Archaeology of Bruce Trigger: Theoretical Empiricism 9780773575776

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THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BRUCE TRIGGER

The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger Theoretical Empiricism Edited by RONALD F. WILLIAMSON

and MICHAEL S. BISSON

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3127-7 isbn-10: 0-7735-3127-0 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3161-1 isbn-10: 0-7735-3161-0 (paper) Legal deposit third quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Insights Initiative of McGill’s Faculty of Arts, the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and the Department of Anthropology of McGill University. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication The archaeology of Bruce Trigger: theoretical empiricism/edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Michael S. Bisson. Includes bibliographical references. isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3127-7 isbn-10: 0-7735-3127-0 (bnd) isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3161-1 isbn-10: 0-7735-3161-0 (pbk) 1. Trigger, Bruce G. 2. Trigger, Bruce G. – Influence. 3. Archaeology. I. Williamson, R. F. (Ronald F.) cc115.t74a72 2006

930.1092

c2006-901600-3

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

Contents

Illustrations and Tables vii Contributors ix Foreword xi 1 The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger 3 ro n a l d f. w i l l i a m s o n , j e r i m y j . c u n n i n g h a m , and jane h. kelley 2 Triggering Post-processual Archaeology and Beyond 16 ian hodder 3 Moderate Relativism/Political Objectivism a l i s o n wy l i e

25

4 Comparative Archaeology: An Unheralded Cross-cultural Method 36 stephen chrisomalis 5 History, Theory, and Politics: Situating Trigger’s Contribution to Social Archaeology 52 ly n n m e s k e l l 6 Marx, Childe, and Trigger 61 randall h. mcguire

vi

Contents

7 Marxist Theories and Settlement Studies in Japanese Archaeology: Direct and Indirect Influences of V. Gordon Childe 80 j u n k o h a b u a n d c l a r e f aw c e t t 8 Yes Virginia, There Is Gender: Shamanism and Archaeology’s Many Histories 92 s i l v i a to m á š k o v á 9 Bruce Trigger’s Impact on Ontario Iroquoian Studies 114 ro b e r t p e a r c e , ro b e r t m a c d o n a l d , da v i d s m i t h , p e t e r ti m m i n s , a n d g a r y wa r r i c k 10 Bruce Trigger and the Children of Aataentsic martha latta

135

11 In the Land of the Lions: The Ethnohistory of Bruce G. Trigger 142 to b y m o r a n t z 12 The Influence of Bruce Trigger on the Forensic Reconstruction of Aboriginal History 174 alexander von gernet 13 The Awakening of Internalist Archaeology in the Aboriginal World 194 e l d o n ye l l o w h o r n 14 Wise Counsel: Bruce Trigger at McGill University 210 michael s. bisson 15 Bruce Trigger: Ambassador for Archaeology 221 b r i a n fa g a n 16 Retrospection 225 b r u c e g . tr i g g e r Bibliography of the Works of Bruce Trigger 259 Honours, Awards, Special Lectures 289 Graduate Student Dissertation and Thesis Titles 293 Index

295

Illustrations and Tables

illustrations Ostyak man near the Ob River 102 Tungus men in a stylized illustration 103 Charles Wesley Trigger, Bruce’s grandfather; John Wesley Trigger, Bruce’s father; and Bruce 227 Beatrice Cooper, Bruce’s aunt; Bruce; and Gertrude Graham, Bruce’s mother 229 Bruce Trigger working with two volunteers, Ault Park site, Ontario, 1957 232 Bruce Trigger with his crew at the site of Arminna West, Nubia, March 1962 238 Bruce and Barbara at Elbow Beach V. Gordon Childe conference

243

249

Bruce Trigger and Ursula Franklin, June 10, 2003

253

viii

Illustrations and Tables

ta b l e s 1.1 The Uses of Bruce Trigger’s Major Works as Reflected in the Citation Patterns of Other Archaeologists 4 1.2 Influential Theoreticians Cited in North American Archaeological Journals 10

Contributors

m i c h a e l s . b i s s o n Department of Anthropology, McGill University s t e p h e n c h r i s o m a l i s Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto j e r i m y j . c u n n i n g h a m Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary b r i a n fa g a n Lindbrior Corporation c l a r e fa w c e t t Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St Francis Xavier University j u n k o h a b u Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley i a n h o d d e r Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University j a n e h . k e l l e y Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary m a r t h a l a t t a Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Scarborough ro b e r t m a c d o n a l d Archaeological Services Inc. r a n d a l l h . m c g u i r e Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University

x

Contributors

ly n n m e s k e l l Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University to b y m o r a n t z Department of Anthropology, McGill University ro b e r t p e a r c e London Museum of Archaeology dav i d s m i t h Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Mississauga p e t e r ti m m i n s Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants s i l v i a to m á š k o v á Women’s Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill b r u c e g . tr i g g e r Department of Anthropology, McGill University a l e x a n d e r v o n g e r n e t Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Mississauga g a r y wa r r i c k Contemporary Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford Campus ro n a l d f. w i l l i a m s o n Archaeological Services Inc. a l i s o n wy l i e Department of Philosophy, University of Washington e l d o n ye l l o w h o r n Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University

Foreword

This volume is based, in large part, on a series of presentations made at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in a symposium entitled “The Works of Bruce G. Trigger: Considering the Contexts of His Influence.” The intent of that session – and indeed of this book, which contains expanded versions of those presentations as well as new contributions – was to draw together a variety of scholars in an effort to identify the fundamental importance of the intellectual contributions of Bruce Trigger. He has been many things to many people: a guide for the contextualization of archaeology within broader society, an articulate advocate of the abandonment of oppositional argument in archaeological theory in favour of the creative middle ground, a critical analyst and architect of social evolutionary theory, an insightful historian of the discipline, an Egyptologist who has broadened his work to include a cross-cultural analysis of the nature of early civilizations, and an ethnohistorian and authority on aboriginal cultures in northeastern North America. It was an easy mission to celebrate a great scholar, mentor, and friend in this way. The task of confirming presenters, and later authors, was almost effortless, as all responded in the affirmative immediately, every reply accompanied by a statement to the effect that they considered it an honour to have the opportunity to acknowledge publicly Bruce’s influence on their work and to explore the ways in which he has changed our discipline. That kind of respect has been earned not only because of

xii

Foreword

Bruce’s superb mind and unparalleled body of work, but also because those who know him personally know him to be a warm, kind, and fundamentally decent human being. It was a special privilege for us, one a former student (Williamson) and the other a career-long colleague (Bisson), to assemble these contributions, which succeed in reflecting to a great degree Bruce’s broad influence in the discipline of anthropology. We would also like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Andrea Carnevale and the insightful copy-editing of Judith Turnbull. It is certainly no accident that two of Bruce Trigger’s most frequently cited works, The Children of Aataentsic and Natives and Newcomers, were published by his home and Canadian publisher, McGill-Queen’s University Press. The unique combination of history, ethnography, and archaeology in these books, as well as Bruce Trigger’s insistence on giving aboriginal peoples their own voice, made them appealing to all thinking Canadians. It is for these reasons that they enjoyed significant influence outside of scholarly circles and well beyond Canada. It is, therefore, fitting that this collection of papers, assembled in Bruce’s honour, should also be a McGill-Queen’s book. The volume includes papers by scholars who have helped to shape the debates on archaeological theory of the past several decades. The contributors have provided their particular view of Trigger’s influence while advancing their own positions on the best approach to the interpretation of archaeological data. What results is a volume that offers the reader a unique opportunity to view how one of the most influential scholars of the twentieth century influenced his students, his peers, and his discipline. All of the diverse perspectives come together in one place in an analysis of the one scholar who has managed to merge the history of our discipline with a prescription for a future understanding of the past. The papers have been ordered to move from the theoretical to the empirical, although anyone familiar with Bruce’s work will know that one should not be separated from the other. Chapter 1, which serves as an introduction to the volume, provides a review of Bruce Trigger’s broad influences in the discipline, focusing on his most frequently cited works and his impact on Canadian archaeology. Ian Hodder’s and Alison Wylie’s chapters then place the corpus of Bruce’s work in the context of the theory debates of the last thirty years, while Stephen Chrisomalis examines Bruce’s ambitious comparative study, Understanding Early Civilizations, looking for ways to include diachronic approaches in such analyses. Lynn Meskell reviews Bruce’s influences on social archaeology in both North America and Egypt. While many of the papers, including

Foreword

xiii

Meskell’s, touch on Trigger’s use of Marxism and, in particular, his regard for the works of V. Gordon Childe, Randall McGuire lays out the historical progression of Marxist perspectives in archaeology from Marx through Childe to Trigger. Junko Habu and Clare Fawcett then take that history and examine it in the context of a nationalist archaeology in Japan. Silvia Tomášková examines the ways in which Trigger has encouraged archaeologists to consider the history of their intellectual practices, specifically as it relates to a historical contextual analysis of the gender of shamans. She concludes that an enhanced understanding of the history of our discipline leads to the potential for diversity in the interpretation of our social past. Turning to Trigger’s specific influences in North America, Robert Pearce and his colleagues and Martha Latta speak to the numerous authoritative works he authored that encompass historical, ethnographic, and archaeological data and to his influence on Iroquoian archaeology. Toby Morantz reviews the methodologies Bruce employs in his use of the ethnohistoric record, applying them herself to the archaeology and ethnohistory of seventeenth-century James Bay in a search for an understanding of how the inhabitants of the region moved through time. Alexander von Gernet then evaluates the use of Trigger’s published record in the context of forensic anthropology – “the application of anthropological knowledge to legal problems” – examining in particular Trigger’s views on the ways in which oral history should be employed in combination with other historical and anthropological evidence. This is followed by Eldon Yellowhorn’s discussion of the direction in which archaeology must move to accommodate the voice(s) of aboriginals in research. Yellowhorn, one of Bruce’s recent graduate students and the first aboriginal p hd graduate in archaeology in Canada, argues for an internalist archaeology that will draw on aboriginal cultural traditions and oral narratives in the study of local history, searching for their reflections in the archaeological record. No review of Bruce Trigger’s scholarship would be complete without a comprehensive examination of his major influences on McGill, the university to which he remained committed throughout his professional career. Michael Bisson presents a detailed discussion of his varied contributions to the McGill university community. With a dramatic flair, Brian Fagan then advances Bruce’s role as an ambassador for archaeology in society at large. It is fitting that one ambassador pays tribute to another.

xiv

Foreword

It is rare in volumes of this nature that the subject himself provides a retrospection with which one can compare the comments of the contributors and trace the evolution of his thinking. We are fortunate to have this paper, one that concludes with the promise of much more to come from one of the most prolific scholars of our time. It is our hope that these papers will introduce future archaeologists to a more nuanced understanding of Bruce’s work. Perhaps they too, inspired by Bruce, will discover the power and joy to be gained in reflecting about our world and the processes that have shaped it. And perhaps they too will embrace the responsibility we have to make our world a better place. Ronald F. Williamson, Toronto Michael S. Bisson, Montreal April 2006

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BRUCE TRIGGER

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1 The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger RONALD F. WILLIAMSON, JERIMY J. CUNNINGHAM, AND JANE H. KELLEY

i n t r o d u c t i o n : b r o a d d i s c i p l i n a ry i n f l u e n c e s In an era of specialists, Bruce Trigger has proven to be a true renaissance figure. He is one of the leading scholars of the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt and of aboriginal cultures in northeastern North America. He is a discriminating analyst and architect of social evolutionary theory and the definitive historian of the discipline. He has also been our most important guide for understanding the power of archaeological knowledge and our societal responsibilities in using that knowledge. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find an area of archaeology that has not been affected by some aspect of his scholarship. In attempting to understand something of Trigger’s influence on the discipline, we have conducted an extensive analysis of citation patterns relating to his research in eight archaeological journals based in North America (varying from small regional journals to disciplinary staples) and two from the United Kingdom for the period 1990–2002.1 In addition to noting which of Trigger’s works were referenced, we also categorized citations according to a basic typological scheme. The five basic types of citations that were noted referred to Trigger’s scholarship on (1) culture process, (2) nature of culture, (3) archaeological epistemology, (4) the practice of archaeology within broader society, and (5) primary research culminating in an “authoritative text” (Table 1.1). While we acknowledge the caveat that citation analysis can only provide a partial picture of

Table 1.1 The Uses of Bruce Trigger’s Major Works as Reflected in the Citation Patterns of Other Archaeologists Culture Process

Nature of Culture

Archaeological Knowledge

Archaeology as Practice

Authoritative Texts

Total

1

39

40

2

3

23

3

31

1

1

26

28

The Children of Aataentsic A History of Archaeological Thought Natives and Newcomers The Huron: Farmers of the North

1

Handbook, Northeast “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian” “Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis”

19

20

11

11

8 2

3

Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology

8

2

7

6

6

“Master and Servant: A Conference Overview”

2

3

1

6

“The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory”

1

3

2

6

“Alternative Archaeologies” “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization”

6 1

1

1

“Who Owns the Past?”

4

“The Past as Power”

4

“Trace-Element Analysis of Iroquoian Pottery” “William J. Wintemberg: Iroquoian Archaeologist”

1

5 4 4

4

4

1

3

“Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site”

3

3

“The Historic Location of the Hurons”

3

3

“Archaeology at the Crossroads” “Archaeology and the Ethnographic Present”

1

6 2

2 1

2 1

2

The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger

5

the scope and scale of the influence of Trigger’s scholarship in the discipline, the results of the analysis support our own general understandings of his contribution to archaeology. These have been integrated with our observations on how other archaeologists have come to view his work. The five most frequently cited texts by Trigger in all of the journals are, in descending order, Children of Aataentsic; A History of Archaeological Thought; Natives and Newcomers; The Huron: Farmers of the North; and the Northeast volume in the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians series. The citation data from the journals in which there were more than ten references to his scholarship underscore his fundamental influences both as an empirical researcher and as a theorist. He is known as the authoritative voice on the Hurons, and as we would expect, this influence predominates in regional journals like Ontario Archaeology, Mid-continental Journal of Archaeology, and even the Canadian Journal of Archaeology. Trigger’s influence as a general theorist is reflected, on the other hand, in the national journals, especially with respect to the integration of archaeological data and oral history in anthropological interpretations of pre-contact contexts. In the two Canadian journals, he is also referenced frequently in discussions of archaeology as it is practised, an influence that is also pronounced in journals with a broadly theoretical and international focus. In American Antiquity, for example, he is identified equally as an authoritative source and as a commentator on archaeology as practised, while in Antiquity, both A History of Archaeological Thought and his analyses of the practice of archaeology are most often noted. Such citations are reflected, for example, in examinations of the relationships between archaeological theory and practice in the context of national archaeological frameworks (e.g., Cooney and Woodman 1993, 632) and in analyses of the colonialist character of those archaeological studies in which the absence of historical connections between the archaeologist and the indigenous people being studied has led to stereotypical presentations of indigenous lives (e.g., Dowson 1993, 641–2). These data suggest that Trigger is known for his meticulous and insightful empirical studies, his critical history of archaeology, and his analyses of archaeology as practice, demonstrating that his influences are not restricted to either the empirical or the theoretical. Trigger’s research consistently highlights a critical political element. A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge University Press’s all-time best-seller in archaeology, astutely shows how archaeological theory has evolved both as a consequence of the social and political

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Ronald Williamson, Jerimy Cunningham, Jane Kelley

contexts in which archaeology is deployed and as a result of an everexpanding knowledge of the archaeological record. It is a story of the progress of scientific knowledge and of the wider intellectual, social, and economic background in which the discipline has developed. His thesis defies the simpler histories that would cast archaeology in the binary of “science” or “non-science,” and the quality and breadth of his research derails any casual disarticulation of these two themes. Unlike any other volume, A History of Archaeological Thought obliges those who like progress also to see archaeology’s social context and compels those who view all scientific knowledge as politics to consider that archaeological knowledge changes in response to data and that new understandings of the past can be more accurate than those that came before. Now in revision for a new edition, A History of Archaeological Thought simply remains the definitive textbook and professional desk-reference-of-choice for archaeologists interested in their discipline’s history. Trigger also has strong political views on contemporary issues, such as who owns the past. He has a profound understanding of the social contexts of archaeology and the differences or distortions that can arise from certain cultural climates, such as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. In this regard, he takes archaeology into politics and brings politics into archaeology. This is, in part, one of his dialectical facets. He is the ultimate authority on V. Gordon Childe and one of the pre-eminent scholars of Marxism, his treatment of the latter being as balanced as his views on other philosophical perspectives. His more overtly political works, like “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian,” Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology, “Alternative Archaeologies,” “Who Owns the Past?” and “The Past as Power,” consistently demonstrate that archaeology has been unable to achieve, at any point in its history, complete freedom from so-called political biases, as had been suggested by positivists. The counter-theme, that archaeological data are a constraint on interpretation, is stressed more directly in “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” In the citation analysis, these articles were cited twenty-eight times in the last twelve years for discussions on the practice of archaeology. The thought-provoking complexity of the arguments in these papers, however, leads to them being read far more often than cited. For example, a non-systematic perusal of North American theory course syllabi listed on the web revealed that few undergraduate theory courses or graduate core courses in archaeology failed to contain at least one of these key publications.

The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger

7

a dva n c i n g t h e m i d d l e g ro u n d Trigger’s work has consistently eschewed fashionable theoretical currents and thus defies easy definition within archaeology’s familiar typological schemes – the processualist, post-processualist, Marxist, or evolutionist. Instead, he shows a steady commitment to a productive theoretical middle ground that is dedicated to producing the highest quality of knowledge about the past. The middle-ground stance he advocates is not a product of random eclecticism or a formulaic attempt to create compromise; it is instead based on a theoretically informed pluralism that recognizes the need for different bodies of theory to appreciate the complexity of the past. The key difference between eclecticism and pluralism is perhaps best illustrated in his recent works (e.g., Trigger 2003a, 2003b). While one may need different theories and approaches to understand human action, such diversity should not preclude attempts to integrate theoretical approaches at a broad level. Perhaps one of the most remarkable elements of Trigger’s middleground approach is his determined advocacy of the value of diversity. That he has remained a moderate voice during periods of radical oscillation between extreme positions in archaeological thinking is readily apparent in his more overtly theoretical pieces. Yet, his reservations about the ahistoricism of the New Archaeology were demonstrated clearly in his definitive historical study The Children of Aataentsic. Then, in the face of the unapologetic particularism of post-processualism, he offered the exceptional comparative study Understanding Early Civilizations, demonstrating, among other things, that there were important parallels between societies in the ways that ideology functioned. Such detailed research does not simply caution against dogmatism, but illustrates how some approaches rendered passé by archaeology’s theoretical oscillations continue to have currency and relevance. By choosing to address issues that are part of the undercurrents of social theory, such as particularism versus nomothetic law, materialism versus idealism, and holism versus individualism, Trigger works to maintain plurality in archaeological discourse. While there is a definitively dialectical nature to Trigger’s scholarship, there is coherency and consistency in the approaches to which he returns in his various enterprises. Among these are a commitment to ecological possibilism over determinism and a long-standing commitment to multilinear visions of social evolution. We see the role of traditions in the creation of historically contingent consciousness but do not see the

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Ronald Williamson, Jerimy Cunningham, Jane Kelley

individual as only a product of that consciousness – both points of view deriving from Trigger’s Marxism. Individuals in Trigger’s vision change both themselves and their societies through the actions they initiate. By rotating his critique around this central core, Trigger has acted consistently as an alternative voice to theoretical stances that are too simple, too dogmatic, and too esoteric. He maintains this position by bringing the most ambitious theoretical claims in contact with data to show the continued relevance of a more holistic vision of human action. Leading by example, he has challenged his students and peers not only to focus on the issues defined by theoretical fashion, but to undertake meticulous research on those puzzling and intractable problems that actually need work in their particular fields of study. His contributions thus speak to both our understandings of the past and the everyday tools we employ in creating archaeological knowledge. They also highlight our understanding of what it means to be an archaeologist within broader society.

th e p r a c t i c e o f a r c h a e o l o g y : a ca n a d i a n fo c u s The result of Trigger’s work in Canada has not been to crystallize Canadian archaeology into a specific school of thought but to reinforce the resistance of many, indeed most, Canadian scholars to singular “-isms.” His sophistication in social theory and epistemology and his commitment to tying these to empirical data seemed to resonate with what was going on in Canadian archaeology at the time. It would make sense that Canadian archaeology in particular would be influenced by Trigger’s research. As one of Canada’s most prolific theorists, situated in one of the country’s most influential research institutions, Trigger naturally occupies a position of prominence within his home country. Much like Trigger though, Canadian archaeology defies simple description. It remains highly regionalized, with people working in Canada’s northern plains having more in common with their colleagues south of the border than with archaeologists working, for example, in Quebec. The sheer size of the country means that much basic sequence-building is still needed. Further, substantial numbers of Canadian archaeologists are now employed by private sector enterprises, as well as by aboriginal bands and agencies, government, and universities and museums. These different archaeological worlds do not interact as much as one would hope, and the kinds of structural separations seen in

The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger

9

countries such as the United States are as prominent here. Indeed, the basic internal structural relationships of Canadian archaeology do not seem to have changed substantially since the mid-1990s (see Kelley and Williamson 1996; Ferris 2000). Yet important initiatives with respect to our relationships with indigenous peoples have been recently formalized by the Canadian Archaeological Association (Nicholson et al. 1996), and concerns about ethical practices within the discipline as well as between archaeology and outside interests have grown. The voices of aboriginal groups now compete with archaeological voices in interpretations of the past (McGee 2004), and archaeologists must argue for their own “culture” in ways that were not imagined even twenty years ago. The evaluation of Trigger’s influence on the Canadian discipline, therefore, requires recognition of the discipline’s evolving complexity. A comparative study of one hundred randomly selected articles published in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology and American Antiquity during the 1990s shows some similarities and distinctions between Canadian and American archaeology in terms of basic emphasis. Only six authors were cited more than ten times cumulatively in both journals. In descending order these were Hodder, Wylie, Binford, Trigger, Hayden, and Schiffer (Table 1.2). While Hodder and Wylie were well represented in both journals, Binford was absent in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology sample and Trigger was absent in the American Antiquity sample. Only five texts were cited three or more times in the Canadian sample, including Trigger’s 1980 paper on “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” Several trends emerged that are worthy of comment. First, while both journals had an approximately equal proportion of citations concerning the nature of culture and the nature of archaeological knowledge, they were significantly different in the proportion of papers that focused on culture process and archaeology as practised. A consideration of culture process occurred far more frequently in American Antiquity (50 per cent of all theory citations) than in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology (27 per cent of all theory citations). The inverse was true for writings about archaeology as practised, with 41 per cent in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology and 13 per cent in American Antiquity. While we are reluctant to reify the role of national identities in academic research, the citation trends outline an important distinction between the archaeological communities in Canada and the United States. The American Antiquity articles demonstrated a continued interest in processualism’s focus on culture process, perhaps solidified

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Ronald Williamson, Jerimy Cunningham, Jane Kelley

Table 1.2 Influential Theoreticians Cited in North American Archaeological Journals (1990s) Canadian Journal of Archaeology

American Antiquity

Number of Citations

Number of Texts Cited

Number of Citations

Number of Texts Cited

Ian Hodder

8

5

21

21

Alison Wylie

13

9

10

6

Louis Binford

0

0

26

16

Bruce Trigger

11

7

0

0

Brian Hayden

10

9

0

0

Michael Schiffer

0

0

10

6

Christopher Shanks

0

0

8

4

Margaret Conkey

6

5

0

0

Robert Dunnell

0

0

6

5

Thomas Kuhn

0

0

6

3

Joan Gero

5

4

0

0

by the processual–post-processual debate, and showed little interest in situating archaeology within broader social and political contexts. Canadian archaeologists, in contrast, had flirted with processualism in the 1980s2 but, by the 1990s, had largely abandoned overt discussions of culture process and references to Binford. Throughout both the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian authors tended to cite Trigger in place of Binford, focusing on his suggestions about what it means to be an archaeologist theorizing and working in contemporary society. Even if they are not overtly committed to theoretical work, many Canadian archaeologists are careful to bring to their texts an acute awareness of the power and responsibilities that come with the production of archaeological knowledge. The apparent reflexivity of Canadian archaeology may also be a product of its relative lack of power. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the processual–post-processual debate provided the broader context against which archaeological theory was examined. Oppositions and incommensurable approaches were reified, prompting caricatures of

The Many Influences of Bruce Trigger

11

British archaeologists armed with French critical theory battling American scientism. Canadian archaeologists, on the other hand, were such a small group in such a vast country with such an unknown archaeological record that theory pluralism was their only option. Indeed, Kelley and Williamson (1996) suggested that Canadian archaeology has often remained inoculated against theoretical fashions in archaeology because its comparatively small archaeological community was focused almost entirely on building basic regional chronologies. The construction of those chronologies was often mixed with ecological interpretations, resulting in a kind of archaeology that was less dogmatic and more eclectic than anything in the United States. Such stances, outside of dominant theoretical/ideological positions, often provide the best perspective on those positions. Feminists, for example, have long noted that the view from the margin is often the best for providing a degree of critical distance from entrenched opinion. Cynics may point to a chronic a-theoretical empiricism north of the border (Binford 1989, 7), but Canadian archaeologists have now seen enough theoretical fads pass by to be able to recognize them as such. To some extent, Trigger’s middle ground and advocacy for theoretical balance are shared within the Canadian context. One of us (Kelley) taught graduate-level archaeological method and theory in Calgary, the largest archaeology department in Canada from the 1970s into the early 1990s. During the height of the New Archaeology, most graduate students flirted with processualism, despite the fact that in most of the classes, as taught by either Kelley or Richard Forbis, alternative viewpoints and the neglected history of the discipline were presented. There was not an avowed processualist on the faculty, but the students nevertheless absorbed that single point of view, as though with their mother’s milk. The emphasis on theoretical diversity was not unique to professionals working at McGill and Calgary. Perhaps seeking alternative ways of knowing and acknowledging the value of these alternatives in understanding complexity are Canadian phenomena; perhaps the Canadian roots of some of Trigger’s positions are deeper than has been noted. The influence of Trigger and others in this regard has been a force against disciplinary “presentism,” where anything over five or ten years old is not worth citing. Theirs might be a particularly Canadian approach to the teaching of archaeology. Trigger also adds an important critical and historically sensitive perspective. He has come to represent a touchstone for those in Canada and abroad who strive to define and understand archaeology as part of the wider world. We would also

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argue that the richness and diversity of the Canadian archaeological record, coupled with its pluralism, give us distinct advantages. That Trigger became the voice most often placed in opposition to Binford and processualism was due in part to the fact that he explored epistemology and social theory in depth, but also to the fact that he applied his perspectives to actual sets of data, some of them Canadian (Trigger 1976). His theoretical middle ground, his histories of the Hurons, and his analyses of the power of archaeological knowledge have permitted Canadian archaeologists to choose the most appropriate theoretical perspective(s) for the analyses of their data but also to remain aware of their responsibilities in the production and use of archaeological knowledge.

conclusion Hegmon (2003) has recently described most American archaeologists as adhering to “processualism-plus,” in which selective elements of different theoretical schools are wedded together. This form of “opportunistic foraging” allows researchers to experiment with different intellectual traditions and incorporate those that suit their own research approaches (Kelley 2001, 133). Trigger, of course, noted and advocated something quite similar in his 1984 article “Archaeology at the Crossroads.” Bruce Trigger has always seemed ahead of his time. His legacy to archaeology flows from his astute ability to make the empirical theoretical and the theoretical empirical. His studies are full of detail and nuance, yet he can tack with ease from these details to the most abstract elements of archaeological thought. By advocating the exploration of a vital and creative middle ground in both archaeological theory and practice, he has inspired his students and peers to do the work that needs doing. Perhaps an effective measure of that inspiration and influence lies in the group of essays that have been assembled herein in his honour.

notes 1 These include American Antiquity, Canadian Journal of Archaeology, Ontario Archaeology, Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Arctic Anthropology, Antiquity, Current Anthropology, Ethnohistory, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and World Archaeology.

