Showing papers in "Southwestern journal of anthropology in 1968"

Family Firms and Economic Development

Abstract: Where the family does play an important part in business itis often a reflection of the economic immaturity of the population, the absence of a tradition fimpersonal service in industry and the unreliability of employees who have no kinship ties to the firm. Industrial development cannot but be handicapped byinappropriate standards ofeconomic morality (United Nations 1955:20). E CONOMIC PLANNERS commonly assume that family firms are detrimental to economic development because they are based on nepotism and paternalism which foster inefficiency. Such a point of view assumes that impersonal role relationships are necessary for economic development and that the major economic effort should come from the public sector. It maintains that the private sector must be controlled tofit in with this (United Nations 1951). My investigations have led me to dispute this point of view. This paper contends that the private sector as represented bythe family firm is an important growing point in the economies of low income countries. I do not claim that family firms are suitable for every sort of enterprise r quired by a developing economy but that for commerce, industry, and many types of financial activity they are extremely well-placed to assist economic growth because they combine a number of unique sociological and economic characteristics. This paper examines the sociological characteristics of the family firm. It attempts to isolate a number of variables and treat hem diachronically with the development of the firm. The principal data are drawn from two family firms from East Africa, but material from Europe, India, the Lebanon, and Pakistan isalso used. I hypothesize that family firm organization is more important in the early stages of the growth of the firm than in the later stages. Indeed it seems likely 1 I would like to acknowledge the very great assistance of Mr. Iqbal Mamdani n the preparation f this paper. I must also thank Professor David Apter, Professor Elizabeth Colson, Dr. Charlotte Erickson, Professor Paul Kay, and Professor B.S. Yamey for helpful comments. None of them, however, bears any responsibility for the views expressed in this paper.

Some Comments on Historical versus Processual Archaeology

Abstract: ARECENTLY PUBLISHED ARTICLE by Sabloff and Willey (1967) discussed some aspects of historical versus processual pproaches in archaeology. The authors acknowledge the need for archaeologists to concern themselves with processual questions but argue that archaeologists must give research priority to the reconstruction of historical events: It is our feeling that, at least at the present state of . . . knowledge, an understanding of historical events can lead to placement of processual factors in proper perspective, rather than the reverse . . . Furthermore, we do not wish to imply in our statements that by switching the historical-processual priorities we have accepted a theoretical position which is essentially non-evolutionary (Sabloff and Willey 1967:313). Sabloff and Willey add in a footnote hat their view \". .. would approach that of Steward's (1955) 'multilinear evolution\"' (Sabloff and Willey 1967:313). The purpose of this paper is to discuss their proposals with respect to two major points: first, the nature of explanation; and second, the feasibility of working according to the priorities set forth by Sabloff and Willey. It is disagreement over these two fundamental points, I feel, that creates the greatest difficulties b tween the more traditional archaeologists and the advocates of what has come to be known as the \"new archaeology.\" Sabloff and Willey are concerned with understanding the collapse of the Classic Lowland Maya cultural system about 900 A.D. The evidence they cite to document the collapse consists of widespread abandonment of sites, decline in frequency of construction, decline in ceramics, apparent population reduction, and so forth. The authors then propose a \"new hypothetical solution\": In boldest form, the hypothesis states that the Southern Lowlands .. were invaded by non-Classic Maya peoples. This invasion began in the 9th Century A.D., and it set in motion a train of events that destroyed the Classic Maya within 100 years (Sabloff and Willey 1967:312). Does this hypothetical formulation of Sabloff and Willey constitute a valid explanation of the collapse of the Lowland Maya? A distinguished philosopher of science, Carl Hempel, in a discussion fexplanation, states: The explanation of the occurrence of an event of some specific kind . . . at a certain place and time consists . . . in indicating the causes or determining factors [of the event in question]. Now the assertion that a set of events . . . have caused the event o be explained, amounts othe statement that, according to certain general 267

