data reduction and comparison to develop this important new interpretation. While some Southwestern archaeologists will find fault with Young's approach and methods, her sample sizes, or her lack of attention to transformation processes, others will find her work useful. I find myself in this latter group, despite the vexing conservatism of Young's beginning assumptions and the purposeful leveling of all potentially suggestive trends in her data. In recent correspondence, a colleague wrote to me stating that at some point someone would need to define the sites and artifacts which identify a
TL;DR: Analyse des ouvrages de W. H. Durham, de J. Barkow, L. Cosmides et J. Tooby, et B. Winterhalder et E. Alden Smith, who proposent tous les trois des modeles de culture fondes sur des processus evolutionnistes.
Abstract: Analyse des ouvrages de W. H. Durham, de J. Barkow, L. Cosmides et J. Tooby, et de B. Winterhalder et E. Alden Smith, qui proposent tous les trois des modeles de culture fondes sur des processus evolutionnistes. Le premier souligne que les etres humains sont constitues de deux systemes d'information independants mais lies (un genetique et un culturel). Le second reprend le paradigme de la « psychologie evolutionniste » (l'esprit adapte est la machine qui genere, filtre et transmet l'information, la culture). Le troisieme passe en revue les applications de la theorie de l'« optimalite » : les differences culturelles sont dues aux reponses apportees aux differences ecologiques
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship of logistic mobility and limited-activity sites to illustrate potential problems with the methods used by Upham to identify areas where oscillation between adaptive strategies occurred, and attempted to show that a variety of factors can affect the relative proportions of limited activity sites and that these sites could have been produced by either hunter-gatherers or sedentary agriculturists.
Abstract: In his comments on my article, Sullivan proposes that my discussions of logistic mobility and variability in lithic assemblages are simplistic and biased by a normative perspective. My response to these comments will briefly discuss the complexity of mobility strategies used by agricultural populations and compare our analyses of the Homol'ovi lithic assemblages. My article examined the relationship of logistic mobility and limited-activity sites to illustrate potential problems with the methods used by Upham to identify areas where oscillation between adaptive strategies occurred. Like Sullivan's (1987) critique of Upham's methods, I attempted to show that a variety of factors can affect the relative proportions of limited-activity sites and that these sites could have been produced by either hunter-gatherers or sedentary agriculturists. I then argued that differences in lithic technology provide a better method for identifying sites that were occuped by mobile populations. My discussions of logistic mobility were not presented as a general model, and I did not claim (as Sullivan implied) that all the limited-activity sites with expediently produced lithic assemglages reflect the remains of groups using logistic mobility. Sedentary populations in the Southwest, as elsewhere, used a wide variety of mobility strategies, only some of which can be characterized as logistic. For example, Southwestern agriculturists often moved to field houses for part of the year-a type of mobility that Preucel (1988) has labeled residential. Mobility was also important in ritual contexts (e. g., visits to shrines) and in exchange relations with neighboring roups-situations that do not necessarily involve logistically organized groups. I agree with Sullivan that terms developed for understanding variability in hunter-gatherer mobility strategies will not completely describe the movements of agricultural populations. However, in certain contexts, such as understanding the strategies used to procure wild resources located in areas away from villages, these concepts can be very useful. Next, I undertook the analysis of the Homol'ovi l thic assemblages to discover whether any of the limited-activity sites within this area were occupied by mobile populations. I relied on Parry and Kelly's (1987) work because it provides a coherent framework for documenting how certain types of mobility place constraints on technology. As a result, my discussions focused primarily on basic differences in lithic technology. However, in his comments, Sullivan holds up his 1987 study of the Homol'ovi l thics as a better method of accounting for assemblage variability and argues that a single factor, such as technology, can not account for all the variability in the sites that he examines.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors describes the Dene Tha as "empiricists of an extreme, almost solopsistic kind, who are in the grip of a doctrine of empirical realism, a doctrine nothing less than full-blown realism, and so on and so forth, and then demanding, in scandalized tones, "But... what if they are not empiricists at all?\" We are sorry to spoil his fun, but ''empiricist'' is his characterization, and "emiricist" is our characterization, which is one that our anthropological
Abstract: Dave Francis has a lovely time whipping himself up into a frenzy of righteous indignation about our alleged characterization of the Dene Tha as \"radical empiricists,\" as \"empiricists of an extreme, almost solopsistic kind,\" who are in the grip of \"a doctrine of empirical realism,\" a \"doctrine nothing less than full-blown realism, \" and so on, and so forth, and then demanding, in scandalized tones, \"But ... what if they are not empiricists at all?\" We are sorry to spoil his fun, but \"empiricist\" is his characterization, ot ours. It is one that our anthropological schooling and gut reaction repudiate as wholly inappropriate. It is evocative of the Enlightenment, of the efflorescence of Western scientific culture, of habits of thought foreign to the Dene Tha. As a characterization of Dene Tha epistemology, it is a misdescription, an analyst's imposition that displaces and occludes that which it purports to describe. That is bad ethnomethodology. A salient characteristic of sound ethnomethodology is a refusal to substitute analysts' constructs for what are demonstrably participants' orientations. Dave Francis instructs us that \"to speak of Dene Tha reality in the singular is to obscure the fact [his word!] that the Dene Tha have what Alfred Schutz (1964) referred to as 'multiple realities'-different orders of experience between which they move\" and that \"the wide-awake reality of daily life is the paramount reality.\" Amazing. Dave Francis, whose contact with the Dene Tha is, we dare say, limited, is in possession of a \"fact\" that has eluded the grasp of experienced field ethnographers. What are the grounds for his knowledge claim? They are evidently a priori, rather than empirical. That is, the role of the Dene Tha in his analysis is (to adapt the words of one of his mentors, John Lee) merely that of a source of illustrations to theoretical points whose provenance is external to that which is to be described (Lee 1987:50). His claim is yet another analyst's imposition, one that ignores our repeated insistence that dreams and visions are utterly prosaic to the Dene Tha, a people who do not make the kind of distinctions that enable analysts to slot their knowledge into preformed Schutzian categories. There are no Dene Tha anthropologists, but were there any, we think they would join Obeyesekere (1990:103-4) and Tambiah (1990:15) in objecting to the imposition by Western scholars of the Schutzian postulate of the paramount reality of everyday life on non-Western societies. For a nonironic account of differences between social constructionism and