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2 In the case of the Canadian Journal of Archaeology, Trigger was cited frequently for his authoritative texts as well as for his 1980 “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian,” 1984 “Alternative Archaeologies,” 1985 “The Past as Power,” and 1986 “Prehistoric Archaeology and American Society” papers, thereby contributing to the focus on archaeology as practice, a focus that continued in the 1990s. Unlike in the 1990s, however, Binford was cited frequently in issues of the Canadian Journal of Archaeology in the 1980s, 40 per cent of the time for his 1980 “Willow Smoke and Dog Tails” paper, an influence that continued into the 1990s in American Antiquity but not in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology. Conversely, Trigger was cited infrequently (eleven times) in American Antiquity during the 1980s, for “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian,” “Anglo-American Archaeology,” Time and Traditions, and The Children of Aataentsic. This suggests that the trends that appeared in the 1980s hardened in the 1990s, with many American Antiquity authors continuing to place their work within the processual–post-processual debate and Canadians abandoning that debate in favour of theoretical considerations concerning their practice.

references Binford, Lewis R. 1980. “Willow Smoke and Dogs Tails: Hunter Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation.” American Antiquity 45:4–20 – 1989. Debating Archaeology. New York: Academic Press Cooney, Gabriel, and P. Woodman. 1993. “A Sense of Place in Irish Prehistory.” Antiquity 67 (256):632–41 Dowson, Thomas A. 1993. “Changing Fortunes of Southern African Archaeology: Comment on A.D. Mazel’s ‘History.’” Antiquity 67 (256):641–4 Ferris, Neal, compiler. 2000. “Warning – Steep Grade Ahead: Current Directions in Canadian Archaeology – Papers of the caa Plenary.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 24:149–200 Hegmon, Michelle. 2003. “Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology.” American Antiquity 68:213–44 Kelley, Jane. 2001. “A Middle-of-the-Road View of Archaeology.” In Examining the Course of Southwest Archaeology: The Durango Conference, September 1995, edited by David A. Phillips and Lynne Sebastian, 129–44. New Mexico Archaeological Council Special Publication no. 3. Albuquerque: New Mexico Archaeological Council

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Kelley, Jane, and Ronald F. Williamson. 1996. “The Positioning of Archaeology within Anthropology: A Canadian Historical Perspective.” American Antiquity 61:1–16 McGee, Robert. 2004. “Between Racism and Romanticism, Scientism and Spiritualism: The Dilemmas of New World Archaeology.” In Archaeology on the Edge: New Perspectives from the Northern Plains, edited by Brian Kooyman and Jane Kelley. Calgary: University of Calgary Press Nicholson, Beverly, David Pokotylo, and Ronald F. Williamson, eds. 1996. Report of the Canadian Archaeological Association Aboriginal Heritage Committee, Statement of Principles for Ethical Conduct Pertaining to Aboriginal Heritage. Canadian Archaeological Association Pendergast, James F., and Bruce G. Trigger. 1972. Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Trigger, Bruce G. 1962. “The Historic Location of the Hurons.” Ontario History 54 (2):137–48 – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1970. “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 14: 3–48 – 1976. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1978a. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Columbia University Press – ed. 1978b. Northeast. Vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution – 1978c. “William J. Wintemberg: Iroquoian Archaeologist.” In Essays in Northeastern Anthropology in Memory of Marian E. White, edited by William E. Engelbrecht and Donald K. Grayson, 5–21. Rindge, N.H.: Occasional Publications in Northeastern Anthropology, no. 15 – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson; New York: Columbia University Press – 1981a. “Anglo-American Archaeology.” World Archaeology 13:138–55 – 1981b. “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study.” In Foundations of Northeast Archaeology, edited by Dean Snow, 1–50. New York: Academic Press – 1981c. “Archaeology and the Ethnographic Present.” Anthropologica 23:3–17 – 1984a. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70

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– 1984b. “Archaeology at the Crossroads: What’s New?” Annual Review of Anthropology 13:275–300 – 1985a. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s ‘Heroic Age’ Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1985b. “The Past as Power: Anthropology and the North American Indian.” In Who Owns the Past? edited by Isabel McBryde. Melbourne: Oxford University Press – 1986. “Prehistoric Archaeology and American Society.” In American Archaeology Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology, 1935–1985, edited by David J. Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, 187–215. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press – 1988. “Who Owns the Past? / A qui appartient le passé?” Muse 6:13–5, 21–3 – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 13:1–11 – 1991. “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis for Archaeological Explanation.” American Anthropologist 93:551–69 – 1999. “Master and Servant: A Conference Overview.” In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology, edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Christopher M. Watts, 303–22. Toronto: eastendbooks in association with the Ontario Archaeological Society – 2003a. “Archaeological Theory: The Big Picture.” In Grace Elizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture Series. Provo, Utah: Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University – 2003b. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press Trigger, Bruce G., L. Yaffe, M. Diksic, J.-L. Galinier, H. Marshall, and J.F. Pendergast. 1980. “Trace-Element Analysis of Iroquoian Pottery.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 4:119–45

2 Triggering Post-processual Archaeology and Beyond IAN HODDER

It has become commonplace throughout the social sciences and humanities to seek epistemological positions that move beyond subject-object oppositions. From Bruno Latour (1999) in science studies to Bill Brown (2003) in literature, from historians of physics (Galison 1997) to phenomenological prehistorians (Thomas 1996), the aim has been to break down Cartesian oppositions and positivist dogma. From various perspectives, subject and object are seen as mutually constituted or dialectically engaged through the historical process. This is the new mantra of critical perspectives across a wide range of disciplines. Superficially, the work of Bruce Trigger seems at odds with this new trend. After all, he has at various times made it plain that he is a materialist at heart, and much of his writing in recent years has been critical of what he calls hyperrelativism. This all sounds very much like someone caught in the either-or of materialism versus idealism and of objectivism versus relativism. I wish to argue, however, that this reading of Trigger’s work is, as I see it, incorrect. A closer reading indicates a much more nuanced position. Trigger often seems to be seeking exactly for that non-dichotomous position that so many have recently tried to move towards. In this sense, he has long been ahead of the game. I also wish to make a second point, and this is that Bruce Trigger’s work was of enormous importance in the development of post-processual archaeology. Trigger has spent much effort putting other people into

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categories as part of his writing of the history of the discipline. For example, in his History of Archaeological Thought (1989a, 10, Figure 1), he includes a chart in which individual archaeologists are categorized as culture-historical, processual, post-processual, and so on. One has a sense that he would be uncomfortable putting himself into one of these boxes or categories. As he had said in the preface to Time and Traditions (1978), “[M]y work has not been aligned explicitly with any of the more easily identifiable positions in archaeology” (vii). Like Shakespeare’s Cicero, he said that he “may be inclined never to ‘follow anything that other men begin’” (ix). This independence or between-ness flirts with marginalization, and in a lesser scholar it would have led to obscurity. But for Trigger it has been a strength, allowing him to comment, snapping at the heels of the New Archaeology and post-processual archaeology, but ultimately finding his work central to the way in which the discipline has developed. While I know that his work has had an important impact in other areas of archaeology, I wish to focus in this paper on his influence on post-processual archaeology. In the end, I will argue that the post-processual position for which many have searched – that same transcending of object and subject that I described at the start – is already present in the example provided by Trigger.

setting the historical scene In the 1960s, Trigger was already staking out a position that was critical of the New Archaeology and that foreshadowed the post-processual critique that would appear ten to fifteen years later. His marginal position of critique on the edge in Canada would be mirrored by the British post-processual position on the edge in Britain. To some extent, the one made the other possible. Both were directed against the centre of the New Archaeology and processual archaeology in the United States. In his 1968 book Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory, Trigger links Egyptology, anthropology, and history. He favours a systemic or functional view of culture, and he is also very critical of the culture-historical view that language, culture, race, and social unit coincide. So in these ways his work aligns with the New Archaeology. But in other ways it does not. While New Archaeologists were throwing out the baby of history with the bathwater of arbitrary and authoritarian science, Trigger was determined to show that history had much to offer. He saw the continued value of studying the history of cultural traits

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when attempting to understand cultural change. He wrote of a reassessed and more critical use of invention, diffusion, and migration in archaeological research (1968, 92). This insistence on the importance and explanatory value of history is also seen in his (1969) book on the Hurons. Here he studies FrancoHuron relations from a Huron point of view. This recognition of the value of other perspectives led him to take a more critical and historical approach to the construction of knowledge by archaeologists themselves. It has now become much more common to argue that Native American traditions can be useful in understanding archaeological remains (e.g., Anyon et al. 1996; Watkins 2000). But in the 1960s and 1970s, such a view differed from those of most practitioners of the New Archaeology, despite their espousal of anthropology and ethnoarchaeology. While Binford and others were expounding the values of Hempelian hypothesis testing, Trigger was taking a very different position. He argued that the study of prehistory “takes the form of a dialogue between the evidence … and the social science theories that are used to interpret it” (1968, 91). This quotation describes perfectly a hermeneutic, dialectical approach. It tries to transcend subject-object dichotomies, and it opens the way for the recognition that different pasts are produced as the result of different dialectical interactions. So, early on, Trigger was espousing history and the social construction of knowledge, and these would be two of the main planks of postprocessual archaeology. In his collection of papers published in 1978 under the title Time and Traditions, he further entered into a critique of the evolutionary tendencies of the New Archaeology. In his embrace of history rather than evolutionary anthropology, Trigger did in fact often look to that other English-speaking margin, Britain. It is notable in his 1978 book how often he turned to British archaeologists to support his critique of the New Archaeology and its lack of focus on history. Throughout the introduction of the book, he wrote that he was very influenced by Gordon Childe, Grahame Clark, and many other British and European archaeologists. But it is important also to recognize that Trigger’s view of history was not dichotomous. He did not see history as simply descriptive and empirical; rather history also employed general rules and so could not in a simplistic way be opposed to anthropology. He argued that both idiographic (particularizing and historical) and nomothetic (or generalizing) approaches are components of the scientific study of human behaviour (1978, 25–7).

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p o s t- p ro c e s s ua l a rc h a e o l o g y So the stage had been set for critique from the margins, coupled with an emphasis on history and the historical construction of knowledge. The version of post-processual archaeology that emerged in Britain had varied influences. For me in particular, Trigger’s work acted as a focus and a legitimation – an example to be followed. After all, the three main struts of the contextual approach that I outlined in Symbols in Action (1982a) were the notions that (a) culture is meaningfully and actively constituted, (b) history is central, and (c) knowledge about the past is historically and socially produced. As we have seen, two of these points were prefigured in Trigger’s work. Another of Trigger’s important influences came from his 1980 book on Gordon Childe. Childe was important to early post-processual archaeology because it seemed that he had struggled with many of the issues that were now being reassessed. Childe’s attempt to develop a non-functionalist, dialectical account (as in Man Makes Himself ) and his foregrounding of history and historical context offered a body of work to be explored. In the introduction to Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Hodder 1982b), I latched on to Trigger’s writing and shared with him a common excitement about the work of Childe. I quoted then from Trigger (1980b, 182): “[W]hether Childe saw beyond the New Archaeology or mere mirages in the Promised Land remains to be determined.” I felt fortified in Trigger’s reading of Childe and in the potential he saw there for a different, non-processual perspective (Hodder 1982b, 12–13). As post-processual archaeology developed in Britain, I found myself, at the very least, continually drawn to Trigger’s writings and influenced by his standpoint. The main points of convergence were still history, knowledge construction, and Marxism. In the focus on the particular and the contingent in Reading the Past (Hodder 1986), I was helped by Trigger to take a less one-sided view. As noted above, Trigger’s Time and Traditions (1978) had argued that history, as much as anthropology, used generalizations, and it was clear that a historical approach in prehistory would similarly depend on making general claims. With regard to the construction of knowledge, I was very influenced by Trigger’s article (1980b) on archaeology and the image of the Native American. He purported to show that Native Americans had been constructed in the interests of different waves of archaeological theory.

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Most tellingly, the same claim could be made for positivist New Archaeologists. Despite their emphasis on hypothesis testing, it was still clear that the way in which they constructed Native Americans was partial and derogatory. Trigger’s work was important in showing that the idea of neutral science was a conceit – and indeed a dangerous one. At the time, few studies in archaeology were making such claims effectively, and thus Trigger’s example was influential in demonstrating the viability and importance of a critical approach. In my view, his paper (1984) on nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism remains the basis for any work on the political and social uses of the past on a global scale. One of the main influences on post-processual archaeology was Marxism. As already noted, Trigger’s writings on Childe were useful in promoting a consideration of materialist views. Other influences came via social theorists such as Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu, who tried to adapt Marxism and structuralism to practice theories that seemed especially relevant to archaeology. But in archaeology there already was a Marxist archaeology beyond Childe, and it became necessary for postprocessual archaeology to engage with the critique of Marxism and Marxist archaeology. In my own attempt to do this (1986), I again turned to Trigger’s writings (1984) on Marxism and archaeology.

materialist and interpretive approaches I have described my own indebtedness to Bruce Trigger’s work in the development of post-processual archaeology. Other authors in Britain (Miller and Tilley 1984; Shanks and Tilley 1987) and the United States (Leone 1982) had rather different influences. But whatever the impetus provided by Trigger’s work, one would have been gravely disappointed if one had thought that Trigger himself would do anything other than take his own independent position. As post-processual archaeology developed, he voiced his criticisms and took an independent point of view. But I wish to argue that the position he took is of interest because it provided a way of dealing with the divisive separation between objectivist or positivist and subjectivist or relativist positions. In his History of Archaeological Thought, Trigger supports various aspects of the post-processual agenda. For example, he is not daunted by theoretical fragmentation in the discipline, holding that the diversity leads to more holistic and fruitful interpretations of archaeological data (Trigger 1989a, xiii). He retains a commitment to the specific and historically particular (374) and offers the notion that culture is

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meaningfully constituted: “[A]rchaeologists should pay more attention to assessing the extent to which cultural conditioning rather than universal logic influences human behaviour as it is reflected in the archaeological record” (378–9). The most obvious way in which the book speaks to post-processual trends is that it is concerned with the social milieu in which archaeological theory and knowledge are produced (1). Trigger examines the social ideas that have structured archaeological work and the reciprocal impact of archaeology on society (2). He even seems at times to embrace the value of multivocality (379). At first glance, it would seem that A History of Archaeological Thought and much of Trigger’s later work is stuck in a series of dichotomies. On the one hand, Trigger avows that he has “always regarded a materialist outlook as being more productive” (1989a, xiii), but in the same paragraph he goes on to critique materialist and some forms of Marxist approaches as too narrow, expressing a preference for an approach that attempts to account for historical diversity – a historically and contextually oriented Marxism (xiv). So here materialist universals are tempered with historical context. Also, on the one hand, he argues that “not even the simplest fact can be constituted independently of a theoretical context” (1989a, 4); he critiques the whole idea of testing theories against independent and objective data (15–16); and in a very telling passage, he denies the notion that science proceeds through the cumulative collection of data, saying instead that “archaeologists often seem to build more on what their predecessors concluded about the past than on the evidence on which these conclusions are based” (16). But on the other hand, he critiques hyperrelativists who claim that archaeological data are constructed entirely in terms of the social and cultural loyalties of the researcher (14). He argues that the past had “a reality of its own that is independent of the reconstructions and explanations that archaeologists may give of it” (381). The archaeological record has been shaped “by forces that are independent of our own beliefs” so that archaeological data “at least potentially can act as a constraint upon archaeologists’ imaginations” (381). Such statements can be read as sets of confusions and contradictions resulting from a dichotomous subject-object perspective. In concluding his History of Archaeological Thought, Trigger evaluates archaeology in terms of its relative degree of objectivity or subjectivity (1989a, 370). Thus, a dichotomous either-or question is asked. And in other papers through the late 1980s and 1990s, he (1989b) has continued to castigate both processual and post-processual archaeology, the latter in

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particular because of what he perceives as hyperrelativism. All this suggests a pair of lenses in which subject and object are seen as separable. But in my view, Trigger’s discussion in A History of Archaeological Thought catches the spirit, if not the language, of those who, as I noted at the start of this paper, are attempting to move beyond such oppositional structures. When he brings the two sides of the opposition together right at the end of the book, the oppositions become a dialectical process, a continuous and indivisible whole. “If subjective factors intervene at every level in the interpretation of the past, so too does archaeological evidence” (1989a, 407). We are moving here towards a position in which subject and object are defined in relation to each other rather than as separate entities.

conclusion Throughout Trigger’s work, it seems that he has taken an independent position that tries to serve as a bridge between polar opposites. He has attempted to soften materialism with contextual history, anthropology with history, and history with anthropology. He has tempered positivist and deductive reasoning with the social embeddedness of theory building and data definition. He has even, it could be argued, created a bridge between Western and Soviet traditions of thought and between British and American archaeology. He has certainly created productive bridges between indigenous peoples and archaeological science. In all these ways, the example of his life moves us towards a non-dichotomous perspective. Over the past decade or so, many people have been calling for a rapprochement between processual and post-processual archaeology (Cowgill 1993; VanPool and VanPool 2003). Different researchers have suggested their own versions of a compromise and coined their own terms, such as the “processual-plus” of Hegmon (2003) or the “cognitive-processual” archaeology of Renfrew (1989). In my view, these various attempts tend to be undermined because they do not transcend the subject-object divide. Thus, in cognitive-processual archaeology, one finds unresolved contradictions. On the one hand, Renfrew (1989, 38) says that “today, no one claims that data can in an absolute sense be ‘objective’: they are not formulated other than by human activity and are not independent of that process.” But then, almost immediately, this argument is contradicted by the following: “The material remains of the past, the actual remains, may indeed be claimed as ‘value-free’ and

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lacking in observer-induced bias,” so that the data “alone can validate or falsify our own (subjectively produced) hypotheses” (39). This direct contradiction, which occurs through many attempts to create a fusion between processual and post-processual archaeology, derives from the use of a perspective and a set of oppositions that beg for transcendence. In my view, what is needed is not a merging or a fusion of processual and post-processual archaeology, but a moving on from a debate caught in a tired opposition between subject and object. The way forward is to seek forms of knowledge construction that operate according to a single integrated process. Writers outside archaeology, such as Latour (1993), have attempted to make such a move beyond objectivism and subjectivism, and there have been attempts to employ Latour in archaeology (Olsen 2003). These theoretical debates will continue, but I believe that a model already exists in Trigger’s lifetime of work. Although he too vacillates between objectivist and subjectivist positions, he has shown – in the nuances of his writing, in the practices of his dealings with Native Americans and their history, and with a series of other oppositions – that it is possible to look towards a new mode of interpretation that is productively less dichotomous.

references Anyon, R., T.J. Ferguson, L. Jackson, and L. Lane. 1996. “Native American Oral Traditions and Archaeology.” Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 14:2, 14–16 Brown, B. 2003. A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Childe, V.G. 1951. Man Makes Himself. New York: New American Library Cowgill, G. 1993. “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Beyond Criticizing New Archaeology.” American Anthropologist 95:551–73 Galison, Peter. 1997. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hegmon, M. 2003. “Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology.” American Antiquity 68 (2):213–43 Hodder, I. 1982a. Symbols in Action. London: Cambridge University Press – 1982b. “Theoretical Archaeology: A Reactionary View.” In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder. London: Cambridge University Press – 1986. Reading the Past. London: Cambridge University Press

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Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press – 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Leone, M. 1982. “Some Opinions about Recovering Mind.” American Antiquity 47:742–60 Miller, D., and C. Tilley, eds. 1984. Ideology, Power and Prehistory. London: Cambridge University Press Olsen, B. 2003. “Material Culture after Text: Re-Membering Things.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (2):87–104 Renfrew, C. 1989. Comments on “Archaeology into the 1990s.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 22:33–41 Shanks, M., and C. Tilley. 1987. Reconstructing Archaeology. London: Cambridge University Press Thomas, J. 1996. Time, Culture and Identity. London: Routledge Trigger, B.G. 1968. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1978. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Columbia University Press – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson; New York: Columbia University Press – 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 VanPool, T., and C. VanPool, eds. 2003. Essential Tensions in Archaeological Method and Theory. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press

3 Moderate Relativism/Political Objectivism ALISON WYLIE

Long the honourable opposition in archaeological contexts, Bruce Trigger has been a Socratic gadfly, a provocateur, an irritant, and a substantial source of clarity on epistemological issues since he entered the fray in the late 1960s. By 1978, when he published his first collection of theoretical essays, Time and Traditions, he had already positioned himself as a sympathetic but critical outsider to the New Archaeology. Twenty-five years later his most recent collection, Artifacts and Ideas (2003), chronicles a cautious engagement with and ultimate disaffection from the succession of archaeological “-isms” generated by reaction against the New Archaeology. Again, he has positioned himself as a sympathetic but trenchantly critical outsider, refusing all the oppositional stances on offer. From this brief sketch, one might imagine that Trigger operates from a contrarian instinct, trimming his sails to tack against the prevailing winds of intellectual fashion, whatever these may be. But, in fact, his is not a practice of strategic vacillation. Rather, it reflects a remarkable consistency of perspective where epistemological matters are concerned: by his own assessment, “[his] position as a moderate relativist has remained substantially the same since at least 1967” (Trigger 2003, 23), undergoing refinement and elaboration as successive cohorts of archaeological theorists have moved dialectically from an uncompromising objectivism to its “hyperrelativist” antithesis (Trigger 1989b) and back again. My aim here is to identify some key features of Trigger’s moderate

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relativism and then consider how his position could be articulated and defended in a way that grows naturally out of his Marxist commitments.

th e c o r e p o s i t i o n Trigger shared a great deal with the New Archaeologists; he enthusiastically endorsed their commitment to push beyond the confines of traditional research and “maximize the explanatory potential of archaeological data” (Trigger 1978, x). But as one of New Archaeology’s most prominent critics, he rejected the claim that it represented a revolutionary break with the past; he saw a great many continuities with innovative developments in post-World War II archaeology that he felt deserved recognition (Trigger 1978, 2003). And he was dubious about the plausibility of the most distinctive theses by which New Archaeologists laid claim to radical originality (Wylie 1979). It is a mistake, he insisted, to characterize historical inquiry as a strictly particularistic enterprise and to align explanation exclusively (and oppositionally) with generalizing inquiry; historical reconstruction carries considerable explanatory insight and the quest for cross-cultural generalizations cannot get off the ground without building a firm foundation of particularistic knowledge (Trigger 1970). Trigger also argued strongly against the reductive functionalism and eco-determinism of the processual paradigm, urging a more nuanced ecological possibilism and historical materialism. Finally, and most importantly for present purposes, he challenged the presumption that archaeological evidence could function as a neutral foundation, the arbiter of truth in a deductive testing program. Evidence is always more slippery than that; good science, even our best science, clearly bears the marks of its makers. In a reprise of these arguments published in 1989, Trigger observes that the meteoric rise of the New Archaeology and its equally precipitous decline did much to undermine confidence in the objectivist tenets of the program, underscoring the contingency of archaeological argument and leading “many archaeologists to recognize for the first time that more than purely objective factors were involved in archaeological interpretation” (Trigger 1989b, 783). It is not surprising, then, that Trigger would have initially welcomed challenges to the “complacency” of processual archaeology (Trigger 1995a, 320), especially the corrective turn to more historical and particularistic lines of inquiry that refocused attention on agency and contingency (Trigger 2003, 18). Where epistemological questions are

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concerned, Trigger shares with critical archaeology a deep appreciation of what he describes as the “subjective” element inherent in all archaeological interpretation: he welcomed a growing awareness that any configuration of archaeological practice – its orienting presuppositions, preferred questions and strategies of inquiry, privileged evidence, and dominant hypotheses – must be understood to reflect the dominant interests and assumptions of the social context in which it has taken shape and is currently conducted. Trigger’s carefully worked case studies and historical analyses have been a powerful source of inspiration for critical archaeology. In an early analysis of the idealism that dominated evolutionary theorizing in the late nineteenth century, he demonstrates how the possibilities for understanding the “transition from ape to man” suggested by Engels’s “materialist” interpretive schemes were constrained by the political climate (Trigger 1967, 170–4), an analysis much expanded in his broad historical account of the entanglement of archaeology with nationalist agendas (Trigger 1989a). His widely influential critique (1980) of the racism inherent in the “image of the American Indian” shows how contemporary models of contact-period interaction between Native North Americans and Europeans preserve at their core a shifting repertoire of tropes for representing “the primitive other.” Likewise, his history of Sudanese archaeology (1994) draws attention to the ways colonial attitudes structured everything, from close-to-the-ground chronological systems and typologies to theories of migration, cultural influence, and evolutionary succession. Nubia was positioned as a fragile rubicon between “the Black and the White races” (Trigger 1994, 331), overrun, dependent, and imitative, in an archaeological narrative whose racism “both reflected and justified colonial policy” (Trigger 1994, 334–5). But the point at which Trigger parted company with critical and postprocessual archaeologists was when they parlayed such case-specific analyses of contextual bias into a general argument for what Trigger has impugned as “hyperrelativism” (1989b; see also 1995b). In each of the cases I have mentioned, Trigger argues that systematic archaeological inquiry holds the potential to expose and correct the errors induced by the blinders of nationalist, racist, colonialist, and other forms of privilege. The convictions of palaeontologists wedded to a “mentalist or idealist outlook” – the certainty that human mental capacities must have developed first – could not be salvaged indefinitely, even with the help of famous frauds like Piltdown; “increasing fossil evidence to the

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contrary (e.g., chronological sequences that violated the core assumptions about primitiveness) eventually led a growing number of Western physical anthropologists to rethink their basic assumptions” (Trigger 2003 [1967], 40–1). In his critical analyses of dominant “image[s] of the American Indian” (1980, 1991), Trigger makes effective use of archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence to establish that, far from being locked in a static, convention-bound state of cultural primitivism, Native Americans demonstrated a sophisticated capacity for strategic positioning and considerable cultural fluidity in their negotiations with Europeans. And in his overview of Sudanese archaeology, Trigger argues that the archaeological initiatives occasioned by construction of the Aswan Dam generated a “vastly expanded data base” that substantially changed the parameters of interpretation (Trigger 1994, 344). While reductive colonial models of cultural interaction and change could be sustained when archaeologists worked in what was largely an empirical vacuum (Trigger 1994, 334), they proved untenable as increasingly detailed archaeological information, often recovered from contexts well outside the canonical sites that had stabilized colonial histories, brought into view highly complex patterns of social interaction and regional settlement, economic fluctuation, and ethnic diversity. Trigger concludes that while such cases offer “no evidence that archaeology ceases to be biased by the intellectual [and political] milieu in which it is practiced” (Trigger 1994, 343) – indeed, the transition he traces in the Sudan is from an archaeology inflected by colonial commitments to a nationalist archaeology – the Sudanese case does justify cautious epistemic optimism: “It does not appear to be an act of selfdeception to believe that the archaeological understanding of what happened in the past is gradually becoming more complete and more objective and that archaeology has a role to play in achieving a more accurate understanding of human history” (344).

justifications for moderate relativism How does Trigger justify this moderate relativism? On what grounds can he block the slide into wholesale hyperrelativism that his carefully worked analyses of pervasive contextual bias seem to open up? More specifically, how does Trigger reconcile the seemingly contradictory (objectivist and constructivist) claims that are juxtaposed when he insists that “beliefs and interests influence scientific interpretation but can be overcome by the constraining influence of the archaeological record”

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(Trigger 2003, 15)? Trigger takes up the challenge of defending this position in a number of contexts; I identify two recurrent realist themes in his arguments for epistemic optimism about archaeological inquiry that he has recently integrated into a much more ambitious evolutionary meta-theory about the epistemic capacities of human agents at a species level of generality. Trigger’s first move is to make the case for a realist ontology, and this he does at two levels. He insists that the cultural past that archaeologists want to understand – the events and conditions, causal dynamics and lifeworld complexities that made up this past – must be recognized as having existed “independently of the present” (Trigger 1989b, 787–8) and as having had the characteristics it did independent of our contemporary interest in it. The cultural past was, as he puts it, an “actual reality,” made up of material conditions, social relations, animating beliefs, and intentions about which archaeologists can be right or wrong (1995b, 347). Given this first-order realism about the subject domain of archaeology – the cultural past – Trigger argues that its surviving record must also be understood in realist terms. This record consists of “the remains of what was produced in the past and hence of what was created independently of the wishes of archaeologists” (Trigger 1995a, 325); consequently, the evidence derived from this record is “real in the sense that what is observed ultimately exists independent of our imagination” (1989b, 787). This robust (two-level) metaphysical realism about the past and its traces provides, in turn, grounds for an epistemic realism: the conviction that our best (archaeologically grounded) knowledge claims about this past warrant acceptance as (approximately) true. However deeply our interpretive paradigms structure what we see in the archaeological record, “these biases are not inherent in the archaeological record” (Trigger 1989b, 788); there is always the possibility that the material traces produced by an independently existing cultural past will resist theoretical appropriation (Tilley 1995, 340). Sometimes we deliberately exploit this capacity of material traces to resist the imposition of our assumptions and expectations, and sometimes it operates more inadvertently, forcing us to rethink favoured beliefs despite our best efforts to insulate them against challenge. But whether we seek critical challenge or happen upon it, Trigger argues, “in the long run the concrete realities of the archaeological record counteract [the] biases” that inform our interpretation of the record as evidence of the (real) past (1989a, 788; see also Trigger’s response to Tilley [Trigger 1995b, 347]). In short, we make archaeological histories and prehistories, but not out of whole cloth; archaeological research is

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work, hard work, on materials that are both found and constructed (Bhaskar 1978, 57). It is in this engagement with an independently produced and structured material/cultural reality that principled grounds are to be found for qualifying the relativist conclusions that Trigger’s critical analyses seem so powerfully to entail. But then a further question arises. While Trigger’s multi-levelled realism establishes, in the abstract, the possibility that the “concrete realities” of the past and its material record could constrain and correct our understanding of the cultural past, what reason do we have to believe that we successfully mobilize these epistemic resources in practice? What reason do we have to accept specific claims about the past as approximately true? Trigger has recently added a new level of justificatory argument designed to explain how it is that situated epistemic agents such as ourselves come to have, and are disposed to deploy, the capacity for self-correction required to counteract the biasing factors that shape our understanding – our representations – in specific contexts of action and inquiry. What he offers is an ambitious evolutionary story, outlined in “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm” (1998), according to which the cognitive and perceptual capabilities developed in the course of hominid evolution have been progressively tuned by selective pressures; requirements of efficacy have systematically reined in our highly social capacities for symbolic representation. As Trigger describes this process, our distinctive speciesnature is characterized by adaptation that is simultaneously symbolic and material: “Mediating between the real world and human understanding of it is the realm of perception. While perception is influenced by beliefs and expectations, it has sufficient independence to convince people that reality does not always behave as they expect and permits them to adjust their understandings to make them more congruent with reality” (Trigger 1998, 11–12). And this, Trigger suggests, offers a general justification for attributing to epistemic agents a capacity to recognize error induced by representational conventions. Systematic empirical investigation is, at bottom, a matter of using our evolved perceptual acuities to constrain our (also evolved) capacities for symbolically mediated imagination and interpretation.

r e s e rvat i o n s a n d a f r i e n d ly a m e n d m e n t While I understand the impulse that animates this final justificatory move, I find it uncompelling for a number of reasons. First, it is not clear what status Trigger accords this evolutionary story. It takes the

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form, as do most such evolutionary schematics, of a transcendental deduction in which ancestral conditions and evolutionary events are posited that, it is suggested, must have obtained for us to have developed the (species) capacities we now seem to have (see Richardson’s analysis [2001] of the conditions of adequacy for evolutionary explanations). In this spirit, Trigger insists that “without successful adaptation” along lines he has outlined, “there would be no human bodies, and without human bodies … no human minds” (Trigger 1998, 12), at least, no human minds with the capacities for epistemic self-improvement that make possible fields like archaeology, with their contradictory play of interpretive construction and evidential constraint. The vagaries of such evolutionary narratives are well known; with thin evidence and ambiguous collateral theory, they must stand as an elaboration of theoretical first principles, much like Engels’s materialist theory of the ape-human transition that Trigger described in 1967. They may be vindicated in the long run, but the jury is definitely out. In the short run, the value of this bold evolutionary conjecture must lie in its capacity to provide fruitful orientation for more modest and local epistemic projects. And here I find Trigger’s general justificatory argument wanting as well. It is pitched at such a high level of generality – as an account of our cognitive and perceptual species-nature – that it does not give the moderate relativist/realist much epistemic traction with respect to specific types of convention-induced error. It offers little explanatory understanding of how or why particular forms of interpretive distortion occur in archaeology or, for that matter, of how we come to deploy our humanly evolved perceptual capacities to counteract these distortions. Consequently, the abstractions of species-tuning that Trigger invokes as a solution provide little in the way of forwardlooking guidelines for improving or extending the corrective strategies that give him cause for epistemic optimism. A complementary and, I would urge, a more promising strategy is suggested by one line of thinking that has emerged from the epistemological insights central to Marxist historical materialism, particularly as it has been reworked and extended by recent feminist standpoint theorists (Harding 2004; Wylie 2003). The central insight here is that often interpretive bias is not, strictly speaking, a matter of subjectivity, as Trigger often describes it. The really worrisome forms of error do not arise from the idiosyncrasies of individual epistemic agents (as suggested by the language of subjectivity); rather, they take the form of systematic bias that afflicts intersubjectively stable consensus and tracks structures of social differentiation and hierarchy.