Anterior Tooth Loss in Arctic Populations

Abstract: W HILE CONDUCTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS in Alaska from 1926 to 1938, Ales Hrdlii:ka noted that an unusually large number of the recovered skulls showed a premortem loss of anterior teeth. He attributed the condition to "ritual ablation" and saw its presence in Asiatic as well as American material as an important cultural link between the aboriginal populations of these two continents. His conclusions, along with extensive tables of observations made on more than 8,000 skulls, were presented in the article "Ritual Ablation of Front Teeth in Siberia and America," published in 1940. This report has been cited (Anderson and Merbs 1962) and referred to without citation (Wells 1964:170), but it has not been subjected to formal review. While preparing a paper for the 32nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and following submission of an abstract (Merbs 1963:425), enough doubts were raised to call for a re-examination of the entire question of premortem tooth loss in northern populations. The results of this re-examination are presented here.

The Formal-Substantive Controversy in Economic Anthropology: Reflections on Its Wider Implications

Abstract: SINCE THE LITERATURE dealing with the so-called formal-substantive controversy in economic anthropology is already quite bulky, a word of explanation is in order as to why I have chosen to add to its bulkiness. As anyone who has been following this dispute knows, the main issue in contention is whether the concepts and propositions of formal economics, ostensibly designed to explain the phenomena of market economies, are also applicable--either wholly or in part-to the analysis of non-market economies as well. The formalists say that they are applicable and the substantivists that they are not. Yet until we are provided with some explicit statement of the rules that connect formal propositions to empirical economic phenomena, it is difficult to see upon what warranted grounds the claims for applicability rest. Thus before raising questions about the relevance of traditional economic theory to non-market economies, we can legitimately pose the more general question: to what extent can formal economic analysis inform us about the operation of any concrete economic system? By focussing the debate almost exclusively upon primitive and peasant economies, the impression has been created that, at least in the case of advanced market systems, this linking of the formal to the empirical has already been worked out and confirmed by economists. But one need not search very far in the economic literature to discover that, even when it comes to market systems, economists themselves hold sharply different views concerning the empirical status and explanatory power of "received" economic theory. Indeed, as Martin has pointed out (1957; 1964), it is not at all clear whether the basic postulates of economics are to be construed as empirical propositions, normative injunctions or heuristic maxims. On this, however, more later. The immediate stimulus for writing this paper has come from my reading of Cook's recent contribution to the formal-substantive debate (1966a) and from a statement of Nash in which he congratulates both Cook and other of his anthropological colleagues on the skill with which they have exposed the fallacy in

Ascertaining, Testing, and Interpreting Sequences of Cultural Development

Abstract: N AN EARLIER PAPER (Carneiro 1962) I attempted to show how Guttman scale analysis could be applied to the study of cultural evolution, and in later ones (Carneiro and Tobias 1963; Carneiro 1969) presented some results obtained thereby. Since the last of these papers was written, ew findings have emerged from the study, and it is these findings that I would like to present here. Since Guttman scaling is becoming increasingly familiar to anthropologists, and since its application to cultural evolution has already been described inthe articles cited above, I will not undertake toexplain it again here. Instead, I will begin by reviewing a few of the results reported arlier, since they serve as a basis for understanding the newer findings. Figure 1 shows a scalogram comprising 50 traits and 100 societies.2 The inventory of traits for each society was made at a single time level. Although the time levels vary somewhat from society to society, most of them (except in the case of early civilizations like Egypt and Rome) are roughly contemporaneous. The order in which the traits are arranged on the scalogram, from bottom to top, which is the order of their decreasing frequency, we take to be the order in which these societies most probably have evolved them. So that from a systematic comparison of a wide range of essentially s nchronic data we are inferring a diachronic process. When scale analysis is used in this way, we have another instance of the application of the comparative method in anthropology. Everyone knows, of course, that the use of the comparative method in this field has long been questioned and even rejected by anthropologists. Alexander Goldenweiser, for example, asked pointedly:

