“Isn't the past, the past?”

Historical memory, Time and the Other or

How do American Archaeologists understand & control time & space?

The utility of the culture area concept is greatest for pre-Contact American Indian cultures.

But there are problems!

Still has a tendency to lock cultures in time

Unfortunate use of the term prehistoric

Prehistoric implies that people were without a history until it was written by the white man.

Some archaeologists seem to believe this

Pre-Contact might actually be a better word

Locked in Time

Taos Pueblo, a thousand years of history

Two ways to get at the distant past

Archaeology

Oral tradition

Both have strengths and weaknesses

American Indians distrust the stories archaeologists tell.

Archaeologists question the historicity of oral tradition.

Knowing the past

Archaeological stories are not Indian stories of their own pasts.

For Indians archaeological stories are told by the conquerors and colonists

This does not invalidate the stories archaeologists tell.

Truth vs. validity

The stories may overlap, but often do not even deal with the same things.

Knowing the past

Archaeology is a western discipline using western approaches to knowing, western ideas of time and western notions of logic.

To study people of the past, you need to make them coeval with yourself.

To know the past, you must excavate, analyze & interpret

Stories are a construction of pasts based on material evidences discovered and interpreted by archaeologists.

Stories are not always about people but contain discussions of objects and a people’s use of  tools.

But archaeologists need to remember that objects are not people!

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

The primacy of material culture and context

The things people leave behind

Artifacts, ecofacts, ideofacts

The crucial importance of context

Artifacts demand explanations

—if it’s there, it requires and explanation

Artifacts don’t lie

—but they don’t speak for themselves

The Problem of Archaeological Jargon

•A major complaint is that people don’t understand our terms

•Archaeological approaches to time and space seem to contradict the way some see the world—most notably Indigenous people, but many lay people

•Archaeology uses standards of scientific taxonomy similar to Linnean taxonomic systems in biology

•Time is the ‘fly in the ointment.’

The linear nature of time

Literacy vs. orality

Written word places emphasis on linearity

Past and future are emphasized because present is fleeting and continually “gone”

Archaeological Approaches to the Past

Archaeology and Linguistic partitions of

the past

For archaeologists, the past is the key to the future.

Time has many possible paths into the future, influenced by our pasts.

Two Archaeological Models of Time and Space

Model 1: ‘time flows like a river’ (space, too)—cultural change is constant, accretional, gradual, and constrained by what already exists

- change within a historical trajectory (except in cases of sudden cultural replacement); cultural traits added, one at a time; must fit with what's already there

- as we proceed from time t to t+1, to t+2, etc., we move farther from starting point, and change gets greater and greater; t+2 is more different from t than t+1 is

- likewise, space s, s+1, s+2, etc.

Model 2: ‘punctuated equilibrium; cultures change in response to environmental change through adaptation

- period of major environmental change (eg., end of Pleistocene) correlate with brief period of major cultural change (Archaic transition), followed by long period of stability

Basic Time Units in Archaeology

Archaeologists conceive of time at different levels or scales; from short term adaptations (periods) to long term patterns (ages; eg., Paleolithic)

- period: usually a short time unit, marked by cultural homogeneity

- age: longer unit of time defined by smaller number of more general traits (eg., stone flaking, pottery, agriculture)

Basic Space Units in Archaeology

- site: discrete place with continuous coverage of archaeological materials

- locality: small area may include several sites of same community or cultural group; assumes complete cultural homogeneity (eg., Fraser River delta)

- region: somewhat larger area, often coincides with physiographic region; assumes high degree of cultural homogeneity, as in several communities who form a "tribe" (eg., G of G)

- area: corresponds to "culture area" (eg., Northwest Coast)

Basic Time/Space Units in Archaeology

- component: archaeological materials from single level (may combine several deposits) at single site

- phase: basic time/space unit of recurring cultural traits; may include several components; limited to brief time period and to locality or region

- culture: groups of phases (eg., Anasazi; BM II, III, Pueblo I-V)

Integrative Units

- these units link cultures together through time and space

- horizon: spatial continuity, represented by broad areal distribution of key traits; assumes wide and rapid spread (eg., Chavin); allows "horizontal" linking of phases

- tradition: integrative unit of temporal continuity; persistent configurations of material culture through time (eg., pottery tradition)

- stage: a cultural developmental unit; evolutionary; eg., Formative stage; chiefdom stage

For Native Americans, the cyclical nature of time

Time has no start or end

All is essentially the present

Actors and places may change but natural laws remains the same

The ‘present’ pastFor Indians, the past is the present, is the future, is the past

Time

The Present Past

“We’ve been here for 26 million years!”