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At the core of standpoint theory, in the form I find defensible, is a “situated knowledge” thesis: what we know, including tacit, perceptual, and experiential knowledge as well as explicit understanding, is systematically shaped by the material conditions of our lives, by the relations of production and reproduction that structure our social interactions, and by the conceptual resources – the evidence, the heuristics, the repertoire of interpretive and explanatory theories – that are available to us as a consequence of our location in hierarchically structured systems of power relations. When social location gives rise to a standpoint that is characterized in these systemic terms, its epistemic effects include a capacity to develop a critical perspective on knowledge production. Those caught at the interstices of contradictory power structures, and those systematically marginalized by these structures (outsiders or insider-outsiders), sometimes have distinct epistemic advantages, even though their authority and credibility as knowers are often discredited compared to those who are comparatively privileged. They may have access to counter-evidence and a richer repertoire of explanatory hypotheses, as well as a degree of critical dissociation from dominant ideologies, all of which enable them to recognize the distortions arising from the taken-for-granted assumptions that structure conventionally authoritative, normative systems of understanding (e.g., the racism, classism, colonialism, and nationalism analysed by Trigger). On this account, it is the specific features of structurally defined social locations that sometimes, and differentially, put us in a position to use our humanly evolved perceptual and cognitive capabilities to good effect; the tuning specific to context may alert us to evidence and interpretive possibilities that have been overlooked, and may cultivate the kind of critical “self-awareness” Trigger advocates of the systematic silences and distortions that afflict the archaeological understanding (Trigger 2003, 18). Trigger invokes something like this standpoint analysis when he chides Tilley for failing to credit the working class with a capacity to see through the self-serving, self-legitimating beliefs that originate with the ruling elite and become normative for society as a whole; this is a capacity Trigger clearly understands to be a function of class location. But more often Trigger characterizes the “Marxist concept of group interest motivating social action” as a determinative force, difficult to resist and one of the most compelling sources of hyperrelativist pessimism (Trigger 2003, 18). To counteract this relativist threat, what Trigger needs is not the appeal to a more abstract conception of our species-nature but, I would argue, more finely worked

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analyses of the dynamic tension between group interests that are brought into view when knowledge production is examined from the perspective of a systematic historical materialism. It is in the play of these interests, in particular in the conflicts between them, that their contours and constraints become visible. And it is this that provides grounds for epistemic optimism, for a relativism moderated by an appreciation of the possibilities for both error and insight that lie in specific material and historical conditions of knowledge production. This raises, finally, the question of exactly what standpoint theory has to offer archaeology. Conceived as a theory of the contingent epistemic advantage that accrues to systemically defined social locations, standpoint theory provides a framework for explaining why specific biases have arisen and, reflexively, for explaining how it became possible to identify and counteract these biases. Trigger enacts this strategy when he delineates the class interests that structured the reception of Engels’s theory of the ape-human transition and when he traces the opportunistic logics of racism underpinning the colonial archaeologies of the Sudan and contact-period historical archaeology in North America. With regard to the Sudanese case, Trigger observes that a number of more fine grained questions remain to be answered about the breadth and staying power of the racist paradigm he describes and about its influence on archaeologists who had very different stakes in the colonial enterprise (Trigger 1994, 335). Likewise, his account of how accumulating evidence forced a reconsideration of “accepted ideas about how the past, and more specifically, the African past, should be interpreted” (Trigger 1994, 335) raises a number of questions that bear further investigation: questions about how and why later generations of (largely foreign) archaeologists should have pursued research programs that would generate, not just more data, but the kinds of data that could effectively counteract the narrowness and systematic distortions of a “once dominant Egyptocentric culture-historical diffusionism” (Trigger 1994, 342). These explanatory questions require more than an appeal to the pressures imposed by a growing database and, I suspect, will not be resolved by appeal to a generic species-capacity for curbing representational excess. It will be necessary to undertake close analysis of the particular epistemic effects generated by the social locations and critical standpoints that put key players and constituencies in a position to seek out and to use the kinds of data that destabilized conventional views of Sudanese history. In addition, standpoint theory suggests some forward-looking strategies for improving archaeological practice. For example, Trigger-style

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critical histories of archaeology – histories that provide a substantive understanding of conditions under which error has been generated and corrected – offer a baseline for assessing the health of contemporary forms of archaeological practice and its institutionalization. These have the potential to give concrete specificity to the now generic wisdom that social and cultural pluralism has an epistemic payoff, suggesting why certain kinds of diversity in background and experience might be expected to enrich archaeological inquiry. Standpoint analysis makes it clear that it is not just idiosyncratic, individual diversity that matters, but diversity that tracks power relations in the larger political-economic contexts from which practitioners are drawn. The inversion thesis for which standpoint theory is famous offers a useful point of departure: those who are socially, politically, and economically disprivileged by structures of domination that systematically marginalize and oppress them may, in fact, have epistemic advantage in some key respects and in relation to particular problems or projects. In particular, they may be in an especially good position to see points at which the intersubjective consensus supported by a dominant ideology is internally contradictory or reflects ignorance of conditions of life, human capacities, ranges of variation in the social world – points that those who live comparatively privileged lives have no reason to notice or, indeed, have good reason not to notice. A standpoint analysis further suggests that if archaeologists are committed to the project of counteracting systematic bias in their understanding of the cultural past, they should make second-order critical science studies an integral part of archaeological practice. An understanding of the historical and sociological formation of archaeology is not a luxury. When such understanding brings into view the structural conditions that shape knowledge production in archaeology, it can play a powerful role in suggesting where archaeological imaginations are limited and in guiding efforts to provoke the “concrete realities” of the archaeological record to show us where we are wrong. Trigger has long enacted this strategy. The epistemic optimism he advocates is best understood, not in terms of our cognitive and perceptual species-nature, but in terms of standpoint-specific capacities to take the measure of our own epistemic strengths and limitations and to use this reflexive insight to generate an “archaeological understanding of the past that is … more complete and more objective” (Trigger 1994, 344). It is in this that archaeology has the capacity to realize its emancipatory potential.

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references Bhaskar, Roy. 1978. A Realist Theory of Science. New Jersey: Humanities Press Harding, Sandra, ed. 2004. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York: Routledge Richardson, Robert C. 2001. “Evolution without History: Critical Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology.” In Conceptual Challenges to Evolutionary Psychology: Innovative Research Strategies, edited by Harmon R. Holcomb III. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers Tilley, Christopher. 1995. “Clowns and Circus Acts.” Critique of Anthropology 15:337–41 Trigger, Bruce G. 1967. “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary Anthropological Theory.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 4:165–76 – 1970. “Aims in Prehistoric Archaeology.” Antiquity 44:26–37 – 1978. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. New York: Columbia University Press – 1980. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 – 1991. “Early Native North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations.” Journal of American History 77:1195–215 – 1994. “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27:323–45 – 1995a. “Archaeology and the Integrated Circus.” Critique of Anthropology 15:319–35 – 1995b. “A Reply to Tilley and Nencel.” Critique of Anthropology 15:347–50 – 1998. “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm.” American Journal of Archaeology 102:1–34 – 2003. Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers Wylie, Alison. 1979. Review of Time and Traditions, by Bruce G. Trigger. International Studies in Philosophy 11:193–5 – 2003. “Why Standpoint Theory Matters: Feminist Standpoint Theory.” In Philosophical Explorations of Science, Technology, and Diversity, edited by Robert Figueroa and Sandra Harding. New York: Routledge

4 Comparative Archaeology: An Unheralded Cross-cultural Method STEPHEN CHRISOMALIS

Throughout his long career, Bruce Trigger has used his deep appreciation for divergent theoretical perspectives in archaeology to challenge his colleagues and students to consider alternative viewpoints. In the same spirit in which Bruce has challenged so many of us, I wish to comment on one important aspect of his research – his thirty-year contribution to comparative research in archaeology, in particular the comparison of early civilizations – while offering him a challenge for the future. Archaeology has long been at the periphery of cross-cultural studies in anthropology, but this is a historical contingency, not a necessity. In this chapter, I will place Trigger’s work within the larger context of archaeological cultural comparison, a subject that has unjustly remained at the fringe of anthropological comparison. Ultimately, if archaeologists wish to contribute to the larger program of cross-cultural research, all comparativists must recognize the unique methodological and substantive potential of archaeology for making diachronic crosscultural comparisons.

tr i g g e r a s c o m p a r a t i v e c i v i l i z a t i o n i s t Trigger’s contributions to cross-cultural comparison are rarely perceived as equal to the contributions he has made to the history of archaeology or ethnohistory. Yet he did coursework with George Murdock and Clelland Ford at Yale in the early sixties, and he later

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interacted with Raoul Naroll at Northwestern during his brief stay there in the mid-sixties. Throughout his career, he has published numerous works comparing ancient civilizations, from his early work on urbanization (1972, 1985a) and political inequality (1976, 1985b) to more recent studies of monumental architecture (1990) and writing systems (1998b). This body of scholarship cannot be defined in terms of keywords and catchphrases, although Trigger has been perceived as a Marxist, an evolutionist, a cultural historian, a relativist, and a positivist by both allies and critics. All of these labels apply to some extent. This research path has culminated recently in his masterwork, Understanding Early Civilizations (2003). Understanding Early Civilizations is a synthetic comparison of the social and cultural features of seven early civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inca, and the pre-colonial Yoruba and Benin states. Trigger is writing within a long scholarly tradition that includes neoevolutionists (Steward 1949; White 1959; Sahlins and Service 1960; Service 1975), Marxists (Childe 1934; Fried 1967), and idealists (Gellner 1988; Mann 1986). Because these societies are early forms of states, scholars hope that such research will shed light on the origin of social inequality and thus contribute to the vast literature on the state. In general, neoevolutionists assume a priori that the most interesting thing about these seven civilizations is their degree of similarity. In contrast, idealists contend that each civilization must be understood in its own right and that the differences between them are more numerous and important than their similarities. In Understanding Early Civilizations, Trigger bridges both of these perspectives to arrive at one that attempts to establish, rather than presume, the degree of similarity and difference among the cases under examination. This perspective follows from his work on constraint and freedom in anthropology, in which biological, social, and psychological processes constrain but do not determine cultural outcomes (Trigger 1991). Understanding Early Civilizations analyses over twenty domains of human existence, paying equal attention to sociopolitical, economic, and cognitive-symbolic aspects. Whereas neoevolutionist theory hypothesizes that the greatest degree of regularity will be found in behaviour related to adaptation to the environment, Trigger demonstrates that there are many regularities, but few universals, in all domains of activity across the seven societies under study. Understanding Early Civilizations is a rigorous comparative work, highly concerned with the epistemic justifications for the interpretations

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presented. Early civilizations are narrowly defined as the earliest and simplest societies to employ a hierarchy of classes rather than kinship as the primary basis of social relations (Trigger 2003, 43–6). They are otherwise highly disparate societies that share this common feature and thus constitute a category. Trigger’s approach contrasts starkly with definitions of civilization that use laundry lists of traits, many of which Trigger shows to be neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for membership in the category of early civilizations (e.g., Childe 1950). In doing so, he challenges other scholars of civilization to improve the quality and rigour of their comparisons, while inviting cross-cultural anthropologists to consider research on comparative civilizations as part of a broader project of anthropological comparativism.

c o m pa r at i v e a rc h a e o l o g y: a marginalized subfield Unfortunately, practitioners of cross-cultural studies in anthropology have insufficiently recognized comparative studies of civilizations as kin to their own research. The work of neoevolutionist scholars of comparative civilizations such as Julian Steward, Leslie White, and Elman Service is regarded by most as different from broad statistical studies that use ethnographic data. Nearly twenty-five years ago, in a paper published in Behaviour Science Research, the flagship journal of the Human Relations Area Files (hraf), Gordon Hewes (1981) argued persuasively for the inclusion of comparative studies of civilizations under the rubric of anthropological comparativism, and suggested specific means by which civilizational scholarship might be made more rigorous. Yet this paper has never been cited in any major journal. With few exceptions (Carneiro 1969; Peregrine 2001), the disjunction of comparative scholars of civilizations and cross-cultural researchers is nearly complete. As a consequence, archaeologists in general, and comparative civilizations experts in particular, have contributed only minimally to projects such as the Human Relations Area Files. This lack of communication and cooperation is the result of several factors. Because cross-cultural research was and is conducted largely by cultural anthropologists, contributions from scholars of early civilizations are rarely sought. This is a subdisciplinary issue that could be remedied easily. Yet, additionally, archaeological data are inherently far more limited in nature than ethnographic data and are perceived as being too scanty to be of much use. Also, at least until the 1990s, the

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hraf tradition of research has been insufficiently cognizant that the ethnographic record does not represent the totality of variation in human behaviour – a problem related to the so-called tyranny of the ethnographic record (Wobst 1978). Even though early civilizations represent a type of society no longer extant, anthropological comparativists have neglected ancient civilizations. The creation of the hraf Collection of Archaeology has partially alleviated this problem (although this resource has yet to be widely employed by archaeologists). Moreover, because archaeologists adopt ontological materialism and epistemological realism more often than do cultural anthropologists, there is reason to hope that archaeology may assume a greater role in future cross-cultural anthropological research. Nevertheless, cross-culturalists and materialist archaeologists are both skeptical about the theories and methods of the other. As Trigger notes (2003, 22), neoevolutionist anthropologists and archaeologists have rarely used large-scale cross-cultural studies because they assume that cultural uniformity is apparent and not in need of demonstration. Conversely, cross-cultural researchers are understandably doubtful that the adaptationist laws proposed but never demonstrated by neoevolutionists are true. Neither position denies the possibility of cooperation between these two branches of research, but both reflect the lack of such cooperation. A final, and potentially fatal, source of discord between anthropological and archaeological comparativists lies in the fact that since comparative civilizationists rarely use quantitative methods or random sampling, their work is perceived as being very different from crosscultural research. In his recent and important paper on cross-cultural archaeology, Peter Peregrine defines cross-cultural research as “the statistical testing of theories or hypotheses against data from a large (often worldwide) and clearly defined sample of societies” (Peregrine 2001, 3). On this basis, Trigger’s work on early civilizations and similar studies are excluded as “not truly controlled in the way sound cross-cultural studies are” (Peregrine 2001, 9). While I recognize that Peregrine’s definition is a commonly accepted one, I do not think it highly useful, except to describe the type of research practised by scholars who use the Human Relations Area Files. It is not the only form of anthropological comparison or even necessarily the most important one. Statistical studies that use a random sample of societies are extremely useful for discerning cross-cultural generalizations. However, to exclude from study phenomena that are not amenable to random

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sampling, on that basis alone, is to exclude a wide swath of the past from our purview. Defining cross-cultural studies in so narrow a way limits the ability of archaeologists to contribute as equal participants in the enterprise of anthropological comparativism. There are many more similarities than differences among crossculturalists and comparative civilizationists. Both groups generally espouse materialism and regard what they do as part of a broader scientific enterprise. Related to these perspectives is a general interest in sociocultural evolution. A rapprochement between the two schools of thought can and ought to be achieved. This is, in fact, precisely what Peregrine is attempting to do in his paper when he urges archaeologists to undertake and use traditional sampling-based, large-scale crosscultural research. However, I believe that a more pluralistic approach that recognizes the unique contributions of archaeological data to cross-cultural theory will ultimately prove more fruitful.

th e c o m p a r a t i v e a n d t h e h i s t o r i c a l For over a century, a false methodological line has been drawn between historical and comparative methods in anthropology. In 1896, Franz Boas’s brief but stunningly influential paper, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology,” appeared in Science, marking a watershed in the history of anthropological theory. Boas’s paper is a denunciation of the conjectural unilinear sequences and stages favoured by scholars such as Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and E.B. Tylor, the first social scientists to use cross-cultural methods systematically. Boas rightly found that the evolutionists’ methods, which often assumed without proof underlying bio-psychological, geographic, or racial causes for cultural phenomena, were lacking in empirical validation. He noted that a seemingly unitary phenomenon can have different origins in different societies; for instance, totem-based clans can develop either through the association of independent groups or through the fissioning of larger groups (Boas 1896, 903). This is the problem of equifinality, which arises because cultural evolution is multilinear rather than unilinear. Thus, a task of the utmost importance is to reconstruct the processes by which cultural phenomena came into being (Boas 1896, 905). Boas called this method the “historical” method, which he explicitly contrasted with the “comparative” method of the evolutionists. Only then, Boas contended, could the task of analysing cultural patterns and determining regularities or laws proceed.

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Boas’s ground-breaking paper and later works formed the basis of a dichotomy that persists to the present day. Many of his students, as well as Boas himself on many occasions, strongly criticized the usefulness of cross-cultural research or put excessively heavy burdens on comparativists. This idiographic or particularist tradition dominated twentiethcentury Anglo-American anthropology, despite radical changes in its theory and practice, and has consistently rejected broad-scale crosscultural comparison (Lowie 1912; Schapera 1953; Geertz 1984; Peel 1987). Despite moderate and non-dichotomous statements by such luminaries as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1951), Fred Eggan (1954), and Oscar Lewis (1955), a theoretical divide was created between historical methods (regional culture history) and comparative methods (the search for cross-cultural patterns). Yet I know of no cross-cultural researcher who argues that we should not do historical comparisons. Bruce Trigger recounted to me an anecdote concerning his time at Yale during his coursework with George Murdock. Apparently emboldened after reading papers by Dutch social anthropologists who contended that proper cross-cultural comparisons had to be based on detailed structural-functional understandings of all the cultures involved, he had asked Murdock whether this might not be an objection to Murdock’s large-scale cross-cultural study of correlations between selected traits in isolation from their context. To this, the senior scholar replied that of course his critics were correct – it was in fact highly desirable to do this sort of work. Yet, Murdock contended, hraf-style cross-cultural research was not an end in itself but rather a technique for hypothesis formation and preliminary testing. Murdock himself argued strongly in favour of the study of particular historical sequences prior to the development of more general evolutionary theories (Murdock 1965, 130–50), and put this into practice in his work on African culture history (Murdock 1959). Where Boas went wrong was in defining two specific methods – the radically contrasted historical and comparative – and then giving priority to his preferred method, the former. Historical methods are useful for answering historical questions, but this does not imply that broader questions regarding cultural analogies should not be asked or cannot be answered. Homological explanations based on common ancestry are often better than analogical ones based on psychic unity or adaptation, as shown in Harold Driver’s (1966) highly analytical cross-cultural study of kin avoidance in North America. But if Driver’s study had reached the opposite conclusion, would it therefore be invalid within

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the Boasian framework? I do not think it ought to be. This problem is exacerbated if we naively assume historical research to be humanistic and comparative research to be scientific. What is needed is a new framework in which the study of process is given its place within comparative research.

th e s y n c h r o n i c a n d t h e d i a c h r o n i c Most cross-cultural researchers in both cultural anthropology and archaeology are sociocultural evolutionists, and of course this includes Trigger, who has written an important volume on the subject (1998a). One would therefore expect them to be interested in processes of change. Yet here we run into a difficulty, namely that the data available through the Human Relations Area Files are synchronic, analysing the societies or phenomena being studied at a single point in time. This is true even of the hraf Collection of Archaeology, in which traditions are delineated by period but change is not examined over time. Thus, most sampling-based cross-cultural research is synchronic. In contrast, a great deal of archaeological research, including that on questions that intrigue Trigger such as the origin of the state, is diachronic, analysing change in phenomena over time. Such research aims not to reach generalizations about societies in stasis, but rather to examine patterns of cultural change. Diachronic research does not conflict with synchronic research, but complements it by allowing the direct investigation of cultural processes. Both can be used to produce generalizations about different aspects of the human condition. Synchronic research is most useful for the study of function – the way in which the parts of a society do or do not interact in a system – while diachronic research is most useful for the study of process – the way in which parts of a society change over time. Synchronic techniques, which are highly useful in the study of function or structure, are at best poor alternatives in the study of social dynamics. Similarly, while diachronic techniques are very useful for describing and explaining processes, they are less so for analysing functional correlations. The major proponent of diachronic cross-cultural research working within the hraf tradition was Raoul Naroll, a former colleague of Trigger’s who for many years sought to bring the need for diachronic cross-cultural research to the awareness of scholars. Naroll’s examination of cross-cultural literature in 1974 revealed over one thousand synchronic studies but only a handful that could be classified as

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holohistorical, holoarchaeological, or holoethnohistorical (Naroll et al. 1974a, 3). Naroll began with an attempt to incorporate causality into his analysis of correlations obtained through cross-cultural surveys (Naroll 1968, 244–8). Eventually, out of frustration, Naroll and his students launched their own diachronic cross-cultural research on creativity (Naroll et al. 1971) and military deterrence (Naroll et al. 1974b), largely using historical data. Yet traditional cross-cultural researchers have not emulated Naroll’s efforts. The work of Robert Carneiro (1962, 1970) represents a rather different approach to the use of cross-cultural data in the study of cultural processes. Instead of comparing change over time directly, Carneiro uses an inferential technique known as scale analysis, or Guttman scaling, to derive evolutionary patterns from synchronic data. A Guttman scale organizes a set of data from a number of societies using a ranked series of traits such that a society that possesses a trait high on the list also possesses all the other traits below it, in order. Thus, in a selection of South American societies, those that have loom weaving also have fermented beverages, pottery, and agriculture; some societies have only pottery and agriculture, but none have only loom weaving and agriculture (Carneiro 1962, 152). Where Guttman scales can be constructed with few exceptions, interesting evolutionary patterns emerge. Yet several objections can be raised against scale analysis. The scales produced have no correlation with time, as the societies are all examined in the ethnographic present. Thus, while they show traits that are functional prerequisites of others, they do not prove unilinear evolution, because a society may develop in the direction of more traits, or it may lose traits, while still following the order of the scale. Also, treating traits that do not fall within the scale as outliers, or epiphenomenal, tends to mask multilinearity and emphasize unilinearity. Finally, scale analysis provides no inkling of the process by which traits are acquired, nor any explanation for why they would be acquired in that particular order. It is thus an excellent tool that allows one to formulate interesting hypotheses, but it cannot by itself explain processes of change. Strikingly, most neoevolutionary theories use synchronic data, not diachronic data, to infer diachronic processes. Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service’s (1960) “band-tribe-chiefdom-state” model is a classic example of such an inferential reconstruction. Of course, a further weakness of neoevolutionary theories is that they have rarely possessed the degree of rigour of the statistical studies of the hraf tradition. There is nothing wrong with using synchronic data to propose such

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models, but diachronic data represent the only way to test them. Naturally, there is nothing to prevent both synchronic and diachronic data being brought forward in support of a theory; one of the benefits of such research is the possibility of finding independent confirmation (or refutation) of a research hypothesis. In order to conduct diachronic cross-cultural research, one ideally should have diachronic data. Textual evidence and the archaeological record are the two main sources for such data, although oral history and ethnohistory may sometimes be useful. However, this does not mean that diachronic comparisons are superior to synchronic ones. While J.D.Y. Peel argues that since “their place in a time sequence is an essential feature of social facts,” any non-diachronic comparison is fundamentally incomplete (Peel 1987, 109), I believe this antagonistic approach to be unproductive. Diachronic techniques answer different questions than synchronic-functional ones. The study of functional patterns of the sort that the hraf research tradition has been doing for half a century is worthy in its own right. But if we wish to study patterns of cultural change – and I presume that, as archaeologists, we do – diachronic cross-cultural comparison is a vital tool. Analyses of change that rely on synchronic data alone are a level removed from the phenomena they seek to explain.

d i ac h ro n i c c o m pa r i s o n i n a rc h a e o l o g y Fortunately, a substantial body of archaeological research is both crosscultural and diachronic. Unlike ethnographic data, archaeological data are readily amenable to being treated diachronically. Unfortunately, as detailed above, this work has not been adequately recognized as being of the same nature as large-scale statistical comparison. Many archaeological studies that use diachronic comparison use only two case studies. Most of these follow in the footsteps of Childe (1934) and Frankfort (1956), who in comparing Egypt and Mesopotamia both concluded that these civilizations’ differences outweighed their similarities. Robert Adams’s (1966) The Evolution of Urban Society is a notable analysis of Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican state formation, illustrating that there is no clear line between particularistic and generalizing research, a point that Trigger has made many times throughout his career. Gordon Willey discusses cycles of integration and diversity in Mesoamerica and Peru, going so far as to contend that this process is a universal one in early civilizations (Willey

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1991, 197). However, studies that compare only two societies represent uncontrolled rather than controlled comparisons. While Carneiro (1969, 1020) expressly claims that his interpretation of Near Eastern and Anglo-Saxon cultural development “invokes general principles of culture rather than particular events of history,” two-case comparisons do not produce cross-cultural generalizations, nor can they refute generalizations made by previous researchers. In general, the more societies included in a study, the more reliable the study’s conclusions will be. The historical sociologist Michael Mann (1986) rejects all generalizations about early states on the basis that he can identify only six pristine civilizations – too few, he believes, to allow for sound comparison. Guillermo Algaze (1993) uses data from Mesopotamia, Teotihuacan, Predynastic Egypt, and the Indus Valley to argue that, immediately following state formation, core outposts appear on the periphery of the new states, facilitating trade and the control of regional economics and politics. Joseph Tainter’s study (1988) of the collapse of early states offers a classic example of a particular form of change in many societies. Peregrine’s research (2001), which uses 283 cases from hraf’s “Outline of Archaeological Traditions” to demonstrate cultural evolution over time, is the largest diachronic cross-cultural study of which I am aware. A further consideration is that using whole societies as the objects of comparison may raise too many methodological difficulties and be too great a task to be useful. We should rightly be skeptical of dubious diachronic cross-cultural studies such as those of Oswald Spengler (1926) and Arnold Toynbee (1934–61). Yet we can avoid these problems by focusing on specific institutions; while this approach necessarily omits some social context, it allows for a narrower comparison of specific subjects. A further archaeological technique for diachronic comparison is the phylogenetic approach, which relies on homology rather than analogy. Irving Rouse – yet another of Trigger’s teachers and mentors – uses diachronic data, primarily from archaeology, to trace and compare the culture histories of several regions for which phylogenetic reconstructions exist, such as Polynesia, Japan, and the Caribbean (Rouse 1986). While vulnerable to criticism on several points, this study usefully compares specific regional phylogenies to produce a comparative theory of migrations. A more rigorous archaeological approach to phylogenetic comparison is that adopted by Patrick Kirch and Roger Green (1987) in their analysis of cultural evolution in Polynesia. Their use of historical and linguistic evidence in conjunction with archaeology allows them to