A Structural Comparison of Disposal of the Dead in the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic

Abstract: FROM THE 1860's until Capitan and Peyrony's (1909, 1912) discovery of the series of Mousterian graves at La Ferrassie, there was a widespread belief that Paleolithic peoples did not bury their dead. Burial of the dead was thought to involve a sensibility of feeling that was beyond the capabilities of the brutish Neanderthalers and the hunters of the Age of Reindeer. The complex structure of the burials at La Ferrassie (Capitan and Peyrony 1909, 1912; Breuil 1921; Howell 1965) and the unequivocal association of these burials with Mousterian artifacts should have settled the problem. Yet as late as 1921 Peyrony felt it necessary to publish a paper entitled "Did the Men of the Mousterian Bury their Dead?" (Peyrony 1921), affirming that they did. Once it became generally accepted that burials did indeed exist in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, various attempts were made to explain the form they took. Luquet (1926) wrote a monograph on the religion of fossil man in which he attempted to trace continuity in a "cult of the dead" from the Mousterian through the Upper Paleolithic. In 1948 a paper appeared by Paul Wernert dealing with a "skull cult," the first traces of which he saw at Choukoutien and which developed in an ever-elaborating fashion through the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic. These authors had their feet firmly planted on both sides of the interpretive fence; on the one hand they denied a role to Neanderthal man in our ancestry, yet they saw the Mousterian as a crucial stage in the sequences they tried to demonstrate.

Romantic Love and Subsistence Dependence of Spouses

Abstract: N ANALYZING THE EFFECTS OF ROMANTIC LOVE on social relations, it is useful to begin by making the assumption that it is to the advantage of most societies to have relatively stable marital relations. Advantages accruing from such stability might include more stable alliances between families, reduced likelihood fanyone being without the necessities for survival, fewer conflicts over inheritance, and less risk of interfamily feuding. There are many sources of instability built into marriages. Relations with one's spouse and with co-resident relatives, like any close social relationships, can be expected to be frustrating at times. Marriage may become tedious in some ways, and other members of the opposite sex may seem more interesting than one's spouse. For these reasons and others, marital relationships typically may need something more than a private agreement between man and woman to remain stable. Dependence of marriage partners upon one another for subsistence is probably an important source of marital stability. Although other kinds of dependencies may contribute to a stable relationship, none would seem to be as crucial for individual survival s subsistence dependence. One could survive more easily with makeshift clothing or shelter, unsatisfied sexual needs, an unfriendly spouse, and deficiencies n most other things that might be provided by a spouse than he could survive on a starvation diet. In the absence of subsistence dependence, marital relations may be relatively unstable unless ome alternative bond develops. It is the hypothesis of this study that romantic love is such an alternative bond, that where subsistence dependence between spouses is strong, romantic love is unimportant as a basis of marriage, while where subsistence dependence between spouses is weak, romantic love is important as a basis of marriage. Romantic love, conceptualized as some degree of idealization a d attraction between a man and woman, has previously been shown to be a relatively im-

Reciprocal Economic Exchanges among North American Agricultural Operators

Abstract: T HIS PAPER concerns the custom of exchanging labor, services, and goods practiced by North American agricultural operators. The existence ofthese forms of exchange in rural areas is commonplace knowledge, although surprisingly few serious tudies have appeared. The objective of the paper is to provide an analysis of the social and economic functions ofa typical case of these exchanges, and to point out some theoretical implications for economic anthropology.

The Western Apache Classificatory Verb System: A Formal Analysis

Abstract: TN A RECENT ARTICLE Mary Haas (1967) demonstrates clearly that the study of classificatory verb systems can be of significant value in revealing the structure and content of what she calls "covert taxonomies."'2 She also notes that information concerning the operation of such systems with respect to specific lexical items is generally lacking (1967:360). The present paper is intended as a modest step towards the elimination of this deficiency. It presents an analysis of the Western Apache classificatory verb system and the covert categories embodied therein.