“This has bothered me for 500 years!”

Matthew King (Noble Red Man), 1983

Matthew King (center), Peacekeeper Conference, 1985

For Native Americans, the cyclical nature of time is apparent everywhere.

Time is repeated, with different actors and locales, but follows a sequence of "god-given," natural law. Stories about it provide exemplars for present behavior.

Note Well:

This does not mean that Indians don’t understand chronological time!

Winter counts and calendar sticks

The nature of oral tradition

Rendering of time is not essential.

Historicity is not central.

What is learned of natural law is crucial.

Natural Law

‘Let the people sleep in peace. It is a burial ground and also a church for our Indian people. We cannot change it, because God gave us this country and he gave us the laws to govern our people. We cannot change it. No one can change it. We cannot make laws. Sometimes those laws are made, it’s more prejudice.’

Matthew King (Noble Red Man), 1983

Ways of life are God-given or part of the natural order of things and knowable simply by living or from oral tradition.

Peacekeeper Conference, South Dakota, 1985, Matthew King to the left of Frank Fools Crow (standing and holding the Crazy Horse pipe)

Raven

Earth DiverTurtle

For American Indians, traditions tell the people where they came from. Stories usually tell of creation in place by culture heroes or a Creator who made the land and sometimes, the people too.

Iktomi—the spider

Muskra

t

Coyote

CrawfishOld Man

"One day the Great Spirit collected swirls of dust from the four directions in order to create the Comanche people. These people formed from the earth had the strength of mighty storms. Unfortunately, a shape-shifting demon was also created and began to torment the people. The Great Spirit cast the demon into a bottomless pit. To seek revenge the demon took refuge in the fangs and stingers of poisonous creatures and continues to harm people every chance it gets."

Comanche Creation Story

My People have been here forever!—Matthew King, Lakota

The stories of scientists—especially archaeologists—

are very different from those of Indians.

They demand data and cannot take the stories on faith as Indian people do.

Using science, they do not prove the past; rather they try to disprove their own hypotheses about it.

Many people don’t understand how science operates, and for Indian people this can lead to frustration and anger about what archaeologists propose.

“[Archaeology,] by its very nature must challenge, not respect, or acknowledge as valid, such folk renditions of the past because traditional knowledge has produced flat earths, geocentrism, women arising out of men's ribs, talking ravens and the historically late first people of the Black Hills upwelling from holes in the ground.“

Ronald Mason

As some archaeologists see oral tradition:

‘… [O]ral accounts have been inevitably changed in context of transmission because the traditions include myths that cannot be considered as if factual histories, because the value of such accounts is limited by concerns of authenticity, reliability, and accuracy, and because the record as a whole does not show where historical fact ends and mythic tale begins…’

As the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sees oral tradition in the Kennewick/Ancient One case:

Whose story is the truth?

Only that of the Indians because truth is always based on faith, not evidence.

Archaeological stories are based on evidence and only seek validity.

Archaeologists should never say they have the truth about the past.

For Indians to accept archaeological stories as true, they would have to give up their own oral traditions about their past.

To do so would be to pound another nail in the coffin of their cultural identity.

‘My ancestors, relatives, grandmother so on down the line, they tell you about the history of our people and it's passed on and basically, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that archaeology don't mean nothing. We just accept it, not accept archaeology, but accept the way our past has been established and just keep on trying to live the same old style, however old it is.’ Cecil Antone (Gila River tribes)

The result: ‘archaeology don't mean nothing.’