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extrapolate general principles underlying divergence and convergence in Polynesia and, potentially, to test these principles in other regions. A related sort of phylogenetic technique is that of Ruth Mace and Mark Pagel (1994), who borrow principles from biological and linguistic taxonomy to show that it may be more profitable for anthropologists to analyse events of change than to compare static cultural phenomena. Mace and Pagel see their technique as being most useful for reconstructing cultural and linguistic phylogenies. Once this is done, they argue, samples of cases for cross-cultural studies can be constructed more accurately, avoiding Galton’s problem of the non-independence of cultural elements due to common ancestry. I believe that the subtle shift in our focus away from the society and towards the event of change as the unit of analysis is more important than Mace and Pagel realize. Comparing events allows us to study cultural processes directly and thereby demonstrate mechanisms of cultural evolution. Shifting the unit of analysis from the society to the event also provides an unlooked-for benefit for those interested in large-scale statistical analysis: while traits and cultures may not be independent of one another, events of change may very well be. There is no parallel to Galton’s problem when the unit of study is the event rather than the society. Trigger has rarely undertaken diachronic cross-cultural research; one important exception is his recent diachronic analysis of writing systems (1998b).

tr i g g e r ’ s c h a l l e n g e t o d i a c h r o n i c r e s e a r c h Understanding Early Civilizations is an explicitly synchronic rather than diachronic cross-cultural study. Trigger’s decision to examine each society at a particular period is in part a pragmatic decision based on the enormous scope of his study; it is also a necessity imposed by his functionalist perspective. Because he seeks to put institutions and phenomena into comprehensible (yet not perfectly cohesive) societal frameworks, he is restricted to a synchronic level of analysis. While Trigger is an evolutionist, interested in the question of the origin of early civilizations as well as the question of their development into different societal types, Understanding Early Civilizations is not primarily devoted to such questions. In fact, Trigger notes a potential problem with diachronic crosscultural studies. In his study of kin terminology systems, Murdock (1949) showed that very few systems of kin terms were logically

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coherent and thus able to survive in a stable form, but he also noted that there was considerably greater variability in the events of change by which one system transformed into another. Here we are reminded of linguist Joseph Greenberg’s “state-process” analysis (1969, 1978) of linguistic change, in which exceptions to universals of language are explained as unstable formations that exist during periods of transition between stable states. On this basis, Trigger argues that “functional studies may be more important for understanding regularities in human behaviour and for addressing what are often viewed as evolutionary as opposed to historical processes than neoevolutionists have believed” (Trigger 2003, 13). He expresses this thought even more strongly in claiming that “anthropological archaeologists have erred in trying to explain changes without first seeking to understand how what is changing functioned” (13). The stronger of the two statements revives the Boasian dichotomy between historical and comparative methods, which I believe is unsustainable. Trigger is clearly conflicted on this issue. Later in the introductory material of Understanding Early Civilizations, endorsing the functionalism of Edward Evans-Pritchard (1962), he writes that “the best way to determine how the various parts of a culture are functionally interrelated is to observe how they change in relation to one another over time” (Trigger 2003, 36). In this, he is of course entirely correct. This formulation far better represents the union of synchronic and diachronic research than does an antagonistic model, which sees the two as opposed to one another. Far from suggesting that Trigger is being unintentionally or wilfully contradictory, I believe that his theoretical statements regarding synchronic versus diachronic comparisons highlight the difficulty in transcending century-old modes of thinking about cross-cultural research in anthropology. Even in his more negative formulation of the problem, Trigger recognizes that both synchronic and diachronic comparisons ought to be part of the comparative enterprise. Yet, in my view, the notion that these can be divorced from one another is theoretically unprofitable and methodologically unsound. In preparing my doctoral dissertation under Bruce’s supervision (Chrisomalis 2003), I first examined over one hundred numerical notation systems synchronically, developing a rigorous typology with the use of two basic dimensions of analysis and thereby creating five basic combinations of structural principle. I then showed that only a limited number of the possible events of change (transformation and

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replacement) among these five types actually occurred. This combination of synchronic and diachronic techniques allowed me to demonstrate multilinear evolutionary patterns of change in numerical notation systems that would not have been visible in a purely synchronic study (Chrisomalis 2004). By comparing different events of change directly, one synthesizes the best features of Boas’s historical method with those of the comparative method. This approach is extremely amenable to use with archaeological data and can be used to test the hypotheses raised by synchronic hraf-style research and diachronic but unproven culturalevolutionary scholarship.

conclusion The best way for archaeologists to become fully involved in comparative anthropological research is to note the ways in which our unique database complements the synchronic data derived from ethnography. As Trigger has noted many times throughout his career, archaeology is one of the historical sciences, along with such fields as history, palaeontology, and historical geology (Trigger 1998a, 4). We should recognize the diachronic comparisons that are already being done in archaeology, improve this work with a more rigorous focus, and cooperate with synchronic comparativists to produce general theories. Synchronic and diachronic explanations of sociocultural phenomena are complementary, not antagonistic. The dichotomy between historical and comparative methods that from Boas onwards has permeated anthropological thought must be abandoned. We can have – at the same time and directed towards the same purpose – synchronic studies of cultural function and diachronic studies of cultural process. By moving beyond the simplistic contrast between historical and comparative methods, we pave the way for a comparative science in which function and process are integrated. It is a science for which comparative archaeologists such as Bruce Trigger have paved the way.

references Adams, Robert. 1966. The Evolution of Urban Society. New York: Aldine Algaze, Guillermo. 1993. “Expansionary Dynamics of Some Early Pristine States.” American Anthropologist 95 (2):304–33

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Boas, Franz. 1896. “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology.” Science, n.s., 4 (103):901–8 Carneiro, Robert L. 1962. “Scale Analysis as an Instrument for the Study of Cultural Evolution.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 18:149–69 – 1969. “The Measurement of Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East and in Anglo-Saxon England.” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2nd ser., 31:1013–23 – 1970. “Scale Analysis, Evolutionary Sequences, and the Rating of Cultures.” In A Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology, edited by Raoul Naroll and Ronald Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press Childe, V. Gordon. 1934. New Light on the Most Ancient East: The Oriental Prelude to European Prehistory. London: Kegan Paul Chrisomalis, Stephen. 2003. The Comparative History of Numerical Notation. p hd dissertation, McGill University – 2004. “A Cognitive Typology for Numerical Notation.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14 (1):37–52 Driver, Harold E. 1966. “Geographical-Historical versus Psycho-Functional Explanations of Kin Avoidances.” Current Anthropology 7:131–82 Eggan, Fred. 1954. “Social Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Comparison.” American Anthropologist 56:743–63 Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1962. Essays in Social Anthropology. London: Faber and Faber Frankfort, Henri. 1956. The Birth of Civilization in the Near East. New York: Doubleday Fried, Morton H. 1967. The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology. New York: Random House Geertz, Clifford. 1984. “Anti Anti-relativism.” American Anthropologist 86:263–78 Gellner, Ernest. 1988. Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History. London: Collins Harvill Greenberg, Joseph H. 1969. “Some Methods of Dynamic Comparison in Linguistics.” In Substance and Structure of Language, edited by J. Puhvel. Berkeley: University of California Press – 1978. “Diachrony, Synchrony, and Language Universals.” In Method and Theory, edited by Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles A. Ferguson, and Edith A. Moravcsik. Vol. 1 of Universals of Human Language. Stanford: Stanford University Press Hewes, Gordon W. 1981. “Prospects for More Productive Comparative Civilizational Studies.” Behaviour Science Research 16:167–85 Kirch, Patrick V., and Roger C. Green. 1987. “History, Phylogeny and Evolution in Polynesia.” Current Anthropology 28:431–56

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Lewis, Oscar. 1955. “Comparisons in Cultural Anthropology.” In Yearbook of Anthropology, edited by William L. Thomas, 259–92. New York: WennerGren Lowie, Robert H. 1912. “On the Principle of Convergence in Ethnology.” Journal of American Folklore 25 (95):24–42 Mace, Ruth, and Mark Pagel. 1994. “The Comparative Method in Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 35 (5):549–64 Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power. Vol. 1 of A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company – 1959. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History. New York: McGrawHill – 1965. Culture and Society. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press Naroll, Raoul. 1968. “Some Thoughts on Comparative Method in Cultural Anthropology.” In Methodology in Social Research, edited by Hubert M. Blalock and Ann B. Blalock, 236–77. New York: McGraw-Hill Naroll, Raoul, E.D. Benjamin, F.K. Fohl, M.J. Fried, R.D. Hildreth, and J.M. Schaefer. 1971. “Creativity: A Cross-Historical Pilot Study.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 2:181–8 Naroll, Raoul, Timothy J. O’Leary, and Lee Sigelman. 1974a. A Hologeistic Bibliography. Working Paper no. 23, isa/ciss. Pittsburgh: University Center for International Studies Naroll, Raoul, Vern L. Bullough, and Frada Naroll. 1974b. Military Deterrence in History. Albany: suny Press Peel, J.D.Y. 1987. “History, Culture and the Comparative Method: A West African Puzzle.” In Comparative Anthropology, edited by L. Holy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers Peregrine, Peter N. 2001. “Cross-cultural Comparative Approaches in Archaeology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30:1–18 Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. 1951. “The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 81:15–22 Rouse, Irving. 1986. Migrations in Prehistory. New Haven: Yale University Press Sahlins, Marshall D., and Elman R. Service, eds. 1960. Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Schapera, Isaac. 1953. “Some Comments on Comparative Method in Social Anthropology.” American Anthropologist 55:353–66 Service, Elman R. 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York: Norton

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Spengler, Oswald. 1926. The Decline of the West. Translated by C.F. Atkinson. 2 vols. New York: Knopf Steward, Julian. 1949. “Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations.” American Anthropologist 51:1–27 Tainter, Joseph A. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Toynbee, Arnold. 1934–61. A Study of History. 12 vols. New York: Oxford University Press Trigger, Bruce G. 1972. “Determinants of Urban Growth in Pre-Industrial Societies.” In Man, Settlement and Urbanism, edited by P.J. Ucko, R. Tringham, and G.W. Dimbleby, 565–99. London: Gerald Duckworth and Company – 1976. “Inequality and Communication in Early Civilizations.” Anthropologica 18:27–52 – 1985a. “The Evolution of Pre-Industrial Cities: A Multilinear Perspective.” In Mélanges offerts à Jean Vercoutter, edited by Francis Geus and Florence Thill, 343–53. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations – 1985b. “Generalized Coercion and Inequality: The Basis of State Power in the Early Civilizations.” In Development and Decline: The Evolution of Sociopolitical Organization, edited by H.J. Claessen, Pieter van de Velde, and M.E. Smith, 46–61. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey – 1990. “Monumental Architecture: A Thermodynamic Explanation of Symbolic Behaviour.” World Archaeology 22:119–32 – 1991. “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis for Archaeological Explanation.” American Anthropologist 93 (3):551–69 – 1998a. Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers – 1998b. “Writing Systems: A Case Study in Cultural Evolution.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 31:39–62 – 2003. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press White, Leslie. 1959. The Evolution of Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill Willey, Gordon R. 1991. “Horizonal Integration and Regional Diversity: An Alternating Process in the Rise of Civilizations.” American Antiquity 56:197–215 Wobst, H. Martin. 1978. “The Archaeo-Ethnology of Hunter-Gatherers or the Tyranny of the Ethnographic record in Archaeology.” American Antiquity 43 (2):303–9

5 History, Theory, and Politics: Situating Trigger’s Contribution to Social Archaeology LYNN MESKELL

on a personal note When I was an undergraduate at Australia’s University of Sydney in the early 1990s, Bruce Trigger’s work was necessary reading in almost every class, whether the course was devoted to archaeological historiography, current theoretical directions, the politics of archaeology, or studies of ancient Egypt and Nubia. In fact, Trigger’s prodigious output has successfully covered so many aspects of what we today call “social archaeology” (Meskell and Preucel 2004) that it been imperative reading for the past three decades. Trigger himself was a source of fascination for us. I remember how amazed we were that an archaeologist could be accepted as an honorary member of the Huron Confederacy at a time when relations between archaeologists and aboriginal people appeared so fractious (see Langford 1983). Thankfully, those relations have greatly improved over the past decade (Burra Charter 1999; Byrne, Brayshaw, and Ireland 2001; Lilley 2000), and it was scholars such as Trigger who implemented fruitful dialogue and collaboration and served to inspire these developments. Yet closer to home, who other than a sympathetic Canadian would an Australian audience look towards to help us understand our own enigmatic archaeological hero, Gordon Childe (Trigger 1980b)? I see a real connection between the two individuals as scholars with political commitment and moral conscience. Trigger embodies many of the

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notable aspects of Childe’s career – political responsibility, a dedication to history and historiography, an ability to synthesize cultural complexity from a global perspective, an engagement with Marxist theory, and an interest in the significance of national and social context in the production of knowledge and power. It is testament to Trigger’s breadth that he has tackled all these areas of scholarship while still maintaining area specializations in Egypt, Sudan, Canada, and elsewhere with substantive influence. I can think of no other scholar of Egyptian archaeology or history who could speak to so many other regions in a comparative fashion, let alone be a major academic force in the arenas of theory and politics. I want to try to outline just a few of the works that highlight Trigger’s diverse contributions to a social archaeology. And I want to say at the outset that without Trigger’s imprimatur upon critiques of the New Archaeology, his insistence on the political dimension of archaeology (Trigger 1989), whether through the discourses on nationalism or colonialism (Trigger 1984, 1995), and his commitment to indigenous issues in archaeology (Trigger 1980a), we would be operating within a very different epistemology. It would have been an even greater struggle for a new generation of researchers to conduct a social archaeology, to practise more ethical work, and to open up dialogue with our most important constituencies, first peoples.

a r c h a e o l o g y, h i s t o r y, a n d th e o ry In Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology, Trigger (1980b) applauds Childe, using Braidwood’s praise that he “never forgot the Indian behind the artifact” – something that has characterized the trajectory of an interpretive or contextual archaeology. He uses Childe’s insights to trace the historical connections with the New Archaeology, albeit with a vociferous critique of the positivist trends within processualism. Childe, like Trigger himself, saw that the future of archaeology lies more with the discipline of history than with the production of generalizations claiming the dignity of natural laws. Both Childe and Trigger have adeptly moved between history and the social sciences, seeing them as mutually enriching for archaeology. In Gordon Childe, Trigger cautions that if archaeology were to continue along positivist lines, we risk intellectual as well as social inconsequence. The flattening out of archaeological data through law-like generalizations could only suffer by comparison with sociological or ethnographic data. It is

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because of these early and perceptive insights that Trigger has been a key player in the rise of social archaeology and a noted proponent of the view that the discipline must make a clear contribution to the social sciences. Perhaps the most crucial of Trigger’s works for us as students, and the book that continues to be his most global contribution, is A History of Archaeological Thought (1989). On rereading it, I was struck by its contemporary relevance, even fifteen years after its publication, and by its crucial message for practitioners of archaeology and writers of situated histories. Through this book, archaeology came alive for us as students. It mattered and was not, as Trigger wrote, quoting Hooten, about “senile playboys of science rooting in the rubbish heaps of antiquity” (1989, 3). From a contextual perspective, he talked about the salience of subjectivity, noting that there were no theory-free data, that political positionality and national traditions marked our evidence and shaped our interpretations. It was the type of social archaeology that post-processualism had espoused during the 1980s (Hodder 1984, 1986), but it was coming from a different direction and a different sort of intellectual tradition and therefore influenced new audiences, perhaps audiences less susceptible to the insights of postmodern theory but more amenable to the sort of historicism Trigger demonstrated. One could say the same of the numerous articles on the specifics of archaeology and its nationalist and colonialist projects in Man, American Antiquity, the American Journal of Archaeology, and the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Trigger’s specific version of contextualism recognized very early on that archaeological interpretation reflected the political and economic concerns of the middle class, and that it was influenced by gender prejudices, ethnic concerns, generational conflicts, the political control of research, funding, and publishing, as well as the idiosyncratic directions of charismatic individuals. That view encapsulates much of what many of us still see, and teach, as the key concepts of a social archaeology. It lies at the heart of a feminist project, a postcolonial one, and any archaeology of difference. Trigger has also been generous enough to write about the history of Australian archaeology, coupled with that of New Zealand and South Africa – areas that are traditionally seen quite literally as off the map. By including these areas as important domains worthy of analysis, he assures those of us coming from the global margins that our discipline extends well beyond the restricted colonial vantage of Britain and America. He has also written about multiple traditions and directions within the

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global archaeology, even though he might not have agreed, or personally endorsed, many of them, and this in itself is always a difficult and altruistic task. These included hard-line positivism and extreme relativism (Trigger 1998), both still prevalent at the time of writing.

th e a r c h a e o l o g y o f s o c i a l l i f e This section briefly addresses Trigger’s various area specializations. They are considerable, and we should note that it is uncommon for archaeologists to master more than a single cultural domain. As someone interested in cultural understandings of private life, something to which social archaeology can contribute a great deal, I look back to one of Trigger’s early books, The Huron (1969), as an example of an important synthesis of archaeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology. This book still resonates today, tackling some of the big issues in social archaeology: power, domestic life, notions of the self, belief, treatments of the dead, bodies and souls, and conceptions of the afterlife. In reading Trigger’s words about Huron concepts of the soul, its specific duality, and the various trajectories after death, one is struck by the immediacy and lived nature of his research. This book, certainly ahead of its time, continues to connect us with the people of the past. One of Trigger’s strengths, regardless of his work’s focus, is his commitment to the specificities of the past and past peoples, together with his ability to make vital connections to world views and experiences that evince a shared humanity (see also Trigger 1976a). In the case of The Huron, he makes connections to ethnographic work more generally, of which more can be said below. Trigger has similarly been a guiding figure in the world of ancient Egypt and, by extension, the Nubian Empire (1976b). In acknowledging this, I am personally underscoring the importance to me of having Bruce Trigger as a role model for Egyptian archaeology. For many younger scholars, he has proven that one can write about Egypt without being narrowly defined as an Egyptologist and that one can have interests both in and outside of Egypt. Trigger’s move towards Nubian archaeology can be seen as a reflection of the static nature of Egyptology at the time and a recognition that the most interesting work would be conducted literally at the margins of empire – with respect to both the physical region and the scholarly situation. But Trigger has successfully moved in and out of Egypt, writing famous cross-cultural works that dared to compare the greatness of Egypt with early civilizations in

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the Near East, Mesoamerica, China, India, and so on (Trigger 1993). This is most strongly demonstrated in his new work, a mammoth undertaking, Understanding Early Civilizations (Trigger 2003). Trigger’s dissertation work and early publications were directed towards analysis of settlement patterns, while related studies focused on urbanism in Egypt, bringing it in line with archaeologies of other regions. Trigger wrote the section devoted to the Predynastic and Archaic periods in the famous volume Ancient Egypt: A Social History, cowritten with two other luminaries, David O’Connor and Barry Kemp (1983). Ancient Egypt was, and continues to be, somewhat of a bible for anyone studying Egyptian history. It has always struck me that Trigger could have written the entire book himself, since he is also an expert on the other periods. Still, he focused on the most challenging section, the one without substantive written records. In the opening lines of his section, Trigger situates Egypt in Africa, something that many scholars still have difficulty doing. What follows is a masterful survey of Egyptian prehistory, linking Upper and Lower Egypt with various aspects of the Nubian Empire – its political complexity, material culture, subsistence landscape, iconography, and cultural productions. Trigger has long been regarded as the expert in the region, as his Nubia under the Pharaohs made clear back in 1976. Here, too, he contextualizes Nubia in its various relationships with pharaonic Egypt, describing the dialogic, mutual constitution of two early cultures that often defined themselves by virtue of their proximity and relationship. Having excavated in Egypt and Sudan, he was well suited for the task. It is important that we recognize that this early interest in colonialism and imperialism has stayed with him his entire career. In this book, he complicates Western notions of empire and adds a corrective: “[W]hile the settlement of conquered territory is often labelled colonialism and distinguished from imperialism, or the occupation of foreign lands solely for economic exploitation, this distinction may not be of great importance to understanding Egyptian activities in Nubia.” Trigger’s knowledge of the region, coupled with his concern with cultural contextualism and nuanced readings of power, has become a hallmark of his work, and unlike almost all Egyptologists of his generation, he was able to bring the data and the theory together in an innovative and enriching discourse. And while we are on the subject of Nubia, I would like to mention that it was while he was a student that Trigger became interested in Meroitic studies and offered his first unique contribution to the translation of

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the script. At Yale, while writing his dissertation on settlement patterns, he began translating a text on a stela from Arminna West cemetery (see Trigger 1967, 1970). In the early stages of Meroitic linguistic study, two hypotheses were on the table. The first was the notion that Meroitic was linked to Nubian, which would have strengthened William Adams’s thesis about ethnic continuity throughout Nubian history. The second proposition, which was advanced by Trigger, was that Meroitic was another Eastern Sudanic language; this proposition fitted much better with his own archaeological data. Trigger then went on to publish the entire corpus of Meroitic texts from Arminna West. Unlike the progress made on pharaonic Egyptian texts, progress on Meroitic has been slow. However, recent developments demonstrate that Trigger’s first intuitions and linguistic analyses were correct: Meroitic is indeed part of the northern branch of the Eastern Sudanic language family. Some forty years after he first offered his hypothesis, we have proof of another of Trigger’s startling successes and contributions to the field. Social Archaeology and Anthropology Another aspect of Trigger’s work, and in this we might include his entire corpus of writing and research, is the placing of archaeology firmly within an anthropological tradition. In tacitly espousing this connection, specifically as it relates to archaeology’s role in the lives of contemporary communities, he presaged developments only now coming to the fore in our field. In the last few years, there has been a growing trend for ethnographers to conduct fieldwork in archaeological contexts (Abu el-Haj 2001; Bartu 2000; Castañeda 1996) and for archaeologists, potentially, to conduct ethnographic work themselves (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2004; Green et al. 2003; Hall 2005; Meskell 2004, ch. 7; Meskell and Pels 2005, Introduction). From the ethnographies produced to date, it is clear that archaeologists are themselves well placed to practise both forms of fieldwork, combining them into the wider remit of projects rather than always resorting to external so-called specialists. Given the training received by graduate students in the United States (and indeed in many other countries), a new generation will inevitably be dually trained to perform many different kinds of field research using a wide array of methodologies. This is something that one might imagine Trigger would endorse; after all, he and scholars like him have done this for some time without taking undue trouble over the nature of

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disciplinary borders. We have certainly witnessed an approach such as this with his crossover with history and even philology, so why not ethnography? Yet, what I advocate and already see happening is a vast break with an older ethnoarchaeological project, or the kind of work that characterized Americanist archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s (Binford 1980, 1991). In this context, work with living people can no longer simply fall into the reductive tropes (and traps) of fossilized cultures and unchanging individuals. The nature of the research “subject” has to be substantially reformulated, and our own part in contemporary struggles and issues fervently acknowledged (Meskell and Pels 2005). Taken together, people are not merely additional data sets to be mined for their knowledge and oral histories to pad out our knowledge of sites and landscapes for our academic benefit. Numerous compelling works have shown that thinking otherwise can create an unethical and intolerable situation. Our commitment to our discipline requires rigorous and constant self-surveillance and challenge (Blundell 2004; Smith 1999; Watkins 2001). These are the hallmarks of an ethically engaged social archaeology today, and they are likely to be key determinants of the future of archaeology, its interdisciplinary profile, and the degree of its acceptance by our various publics. To conclude, I want to revisit something I wrote a few years ago about Bruce Trigger’s enormous contribution to our field and, more specifically, about one of the most important texts in the discipline. Two decades ago Bruce Trigger brought to the fore a certain frame of political discourse in archaeology. It has taken time to sediment. Trigger sought to interrogate the history of archaeology in A History of Archaeology Thought, outline the contours of nationalist, colonialist and imperialist archaeologies from a global perspective, and underscore the social milieus underpinning those discursive productions. As an established scholar, his contribution has had monumental effects in instantiating a responsible and ethical archaeology. In the more recent climate of Post-Processual and indigenous archaeologies, scholars have become more politicised and outspoken. Central to this development has been a recognition of the politics of location, both in regard to the effects of colonial hegemonies or transnational tensions, and in terms of our own situated scholarship. (Meskell 2002, 289–9)

Trigger is one of the major figures directly responsible for both a politicized and ethical turn in anthropology, and social archaeology would never have come to fruition as it has, without him.