Thoughts on Upward Collapse: An Essay on Explanation in Anthropology

Abstract: IN A RECENT ARTICLE in this journal Sablofl and Willey (1967:312, 330, 313) propose not only a "'new solution to the mystery' of the Maya collapse" but a shift of "methodological priorities" with implications for all of anthropology. They believe their case study, in the light of past research on the Maya, teaches a valuable lesson: "by first gaining control of the historical variables we will then be in an excellent position to eventually gain control of the processual ones." Although the authors never make clear what they mean by "process," they connect it with evolution during their discussion of Binford's "stimulus" to the archaeological "outlook" of the 1960's. In that context there is something "materialistic" about evolutionary process although they do not claim to be "non-evolutionary." I find it difficult to understand why Sabloff and Willey minimize the importance of the evolutionary assumption on which their "historical" argument rests. When the authors accept the chiefdom classification for the Maya as well as the type's vulnerability in the face of competition from state societies, they make their historical event-"the collapse of Maya civilization" in the face of "militaristic aggressiveness" by state societies from the Mexican highlandspart of a sequential process bridging two sequential classes of society. Yet in argument against Binfordian "evolutionary premises" they warn: "if in our eagerness to change our goals from historical to processual ones, we relegate the reconstruction of historical events to a low priority role and ignore the importance of these events, then our efforts will be futile" (Sabloff and Willey 1967:317-318, 313-314). Unless I have misread Binford, the authors have not contradicted his position; they have simply added another demonstration of the kind of inadequate conceptualization of problems that he was warning against. In his article on the place of archaeology in anthropology, Binford (1962: 220-223) applies his distinctions between technomic, socio-technic and ideo-technic artifacts to the previously assumed devolution of copper artifacts between Archaic and Middle Woodland times. Ingeniously arguing that they were primarily status indicators rather than technomic items, he relates changes in their incidence and form to population and social changes. Thus, the copper artifacts in

Higi Armed Combat

Abstract: ONE APPROACH to the study of the warfare of a tribal people is to analyze the total range of types of armed combat in the society. Any fight involving weapons, whether it be between individuals, an individual and a group, or between groups, is considered armed combat. A perusal of the anthropological literature dealing with warfare reveals only two studies which have employed such an approach. Nearly 40 years ago W. Lloyd Warner, in his classic study of Murngin warfare (1931), described six types of engagements in which these Australian aborigines used weaponry. These types included fights, killings, night raids, planned battles, pitched battles between regions, and peace-making fights. Recently, Napoleon A. Chagnon studied the Yanomam6 of Venezuela (1967) and examined five forms of violence through which these Indians express their fierceness. This "graded system of violence" includes duels, club fights, spear fights, raids, and the assassination of visitors. The following analysis of Higi armed combat describes five types of conflict in this society: duels, staff fights, feuds, raids, and battles. The social and political context of each type of combat is discussed, and the causes and outcomes of the conflicts are analyzed. The present study differs from those of Warner and Chagnon in that the three types of armed combat-duels, staff fights, and feuds -which occurred within the Higi political community2 focused upon are classified as internal conflict; and the two types of armed combat-raids and battleswhich occurred between this political community and other Higi political communities are classified as external conflict. Such a distinction is useful because it

The Exchange of Sister's Daughter's Daughters in Northeast Arnhem Land

Abstract: 1. Australian Aboriginal relationship terminologies can only (or best) be seen as structured according to patri-sequences ("patrilines"), in terms of which alliance properties can be expressed. This assumption stems from the pervasive influence of Radcliffe-Brown's The Social Organization of Australian Tribes (1931) and Elkin's The Australian Aborigines (latest edition 1964). Ruhemann (1945), by contrast, has demonstrated the utility of viewing these systems in terms of matri-sequences as well as patri-sequences; her contribution, however, has been largely ignored. RadcliffeBrown's "Murngin" analysis (1951) is also carried out with the aid of matrisequences, but these are regarded simply as diagrammatic devices with no necessary ethnographic validity. Finally, Berndt's representation of the same system (1955) contains matri-sequences, but these are not systematically described in his text (see Radcliffe-Brown 1956). 2. In societies with prescriptive marriage, alliance categories are identical, or at least isomorphic, with descent groups or local aggregates of kinsmen. Maybury-Lewis (1965) and, recently at least, Needham (1964, 1967) have proceeded without this assumption, but the overwhelming mass of the literature on "elementary structures" takes it for granted. This means, in the case at hand, that formal properties of alliance in northeast Arnhem Land are viewed largely in terms of patri-categories (see preceeding assumption), since there are patrilineal descent groups but no matrilineal descent groups or preference for uxorilocal residence. 3. Prescriptive marriage systems cannot be viewed as symmetric if they can be seen in terms of at least three patri-sequences with continuous asymmetric relationships with each other. Lane (1961) has challenged this, though her arguments have not been generally accepted and so far lack detailed published ethnographic support (but see Shapiro 1967a, 1967c, 1967d, 1969a, 1969b:Chapter 8). This assumption forms the basis of the attempts by Leach (1961:68-72), Berndt (1955), and others

Friendship and Mobility in the Development of an Urban Elite African Social System

Abstract: T HERE IS A GROWING LITERATURE dealing with new elite Africans in towns, but there have been few studies of their informal social networks.2 In this article I describe friendship interaction which is part of the informal social organization of elite Africans in a town in Uganda, and I analyze the factors underlying the development of that organization. Elite Africans in Uganda are more than individuals with certain socio-economic attributes. They interact with one another, despite their ethnic differences, and their interaction constitutes an elite social system. The factors underlying this system are geographical mobility and a common friendship ideology. Given the attributes of elite status in Uganda -Western education, fluency in English, employment in bureaucracies, and relative wealth-the mobility of the elite and their common friendship ideology are essential to their interaction and thus to the development of their social system. The social organization of urban elite Africans which I describe is based upon fieldwork in Mbale, Uganda, in 1965-1966.

The Beginnings of a Scientific Approach to Prehistoric Archaeology in 17th and 18th Century Britain

Abstract: THE EARLY HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY has been the subject of several recent and informative studies. Rowe (1965) has dealt in some detail with the Renaissance foundations of anthropology, and Hodgen (1964) with the 16th and 17th centuries. But neither author has stressed the development of an idea of prehistory. This has been the contribution of Daniel (1952, 1962), who, however, has concentrated on the 19th century. Piggot (1931 through 1965) has contributed a great number of illuminating and historically conscious articles on British antiquarianism, but he has yet to consolidate hese into a systematic exposition of the development of prehistoric studies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Atkinson (1960), Heizer (1962), and others have used some materials from this period, but, again, no cohesive history has resulted from their work. According to anthropological tradition, the study of prehistory in Western Europe was founded during the 19th century by men such as Thomsen in Denmark, Boucher de Perthes in France, and Pengelly, Lyell, and Colt Hoare in Britain. Although it may be true that the word prehistory was not used before this period, the foundations for the systematic study of prehistoric sites had already been laid by 1800. Interest in the monuments ofpre-Roman tiquity dates back at least to the Tudor period in Great Britain. The topographies and county histories ofthe 17th century contain an increasing umber of references to the stone circles, barrows, and other prehistoric remains inthe West of England. By 1750, a number of antiquarians ot only considered pre-Roman relics to be of great importance; they also distinguished between the problems of historic archaeology and the archaeology of remains which antedated written sources (Wise 1742:3, Stukeley 1724:2). The latter half of the 18th century witnessed the expansion of the idea of prehistory to include not only the study of preRoman Britain but also the study of the rudimentary stone technology of the earliest inhabitants of England. This formative period in British archaeology coincides with a time of rapid economic growth in England and Wales, which, with population expansion, 1 We should like to thank Professors Robert J. Braidwood and Allen Debus, both of the University of Chicago, who gave generously of their time and advice when research for this paper was begun in 1963.