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references Abu el-Haj, N. 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Bartu, A. 2000. “Where Is Catalogue: Multiple Sites in the Construction of an Archaeological Site.” In Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at Çatalhöyük, edited by I. Hodder. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Binford, L.R. 1980. “Willow Smoke and Dogs’ Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation.” American Antiquity 45:4–20 – 1991. “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going: Nunamiut Local Groups, Camping Patterns, and Economic Organization.” In Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Mobile Campsites: Hunter-Gatherer and Pastoralist Case Studies, edited by W.A. Boimier and C. Gamble. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Blundell, G. 2004. Nquabayo’s Nomansland. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University Burra Charter. 1999. “The Burra Charter: The Australian icomos Charter for the Conservation of Cultural Places of Cultural Significance.” Available at www.icomos.org/australia/burra.html Byrne, D., H. Brayshaw, and T. Ireland. 2001. Social Significance: A Discussion Paper. Sydney: nsw National Parks and Wildlife Service Castañeda, Q. 1996. In the Museum of Maya Culture: Touring Chichén Itzá. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C., and T.J. Ferguson. 2004. “Virtue Ethics and the Practice of History: Native Americans and Archaeologists along the San Pedro Valley of Arizona.” Journal of Social Archaeology 4:5–27 Green, L.F., D.R. Green, and E.G. Neves. 2003. “Indigenous Knowledge and Archaeological Science: The Challenges of Public Archaeology in the Reserve Uaca.” Journal of Social Archaeology 3:366–98 Hall, M. 2005. “Las Vegas in Africa.” Journal of Social Archaeology 5:5–24 Hodder, I. 1984. “Archaeology in 1984.” Antiquity 58:25–32 – 1986. Reading the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Langford, M. 1983. “Our Heritage – Your Playground.” Australian Archaeology 16:1–6 Lilley, I., ed. 2000. Native Title and the Transformation of Archaeology in the Postcolonial World. Vol. 50 of Oceania Monographs. Sydney: University of Sydney

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Meskell, L.M. 2002. “The Intersection of Identity and Politics in Archaeology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:279–301 – 2004. Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. Oxford: Berg Meskell, L.M., and P. Pels, eds. 2005. Embedding Ethics. Oxford: Berg Meskell, L.M., and R.W. Preucel, eds. 2004. Companion to Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Smith, L.T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies. London: Zed Books Trigger, B.G. 1967. The Late Nubian Settlement at Arminna West. Publications of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt, no. 2. New Haven: Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1970. The Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West. Publications of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt, no. 4. New Haven: Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University – 1976a. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1976b. Nubia under the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson – 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 – 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press – 1993. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press – 1995. “Romanticism, Nationalism, and Archaeology.” In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by P.L. Kohl and C. Fawcett, 262–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1998. “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm.” American Journal of Archaeology 102:1–34 – 2003. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. London: Thames and Hudson Trigger, B.G., B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd. 1983. Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Watkins, J. 2001. Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press

6 Marx, Childe, and Trigger RANDALL H. MCGUIRE

I first became aware of the work of Bruce Trigger while a graduate student at the University of Arizona in the late 1970s. The heady revolutionary days of the New Archaeology were over, and my professors were busily institutionalizing their revolution as the processual archaeology. In this context, Trigger’s name was frequently mentioned, but he was seldom assigned in seminars. The faculty clearly respected him as an iconoclast, as a critical thinker, and as a rebel like themselves. They liked his early settlement pattern research, but they could not embrace him as an ally because they did not know what to make of the theoretical brew that he had cooked up. When Time and Traditions came out in 1978, we graduate students passed it around, but we too really did not know what to make of it. On the one hand, his concerns with history, diffusion, and archaeological cultures seemed old-fashioned and perhaps even normative. On the other, he was clearly a materialist who took a systemic view of society, studied evolutionary change, and searched for patterning in the archaeological record. But he was a materialist who did not discount ideology or relegate it to epiphenomena. He explicitly rejected both the New Archaeology and culture history, but his theory seemed to us like some strange amalgam of the two. Many archaeologists have found Trigger’s thought perplexing. He has never fitted easily into the simplistic theoretical oppositions of archaeological debate – normative versus processual or processual versus post-processual. When history was under attack, he advocated history (Trigger 1978), and when the critics turned their knives on sociocultural

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evolution, he rose to defend it (Trigger 1998). He has stressed the social, contextual nature of knowledge to the positivists (Trigger 1980a) and the ability of archaeology to move towards a more complete and accurate understanding of the past to the postmodernists (Trigger 1995a, 324). I would not learn how to read Trigger until, as an assistant professor at Binghamton University, I got serious about reading Marx. Classical Marxism attracts me because in my opinion it accounts better than any other theory for human behaviour as I understand it … (Trigger 1995b, 349)

Bruce Trigger is one of a handful of anglophone archaeologists who has explicitly embraced Marxism as a way to know the world, as a critique of the world, and as a means to change the world (Patterson 2003). All well-founded Marxist approaches incorporate these three goals, and the tension between them warns Trigger away from both the determinism and false objectivity of positivism and the nihilism and subjectivity of postmodernism. This tension also warns him away from Marxism as a state ideology to legitimate the exercise of political power. He recognizes that the results of such ideology have been alienation, domination, exploitation, and repression (Klejn 1993, 70; Trigger 1995a, 326). A dynamic, holistic analysis of society and history, often referred to as the dialectic, lies at the heart of most forms of Marxism. I would argue that this includes Trigger’s theory. I label Trigger’s work as dialectical with some trepidation because after pouring over his many pages I did not find the word ever used. Yet, it seems clear to me that the ambiguity that so bedevilled my professors and my fellow graduate students springs from the dialectic. There is no simple or unambiguous way to define the dialectic, but most definitions share a few general principles. The dialectic views society as a whole within which any given entity is defined by its relationship to other entities. You cannot have teachers without students; each social entity exists because of the existence of its opposite. If interconnectedness is broken, the opposites dissolve away or, more properly, are transformed into something else. By this same token, causes do not exist free of their effects and no variable is ever independent. This social world has an intrinsic dynamic because change in any part of the world alters the whole of the relations, sustaining all elements forever in flux. In the dialectic, the entities that make up the social whole are not expected to fit comfortably together. They may fit, but the dynamics of

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change are not to be found in these functional relations. Rather, they lie in relational contradictions that spring from the fact that social categories are defined by and require the existence of their opposite. Thus, slavery defines both the master and the slave. For one to exist, so too must the other, yet they are opposites and as such potentially in conflict. Each has contrary interests and a different lived experience in the context of a shared history. Change in these relations is never simply quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative changes can lead to qualitative change, and qualitative change necessarily implies a quantitative change. Conflicts that result from relational contradictions may result in quantitative changes in those relations that build to a qualitative change. Rebellion by slaves may lead the masters to enforce stricter and stricter discipline, thereby heightening slave resistance until the relation of slavery is overthrown. The social relations that result from such a qualitative change are a mix of the old and the new; the old social form is remade, not replaced. Thus, Marxism allows Trigger to escape many of the oppositions that bedevil debates about archaeological theory. These oppositions include science versus humanism, objectivity versus subjectivity, the material versus the mental, and evolution versus history. Trigger has sought to examine how these poles are interconnected rather than seeing them as irresolvable opposites. He acknowledges that scholars are part of the social world that they study and that they thus must critically examine their role in that world. But, by the same token, archaeologists study a real past, and Trigger argues that recognizing the subjectivity of the scholar does not negate the possibility of determining the truth or falsehood of specific interpretations. Trigger was not the only or first scholar to confuse the processual archaeologists. They never quite knew what to do with V. Gordon Childe either. Bruce Trigger (2003a, 7–15) read Childe as an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. He was already predisposed to believe that political commitment influenced scholarly ideas, and he found that idea reinforced in the classical Marxism of Childe. He also read other works to expand his understanding of the Marxist background to Childe’s thinking. In his first explicitly Marxist influenced work, “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary Archaeological Thinking,” Trigger argued that Engels had used Marxism to formulate a deductive, materialist explanation for the biological evolution of humans that presaged that of contemporary American physical anthropologists (Trigger

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1967). A “leading American anthropological journal” rejected the paper because the editors feared that political harm might come to the physical anthropologists through guilt by association with Friedrich Engels (Trigger 2003b, 13). Trigger noted: “The rejection of my paper was a measure of the enduring scars that McCarthyism had inflicted on academic life in the United States” (Trigger 2003b, 13). For Trigger, fear of political harassment explained why the New Archaeologists had never really come to grips with the Marxism of Childe, why Leslie White embraced technological determinism, and why Julian Steward settled into an environmental determinism. He bemoaned the fact that this harassment had severed Marxism from neoevolutionary theory and abandoned Marxist theory to ideologues (Trigger 2003b, 16). During the 1970s, Trigger (1978) developed a critique of processual archaeology. He welcomed the move away from culture history and taxonomy but could not embrace the new theory. He found the New Archaeology’s characterizations of a “normative” archaeology overly simplistic and in error. He rejected the determinism and false objectivity inherent in its positivist epistemology and in the simplistic oppositions of the debate between materialism and idealism. Most of all, he defended history, which he saw as having been badly treated by both its Boasian advocates and their New Archaeological critics. Patterson finds Trigger’s critique “highly original” but not necessarily “rooted in Marxist social thought” (2003, 157). Patterson is certainly correct that Trigger’s analysis lacks an explicit use of Marxist social concepts. However, a dialectical logic pervades the critique: “There is not evidence of a split between Childe as a humanist, and as a Marxist or social scientist” (Trigger 1980b, 168). Yet, all the while that Trigger was evaluating the New Archaeology, he was still contemplating Childe. I remember reading Trigger’s Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. For the first time, Childe made sense to me as a Marxist scholar, not as the confused diffusionist turned neoevolutionist I had been taught he was. From any review of Trigger’s work, it is clear that Childe had a seminal influence on his thought. In equal measure, however, Trigger has been the scholar most responsible for formulating a coherent, contemporary understanding of Childe for archaeology. Trigger plumbed the depths of Childe’s thinking to reveal the ways in which “Childe’s thought continues to constitute an important challenge to archaeology” (1980b, 19). Trigger found the ongoing relevance of Childe through a serious consideration of Childe’s Marxism.

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Childe looms large in the history of anglophone archaeology. He is probably the most widely cited English-speaking archaeologist of the twentieth century and the most broadly known both within and without of the profession. Yet both his contemporaries and his descendants have had great trouble figuring him out. For his contemporaries at the middle of the twentieth century, the problem was how to separate Childe’s considerable substantive contributions from his Marxist challenges to the ideologies on both sides of the Cold War. In Russia, Soviet authors both praised Childe as the “most eminent archaeologist of the twentieth century” and decried him as a captive of “bourgeois science” (Trigger 1980b, 14–15). North American archaeologists could not reconcile Childe’s early diffusionist interpretations of European prehistory with his later evolutionary work Man Makes Himself or the humanism of his European syntheses with the deductive approach of his later work (Braidwood 1958; Rouse 1958). In England, archaeologists sought to downplay or deny Childe’s Marxism. In numerous places Glyn Daniel denied that Childe was a Marxist, and he asserted, “He [Childe] remained firmly a diffusionist preaching a modified form of the excesses of the Manchester School” (Daniel 1981, 162). In the second half of the twentieth century, archaeological reformers have attempted to legitimate their new approaches by finding bits and pieces of what they want to do in Childe. New Archaeologists embraced Childe as one of the first archaeologists to speak of process, to advocate evolution, and to propose sets of testable propositions for his theories (Binford 1972, 79, 427). Gordon Willey and Jeremy Sabloff (1974, 180) identified Childe as an evolutionist who fed influences into the mainstream of American archaeology that led to the development of the New Archaeology. In the manifesto of the post-processual archaeology, Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Hodder 1982), the authors advocated a reactionary view that harked back to the humanism of Childe. Mark Leone (1982), in his commentary on the volume, called the post-processualists “Childe’s Offspring.” Clearly, Childe was a complex, insightful, and path-breaking thinker, and his contemporaries and the reformers picked and chose from this complexity to find the bits of his ideas that they wanted. They failed to see the coherent whole of Childe’s archaeology because they attempted to understand him in terms of either-or oppositions, determinates, and categorical thinking. Trigger was able to make sense of the whole of Childe’s archaeology because he recognized that Childe’s Marxism (like

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all well-conceived Marxisms) understood social change to be overdetermined, recognized oppositions to be the products of contradictions, and understood categories to be only comprehensible in terms of their relationship to other aspects of society. Marxist lenses allowed Trigger (1980b, 168–79) to see the coherent whole of Childe’s archaeology. Childe began with the assumption that society forms an interconnected totality and that cultural change had to be explained in societal terms. Technology was key in his explanations but not determinate. Social and ideological factors could both assist and impede the process of change. Childe accepted a notion of evolutionary change, but since such a process could not be in some simple way determined, he also stressed the role of historical processes, specifically diffusion, in processes of change. He toyed with the idea of universal laws for human behaviour and cultural change. Ultimately, he rejected this idea because he realized that human nature and the rules governing society were not fixed but rather subject to revolutionary change. This rejection of determinism and universal laws led Childe to combine a materialist perspective on change with a humanistic focus on the human side as opposed to the animal side of Homo sapiens behaviour. One of the most impressive things about Childe was his detailed knowledge of the archaeological record, and he insisted that data should be the starting point for archaeological theory. Unlike many Marxists, he tended to take a functionalist view of society and adaptation, but he did advocate contradictions within society as the mechanisms that produced social change. Like all Marxists, he saw scholarship as a human, social endeavour with political inspirations and consequences. By eliminating the white man’s definition of history as studying themselves and of anthropology as the science of allegedly simple peoples, archaeology may at last transcend some of the false consciousness that is a heritage from America’s colonialist past. It is our duty to recognize this heritage for what it is and to overcome it. (Trigger 1980a, 674)

In the 1980s, Trigger (1984b, 1985, 1993b) advocated an explicitly Marxist approach to archaeology that he grounded in a Marxism very much like that of Childe. Key to this approach was his critique of the political nature of archaeological thought, which resulted in a series of articles and a book that helped to inspire a major shift in the historiography of archaeology. With a few notable exceptions, such as Robert

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Silverberg’s (1968) The Mound Builders of Ancient America, the authors of previous English-language histories of archaeology had written about great men, their achievements, and the march of progress in archaeology. In contrast, Trigger argued that political and social realities such as nationalism, colonialism, and class struggle strongly influenced archaeological interpretations. In these contexts, archaeology both produced ideology and was a product of ideology. Yet he recognized that the accumulation of data mitigated the effects of these realities. Thomas Patterson (1986, 2003) embarked on a similar program of research and publication at about the same time. This critical and social approach to the history of archaeology has become the dominant one, as indicated by more recent Marxist (McGuire 1992), feminist (Kehoe 1998), indigenous (Watkins 2000), and other (Arnold 1990; Klejn 1993) studies. Trigger’s (1980a) “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian” had a profound effect on me as a graduate student. I had entered college in a time of red power, I had furtively read Vine Deloria’s (1969) book Custer Died for Your Sins, and I had been an undergraduate student at Colorado State University in 1971, when American Indian Movement activists took over a physical anthropology laboratory (Watkins 2000, 7). It was enlightening for me to see an archaeologist taking Native American distrust of archaeology seriously and more importantly trying to make critical sense of that fact. Trigger maintained that North American archaeologists had embraced an ideology that aboriginal peoples were incapable of change to justify a colonialist practice of archaeology. He also argued that the heavy weight of data had forced archaeologists gradually to reject this ideology. He praised the New Archaeology for establishing that aboriginal people were as creative as other people, but he noted that the archaeologists’ focus on generalization alienated them from living aboriginal people. For me as a graduate student, this analysis not only explained the controversies of my formative years in the profession but also pointed to ways to tackle those controversies as a scholar and an archaeologist. In 1984 Trigger argued that the position of countries in the modern world system very much influenced the practice of archaeology in those countries (Trigger 1984a). He posited that there were three basic approaches to archaeology: nationalist, colonialist, and imperialist. In each case, he showed how the aspirations, interests, and fears of the dominant classes influenced the form of archaeology. At that time I was in the processes of beginning a still ongoing research project in Mexico. Nearly a decade before, at a meeting at Teotihuacan, a group of largely

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Marxist Latin American archaeologists had met and produced a manifesto that called for an arqueología social that confronted the power relations and imperialism of Yankee archaeology in Mexico (Lorenzo 1976). Trigger’s analysis helped me make sense of the confrontation between a nationalist Mexican archaeology and an imperialist U.S. archaeology. It also helped me to formulate an approach to working in Mexico that transcended these differences (McGuire 1997, 2002). I find it significant that Trigger (1989a) entitled his historical opus A History of Archaeological Thought as opposed to “A History of Archaeology.” For Trigger, archaeological thought is a complex thing. It results from two major influences (Trigger 1989a, 15). First, the ideas and interests of social groups influence the archaeological interpretations that these social groups then use as tools to achieve their goals in particular contexts. Second, archaeologists accumulate data about the past and these data constitute a test of earlier interpretations. Trigger (1989a, 14) argues that the development of archaeology corresponds to the rise of the middle classes in the West. In this context, archaeology has served an ideological purpose of providing societies, nations, and groups with mythical charters that justify their existence, interests, aspirations, and authority. For many of us, the main lesson of Trigger’s histories was that archaeology is a product of a specific class or community. This conflicted with both the normative idea of archaeology as the gathering of facts and the processualist notion of archaeology as a method to obtain objective (i.e., context free) understanding of the processes of cultural change. The implication from this was that we could create an archaeology that served the interest of communities other than the middle classes and thus use it as an instrument to challenge the powerful rather than legitimate them (Shanks and McGuire 1996). This has led to efforts to develop feminist (Hays-Gilpin and Whitley 1998), indigenous (Watkins 2000), and working-class (McGuire and Reckner 2003) archaeologies, among others. Trigger (1989b, 797) would not, however, necessarily agree with these efforts, since he worries that political partisanship would dominate such efforts and destroy any objectivity in them. Trigger (2003b, 13) has reflected on the relativism of his own work. He recognizes that his considerations of context were incomplete because, like most Marxists of his generation, he had not given enough attention to gender and gender inequality (Trigger 2003b, 15). Like Childe, Trigger realizes that the material world of archaeology and the data we generate do not exist independent of thought but that only by struggling to find a correspondence between our views of reality and

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the material world can we generate data and true understanding. For Trigger, this is an inexact and imperfect process, heavily influenced by social, political, and ideological context, but one still capable of generating and being shaped by our cumulative knowledge of the past. This position put him at odds with both the determinism of processual archaeology and the relativism of post-processual archaeology. True knowledge is and always has been the reformer’s strongest weapon. Reformers must never surrender it. (Trigger 1995a, 331)

Trigger (1995b, 349) acknowledged the influence of social and political context on the creation of ideas, but he was suspicious of theories that assigned too much independent transformational power to ideas. Just as he contrasted the concern of classical Marxism for the context of knowledge creation with the feigned objectivity of processual archaeology, he also confronted the relativism of post-processual archaeology with the materialism of classical Marxism. Trigger (1989b, 783) recognized that the post-processual archaeology advocated by Ian Hodder and his students at Cambridge represented a return to many of the major themes that had dominated a culturehistorical archaeology. These included history, ethnology, context, and the subjectivity of the researcher, and all of them were themes that he had defended and promoted in opposition to processual archaeology. But Trigger found these things linked to a hyperrelativism that failed to recognize the importance of the real world in the formation of archaeological thought. He initially linked these ideas to a critical, humanistic “neo-Marxism” (Trigger 1989b). Trigger argued that the “constraints of archaeological evidence are not negligible” (1989b, 790). He noted that although social and political context affected how archaeologists studied the past, these biases were not inherent in the archaeological record. The power of archaeology for social transformation lay in the archaeologist’s ability to accumulate facts about the past that could challenge pernicious uses of history. He was concerned that the post-processual relativistic position offered the archaeologist no way to transcend their social and political context to produce knowledge that was not simply a reflection of their self-interest. It left them with no basis except political belief for confronting the manipulation of archaeology by states, elites, and totalitarian movements. Trigger (1990, 1995a, 1998) developed his critique of the postprocessual archaeology through a series of papers in the 1990s. Most

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recently, his criticisms have followed the more general critiques of postmodernism by Marxist scholars (Trigger 1995a; 1998, 245). He argues that contemporary neo-conservative forces have rewarded postmodernism (and its archaeological manifestation as post-processual archaeology) because of its relativism and nihilism. The relativism deligitimizes any attempt by archaeology to challenge these forces, and the nihilism of the approach leads scholars to underestimate their ability to challenge them. Trigger (1995a, 327) contends that the social sciences must seek a more objective view of the world and knowledge in order to change society for the collective good. The challenge of the present is for progressive anthropologists to draw on their knowledge of social behaviour to try to design societies of a sort that have never existed before in human history. (Trigger 2003a, 42)

For Trigger, the ultimate goal of anthropological scholarship is to transform the social world. He urges us to work towards a society that is technologically advanced, culturally diverse, and egalitarian in both its economy and politics, and in which all people share in both the rewards and responsibilities of living on this earth. He finds the means to this goal in a critical awareness of the social and political context of our scholarship and in a search for true knowledge. In the last decade, Trigger has made the political implications of his research more overt. He has confronted neo-conservative ideologies such as the “end of history” (Trigger 1995a) and the core assumptions of neo-liberalism (Trigger 2003a). These efforts have been embedded in critical considerations of sociocultural evolution and human nature. Trigger (1998, xi) equates the rejection of sociocultural evolution with the extreme relativism of post-processual archaeology. Even outside of this theoretical group there can be little doubt that sociocultural evolution has lost popularity in archaeology. In his book Sociocultural Evolution, Trigger (1998) provides a critical historical analysis. He examines the concept of sociocultural evolution both in terms of the social and political contexts of its formulation and use and in terms of its relationship to the accumulation of knowledge about the past. He recognizes that varied political and social agendas have used sociocultural evolution and that the concept has carried the heavy baggage of ethnocentrism (Trigger 1998, 225). He notes, however, that these problems spring from the political uses of the concept and that these uses do not

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address the question of whether or not there is shape and direction to human history. He did not see racism and ethnocentrism as being inherent in sociocultural evolution (Trigger 1995, 348). Trigger argues that for sociocultural evolution to be an essential concept for understanding human history, its proponents must address ideas of determinism, inevitable directions of change, and value judgments. Once accomplished, they can study sociocultural evolution within the historical contexts of real human life. He also maintains that the reality of sociocultural evolution demonstrates the falseness of the conservative assertion that we are living at the “end of history” and that only free enterprise awaits in our future (Trigger 1998, 192–3, 256). Trigger’s ten years of research that culminated in Understanding Early Civilizations (2003c) involved a critique both of the assumptions of neo-liberalism and of Marxist treatments of human nature, including Marx’s own claims, though not his practice. He questions the Enlightenment assumption that humans are inherently altruistic. He argues that egalitarian relations in small-scale societies must be maintained by ridicule, gossip, and fear of witchcraft. Thus, hunter-gatherer societies do not provide a model for the future, but they do demonstrate that social and political egalitarianism is possible in human societies. His cross-cultural study of early civilizations indicates that these mechanisms fail with an increase in social complexity. He argues that the inevitable result of evolutionary changes in societies is institutionalized political, social, and economic inequality. He recognizes that high-level decision-making is required in complex political systems but that this does not explain why such managerial elites appropriate top-heavy surpluses for their own use. He takes this as evidence that altruism is not inherent in the human condition and that we cannot create more-just societies simply by removing the corrupting influences of modes of production such as capitalism. Rather we have to imagine and design control mechanisms that will work in technologically advanced large-scale societies in a manner analogous to the role of ridicule, gossip, and fear of witchcraft in small-scale societies. Marxism is not a divine revelation but a scientific theory and method that in the opinion of most of its adherents aims to test itself by transforming society. (Trigger 1984b, 61)

Trigger’s theory differs from both the processual and the post-processual archaeologies because it is Marxist. His classical Marxism may also be

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contrasted with other Marxist approaches to archaeology. Approaches to Marxism can be differentiated based on how they weight the goals of knowledge, critique, and action, and on how they relate these three goals one to the other. They also differ in the amount of tolerance they will give to competing Marxisms (Trigger 1995a). Trigger has explicitly contrasted his approach of classical Marxism with the state ideologies of the former Marxist states, structural Marxism, and neo-Marxism. His strong advocacy of a classical Marxism also attracted the admiration of Spanish-speaking scholars who developed the arqueología social in Latin America and Spain. Trigger separated his Marxism from the state ideology of the Soviet Union. He noted that Childe had rejected the Marxist theory that dominated Soviet archaeology after World War II, and Trigger adopted the same qualified interest in Soviet archaeology that characterized Childe’s research in the 1950s. The Soviets’ dogmatic imposition of Marxism on archaeological data violated one of Trigger’s (1998a, 235) key tenets: to wit, that science should consider opposing views of the same issue and submit all views to rigorous, empirical review and evaluation. Following Leo Klejn (1993), he described the Marxist ideology of the Soviet state as alienating, dominating, exploitative, and antithetical to science (Trigger 1995a, 326). Trigger employed his critique of neo-Marxist theory primarily against post-processual authors who were influenced by Marxism but never adopted a Marxist point of view. These included scholars such as Ian Hodder, Christopher Tilley, and Michael Shanks. Trigger (1989b, 1998) identified neo-Marxism as originating in the critical Marxism of the Frankfurt School and with Antonio Gramsci’s writings. He applauded the understanding that archaeological interpretations were subjective and influenced by social milieus, but worried that they lured these authors to an extreme epistemological realism. From this point of view, there exists no objective means to determine the falsehood of ideas and radical praxis is accomplished by encouraging multiple views of the past. Trigger (1989b, 786) praised neo-Marxist scholars such as Mark Leone for arguing that considerations of subjectivities could be used to control them and thus create more objective understandings of the past. But he faulted them for not developing formal methodologies to do so. In the 1970s, a French-derived structural Marxism became fashionable, especially in anthropology and British archaeology (Patterson 2003, 98). This theory built on the work of Louis Althusser and sought to replace the dialectics of classical Marxism with a theory of structuralism. Advocates of the theory argued that superstructural elements, such as

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religion and ideology, were the motor of political developments in the evolution of states (Friedman and Rowlands 1977). In a comparative study of early states, Trigger (1993a) did not find the motor of political development to be in the superstructure but rather in the dialectic between religion and the state, which varied depending on the socioeconomic and class structure of the state. Structural Marxists also argued that all societies, including primitive ones, could be analysed using class analysis: that is, that processes analogous to class exist in all societies. For archaeology, Dean Saitta (1994) has argued that, in primitive societies, class processes are subsumed within kin relations. Trigger (1993b, 179) criticized the uniformitarian view of human behaviour inherent in such structural Marxist positions and argued instead that the social relations of primitive communal societies are fundamentally different than those of either tributary or capitalist states (see also Patterson 2003, 132–40). A Marxist arqueología social developed in the Spanish-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s. A self-conscious Marxist archaeology in Latin America sprang from the leftist revolutionary movements of the 1960s and the concurrent development of an anti-imperialist intellectual tradition (McGuire and Navarrete 1999; Benavidas 2001). The arqueología social found the starting point for archaeology as a social science in the work of V. Gordon Childe but realized that his work could not be applied directly to their context (Lorenzo 1976, 6; Vargas and Sanoja 1999, 60). Proponents of the arqueología social sought to reformulate the concepts of Marx to apply them to the aboriginal history of Latin America, and in so doing, they were critical of both neo-Marxism and structural Marxism (Benavidas 2001). In Spain, the explicit development of a Marxist archaeology followed the death of the dictator Franco in 1975. As in Latin America, these Spaniards sought to develop a scientific Marxism grounded in a classical approach (Castro et al. 1998). These Hispanic archaeologists have embraced Trigger’s research as one of the few like-minded lines of thought in anglophone archaeology. Yet there are some indications that in the darkest hour of its political existence, classical Marxism as a materialistic philosophical system may be beginning a process of renewal that will allow it once again to compete with alternative views of human behaviour. (Trigger 1993b)

In the broadest sense, we can speak of two major Marxist theoretical currents within archaeology today. The first of these derives from what

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Trigger has called “classical Marxism.” The second derives from a more humanistic approach based in a Hegelian dialectic and a relational theory of Marxism (McGuire 1992). All Marxists seek to gain knowledge of the world, critique the world, and take action in the world, but within these two broad approaches, they differ in the weight they give each of these goals and how they relate each to the other. The similarities and differences of these two approaches are probably best illustrated by a comparison of how they lead to similar and different interpretations of real archaeological cases. These two approaches begin with different concepts of the dialectic. Classical Marxists tend to accept Engels’s (1940) concept of the dialectics of nature and apply the dialectic to the study of both the natural and the social world. In contrast, humanistic or Hegelian Marxists see the dialectic as a uniquely social phenomena. The dialectics of nature seek the general laws governing the development of nature, science, society, and thought (Woods and Grant 1995). They treat all phenomena as being in a state of perpetual change and movement. The motor for this change lies in struggle and contradiction. The dialectics of nature tend to overlap and complement ideas of chaos theory and of complex adaptive systems (Woods and Grant 1995). A Hegelian dialectic treats Marxism as a theory of relations and society as a complex web of social relations within which the relation of any entity to other entities governs what that entity will be. Teachers do not exist without students, nor students without teachers. It is the underlying relationship of teaching and learning that defines both. Such a dialectical relationship depends upon the entities involved forming a unity of opposites. Such a unity of opposites cannot exist in the study of nature. A unity of opposites exists in the study of the social world because scholars are part of the social world that they study. The scholar may be the subject and the object of the study; it is the relationship of study that creates scholars (subjects) and informants (objects). The study of nature produces scientists, but it does not produce nature. The study of geology creates geologists, but it does not create rocks. These different interpretations of the dialectic have implications for how Marxists construct research and interpret social change. For a classical Marxist like Trigger, gaining knowledge of the world lies at the core of research. The role of the scholar is to gain as objective as possible an understanding of the world to provide a basis for action to transform the world (Trigger 1995a, 329). This enterprise begins with a critique of the subjective nature of knowledge with a goal of overcoming

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that subjectivity. For Hegelian Marxists, critique lies at the core of research. The scholar obtains knowledge of the world through observation but must be constantly critical of how and why that knowledge is accepted. Interpretations of the past must fit the observations that we make about the past, but we must also critique how such knowledge flows from, creates, and reinforces the relational contradictions that define the society of which we are a part. In other words, we must remember that all knowledge is social, a complex mix of our observations of the real world and the social context of those observations. Social action follows from this complex understanding and is the ultimate test of it. That test again requires critique of both the knowledge and the action. One place this opposition is clear is in how critique and knowledge are transformed into praxis. For Trigger, the reformer’s main weapon is true knowledge. Many of us would agree with this position but also argue that archaeology must be more than a bourgeois practice in order for “true knowledge” to have a transformative impact on the world. Put more simply, we do not believe that an archaeology that speaks to and for the bourgeoisie will be transformative because the bourgeoisie have no interests that would be served by such a transformation. We would argue instead that archaeology needs to serve the interests of different communities, for example the working class (McGuire and Reckner 2003) and indigenous peoples (Watkins 2000). Trigger fears, however, that with a loss of objectivity, archaeology will become simply a prop for preconceived ideologies, as it became in the Soviet Union, and that such an archaeology risks self-deception. He wants us to stand aside from the fray more as referees than players. Yet, it is Trigger who lays out the process by which this anxiety may be alleviated. Trigger (1989a) has made the convincing case that modern archaeology resulted from the development of the capitalist middle classes and that archaeology has served the interests of that class. He also argues, however, that the accumulation of knowledge by archaeology has resisted the ideologies of the bourgeoisie despite the class basis of archaeological practice. He identifies the key to this process as being a focus on empirical reality and a reluctance to dismiss lightly evidence that does not support current political beliefs. Thus, he argues that the reason to consider the political nature of archaeology is to arrive at a more objective understanding of the world. Others and I agree and would support these efforts within the traditional boundaries of archaeology. But we would argue that there is more to be done because, as Trigger recognizes, what knowledge we

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accumulate depends also upon what questions and interests we bring to our research. We wish to allow communities other than the middle classes to define the interests and questions of archaeology. In doing so, we resist simply providing these communities with mythical charters that justify their existence, interests, aspirations, and authority. Rather, we wish to critically and empirically answer the archaeological questions these communities raise to arrive at knowledge that will transform the political struggles of our world. We feel that such efforts, combined with the type of archaeology that Trigger advocates, stand the best hope of contributing to a change in society for the collective good of a majority of human beings. The reading of Bruce Trigger that I began as a graduate student is not over. As with Marx and Childe, each time I return to his work I find new insight and new substance that I missed in a previous reading. I find this more and more true as my own thinking about archaeology and its role in the world matures and grows. I know that Marx, Childe, and Trigger will continue to broaden my knowledge.

references Arnold, Bettina. 1990. “The Past as Propaganda: Totalitarian Archaeology in Nazi Germany.” Antiquity 64:464–78 Bate, Luis Felipe. 1998. El Proceso de Investigación en Arqueología. Barcelona: Crítica Benavidas, O. Hugo. 2001. “Returning to the Source: Social Archaeology as Latin American Philosophy.” Latin American Antiquity 12 (4):355–70 Binford, Lewis R. 1972. An Archaeological Perspective. New York: Seminar Press Braidwood, Robert J. 1958. “Vere Gordon Childe, 1892–1957.” American Anthropologist 60:733–6 Castro, Pedro V., Sylvia Gili, Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete, Roberto Risch, and Encarna Sanahuja Yll. 1998. “Towards a Theory of Social Production and Social Practice.” In Craft Specialization: Operational Sequences and Beyond, edited by Sarah Milliken and Massimo Vidal. Vol. 4 of bar International Series 720. Oxford: Archaeopress Daniel, Glyn. 1981. A Short History of Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1969. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Tulson: University of Oklahoma Press

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Engels, F. 1940. Dialectics of Nature. Translated by E. Buns. London: Thames and Hudson. Originally published in 1876 Friedman, Jonathan, and Michael Rowlands. 1977. “Notes toward an Epigenetic Model of Evolution of Civilization.” In The Evolution of Social Systems, edited by J. Friedman and M. Rowlands, 201–76. London: Gerald Duckworth and Company Hays-Gilpin, Kelley, and David S. Whitley. 1998. Reader in Gender Archaeology. London: Routledge Hodder, Ian, ed. 1982. Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Kehoe, Alice Beck. 1998. The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. London: Routledge Klejn, Leo S. 1993. La Arqueología Soviética: Historia y Teoría de una Escuela Desconocida. Barcelona: Crítica Leone, Mark. 1982. “Childe’s Offspring.” In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by I. Hodder, 179–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Lorenzo, Jose Luis. 1976. Hacia Una Arqueología Social: Reunion en Teotihuacan. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia McGuire, Randall H. 1992. A Marxist Archaeology. Orlando: Academic Press – 1997. “Crossing the Border.” In Prehistory of the Borderlands, edited by J. Carpenter and G. Sanchez, 130–7. Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series 186. Tucson – 2002. “The Meaning and Limits of the Southwest/Northwest.” In Boundaries and Territories: Prehistory of the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico, edited by M.E. Villalpando, 173–83. Arizona State University Anthropological Research Papers 54. Tempe McGuire, Randall H., and Rodrigo Navarrete. 1999. “Entre Motocicletetas y Fusiles: Las Arqueologías Radicales Anglosajona y Latinoamericana.” Boletín de Antropología Americana 34:90–110 McGuire, Randall H., and Paul Reckner. 2003. “Building a Working Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project.” Industrial Archaeology Review 25 (2):83–95 Patterson, Thomas. 1986. “The Last Sixty Years: Towards a Social History of Archaeology in the United States.” American Anthropologist 88 (1):7–26 – 2003. Marx’s Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists. Oxford: Berg Rouse, Irving. 1958. “Vere Gordon Childe 1892–1957.” American Antiquity 24:82–4 Saitta, Dean. 1994. “Agency, Class, and Archaeological Interpretation.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13 (2):201–27

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Shanks, Michael, and R. McGuire. 1996. “The Craft of Archaeology.” American Antiquity 61:75–88 Silverberg, Robert. 1968. The Mound Burials of Ancient America. Greenwich, N.Y.: Graphics Society Trigger, Bruce G. 1978. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. New York: Columbia University Press – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press – 1984a. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 – 1984b. “Marxism and Archaeology.” In On Marxian Perspectives in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Harry Hoijer, 1981, edited by Jacques Maquet and Nancy Daniels, 59–97. Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications – 1985. “Marxism in Archaeology: Real or Spurious?” Reviews in Anthropology 12:114–23 – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 – 1990. “The 1990s: North American Archaeology with a Human Face?” Antiquity 64:778–87 – 1993a. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press – 1993b. “Marxism in Contemporary Western Archaeology.” In Archaeological Method and Theory, edited by M.B. Schiffer, 5:159–200. Tucson: University of Arizona Press – 1995a. “Archaeology and the Integrated Circus.” Critique of Anthropology 15 (4):319–35 – 1995b. “A Reply to Tilley and Nencel.” Critique of Anthropology 15 (4): 347–50 – 1998. Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers – 2003a. “All People Are [Not] Good.” Anthropologica 45:39–44 – 2003b. Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers – 2003c. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Vargas A., Iraida, and Mario Sanoja. 1999. “Archaeology as a Social Science: Its Expression in Latin America.” In Archaeology in Latin America, edited by G.G. Politis and B. Alberti, 59–75. London: Routledge Watkins, Joe. 2000. Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff. 1974. A History of American Archaeology. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company Woods, Alan, and T. Grant. 1995. Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science. London: Wellred Publications

7 Marxist Theories and Settlement Studies in Japanese Archaeology: Direct and Indirect Influences of V. Gordon Childe JUNKO HABU AND CLARE FAWCETT

preface When the editors of this volume first asked us to participate in a 2004 Society for American Archaeology session to honour Bruce Trigger, we immediately thought of the topic of Gordon Childe and Japanese archaeology. Perhaps this was because both of us had memories particularly linked to Childe, Bruce Trigger, and Japanese archaeology. In the late 1970s, the heyday of processual archaeology, Clare Fawcett, then an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, was asked by a Japanese professor of archaeology whether she had studied the work of Gordon Childe. From the context of the conversation, it was apparent that the professor had extensive knowledge of Childe’s work. Surprised by the question, she naively replied that although she had heard of Childe in her archaeological theory class, North American students no longer read Childe except to gain an understanding of the history of the discipline. How wrong she was. Two years later, as a graduate student at McGill University, Fawcett was reintroduced to Childe’s work by Bruce Trigger and was asked to take Childe and his theory seriously. Later, in the early 1990s, Junko Habu defended her dissertation proposal at McGill University in front of her three committee members, Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, Bruce Trigger, and Jim Savelle. One question at the defence that she could not answer was about the work of Gordon

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Childe in the context of Japanese archaeology. Since then, she has been looking for an opportunity to repay her debt to her committee members, and she hopes that this paper will suffice.

tr i g g e r , c h i l d e , a n d wo r l d a r c h a e o l o g y This paper discusses the importance of V. Gordon Childe’s work to the development of Japanese archaeology. Underlying and informing our discussion is the knowledge that Childe also played a crucial role in the scholarship of Bruce Trigger (e.g., Trigger 1980b, 1989a, 1994). Reading Childe encouraged Trigger to study Marxist theory (Trigger 1967, 1993) and explore a social and political approach to interpreting archaeological data (Trigger 2003, 7). Trigger’s reading of Childe also encouraged his exploration of the implications of thinking about archaeology as a form of historical study rather than as a historical science that seeks to establish general laws (e.g., Trigger 1980a, 181–2). Trigger expanded his interest in Marxism and history to include a passion for understanding the social and political forces underlying archaeological thought in traditions around the world (Trigger and Glover 1981, 1982). For example, Trigger’s A History of Archaeological Thought (1989a) devoted a whole chapter to outlining the history of Soviet archaeology from Tsarist Russia to the 1980s, with an emphasis on the unique development of Marxist interpretations of the past in the Soviet Union. His analysis of nationalist archaeology in different parts of the world demonstrated the close interrelationship between archaeological interpretations and their sociopolitical contexts (1984; 1989a, 174–86). His work on world archaeological traditions paralleled his analysis of the sociopolitical contexts of archaeological studies in the Anglo-American tradition, particularly those in North America (e.g., Trigger 1980a, 1981, 1990). These case studies resonate with Trigger’s long-standing advocacy of “moderate cultural relativism,” in which he emphasizes “the constraining influences of the archaeological record” (2003, 15) while acknowledging the inherently subjective nature of archaeological interpretations (see also Kohl and Fawcett 1995; Wylie 1982, 1989, 1992, 1995). This has led Trigger to criticize the approaches of some post-processualists, such as those of Shanks and Tilley (1987), for falling into the realm of hyperrelativism (Trigger 1989b, 1995, 1998; cf. Hodder 1999). Trigger’s work encourages us to analyse how various archaeological traditions have used specific archaeological concepts in similar and different ways. While his work did not directly affect the development

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of Japanese theory and method, our paper, which is strongly influenced by his interest in the historical context of various archaeological traditions, will examine how the ideas of V. Gordon Childe influenced the path of postwar Japanese archaeology. We are particularly curious about how Marxist theory and settlement pattern studies, both of which involve key concepts that Trigger analysed in his study of Gordon Childe (1980a, 1989a), have undergone unique transformations in Japanese archaeology. Equally important is Childe’s influence on social and ideological studies in Japanese archaeology. These developments predate the post-processual movement in Anglo-American archaeology by over twenty years, and they have significantly affected the subsequent course of Japanese archaeology. In this paper, we first briefly outline the history of Japanese archaeology so that the reader can understand the historical background. After this overview, we discuss three major fields of Japanese archaeology where Childe’s work made a significant impact: Marxist theory, settlement studies, and social archaeology. We also discuss the direct and indirect effects of this impact on the resulting theoretical and methodological development of Japanese archaeology.

background: japanese archaeology b e f o r e a n d d u r i n g wo r l d wa r i i As many scholars have noted (Habu 1989; Ikawa-Smith 1982), the history of Japanese archaeology since the mid-nineteenth century reflects active interaction with Europe and North America. Most scholars agree that the 1877 excavation of the Omori shell midden by Edward Morse (1879), an American zoologist who taught at the University of Tokyo from 1877 to 1879 (Isono 1987), marked the transition from antiquarianism to the Western style of scientific archaeology. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several Japanese archaeologists studied abroad, bringing back new theories and methods. Notably, Kosaku Hamada (1922), who studied in England under W.M. Flinders Petrie from 1914 to 1916, introduced two important concepts into Japanese archaeology: typology and stratigraphy. Hamada also translated Oscar Montelius’s 1903 book on archaeological methods into Japanese in 1932. Since then, the work of Montelius has been cited by numerous Japanese archaeologists as a key reference for understanding the theoretical foundation of artifact typology (e.g., Tanaka 1978).

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From the 1920s to the 1930s, other Japanese archaeologists played active roles in establishing typological chronologies of artifacts, especially of pottery from the prehistoric Jomon (ca. 14,000–400 b.c.) and Yayoi (ca. 400 b.c.–a.d. 300) periods. Sugao Yamanouchi, for example, whose theories and methods were strongly influenced by Darwinism and biological classification schemes (Sahara 1984), conducted systematic typological and stratigraphic analyses of Jomon pottery. By the late 1930s, Yamanouchi successfully established the basic framework of Jomon pottery chronology (Yamanouchi 1937). It was also during the 1920s and 1930s that Japanese archaeologists began to question whether an emphasis on artifact typology would lead to a healthy development of archaeology as a scientific discipline. For example, Masashi Nezu, a student of Hamada’s, criticized Japanese archaeology for its lack of studies on social organization, including on the “forces of production” and the “relations of production” (Nezu 1935). As these Marxist terms in Nezu’s writing reflect, many Japanese archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s were exposed to the new wave of political ideologies from the West, which included Marxism and anarchism (Sahara 1984). Unfortunately, in these same years, an ultranationalistic ideology began to dominate political and social climates of Japan. Under this situation, it became increasingly difficult not only to use Marxist interpretations of the past, but also to undertake the study of prehistoric Japanese societies. This was because the official history approved by the ultra-nationalistic government did not admit the presence of either hunter-gatherer or early agricultural societies prior to the formation of the ancient Japanese state (Fawcett and Habu 1990; Habu 1989). Legends and myths were mixed with historical facts, and 660 b.c. was given as the date when the Japanese nation was established by the first emperor, Jinmu (a mythical character). Moreover, schoolchildren were taught in their history classes that the imperial family members were descendants of the ancient gods. This ultra-nationalism severely restricted Japanese archaeological interpretations until the end of World War II. Defeat in World War II in 1945 finally forced Japan to give up ultranationalism, including the deification of the emperor and his ancestors. In this new social and political environment, Japanese archaeology began to develop new directions of research (Fawcett and Habu 1990). It was in this context that the majority of Japanese translations of Childe’s work were published.

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c h i l d e ’ s wo r k a n d j a p a n e s e a r c h a e o l o g y from the late 1940s through to the 1960s In post–World War II Japanese archaeology, Childe is probably the most well known Western archaeologist. Six of his books have been translated into Japanese: (1) New Light on the Most Ancient East (1934; translated by M. Nezu in 1944); (2) Man Makes Himself (revised version) (1951; translated by M. Nezu in 1957); (3) History (1947; translated by M. Nezu in 1954); (4) What Happened in History (1954b; translated by R. Imaki and K. Muto in 1958); (5) Piecing Together the Past (1956a: translated by Y. Kondo in 1966, revised in 1981); and (6) A Short Introduction to Archaeology (1956b; translated by Y. Kondo and T. Kimura in 1969). All of these books were translated from the 1940s to the 1960s. Also, according to Kondo and Yamaguchi (1987), two of Childe’s articles published in A History of Technology (Singer and Holmyard 1954) were translated into Japanese in 1962. Childe’s work was appreciated by postwar Japanese archaeologists in three different but interrelated ways. First, he provided them with an elegant example of how to apply Marxist theories in order to understand a past social structure and its changes over time. Although Marxism (usually called “historical materialism” in Japanese archaeology) became quite popular among postwar Japanese archaeologists and anthropologists, their main sources of information were limited to a few classics, such as Ancient Society by Lewis Morgan (1887; translated in 1954) and The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels (1884; translated in 1954). Childe’s synthesis of European and Near Eastern archaeology, with his emphasis on neolithic and urban revolutions, provided a model for Japanese archaeologists to link archaeological data with sequential developmental stages, each of which was characterized by different social relations. A good example of work that shows Childe’s influence is Seiichi Wajima’s 1962 article titled “Primitive Communities before Agriculture and Pastoralism.” In his earlier work, Wajima (1948) proposed the presence of clan-based “communities” (cooperative groups involved in various subsistence activities) during the Jomon period and focused on long-term changes in the “mode of production” and consequential changes in prehistoric and protohistoric conjugal systems. No comparisons were made with examples from other parts of the world, and it is

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evident that these interpretations derived primarily from the works of Morgan, Marx, and Engels. On the other hand, in his 1962 work, Wajima identified the Jomon as a neolithic society and compared the cultural sequence of Japan with that of the Near East. Throughout this article, Wajima consistently emphasized the importance of the transition to the neolithic and its consequences for changes in social structure. It is interesting that he identified the people of the Jomon period as a neolithic society on the basis of their use of pottery and polished stone tools, even though he realized that the Jomon people relied primarily on hunting and gathering, not agriculture or animal husbandry. Second, it is important to note that Childe’s emphasis on the study of changes in social relations was adopted by Japanese archaeologists primarily in the field of settlement studies. This is because the foundation of Japanese settlement archaeology was established by Wajima and his followers (for more details, see Habu 2001, 2004). In 1955 Wajima undertook an excavation of the Early Jomon Nanbori site in Kanagawa Prefecture, the first systematic excavation of a complete prehistoric settlement in Japan. He used the excavation data to reconstruct prehistoric “communities,” emphasizing evolutionary developments in “forces of production” and site size through the Jomon period (Wajima 1958). Wajima’s discussion on the nature of Jomon communities was subsequently expanded by Yoshiro Kondo (1959), who taught at Okayama University from 1950 to 1990. In his 1959 article, Kondo sought to shed light on the nature of Yayoi “primitive communities” by analysing the intrasite feature distribution patterns of the agricultural Yayoi period. The two books by Childe (1966, 1969) that Kondo translated were widely read by Kondo’s students and followers, and Childe’s ideas were directly and indirectly incorporated into settlement studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Third, Childe’s work had a strong influence on many of the Japanese archaeologists who wanted to go beyond typological chronology of artifacts. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, Japanese archaeologists seriously attempted to understand the meaning of the spatial distribution of artifacts. As discussed earlier, shortly before and during World War II, scholars such as Yamanouchi succeeded in establishing detailed pottery typologies. This provided archaeologists with a fine-grained time scale, but many scholars felt that artifact typology did not necessarily help them understand the people and societies of the past. As a result, beginning in the late 1950s, many archaeologists (e.g., Takahashi 1958) began to investigate the meaning of style zones (e.g., do style zones reflect

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ethnic/linguistic boundaries?). In this context, Childe’s works, including his early book, New Light on the Most Ancient East (1944), provided Japanese archaeologists with a model with which to infer the movement of peoples through the analysis of changes in pottery style zones.

direct and indirect consequences of childe’s influence In summary, Childe’s work had significant influence on postwar Japanese archaeologists in terms of (1) Marxist approaches, including studies of the social relations and evolutionary development of prehistoric and protohistoric societies; (2) settlement studies; and (3) social and ideological studies of past societies through artifact typology. Since their primary goal was to understand past societies as a whole, not only subsistence and settlement systems, Japanese archaeologists showed very little interest in ecological approaches when processual archaeology became prevalent in Anglo-American archaeology during the 1960s and 1970s. For most Japanese archaeologists, explaining the mechanisms of long-term changes as adaptations to the natural environment was too simplistic and unattractive. Most of them strongly believed that the ultimate goal of archaeological studies should be to understand past societies and people. They also strongly believed that archaeology is a historical discipline. Thus, processual archaeologists’ disinterest in historical contingency and human agency further turned Japanese archaeologists away from processual archaeology. As a result, with the exception of a few scholars who published primarily in English, such as Takeru Akazawa (1982, 1986), Hiroko Koike (1980, 1986), and Hitoshi Watanabe (1973, 1986), Japanese archaeology remained primarily non-processual. Through their reading of Gordon Childe, Japanese archaeologists and Bruce Trigger independently developed similar theoretical interests and understandings of the purpose of archaeological work. As a result, Trigger’s work has resonated with and been highly appreciated by many Japanese archaeologists. One of Trigger’s books, Archaeology as Historical Science (1985), was translated into Japanese in 1991 and has been widely read by Japanese scholars. Japanese archaeology has always been seen as history, and the roots of this perspective have been amplified and legitimized by the works of Gordon Childe. As a North American scholar, Trigger worked within the context of anthropological archaeology. Nevertheless, he was aware of the historical

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importance of archaeology and encouraged archaeologists to acknowledge the potential of their discipline to create a history for North American indigenous people. The framing of archaeology as a humanist historical endeavour and the eschewing of those anthropological models that deny human agency underlie the thinking of Childe, Trigger, and Japanese archaeologists.

ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s We thank Ron Williamson and Mike Bisson for the invitation to contribute to this volume. We also thank Mark Hall, Holly Halligan, Silvia Huang, and Theresa Molino for their editorial comments.

references Akazawa, Takeru. 1982. “Cultural Change in Prehistoric Japan: Receptivity to Rice Agriculture in the Japanese Archipelago.” In Advances in World Archaeology, edited by Fred Wendorf and Angela E. Close, 1:151–211. New York: Academic Press – 1986. “Regional Variation in Procurement Systems of Jomon HunterGatherers.” In Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers in Japan, edited by Takeru Akazawa and C. Melvin Aikens, 73–92. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press Childe, V. Gordon. 1934. New Light on the Most Ancient East. London: Kegan Paul – 1944. Ajia no Kodai Bunmei [New Light on the Most Ancient East]. Abridged and translated by Masashi Nezu. Tokyo: Ito Shoten – 1947. History. London: Cobbett Press – 1951. Man Makes Himself. Revised edition. London: Watts and Company – 1954a. Rekishigaku Nyumon [History]. Translated by Masashi Nezu. Tokyo: Shin Hyoron-sha – 1954b. What Happened in History. Revised edition. Baltimore: Penguin Books – 1956a. Piecing Together the Past. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul – 1956b. A Short Introduction to Archaeology. London: Frederick Muller – 1957. Bunmei no [Kigen Man Makes Himself]. Revised edition. Translated by Masashi Nezu. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten – 1958. Rekishi no Akebono [What Happened in History]. Translated by Rikuro Imaki and Kiyoshi Muto. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten

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– 1966. Kokogaku no Hoho [Piecing Together the Past]. Translated by Yoshiro Kondo; translation revised in 1981. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha – 1969. Kokogaku to wa Nani ka [A Short Introduction to Archaeology]. Translated by Yoshiro Kondo and Toshiko Kimura. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Engels, Friedrich. 1954. Kazoku, Shiyu Zaisan oyobi Kokka no Kigen [Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates]. Translated by Yasuo Murai and Yoichi Murata. Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten Fawcett, Clare, and Junko Habu. 1990. “Education and Archaeology in Japan.” In The Excluded Past: Archaeology in Education, edited by Peter Stone and Robert MacKenzie, 217–30. London: Unwin Hyman Habu, Junko. 1989. “Contemporary Japanese Archaeology and Society.” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 8 (1):36–45 – 2001. Subsistence-Settlement Systems and Intersite Variability in the Moroiso Phase of the Early Jomon Period of Japan. Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory – 2004. Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hamada, Kosaku. 1922. Tsuron Kokogaku [Introduction to Archaeology]. Tokyo: Daito-kaku Hodder, Ian. 1999. The Archaeological Process: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers Ikawa-Smith, Fumiko. 1982. “Co-traditions in Japanese Archaeology.” World Archaeology 13 (3):296–309 Isono, Naohide. 1987. Morse Sono Hi Sono Hi [Morse Day by Day]. Yokohama: Yurindo Kohl, Philip L., and Clare Fawcett. 1995. “Archaeology in the Service of the State: Theoretical Considerations.” In Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 3–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Koike, Hiroko. 1980. Seasonal Dating by Growth-line Counting of the Clam, Meretrix lusoria: Toward a Reconstruction of Prehistoric Shell-collecting Activities in Japan. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press – 1986. “Jomon Shell Mounds and Growth-Line Analysis of Molluscan Shells.” In Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Richard J. Pearson, Gina L. Barnes, and Karl L. Hutterer, 267–78. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan Kondo, Yoshiro. 1959. “Kyodotai to tan’i shudan” [“On the Concepts of the Community and the Group Unit”]. Kokogaku Kenkyu [Quarterly of Archaeological Studies] 1 (6):13–20

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Kondo, Yoshiro, and Yamaguchi, Kuniko. 1987. “Yakusha atogaki” [“Translators’ Postscript”]. In Sally Green, Kokogaku no Henkaku-sha: Godon Chairudo no Shogai [Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe]. Translated by Yoshiro Kondo and Kuniko Yamaguchi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Montelius, Oscar. 1932. Kokogaku Kenkyu-ho [Die älteren Kulturperioden im Orient und in Europa, vol. 1, Die Methode]. Translated by Kosaku Hamada.. Tokyo: Oka Shoin Morgan, Lewis H. 1954. Kodai Shakai [Ancient Society]. Translated by Kanson Arahata. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten Morse, Edward S. 1879. Shell Mounds of Omori. Vol. 1, pt 1. Tokyo: Memoirs of the Science Department, University of Tokio, Japan Nezu, Masashi. 1935. “Primitive Society of the Japanese” [“Genshi Nihon no Keizai to Shakai”]. Rekishigaku Kenkyu 4 (4):19–32; 4 (5):49–62 (in Japanese with English title) Sahara, Makoto. 1984. “Yamanouchi Sugao Ron” [“Contributions of Sugao Yamanouchi”]. In Jomon Bunka no Kenkyu [Studies of the Jomon Culture], edited by Shinpei Kato, Tatsuo Kobayashi, and Tsuyoshi Fujimoto, 232–40. Vol. 10 of Jomon Jidai Kenkyu-shi [History of Jomon Archaeology]. Tokyo: Yuzankaku Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley. 1987. Re-constructing Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Singer, Charles J., and Holmyard, E.J., eds. 1954. A History of Technology. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press Takahashi, Mamoru. 1958. “Doki to sono Keishiki” [“Pottery and Style”]. Kokogaku Techo 1:1–2 Tanaka, Migaku. 1978. “Keishiki-gaku no Mondai” [“Problems of Typologies”]. In Nihon Kokogaku o Manabu [Studying Japanese Archaeology], edited by Hatsushige Otsuka, Mitsunori Tozawa, and Makoto Sahara, 12–23. Vol. 1 of Nihon Kokogaku no Kiso [Foundations of Japanese Archaeology]. Tokyo: Yuhikaku Trigger, Bruce G. 1967. “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary Anthropological Theory.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 4:165–76 – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson – 1981. “Anglo-American Archaeology.” World Archaeology 13:138–55

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– 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 – 1985. Archaeology as Historical Science. Monograph of the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, no. 14. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 – 1990. “The 1990s: North American Archaeology with a Human face?” Antiquity 64:778–87 – 1991. Rekishi Kagaku to-shite no Kokogaku [Archaeology as Historical Science]. Translated by Nobuhiro Kishigami. Tokyo: Yuzankaku Publishing House – 1993. “Marxism in Contemporary Western Archaeology.” In Archaeological Method and Theory, edited by M.B. Schiffer, 5:159–200. Tucson: University of Arizona Press – 1994. “Childe’s Relevance to the 1990s.” In The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe, edited by David R. Harris, 9–34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press – 1995. “Romanticism, Nationalism, and Archaeology.” In Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 262–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1998. “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm.” American Journal of Archaeology 102:1–34 – 2003. “Introduction: Understanding the Material Remains of the Past.” In Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers Trigger, Bruce G., and Ian Glover, eds. 1981 and 1982. “Regional Traditions of Archaeological Research i, ii.” World Archaeology 13 (2); 13 (3) Wajima, Seiichi. 1948. “Genshi Shuraku no Kosei” [“The Organization and Composition of Prehistoric Settlements”]. In Nihon Rekishi-gaku Koza [Lectures in Japanese History], edited by the Historical Association of the University of Tokyo [Tokyo Daigaku Rekishigaku Kenkyu-kai]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press [Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan-kai] – 1958. “Nanbori kaizuka to genshi shuraku” [“The Nanbori Shell-Midden and Settlements of the Prehistoric Period”]. In Yokohama Shi-shi [History of Yokohama City], 1:29–46. Yokohama: Yokohama City – 1962. “Josetsu: noko-bokuchiku hassei izen no genshi kyodotai” [“Introduction: Primitive Communities before Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”]. In Kodaishi Koza [Lectures in Ancient History]. Tokyo: Gakusei-sha

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Watanabe, Hitoshi. 1973. The Ainu Ecosystem: Environment and Group Structure. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Originally published, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1972 – 1986. “Community Habitation and Food Gathering in Prehistoric Japan: An Ethnographic Interpretation of the Archaeological Evidence.” In Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Richard J. Pearson, Gina L. Barnes, and Karl L. Hutterer. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan Wylie, Alison. 1982. “Epistemological Issues Raised by a Structuralist Archaeology.” In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder, 39– 46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989. “Archaeological Cables and Tacking: The Implications of Practice for Bernstein’s Options beyond Objectivism and Relativism.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 19:1–18 – 1992. “The Interplay of Evidential Constraints and Political Interests: Recent Archaeological Research on Gender.” American Antiquity 57 (1):15–35 – 1995. “Epistemic Disunity and Political Integrity.” In Making Alternative Histories, edited by Peter R. Schmidt and Thomas C. Patterson, 255–72. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press Yamanouchi, Sugao. 1937. “Jomon Doki no Saibetsu to Taibetsu” [“Classification and Sub-classification of Jomon Pottery”]. Senshi Koko-gaku 1:28–32

8 Yes Virginia, There Is Gender: Shamanism and Archaeology’s Many Histories SILVIA TOMÁŠKOVÁ

histories In December 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun, posing the all-important question of her age – “Is there a Santa Claus?” – since some of her friends had been telling her that there was no such a thing. Francis P. Church, the editor, answered in what became one of the most famous editorials ever published in an American newspaper: Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.1

The editorial continues in this vein before delivering the now famous punchline: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” I wish to take my cue from this moment in journalism, not to talk about belief and rationality or innocence and jaded knowledge, but rather to take seriously its lead in reflecting on the questions we do or do not ask and the answers we find comprehensible. If we were to examine the history of our discipline

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from this perspective, one of our central tasks would be to think about what it is that we have been able to see, and therefore believe in, and what has remained beyond the scope of our questions at any given moment, and therefore remains invisible. While we may live in a different, more skeptical age than Virginia did at the end of the nineteenth century, and direct empiricism may no longer be the only game in town, our research remains contingent upon the social, cultural, political, and material circumstances in which it transpires, encouraging some questions more than others. Bruce Trigger’s A History of Archaeological Thought (1989) pioneered the study of our disciplinary history, laying out the contexts in which the discipline coalesced into a field that focused on the examination of human existence past and present, together with ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology. This work also boldly exposed the colonial, racist, and nationalist reasons that were the primary driving forces for Europeans’ interest in their own past and that of their colonies (see also Trigger 1984). By examining the historical foundations of the house we all inhabit, the book encourages us to look at the floor plans used in its construction and, while considering them in a new context, to wonder about their rationale and the possibility of asking new questions. Moreover, by establishing a central frame of reference that recognizes the context of thought, Bruce Trigger’s work reminds us that the history of any discipline is an ongoing project, like the discipline itself, one where the appearance of an authoritative, respected work marks not an end but rather a new and dynamic beginning. As Alain Schnapp notes: “No longer understood as the fruitful exploration of some terra incognita, the history of archaeology is rather seen as a complex succession of ideas and observations, of disappointments and unexpected turns and achievements, the whole integrated within local and national traditions, set in motion by often contradictory models, and crossed through by paradigms originating from other disciplines” (Schnapp 2002, 135). Such an approach to a history of a discipline repositions questions about the comprehensible and incomprehensible edges of what we think we know and how we came to know it. Instead of simply narrating the progressive development of a field, a contextual history of archaeology revisits the accounts of the past from the margins so as to reflect on the concerns of the centre. I would like to adopt this approach and consider the history of our discipline through one such edge – that of gender – a topical concern believed revealing by some and distorting by others.