A Computer Analysis of Bedouin Marriage

Abstract: N AN EARLIER PAPER we described a computer program that we have devised for the analysis of genealogical data (Coult and Randolph 1965). We present here some of the results obtained in analyzing, by use of the program, the marriage system of a Bedouin Arab descent group. Marriage systems, such as those of the Bedouin, in which endogamic marriage is frequent, are particularly cumbersome to analyze because of the many affinal nd consanguineal re ationships that may unite any two given individuals. Use of high speed electronic computers presents one practical possibility for analyzing such systems. The employment of a computer permits horough processing of masses of empirical data prior to the formulation f models. Thus, the present analysis, which resulted in the determination of all consanguineal relations between spouses up to ten links and the determination of all affinal relations up to ten links but containing a maximum of two affinal (H or W) links, produced an average of 350 kin-type r lationships between each set of spouses. The usual means of determining relationships bymanual methods ordinarily results in the production of an average of no more than 3 or 4 links between spouses. Manual methods, therefore, do not begin to show the complexity of such systems. The data to be discussed below were collected by Randolph in the Negev desert of Israel between February 1961 and February 1962.2 Standard methods for collecting the genealogical data were employed, and no thought was given to a later analysis by computers. An attempt was made to gather all the genealogical information possessed by members of the descent group.3 The data used for computation include a list of the individuals inthe population and their known ancestors, as well as the known primary relatives for all of these persons. The population in this case was the Hawaashleh Bedouin sub-

Anthropology in the Age of Enlightenment: Progress and Utopian Functionalism

Abstract: D URING THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, philosopher-scientists set their sights on the sources of human progress. Their immediate purpose was to apply a scientific method to human history in order to trace a natural human growth which began in savagery, passed through the intermediate stage of barbarism, and then moved up to civilization. However, their ultimate goal was to draw the guideline by which civilized men could avoid painful turns and the tardy pace that had dogged these savage and barbaric paths because of errors that contradicted Nature's laws. Thus it happened that the wide spectrum of the human situation opened before them, and they were forced to confront he nature of man, society, tradition, how things change, and how nations may lose their sense of destiny because of '\"artificial\" aws and extravagances. The idea of progress drew scholars into ultimate human purposes, and here they were attracted by the notion that the processes of civilization finally would produce a type of community and a mode of life congenial to human nature and the best that could be achieved according to the potentials of that nature. The utopian orientation of 18-century Progressivists inevitably involved them in a systemic-functional a ysis reminiscent ofall those who have projected in an imaginative way their hopes for a perfected man in a perfect society. There was

Anthropological Explanations: Style in Discourse

Abstract: ONE OF THE MOST PERSISTENT POLEMICS of scholarship has been that between science and humanism, a dispute which probably began before anyone thought to phrase the opposition in just those terms and which might even have led to the definition f these two bodies of thought as different and opposite.' From early manifestations to enshrinement in a series of novels by C. P. Snow, its primary product has been further inconclusive argument. Chiefly a ritual of historians, it has also been conducted by their close kin, the