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The history of European archaeology is increasingly being complicated by various counter-narratives to the dominant progressive story of a science that started with wealthy amateurs and over time involved ever more sophisticated techniques and educated practitioners (Schnapp 1996; Schlanger 2002). Numerous authors have illustrated the interrelationship between archaeology as an emerging science and the social context in which it operated (Abu El-Haj 2001; Marchand 1996; Van Reybrouck 2002; Van Riper 1993). Archaeology from its very inception was an enterprise whose social purpose was to produce knowledge, as well as material culture, with numerous potential uses. Those interested in the past were never merely curious; rather they were in search of specific knowledge that had its role and a place in the social context where it emerged (for a discussion of the antiquity of antiquity, see Schnapp 2002; Van Riper 1993). Frequently, the discussion of the ideological nature of knowledge production is deemed as either a discussion of an anomaly or a deviation from high standards, or as unnecessarily detracting from the real results, discoveries, and advances of science. I would suggest, however, that archaeology has always relied heavily on the current modes of thinking to explain the past. As discussions of such topics as human origins, successful adaptation, or hierarchy show, archaeologists take cues from the dominant paradigms of their time (Abu El-Haj 2001; Conkey and Williams 1991; Landau 1991; Moser 1998). Yet despite the recognition of the social forces operative in the formulation of research questions or interpretations of past remains, it is still far less clear how exactly such forces influence work in science. Are only certain aspects or moments of research susceptible to the whims of political pressures, or does social context influence technical practices as much as concepts or interpretations? If nationalism was a major force of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that affected archaeology, to what extent did this broad social influence interact with varying transnational intellectual movements of the day, such as evolutionary theory or Freudian psychoanalysis? And where might we position the fitful struggle for women’s equality and efforts to define and redefine gender roles, also a part of the “context” of Europe during the same general time period? In the following pages, I will suggest that while such questions about context have no simple answers, looking at the geographical and conceptual margins of archaeology can indeed help us notice patterns that have shaped intellectual trends in the field as a whole. My focus will be on the figure of the “shaman,” as considered both as a

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complex historical actor in many native societies of Siberia and as a significant early archaeological concept. By embodying an elemental form of magic, science, and religion amid an otherwise materially defined past centred on political economy and ecology, the shaman constitutes an ideal guide to our disciplinary understanding of gender relative to culture in the history of archaeology. Here I will concentrate on a particular, situated case within the history of European prehistory: the migration of the shaman from an ethnographic reference to a general anthropological and archaeological category. In moving from history to theory and from there into projections about the emergence of culture within the past, I argue that the shaman also altered conceptual shape, changing from an unstable form in gender terms to one quite sharply defined as male. By recognizing this gender transformation in the historical case of the shaman, we can see the outlines of gender concepts present at the contextual moment of prehistory’s early definition, ones that affected the questions that archaeologists did and did not ask, and that are still embedded in the continuing context of our inherited categories. Like Santa Claus, key questions about gender may be found not in forms we can easily recognize but rather quite precisely in those we cannot.

th e h i s t o ry o f s h a m a n s Although the methodological practice of Palaeolithic archaeology remains steadfastly physical in orientation, as aligned with geology and palaeontology as with any of the social sciences, an interest in defining the roots of human cultural life has long echoed through its most significant theoretical discussions. Evidence of prehistoric ritual behaviour remains a central site of contest and uncertainty amid repeated appeals to ethnographic analogues. A century of research on the dating, techniques, and meaning of Palaeolithic image-making has provided us with numerous studies detailing a time and place usually considered to be at the beginning of art and, implicitly, also a new stage in human cognition. While the act of creation itself may not have been marked in terms of gender, the assorted characters cast as potential creators of images have been far more so. The paintings and engravings of rock shelters and caves have been variously attributed to artists, sorcerers, or diviners, roles classified as positions of status or power and usually defined in masculine terms when projected into prehistory. One of the central figures to capture the imagination of archaeologists has been that of the

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shaman, a proto-priest cast as the original producer of symbolic imagery and largely assumed to be male (in recent writings – Francfort and Hamayon 2001; Lewis-Williams 2002; Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988; Price 2001) – and longer ago – (Breuil 1952; Piette 1907; Reinach 1903). The durability of this hypothesis in archaeological debates for more than a century, together with its recent forceful re-emergence, calls for a historical investigation into its own origin and into the specific circumstances that surrounded the introduction of the category of shaman into the vocabulary of scientific archaeology as a particularly gendered role. A general pattern of interest in the origins of cognition, religious behaviour, and artistic expression runs throughout the history of anthropology, where it marks a potential dividing line between humans and animals. Versions of these questions have intrigued scholars since at least the sixteenth century and fascinated European officials involved in colonial expansion amid distinctly different societies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This overseas extension of European frontiers was matched by overland efforts as well. Russian colonial expansion into Siberia and further east is a topic that has only very recently been addressed by Western scholars and is still marginal in our understanding of world colonial projects (for recent research see Brower and Lazzerini 1997; Wood 1991). Yet it was detailed ethnographic accounts collected by Russian and German administrators and scientists in that region that constituted the source for a key narrative about the evolution of belief and cultural specialization. From the eighteenth century onwards, the image of the shaman begins to appear in debates addressing the origins of human spiritual behaviour, healing practice, and artistic expression (Aletphilo 1718; Georgi 1799; Gmelin 1743; Lepekhin 1802; Strahlenberg 1730; Strindberg 1879; Wreech 1725). Prior fascination with shamanism in European circles provided nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeologists with a figure for models of prehistoric culture (for an extended discussion of the impact of shamanism on European art and culture of the eighteenth century, see Flaherty 1992). Unlike later archaeological theory, however, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers’ reports record a variety of female and male shamans of various ages and abilities, a point I shall illustrate and reinforce below (Balzer 1996; Basilov 1992; Bell 1763; Bogoraz 1928; Shternberg 1936; Troshchanskii 1902). That this heterogeneity would be lost in later appropriations of the term suggests that it was not seen as a significant or defining aspect of the ethnographic example precisely when it came to be constituted as a category within the study of prehistory.

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Through selective translations into the past, the shaman becomes a masculine figure, even while serving as the potential precursor to not only a priest, but also a doctor, an artist, or (in debates about cognition) an intellectual. Thus, the standardization of the shaman in prehistory constitutes a significant moment of reduction in perceptions of the roots of expressive culture, religious beliefs, and religious practices, in which gender was stabilized. Through a comparative classification of religious practice in anthropology, this standardization was then spread through the world, and through the development of Palaeolithic archaeology, it was applied to the prehistory of all human culture.

pictures from siberia Interest in the ritual life of Siberian peoples developed first on Europe’s eastern margin. Starting with Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, expanding with Peter the Great at the end of the seventeenth century, and fully in force under Catherine the Great at the end of the eighteenth century, Russian emperors invested resources in exploring, mapping, and, through detailed knowledge, possessing the vast land east of the Ural Mountains (Brower and Lazzerini 1997; Wood 1991). Maritime explorers in search of the northern passage, those who voyaged inland to the Mongolian and Chinese borders in the south, and Polish and Swedish military captives sent into exile in Siberia all produced diaries and accounts of the natives inhabiting the diverse continent that was the ultimate other for the people of European Russia. For the most part, foreigners, either hired by the Russian rulers or encouraged to cross Russia in search of new routes, produced the written accounts. Consequently, many of the written accounts of the first encounters with peoples of Siberia, of their customs and social norms, were written in German and later deposited in archives and libraries in Germany. Starting with Adam Brand’s 1698 account of his crossing of Siberia on the way to China or Endter’s 1720 detailed description of the Yakut and Samoyed peoples as the “ugliest people on earth with the most disgusting habits and no fear of afterlife” (Titov 1890, 114), these accounts provide heterogeneous early narratives about the Siberian natives. In many ways, these encounters resonate with other moments of colonial encounter in their display of a tone of disgust, fascination, and superiority with regard to others not seen as fully human: People who live here are called Samoyed or Malgonzei. They eat deer and fish and each other. If visitors come, they kill their own children to feed the visitors,

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if a visitor were to die they eat him as well. They are short, flat faced, with small noses. They ride reindeer and dogs and are good shooters. Their clothes are made of deer and sable hides. In that same region other Samoyeds live as well who live in the sea all summer long, their bodies would dry out, so they have to be in the water for the whole month. Behind those Samoyeds, above the sea other Samoyeds live who are hairy from the waist down (from the bellybutton down); from the waist up they are just like other people. In that same region, behind these people, above that same sea, live other Samoyeds who have mouths on top of their heads and who do not speak. When they eat they put the meat or fish under their hats, and when they eat they move their shoulders up and down. To the east are other Samoyeds called Kamenskie, near the Iugorskaia land who live in the mountains, ride deer and dogs, wear sable and deer clothing, and eat deer, dogs and beaver and drink all kinds of blood, including human blood. They have healers who cut open anyone who has pain inside, and take it out. (Titov 1890, 112–14)

These and numerous other accounts circulated throughout Europe from the seventeenth century on, purporting to reveal the habits, practices, and rituals of “primitives” found at the edges of Europe. European encounters with the “other” were already familiar from the colonial accounts from Africa, Australia, and the New World, which contained vivid descriptions of the otherness, the monstrosity, and, simultaneously, the childlike gullibility and simplicity of the native peoples (for a review of these accounts and an extensive bibliography, see Pels 1997). The Siberian indigenous peoples were uniquely situated in their proximity to the eastern borders of Europe. Their frequent encounters with travellers, military personnel, missionaries, and (from the nineteenth century on) political exiles made them easier to study and classify than more remote peoples, but they were also a reminder of the existence of a more primitive humanity, one that had to be placed in some distancing relationship with the existing European civilization and explained, particularly in the earlier days of colonial expansion, in theological terms. The shamanic practices of the native Siberians, read in religious terms, did not fit the traditional understanding of belief and ritual within the framework of Christianity, and were therefore depicted as backward and as deceitful trickery. Yet these practices were nonetheless sufficiently visible to require comment and explanation. Nikolaev Chaunskii wrote at the end of the eighteenth century: “Shamans are celebrated for their wisdom, explanation of dreams, gift of fortune telling,

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and various ‘hocus-pocus’ tricks. They tend to the sick, keep the healthy, start storms, keep winds, steal the moon, which causes lunar eclipses and such” (Argentov 1857, 95). The knowledge that covers healing, fortune-telling, interpreting dreams, and predicting a lunar eclipse is collectively cast in a frame of “hocus pocus” tricks, revealing an uncertainty as to where such practices might fit in the known register of European disciplines. The ethnographic problem of category translation was potentially further complicated by the fact that women were included among the practitioners of shamanism: Shamans are frequently women … The Yakuts, the Koryaks, and the Chukchi had polygamy and each wife had her own household. They had women “white shamans,” who also took care of all household business. The men traveled from household to household but did not stay long, visiting each family for a while. (Argentov 1857, 115–16) Women shamans used special costumes for rituals which increasingly involved metal decorations, supplied by blacksmiths – the position of blacksmiths improved over time as the costumes became more elaborate, they were irreplaceable, and their fate was inseparable from that of women shamans. (Krasheninnikov, cited in Argentov 1857, 120)

Images of women commonly performing shamanic rituals appear not only in early accounts but well into twentieth-century Russian ethnography. However, the commentary, reception, and explanatory frame of women shamans dramatically differ over time. In many initial accounts, the presence of women shamans is noted but they are not the subject of particular commentary or extensive explanation. This partial silence (recognition without comment) can be explained in several ways. All early European travellers and explorers to Siberia were men, and the first women to describe travels across Siberia were missionary wives arriving only at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Bawden 1985). Thus, an oblique reference to gender is not in itself surprising. Furthermore, the gender roles observed did not comply with European sensibilities or the colonial sense of order. Not only was the hierarchy different from that with which travellers were familiar, but the extent of power that native women may have had was unclear, since even though they were observed performing most domestic duties, among some groups they also headed their own households and performed shamanistic

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rituals. Finally, the contexts in which Europeans acquired information about Siberian shamans were themselves highly incongruous. Detailed shamanic information that was traditionally passed on within a prescribed line of descent was acquired through coercion, collected in the process of missionary conversion or through the observation of rituals that remained puzzling or bewildering to Westerners (Bawden 1985; Meyer and Pels 2003). Consequently, the heterogeneity of gender roles and relationships, though recorded, was described in the language of the colonists but was only partially and quite imperfectly mapped onto known gender patterns of Europe. The fact that women could also serve as shamans among some peoples was not, in and of itself, the most surprising thing about them. Descriptions of gender relations, mistranslated into European patriarchal household arrangements, resulted in accounts of polygamy, of single mothers, and of the plain incomprehensible chaos of women not knowing their relations and possibly “kill[ing] their own children to feed the visitors” (Titov 1890, 72). Any of these marital and conjugal forms could be presented as an obvious sign of backwardness. Yet since the status of native women itself was not familiar or clear to the travellers, who probably spent less time with them than with men, the discussion of gender focused on questioning the relative masculinity of the native Siberian men. We can find an especially vivid example of uncertainty over the masculinity of Siberian men, as well as of possibly conscious emasculation, in the illustrations accompanying published travellers’ accounts. Most texts that enjoyed public circulation, especially in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, include exquisite landscape illustrations featuring travellers on very slender, English-looking horses, full-page intricate pictures of the fauna and flora of Siberia, as well as images of villages and native peoples. All of these images are highly stylized, resembling bucolic German landscapes in the Romantic tradition with their excessively detailed natural features. Yet the images of Tungus or Ostyak men and women are remarkable in their gender sameness; the men in particular are lacking any signs of masculinity, and only the inscriptions below the picture give a hint that the reader is looking at an illustration of a man (see Illustrations 8.1 and 8.2, pages 102–3). Beginning with forms of clothing that lack any gender specificity, continuing with the childlike facial features given Siberian men and women alike, and concluding with the passive postures in which all Siberians are depicted, the illustrations portray people who are unlike Europeans in the

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contemporary European classificatory schema of gender. As Schiebinger notes, Carl Linnaeus declared in his lectures at Uppsala University in 1740 that “God gave men beards for ornaments and to distinguish them from women” (Schiebinger 1990, 391). The beard served not only to differentiate men from women in fundamental terms, but also to delineate types of men, whereby those men lacking this symbol of virility and leadership were lower on the scale of masculinity and even of humanity. Thus, gender characteristics served also as racial markers in the classification of native peoples (see Schiebinger 1990 for a discussion of the issue in relation to Native Americans). The lack of clarity of gender roles among indigenous Siberians, and thereby also an ambiguity around the masculinity of Siberian men, was further accentuated after encounters with “koekchuch,” a separate category of men who by all accounts appear to be transgendered figures. As Krasheninnikov wrote in 1775, “‘koekchuch’ dress in women’s clothes, do women’s work, and have no relations with men, either because they are disgusted by men or chose to abstain” (cited in Argentov 1857, 120). This was also one of the earliest accounts to describe in great detail another kind of gender transformation, that of male shamans who became women for the purpose of performing shamanic rituals. The questionable accuracy of the description, the probable lack of understanding of just what changing gender in the particular native context might have entailed, and a likely unwillingness to accept the possibility that men would become women resulted in an even more convoluted claim: that the koekchuch may possibly have been women. The claim was supported by the argument that women’s position must have been quite high, as they were considered “the prettier gender, wiser, and that’s why more shamans are women and ‘koekchuch’ than men” (Argentov 1857, 120). In this instance, an inverted hierarchy among the indigenous populations was more comprehensible than either the possibility of fluid boundaries in sex and gender or the possibility that a man could become – or would even choose to become – a woman. Sexuality and gender, together with eating habits and appearance, constituted the focus of attention in early discussions seeking to determine distinctive differences between European colonizers and indigenous peoples. Yet this was also a period of “unstable otherness,” an otherness in the making, which served disciplinary purposes at home as well as in colonial contexts (Pels 1997). Descriptions of gender with respect to indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, and particularly those at the margins of Europe, brought gender into the open and

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Ostyak man near the Ob River. (Georgi 1799)

allowed for discussions of hierarchy and of normal, appropriate behaviour in European societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the eighteenth century is recognized as the age of classification, it was simultaneously a time for the codification of categories with sharp boundaries, including the enduring binary oppositions involving nature and culture and reason and spirit, as well as men and women (Laqueur 1986). Consequently, European difficulties in rendering an indigenous society comprehensible, particularly one where men may become women to perform religious or medical functions, reflect a clash of incongruent philosophical frameworks. This is particularly

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Tungus men in a stylized illustration. (Georgi 1799)

obvious when we compare the early descriptions of native shamans, “changed men,” and women with later ethnographic accounts, especially those from the early twentieth century. While travellers and missionaries of earlier days may have had trouble explaining fluid gender categories and magic that resembled witchcraft, by the early twentieth century these ethnographic objects were fully domesticated and discussed in great detail. Thus, Lev Shternberg, one of the most productive Russian ethnographers of Siberia in the early twentieth century, wrote: South Tungus, Buryat, Yakut all have both male and female shamans, chosen by a spirit for “marriage” … Among the Chukchi, Kamchadal, and the Koryaks this phenomenon takes the form of transvestism – or gender change of the shaman. Male shaman changes into a woman – he dresses like a woman, he talks like a woman; the Chukchi even have a special women’s language – a special phonetics for women’s pronunciation. The shaman has to stop doing any kind of men’s work, and carry out only women’s tasks, and even if he remains married, he considers himself to be a woman. This could be a case of latent

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homosexuality but it could also be the case of female spirits choosing the male body to settle into and changing it to serve their purposes. This sex/gender change occurs not only among the north Asian peoples but also among the Dayaks, and the Kadyaks. (Shternberg 1936, 353)

Shternberg’s writing came at a time when images of a “wild and devilish” indigenous people were replaced by images of autonomous individuals with psychological needs and desires, and when the shamanistic rituals were not judged as magical tricks, but rather were taken seriously and interpreted in the framework of individual psychology. By the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans assumed that individuals with desires and motives not dissimilar from their own populated even the most remote ends of the earth, and thus shamanic roles could be framed by discussions of sexual desire. In a treatise on religion among indigenous Siberian peoples, Shternberg addressed at length how a shaman is chosen:2 What is a shaman and where does his power reside? The shaman’s power is within himself – he knows it and everyone around him knows it – his power is in all the spirits that serve him. These spirits guide him through other worlds, they help him to chase evil spirits away from a sick person, they tell fortunes. But among all those spirits is the main spirit, who chose the shaman in the first place, all the other spirits are mere helpers. This main spirit chooses the shaman out of attraction – for sexual reasons. (Shternberg 1936, 353)

Shternberg and Bogoraz, the two better-known Russian ethnographers of pre- and to a limited degree post-revolutionary Siberia, left a legacy of a rich and diverse record of the heterogeneity of indigenous Siberian peoples.3 They were also active in intellectual circles of early twentiethcentury Europe and well versed in the anthropological discussions of the day, whose topics included prehistory subjects as well as accounts of “primitive” peoples in colonial outposts. Through Shternberg’s and Bogoraz’s writing, historians of anthropology can trace the key intellectual debates about individual psychology, rationality, and cultural difference that framed the period’s discussions of Siberian shamans and their relationship to the recently discovered prehistoric mind. It was in the context of such concerns, coupled with the emerging interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, that shamans would enter archaeological debates. The reduced importance of observed details amid these theoretical debates served to confirm early twentieth-century assumptions in advance of any ethnographic or archaeological record.

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s h a m a n s e m e r g e i n p r e h i s to ry By the end of the nineteenth century, the existence of shamans was an accepted fact in anthropological as well as popular literature. In Chicago in January 1908, Roland B. Dixon delivered the presidential address to the nineteenth annual meeting of the American Folklore Society. The address, titled “Some Aspects of the American Shaman,” included these words: “In any study of religious beliefs and ceremonials of savage or semi-civilized peoples, either special or comparative, the shaman stands easily as one of the foremost figures. On almost every side of their religious life his influence makes itself felt, and his importance reaches out beyond the limits of religion into the domain of social life and organization and governmental control” (Dixon 1908, 1). Dixon then proceeded to discuss the delicate issue of gender, framing it with twentieth-century notions of clearly defined and universal roles: “One of the broadest distinctions which may be made, in connection with the making of shamans, is that of sex, – whether the practice of shamanism is open freely to both sexes, or is more less restricted to one or the other. In this particular, America is at one with most of the rest of the world in that, predominantly, shamans are male” (Dixon 1908, 1–2). Dixon acknowledged the existence of female shamans among some groups, particularly in northern California, where he ascribed greater numbers and social importance to female shamans, and also noted the “curious custom” in Patagonia of male shamans wearing female clothing. Nonetheless, he concluded that male shamans constitute the general pattern and hence define the universal norm (Dixon 1908). Dixon’s address shows us that by the beginning of the twentieth century the shaman could be presented as an accepted anthropological category, one that needed little explanation but only refinement and evidence of presence in any specific instance. Moreover, this category, in contrast to earlier ethnographic renderings, was now clearly marked at a theoretical level as a masculine one. At the turn of the last century, archaeology and ethnology were quite closely aligned in Europe as well as North America, and thus it should come as no surprise that in wider anthropological discussions of the day we witness the emergence of “shamans” not only in geographic places quite distant from Siberia, but also amid the dark places of prehistory, particularly caves. Gabriel de Mortillet, a French socialist freethinker and museum curator (in that order), had established a sequence for Palaeolithic chronology by 1872, stabilizing the antiquity of humans into a progressive, sequential, and observable framework (Chazan

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1995). Advancing his theory of human progress, de Mortillet claimed that “[q]uaternary man lived in peace, entirely destitute of religious ideas” but “towards the end of the quaternary period, in the solutrian and the Magdalenian epochs [sic], he became an artist” (de Mortillet 1885, 136). This perspective established a clear ground for human progress, measured by criteria drawn from contemporary understandings of “civilization.” A new generation of French archaeologists and scholars of religion, including Edouard Piette, Abbé Breuil, and Salomon Reinach, adopted a similar approach when addressing the origins of civilization. While de Mortillet may have been a firm believer in human progress in line with the new science of evolutionary theory, resistance to evolution elsewhere in France was strong (Hammond 1982). One route around this resistance was to focus on the spiritual aspects of prehistory, particularly art and religion. Thus, de Mortillet’s successors took up the new challenge of prehistory by filling the prehistoric picture not only with material remains but also with images of art and religion. In 1903 Reinach, a newly appointed curator of the National Museum of Antiquities in St Germain and a joint editor of the Revue archéologique, broached the subject of joining art and magic for the first time. Writing about cave art, he suggested that “[b]y the aid of magic, man takes the initiative against things, or rather he becomes the conductor in the great concert of spirits, which murmur in his ears” (Reinach 1903; 1913; 1929, 23). Poetic as this rendition of the ritual may be, in Reinach’s writing any ambiguity about gender is utterly lost in the masculine pronoun for universal humanity. Furthermore, Reinach appears to have bequeathed to archaeology the idea of “hunting magic” as an interpretation for cave painting. In this model, later developed and popularized by Henri Breuil, hunting, creativity, religion, and masculinity all became one inseparable package (Breuil 1952; Piette 1907; Reinach 1903, 1913). Consequently, it comes as no surprise to read M.C. Burkitt’s 1921 enthusiastic description in Man of “the sorcerer” from the cave of Les Trois Frères: On the surface of the wall, to the left of the window, there is a figure of a man, partly painted and partly engraved, masked with stag’s horns on his head, and with a tail behind. Here, indeed is the sorcerer himself, dominating the frieze of the engravings below! … The great number and especially the beauty of the engravings, and the sorcerer dominating the whole, would seem to show that this place in the cave was of peculiar importance to the prehistoric hunters engaged in the magic ritual necessary to their hunting. (Burkitt 1921, 184)

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Most commentators only found further confirmation of the unquestionable masculinity of the Trois Frères sorcerer in the distinct and unabashed depiction of his genital organs, even though some noted that the putative phallus is pointing towards the back. It was not until the 1960s that Rosenfeld questioned not only this particular interpretation, but also Breuil’s reproduction of the image in publications and even the existence of the body part itself in the cave painting (Ucko and Rosenfeld 1967; for a clear image of the ambiguity of the painting see Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996). Thus, by the 1920s shamanism had transmuted from a particular ethnographic practice of Siberian peoples into an anthropological category applied all over the world and through deep prehistory. Along the way, shamans had lost any residual gender ambiguity and came to be described in sharply defined masculine terms. In prehistory, practices that had once appeared backward and primitive now became progressive when cast in an ancestral role; while Tungus or Ostyak men might have displayed ambiguous gender characteristics to early explorers, the masculinity of the creative forerunners of European civilization stood beyond question for scholars in the early twentieth century. The theoretical funnel through which these figures passed rendered them simultaneously familiar and alluring in terms of artistic and religious capabilities. This masculine image endured for most of the twentieth century, anemic in terms of historical memory but non-threatening in terms of social imagination. Hunting magic remained the dominant interpretive framework for prehistoric art, contributing to the larger narrative of naturalized gender roles common to archaeology and palaeoanthropology that produced the theoretical paradigm of “Man the Hunter.” The overall image of prehistoric times as thoroughly unsuitable for weaker types left the real gender of universal terms in no doubt: “He was a cold climate big game hunter. His environment was at once bountiful and threatening. Animal and plant resources abounded; but bringing down game, even with the refined and varied arsenal then at hand, was extremely difficult if not dangerous. The natural setting which enveloped the Ice Age hunter was uncommonly labile and must have seemed brutally capricious: the weather in Wurm times was fairly drastic, and the landscape was tortured by tectonic upheavals” (Levine 1957, 950). Mircea Eliade’s (1964) classic work on shamanism subsequently summarized most of the anthropological literature in the 1950s, becoming the most cited source of information on shamans for archaeologists and

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anthropologists, not to mention the general public. The shamans that have re-entered archaeological literature in the 1980s, largely through the work of David Lewis-Williams and numerous reactions to it (Francfort and Hamayon 2001; Kehoe 2000), may have acquired more nuance than they were given earlier in the twentieth century (Chippindale and Tacon 1998), but the conceptual category retains a longer legacy of gender, one found not in the presence or absence of specific detail or visible evidence, but rather in the larger history of its universalization.

conclusion As Adam Kuper has shown in The Invention of Primitive Society (1988), the “original society” is a concept that has as much to do with the state of nineteenth-century society, colonialism, and colonial ethnography as with any existing observable “primitive man,” preserved in a distant place and waiting to be discovered. Prior fascination with shamanism in European circles provided nineteenth-century anthropologists with a figure for models of prehistoric culture. However, their translation was selective in projecting backwards, as the shaman became a masculine figure when projected through western Europe into the human past, a potential precursor to not only a priest but also an artist, a healer, or (in debates about cognition) an intellectual. Thus, the standardization of the shaman in prehistory constitutes a significant moment of reduction in perceptions of the roots of expressive culture, in which gender was stabilized. Through a comparative classification of religious practice in anthropology, this standardization was then spread through the world, and through the development of Palaeolithic archaeology, it was applied to the prehistory of all human culture. While ethnographic accounts of Siberian shamans present us with an intriguing range of practitioners – male, female, and people who changed gender – who filled numerous roles in a household as well as the community, the archaeological appropriation of the figure has shifted an exclusive focus on public male religious leaders as standard representations of the origins of human spirituality, creativity, and knowing. As historians of science have pointed out, the neutrality of science is itself historically gendered by contexts that posit masculinity as the norm (Fox Keller 1995; Schiebinger 1999). In a similar vein, an archaeology cognizant of gender differences has to account for a gendered history of the discipline itself (Conkey and Gero 1997). A detailed historical account of the epistemological roots of gendered

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accounts of the past has to provide a firm ground for assessing such claims. While social contexts and gender roles for early human prehistory may be difficult to address directly, knowledge of the history of present claims will serve as a cautionary reminder that concepts used in our research have a past in which gender plays a central role. In searching for interpretations of deep prehistory, then, we should explore a much wider range of human experience. To use Richard Bradley’s (1993) term – or for that matter Francis P. Church’s – we must attempt to “imagine the unimaginable” rather than only mirror the most recent arrangements and “see only that which we deem comprehensible.” Despite considerable advances in theoretical approaches to gender and recent accounts of the historical involvement of female ancestors in the discipline, the topic continues to be a marked category within archaeology, used to denote research on women, whereas men remain as the unmarked and defining norm (Conkey and Gero 1997; DiazAndreu and Sorenson 1998; Gilchrist 1999; Joyce 2002). Thus women – or any people with visible gender – remain largely separated from history, social contexts, and politics, and their enclosure in a separate sphere permits the continuation of a “neutral” discipline. For all that gender may be a crucial component of human existence, it is only in the 1990s that we can find traces of a greater awareness of the context in which archaeology operates and the manner in which the historical bias of a masculine discipline may limit our vision of the lived past. In approaching our disciplinary past, then, we must understand Trigger’s pioneering emphasis on context as a starting point as well as a landmark. He has challenged us to engage in a more detailed consideration of the history, not only of our theories and concepts, but also of the general framework of our intellectual practice and of the questions we do or do not pose at any given point in time. By tracing the specific deletions of detail in the emergence of key conceptual categories that we have inherited from the past, this sort of historical approach can reveal the centrality of apparently marginal concerns. Improved awareness of the history of our discipline thus allows us to accept the contingency of our knowledge in a potentially productive way; rather than suggesting absolute certainty about our subject, we may become more attuned to the potential diversity of social facts in the past, however presently “unimaginable.” To paraphrase Francis P. Church’s nineteenth-century insight: “Yes Virginia, there is gender,” for sometimes “[t]he most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.”