People as Wealth in Turu Society

Abstract: IT SEEMS TO ME that anthropology has reached a state of economic sophistication sufficient to make it unnecessary to be concerned over the treatment of people as wealth. Gray has argued the point with respect to African marriage (Gray 1960), and in our own society we are aware that there is no moral problem involved in treating people in some respects as wealth. We award variable amounts to plaintiffs because of bodily injuries from automobile accidents, we buy and sell rights in athletes, and we purchase the time of laborers. We recognize that the services and the bodies of people have economic value, whatever other values they may have. Applying this point of view in Africa, a whole new dimension of African life may be uncovered, as not only marriage arrangements but negotiations regarding compensation for injury to the bodies of persons are revealed to be a kind of exchange system. The purpose of this paper is to describe in part how such a general system of exchange of rights in persons appears to work, and how it worked, in Turu society. In the course of exploring the Turu system, light may also be cast upon some old problems in African ethnology, particularly the matters of the relation of sister's son and mother's brother, the relation of brideprice and bloodwealth, the relation of patrilineality and matrilineality, and the operation of the feud in segmentary societies. The Turu, a Bantu-speaking people of about 175,000 population, who formerly had a classic segmentary, patrilineal society, and who grow bulrush millet as well as herd large numbers of cattle, sheep, and goats, dwell in the inland drainage region of Singida District on the mainland of Tanzania., Turu think of people in one respect as social beings and in another as wealth of the same order as cattle, grain, and other material goods. This is seen in the distinction that is made with respect to "conflicts between people" and "conflicts between cattle." The former refers to disputes stemming from attack on the social position of someone, such as an unwarranted insult aimed at a senior by a junior. The latter conflict relates to disputes about property, for which the word "cattle" is a synonym or common denominator referring not only to cattle as such but to other goods and people insofar as they are property. For example, if the beating of a woman gives rise to a dispute between her husband and her owners, 1 Further background information on the Turu may be obtained in Schneider (1964, 1966) and Von Sick (1916).

Settlement Pattern and Demography at Sheep Rock Shelter: Their Role in Culture Contact

Abstract: O NE OF THE MOST INTERESTING ASPECTS of an artifact assemblage is the nature and extent of resemblances b tween itand other assemblages located elsewhere. Strong, specific resemblances between elements within two or more geographically separated archaeological omponents are often regarded as evidence of an historical relationship between the communities thus archaeologically defined. The nature of this relationship is often ot made clear, even when these resemblances areused to date the components, or to define archaeological units uch as \"tradition,\" \"phase,\" horizon,\" \"complex,\" and \"culture area.\" Questions concerning the nature of cultural ffinities b tween groups, regardless of whether the groups are archaeologically or ethnographically defined, are fundamentally questions concerning the nature of culture contact. Within any given geographical or physiographic province it is very likely that only a limited number of types of contact situations prevail among the constituent local populations during any particular historical period. Insight into the nature of these contact situations should therefore contribute to an explanation of the cultural ffinities connecting local populations. The term \"contact network\" will be used to refer to the multiple interaction links that bind together a number of local populations and make possible culture element diffusion. A contact network is thus the sum total of contact situations between groups that account for culture lement resemblances b tween close or widely separated local populations. In the Ridge and Valley Section of Central Pennsylvania (Fig. 1), and between it and adjacent regions, the contact network among local populations appears to be a function of settlement pattern and population density. The entire history of the Raystown region of Central Pennsylvania, as viewed from excavations at Sheep Rock and neighboring sites, seems to reveal only two fundamental settlement patterns. The earliest, and most persistent, was a nomadic pattern of

A Correction: A Structural Comparison of Disposal of the Dead in the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic

Abstract: Dr. Henry Wright of the University of Michigan was kind enough to point out to me an error of fact in my recent paper, \"A Structural Comparison of Disposal of the Dead in the Mousterian and the Upper Paleolithic\" 24:144 (1968). In the paper, reference is made to a multiple burial at Shukbah; I included this multiple burial in the sample of Near Eastern Neanderthal burials, whereas Garrod identifies t as Natufian (Garrod and Bate 1942:7). There were 8burials at the site, and this group of one adult and 2 children (burials # 6-8) underlay a block that was \" . .. gradually buried as the Natufian hearths were laid down\" (Garrod and Bate 1942:6). One might argue that he stratigraphic icture here is ambiguous, and certainly the level of generality and undocumented assertion i Garrod's report is distressing. Let us assume, however, that Garrod iscorrect and that he burials in question were Natufian. The removal of the one group burial from the Neanderthal sample used in the paper does not affect the arguments made--that Near Eastern and Western European Neanderthals disposed of their dead in different ways and that he social organizational data to be gleaned from an analysis of the patterns of disposal can be instructive.