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notes 1 Quotations from Church’s text are taken from Bartleby’s dictionary of quotations, found at www.bartleby.com/73/1660.html. The editorial originally ran on September 21, 1897. 2 One of the most interesting issues raised by Shternberg is the agency given to the spirits, and hence the veracity with which he accepts the Giliak version of reality, rather than trying to understand it through the Western binary opposition of reason and spirit, or magic and reality, and provide a rational explanation of “irrational” behaviour. In an extended debate, Shternberg takes issue with Levy-Bruhl’s claim that primitive people have no sense of objective reality – all is a matter of mystical images – or that they are incapable of distinguishing between the real and the mystical. 3 Their personal biographies are well worth the attention of historians of anthropology, and they still remain to be brought to the attention of Western readers. Both were members of the Jewish intelligentsia of the late nineteenth century, trained as lawyers and active in anti-tsarist movements, activities that led to their ten-year exile to Siberia. It was only there that they turned their attention to native peoples, learned the respective local languages, and produced volumes of highly sophisticated ethnographic accounts, in addition to carrying out academic debates with scholars in Europe and the United States.

references Abu El-Haj, N. 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Aletphilo. 1718 [1721]. Der innere und ausere Zustand derer Schwedischen Gefangenen in Russland, durch ihre eigene Brieffe … und zur allgemeinen Erbaung getreulich ausdicht gestellt von Aletphilo. Frankfurt, Leipzig Argentov, A. 1857. Description of the Arrival of Nikolaev Chaunskii. Notes from Eastern Siberian Division, I.R.G.O. Vol. 3 Balzer, M., ed. 1996. Shamanic Worlds: Rituals and Lore of Siberia and Central Asia. Armonk, N.Y.: North Castle Books Basilov, V.N. 1992. Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana. Moscow: Nauka Bawden, C.R. 1985. Shamans, Lamas and Evangelicals: The English Missionaries in Siberia. London: Routledge Bell, J. 1763. Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia, to Diverse Parts of Asia. 2 vols. Glasgow

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Bogoraz, V.G. 1928. The Spread of Culture on Earth: Essentials of Ethnography. Moscow: Government Publishers Bradley, R. 1993. Altering the Earth: The Origins of Monuments in Britain and Continental Europe. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Breuil, H. 1952. Four Hundred Years of Cave Art. Montignac, Dordogne: Centre d’Études et de Documentation Préhistorique Breuil, H., and H. Obermaier. 1935. The Cave of Altamira at Santillana del Mar, Spain. Madrid Brower, D.R., and E.J. Lazzerini, eds. 1997. Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Burkitt, M.C. 1921. “A New Find in Paleolithic Cave Art.” Man 21:183–5 Chazan, M. 1995. “Conceptions of Time and the Development of Paleolithic Chronology.” American Anthropologist 97 (3):457–67 Chippindale, C., and P. Tacon, eds. 1998. The Archaeology of Rock Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Clottes, J., and D. Lewis-Williams. 1996. The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in Painted Caves. New York: Henry Abrams Conkey, M.W., and J.M. Gero. 1997. “Programme to Practice: Gender and Feminism in Archaeology.” Annual Reviews in Anthropology 26:411–37 Conkey, M.W., with S.H. Williams. 1991. “Original Narratives: The Political Economy of Gender in Archaeology.” In Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, edited by M. di Leonardo, 102–39. Berkeley: University of California Press Diaz-Andreu, M., and M.L. Sorenson, eds. 1998. Excavating Women: A History of Women in European Archaeology. London: Routledge Dixon, R.B. 1908. “Some Aspects of American Shamanism.” Journal of American Folklore 21 (80):1–12 Eliade, M. 1964 [1951]. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. New York: Pantheon Books Falk, I.P. 1824. Collected Works of Learned Travels in Russia. St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences Flaherty, G. 1992. Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press Fox Keller, E. 1995. “Gender and Science: Origin, History, and Politics.” Osiris 10:26–38 Francfort, H.P., and R.N. Hamayon, eds. 2001. The Concept of Shamanism: Uses and Abuses. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado Georgi, J.G. 1799. Opisanie vsiekh obitaiushchikh v Rossiiskom gosudarstvie narodov. 4 vols. St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences

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Gilchrist, R. 1999. Gender and Archaeology. Contesting the Past. London, New York: Routledge Gmelin, J.G. 1743. Dr. Georg Gmelins Reise durch Sibirien von dem Jahr 1733 bis 1743. Göttingen: Verlag Hammond, M. 1982. “The Expulsion of the Neanderthal from Human Ancestry: Marcellin Boule and the Social Context of Scientific Research.” Social Studies of Science 12 (1):1–36 Joyce, R. 2002. The Languages of Archaeology: Dialogue, Narrative, and Writing. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers Kehoe, A. 2000. Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press Kuper, A. 1988. The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion. New York: Routledge. Landau, M. 1991. Narratives of Human Evolution. New Haven: Yale University Press Laqueur, T. 1986. “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology.” Representations 14:1–41 Laufer, B. 1917. “The Origin of the Word Shaman.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 19 (3):361–71 Lepekhin, I.I. 1802. Diary of Travels through the Various Provinces of the Russian Empire in 1770. Vol. 2. St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences Levine, M.H. 1957. “Prehistoric Art and Ideology.” American Anthropologist 59 (6):949–64 Lewis-Williams, D. 2002. A Cosmos in Stone: Interpreting Religion and Society through Rock Art. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press Lewis-Williams, D., and T. Dowson. 1988. “The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art.” Current Anthropology 29 (2): 201–45 Marchand, S. 1996. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750–1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press Meyer, B., and P. Pels, eds. 2003. Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment. Stanford: Stanford University Press Mortillet, G. de. 1885. “Mortillet’s Conclusions Regarding Early Man in Europe.” Science 5, no. 106: 136 Moser, S. 1998. Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press Pels, P. 1997. “The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History and the Emergence of Governmentality.” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 26:163–83 Piette, E. 1907. L’Art pendant l’age du renne. Paris: Masson Price, N., ed. 2001. The Archaeology of Shamanism. New York: Routledge

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Reinach, S. 1903. “L’art et la magie: À propos des peintures et des gravures de l’Âge du Renne.” L’Anthropologie 14:257–66 – 1913. Répertoire d’art quaternaire. Paris: Leroux Ernest – 1929. Orpheus: A History of Religions. London: Peter Owen Schiebinger, L. 1990. “The Anatomy of Difference: Race and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Science.” Eighteenth Century Studies 23/4:387–405 – 1999. Has Feminism Changed Science? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Schlanger, N., ed. 2002. “Ancestral Archives: Explorations in the History of Archaeology.” Antiquity 76 (291):127–238 Schnapp, A. 1996. The Discovery of the Past. London: British Museum Press – 2002. “Between Antiquarians and Archaeologists – Continuities and Ruptures.” Antiquity 76 (291):134–40 Shternberg, L.I. 1936. Primitive Religion in Light of Ethnography. Leningrad: Academy of Sciences Strahlenberg, P.J. 1730. Das Nord-und ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia. Stockholm: Ferdinand Hilfreich Frisch Strindberg, A. 1879. “Philipp Johan Strahlenberg och nans karta ofver Asien.” Svenska sallskapet Antropologii och Geografi. Geografiska sektionen. Tidskrift, Band I/6 Titov, A. 1890. Sibir’ v XVII viekie (Siberia in the 17th century). Moscow: Tip. L. i A. Snegirevykh Trigger, B.G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 Troshchanskii, V.F. 1902. Evolution of the Black Faith (Shamanism) among the Yakut. Kazan: Imperial University Ucko, P., and A. Rosenfeld. 1967. Paleolithic Cave Art. New York: McGrawHill Van Reybrouck, D. 2002. “Boule’s Error: On the Social Context of Scientific Knowledge.” Antiquity 76:158–64 Van Riper, A.B. 1993. Men among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Antiquity. Chicago: Chicago University Press Wood, A., ed. 1991. The History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution. London: Routledge Wreech, C.F. 1725. Wahrhaftige und umständliche Historie von denen schwedischen Gefangenen in Russland und Siberien. Sorau

9 Bruce Trigger’s Impact on Ontario Iroquoian Studies ROBERT PEARCE, ROBERT MACDONALD, DAVID SMITH, PETER TIMMINS, AND GARY WARRICK

introduction Those familiar with the scholarly record of Bruce Trigger will know that he has long regarded Gordon Willey’s (1953) Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley and K.C. Chang’s (1968) edited volume Settlement Archaeology as two seminal archaeological publications, often citing them in his arguments for viewing settlement patterns as a fundamental reflection of sociocultural systems (see, for example, Trigger 1998, 79; 1999, 304). Indeed, one of Trigger’s papers addressing the issues of settlement archaeology was first published in the 1968 volume edited by Chang (Trigger 1968, reprinted in Trigger 1978b, 167–93). Therein, he stated that his “chief interests are in the nature of settlement patterns and in the relationships they bear to the rest of culture,” as well as, in particular, “the ways in which archaeologists can use the knowledge of such relationships to further an understanding of the cultures they are investigating” (Trigger 1978b, 167). Building on the work of others, including Willey and Chang, Trigger clearly elucidated the tenet that “archaeologists and other anthropologists can conceive of settlement patterns … in terms of three levels … the individual building or structure; … the manner in which these structures are arranged within single communities; and … the manner in which communities are distributed over the landscape” (Trigger 1978b,

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169). Iroquoian researchers have since modified and expanded on this scheme, pointing to the potential for significant insights based on the examination of micro- and macro-settlement pattern features, such as individual post moulds, hearths, and graves; personal or family space, such as activity loci both within or outside of house structures; households (e.g., traditional Iroquoian longhouses); communities, including hamlets, villages, and towns; and larger sociopolitical networks, such as tribal confederacies (Noble 1984). In his 1980 and 1981 articles, Trigger addressed a wide range of thematic approaches and concepts applicable to Ontario Iroquoian studies. These included the micro- and macro-levels and everything in between: the excavation of individual structures through to total site excavation; village size, organization, and expansion; special-purpose sites; activity areas; regional studies and community sequences; territorial and tribal affiliations leading to tribal groupings and confederacies; the complex issue of Iroquoian origins and the ongoing debate of in situ development versus migration, especially the evidence for continuities versus discontinuities between the Middle and Late Woodland periods, when Ontario Iroquoian societies evolved; the adoption/spread of maize horticulture and the nature of subsistence economies; the need for detailed floral and faunal studies and the determination of site seasonality; an awareness of the environmental/ecological factors that might have influenced Iroquoian development; inferences that could be made from the study of burials; stylistic attributes of ceramic pots and pipes and the related issues of gender (i.e., whether women made the pots and men made the pipes); residence and descent patterns and questions centring on the use of ethnographic analogy and the direct historical approach; status differences and the differential access among the Iroquoians to specific items, including European trade goods; trade; warfare; and aspects of religion, spirituality, and ideology. In his 1981 article, Trigger stressed the need for a holistic approach to the study of Iroquoian social and political organization, emphasizing that new methodologies and frameworks should be developed within which the total pattern of Iroquoian culture could be interpreted. It is only necessary to examine the list of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations completed under Trigger’s supervision to appreciate his continuing interest in, and influence on, Iroquoian studies. In fact, 82 per cent of the doctoral theses and 60 per cent of the master’s theses that Trigger had supervised as of 2003 dealt either exclusively or

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primarily with Ontario Iroquoian societies. Trigger himself has been stimulated by his graduate students, a fact which he acknowledged in his 1985 publication Natives and Newcomers (1985, xiii). He frequently cites in his own publications the published articles and theses of his students (Trigger 1998, 2001). He has had the unique pleasure of commenting on papers presented by his students at conferences (Trigger 1982); on occasion his comments have been published with the conference proceedings (Trigger 1994, 1999); and on at least two occasions he delivered the keynote address at conferences in which some of his former students had given papers (Trigger 1999, 2001). By attending such conferences and reading the articles that researchers are continually sending him, Bruce keeps up-to-date with recent developments in Ontario Iroquoian archaeology. The theses and subsequent research articles authored, co-authored, or edited by Trigger’s students have spanned the same themes, topics, and concepts noted above, including the following: 1 Individual site descriptions (Jamieson 1982; MacDonald and Williamson 2001; Robertson and Williamson 2002, 2003; Robertson et al. 1995; Timmins 1997; Williamson 1983; Williamson 1998; Williamson and Robertson 1998; Williamson et al. 2003a), including an ossuary (Williamson and Pfeiffer 2003) 2 Descriptions and interpretations of individual features on sites, such as semi-subterranean sweat lodges (MacDonald 1988, 1992) or longhouses (Warrick 1996; Williamson 2004) 3 Regional syntheses (Fitzgerald 1990; MacDonald 2002; Pearce 1984; Warrick 1990, 2000; Williamson 1985) 4 Detailed descriptions, analyses, and interpretations of specific classes of artifacts ranging from ceramics (Smith 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995) to pipes (von Gernet 1982, 1989) to faunal remains/subsistence (Stewart 1998, 2000; Stewart and Finlayson 2000) to flaked lithic tools (Lerner 2000) to purposefully altered human bone (Jamieson 1983) from single sites or clusters of related sites 5 Syntheses of Amerindian belief systems (von Gernet 1989, 1992; Fox and Salzer 1999) 6 Insights into the ideological significance of individual artifacts or small assemblages of particular items such as a unique effigy pipe (Pearce 1990, 2003a; Williamson et al. 2003b, 141), an antler ornament in the form of a rattlesnake effigy (Fox 2003a, 5), turtle shell rattles (Fox 2002a), stone disc-style pipes (Fox 2002b),

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engraved shell pendants (Fox 2003b), and possible Iroquoian medicine bundles (Fox and Molto 1994) The analysis of minutiae through the meticulous excavation, analysis, and interpretation of single cultural pit features, such as a Transitional Woodland period pit at the large, multi-component Peace Bridge site in Fort Erie, which contained a collapsed ceramic vessel and associated faunal and floral remains interpreted as the remnants of a stew or soup made from pickerel, bass, sturgeon, venison, walnuts, and purslane (Williamson and MacDonald 1997, 218; 1998, 125), the comprehensive delineation of the evidence from a single pit on an Early Ontario Iroquoian site of three separate ritual episodes involving feasting and a mortuary ceremony for a child interred with an eagle wing, marine shell beads, and red ochre (Fox and Salzer 1999, 250–1), and the recovery at another Early Ontario Iroquoian village of a stone calumet pipe in association with rare Carolina parakeet bones (Timmins 1997, 232; von Gernet and Timmins 1987) An overview and critique of radiocarbon dates from Ontario Iroquoian sites (Timmins 1985) An ecological/environmental overview of a large region (MacDonald 2002) New evidence relating to the origin of Ontario Iroquoians and the related issue of the introduction and spread of maize horticulture (Crawford and Smith 1996; Crawford et al. 1997; Crawford et al. 1998; MacDonald and Williamson 1995; Smith 1997a; Smith and Crawford 1997; van der Merwe et al. 2003) The history and foundations of inquiry into the Ontario Iroquoians (Pearce 1984, 8–42; 2003b; Smith 1990) Syntheses of Ontario Iroquoian studies and related/contemporaneous groups (Dodd et al. 1990; Fox 1990a, 1990b; Jamieson 1990; Lennox and Fitzgerald 1990; Warrick 2000; Williamson 1990; Williamson and Robertson 1994)

The above-noted works have encompassed a variety of archaeological site types (villages, satellites, special-purpose components, and burials), time periods (Early, Middle, and Late Iroquoian), and cultural groups (Neutral, Huron, Petun, and St Lawrence Iroquoian). In the following sections, the five co-authors each express their views on the major influences Trigger had on their work, whether those influences were direct or indirect.

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ro b e r t p e a r c e When I entered the doctoral program at McGill to study under Bruce Trigger, I was armed with a vast quantity of data concerning a particular sequence of Late Iroquoian sites in southwestern Ontario but lacked the sound methodological and theoretical frameworks necessary to interpret those data. Bruce certainly provided the basis on which to form those frameworks. During a weekly seminar with his graduate students, he enlightened us on the history of archaeological thought, giving particular emphasis to the concepts of culture and sociocultural evolution through assigned readings consisting of Walter Taylor, V. Gordon Childe, Lewis Binford, Colin Renfrew, Ian Hodder, and many others. Bruce did not subscribe to any one particular school of thought but rather steered us towards making our own selection of the ideas and concepts most relevant to our research. It is fair to say that all of his students benefited from the exposure to, and discussion of, those works. Among the many other varied contributions and influences to my research were Bruce’s insights into the history of archaeological research on the Ontario Iroquoians, his concept of culture and analysis of cultural change, his ability to reduce massive amounts of data into succinct and meaningful syntheses, his recognition of unique settlement structures such as a chief’s house, and his acknowledgment of our limited ability to interpret the ideological realm. It is now well known that some Iroquoian villages in southwestern Ontario were complemented by special-purpose sites, including agricultural cabins. These sites frequently consisted of one or two longhouses erected in the fields that immediately surrounded the village. Bruce Trigger had a profound influence on how two of his students interpreted such special-purpose sites (Pearce 1984; Williamson 1983, 1986), their interpretations being among the first comprehensive interpretations of such sites for the Ontario Iroquoians. Since then, many other specialpurpose sites have been uncovered and interpreted to permit a more comprehensive understanding of their place in Iroquoian settlementsubsistence activities. It is believed that groups comprised of extended family agglomerations created the agricultural cabins to provide for their own subsistence needs and that such groups controlled specific tracts of land, returning to them each spring to plant their crops. My examination of the many cabin sites surrounding the circa a.d. 1500 Lawson village in southwestern Ontario suggests that the cabins

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were not just occupied by the females, who were responsible for planting, tending, and harvesting the crops, but also by males and children. The cabin sites appear to be microcosms of the much larger village, complete with ample evidence of lithic tool production and maintenance, the manufacture and use of ceramics, the collection and processing of floral and faunal resources, and the enjoyment of leisure time activities (i.e., games). It is now possible to interpret the large Lawson village (two hectares – five acres – in size) as internally segmented. There are different clusters of longhouses oriented in different directions, with each cluster occupied by a distinct, socially defined group, such as an alliance of related extended families. The total excavation of all of the houses in one such cluster at Lawson has led to the recognition within it of a “chief’s house,” and adjacent to it there is a large and unusual structure that has been interpreted as a meeting place or “community centre” for the socially defined group. Clusters of specialpurpose agricultural cabins surrounding Lawson suggest that they were occupied by the members of such larger social alliances. Thus, the social group that lived in the north end of the Lawson village established a series of closely spaced cabins in the catchment area two to four kilometres northeast of the village, while a different social group that lived in the south end of the Lawson village established a series of closely spaced cabins at a similar distance southwest of the village.

ro b e r t m a c d o n a l d By the time I began my doctoral studies, I was already steeped in the perspective of what was becoming a de facto research program – the “McGill School” of Iroquoian archaeology – under the guidance and tutelage of Bruce Trigger. The fact that I had initially acquired this perspective not through direct interaction with Bruce, but through reading and interaction with his students, highlights the compelling power of the teacher’s influence. This influence was never wielded dogmatically; rather, through an engaged dialectic between teacher and student(s), the various logical facets of an issue would be explored until (usually) a consensus understanding was achieved. Bruce’s extraordinary facility for arguing both sides of an issue with apparently equal conviction encouraged his students to participate in what was clearly, at one level, merely a didactic exercise. At another level, however, it developed in the students the ability to think critically and seek to satisfy their own conscience, not some artificial standard or truth imposed by the teacher.

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For me, the unifying theme of the McGill School remains not some programmatic view of Iroquoian prehistory, but rather the critical approach to its investigation. In this light, the fairly consistent understanding of Iroquoian prehistory shared by the students of the McGill School can be seen as merely an artifact of their shared experience in debating the topic among themselves and with Bruce Trigger. At Bruce’s suggestion, I elected to pursue my interest in Iroquoian cultural ecology for my doctoral dissertation research. In my desire to emulate the theoretical rigour with which my teacher and fellow students approached their research, I began my dissertation research by reviewing the parallel development of prehistoric archaeology and ecology since the Enlightenment. This research would identify the fundamental theoretical issues underlying the project and provide direction and a foundation on which to base the investigative methodology. A central theme identified through this exercise was the chronic explanatory dilemma in which ideographic holism was pitted against nomothetic reductionism. Fortunately, a solution to this impasse had already been articulated by Bruce (1989, 374): in order to realize its potential as a discipline, archaeology had to explain culture change in all of its particularistic complexity but with reference both to generalizations about human behaviour and cultural processes and to idiosyncratic contingencies. The application of this edict to the study of Iroquoian cultural ecology would require additional guiding principles, and here again I turned to Bruce Trigger (1991) and his notion of the various internal and external constraints defining the boundary conditions of human behaviour. Recognizing that these constraints operated at many different levels and scales, I adopted the following premises to guide my investigation of Late Woodland settlement trends in south-central Ontario (MacDonald 2002): 1 The selection of locations for major settlements was constrained by an array of external factors operating in a range of spatial and temporal scales. 2 This selection process was also constrained by an array of internal factors also operating at a range of scales. 3 The selection process involved individuals’ rationally negotiating this multiplicity of constraints in the course of their lives. 4 An understanding of these various constraints would require a multidimensional investigation strategy.

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I selected external constraints of the natural environment as the primary focus because of the need for an ecological context for the broader debate concerning Iroquoian culture change. Using an assemblage of 258 major settlements, I compared an array of environmental attributes within site catchments and throughout the study area. As this analysis largely focused on the regional and pan-regional scale, I supplemented it with detailed investigations of eleven case study sites to provide information at the local scale. All of these analyses crosscut both time and space (MacDonald 2002). The product of this study is a broadly based explanatory narrative that provides an ecological framework for understanding Iroquoian culture history and culture change in south-central Ontario. It specifically addresses questions such as those raised by Conrad Heidenreich (1963, 1971) and Bruce Trigger (1962, 1963, 1969, 1979, 1985) regarding the long-term migration of Late Woodland communities away from the north shore of Lake Ontario and their eventual coalescence in historic Huronia and Petunia (see also Sutton 1996). In so doing, it adds another brick to the edifice that is the McGill School of Iroquoian archaeology, an edifice that owes its existence to its visionary architect, Bruce Trigger.

dav i d s m i t h My master’s thesis (1983) and doctoral dissertation (1987) were completed under Bruce Trigger’s supervision between 1980 and 1987. While both focused on Middle and Late Ontario Iroquoian ceramics, they were profoundly influenced by Bruce’s views on the nature of Iroquoian communities, the relations among them, and their distribution over the landscape (Trigger 1968, 1978b, 1981). The impact of Bruce Trigger’s interpretations can also be seen in my recent research, with Gary Crawford, into the origins of Iroquoian societies in southern Ontario during the first millennium a.d. (Crawford and Smith 1996, 2003; Crawford et al. 1997; Smith 1997a, 1997b; Smith and Crawford 1995, 1997). Site distribution over the landscape changed dramatically at about a.d. 500 and then again at about a.d. 1000. Middle Woodland sites in southern Ontario dated circa 400 b.c.–a.d. 500 had a much dispersed distribution. This changed dramatically during the subsequent transitional period, when Princess Point sites dating between a.d. 500 and 1000 were clustered along rivers, wetlands, and lakeshores. After a.d. 1000, Iroquoian villages were widely dispersed.

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It has been argued that the marked difference between the dispersed Middle Woodland and clustered Princess Point settlement systems can be explained by migration and wholesale replacement (Snow 1996b). An equally plausible hypothesis can be developed, however, that is informed by Bruce’s three levels of settlement pattern and takes into account changing subsistence strategies, micro-migration, and social transition. The Middle Woodland distribution can be explained by recourse to Kent Flannery’s (1968) concept of the seasonally rescheduled relocation of entire forager communities to different locales within a band territory. David Stothers (1977) argued that this strategy also characterized Princess Point settlement distribution, but such a pattern is not supported by the distribution of Princess Point sites. Alternatively, it might be argued that, by a.d. 500, forager communities began to focus more on specific locales, such as the river bars and terraces of the Lower Grand River Valley (Smith and Crawford 1997; Crawford and Smith 2003). This strategy was stimulated and/or reinforced by the introduction of maize cultivation by a.d. 500 (Crawford et al. 1997; Smith 1997a). These centred communities continued to exploit the surrounding territory in a seasonal schedule, not by relocating the entire social group, but by undertaking specialized expeditions, a pattern that foreshadows the later Iroquoian strategy. What we may now call Princess Point communities consisted of individual family dwellings loosely clustered within the locale. By a.d. 1000, socially related families merged into extended families that occupied the prototype of the Iroquoian longhouse, evidence of which can be seen at the Holmedale site, excavated by Ronald Williamson and his colleagues (Pihl et al. 1997). With the intensification of maize horticulture by a.d. 1000, the social units dwelling in longhouses coalesced into villages. Early Ontario Iroquoian villages were situated according to parameters (documented in Williamson 1990 and Timmins 1997) that were quite different from those affecting Princess Point communities. These communities continued to exploit a territory seasonally, but from the vantage of the sedentary village, a pattern illustrated by the Lawson site and its surrounding hamlets (Pearce 1984). Thus, the nature of territoriality did not change so much as the structure of the family, the community, and its home base, and the way in which the community seasonally utilized the territory in economic, social, and ideational terms.

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p e t e r ti m m i n s Under Bruce Trigger’s supervision, I undertook a detailed analysis of a single Iroquoian village, studying the occupational history of the Early Iroquoian Calvert site, located near London, Ontario (Timmins 1997). This study followed the framework of an interpretive pyramid, beginning at the broad spatiotemporal level and working upwards through progressively more difficult techno-economic, sociopolitical, and cultural analyses. This work was also grounded in the development of interpretive theory, an approach that involved an expansion of middlerange research to incorporate all of the social, cultural, and natural processes that condition the archaeological record. Early Iroquoian villages typically represent a complex non-stratified overlay of structures and features resulting from long-term occupation and many rebuilding episodes. In the case of the Calvert site, an analysis of superimposed features and structures, ceramic cross-mends, radiocarbon dates, and house-wall post densities led to the development of an occupational history for the village. The study revealed that the Calvert village went through four phases of construction and reconstruction between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, involving wholesale changes in the orientation and size of houses, major modifications to the village palisade, and the reorganization of space and activity areas within the community. The spatiotemporal analysis provided four distinct data sets, each related to an occupational phase. I subjected these sets to comparative analysis to assess changes in the material culture, economy, and sociopolitical aspects of the community over the estimated seventy-five-year occupation of the site. I determined that the Calvert site began as a single structure (House 1) occupied in the late thirteenth century. Analysis of the pottery and faunal debris from this structure indicated that its occupants may have been unrelated to the subsequent villagers. The Early Phase of the Calvert village involved three widely spaced longhouses oriented roughly north-south and surrounded by a single-row palisade. In the Middle Phase the houses were dismantled and replaced by three larger, closely spaced longhouses oriented roughly east-west. At this time, the palisade was doubled and contracted, suggesting increased concern for defence, while the population appeared to have increased. The Late Phase saw the dismantling of the Middle Phase structures followed by the construction of three much smaller east-west–oriented

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houses. Changes in house size, artifact assemblages, and faunal debris suggest that the Late Phase occupation represents a hunting camp in which the houses were occupied on a short-term basis by special-task groups rather than extended families. A key component of the Calvert analysis involved the study of refuse disposal practices, accomplished through the archaeological study of waste streams to reveal “how activity areas contributed, through time, to various secondary deposits” (Schiffer 1987, 67). In the Calvert case, ceramic cross-mends linking interior activity areas to external refuse pits revealed a pattern of systematic cleaning and maintenance of houses during the Early and Middle Phases of the Calvert occupation. Interestingly, this pattern changed in the Late Phase, when there was little concern for moving garbage out of houses, which is interpreted as evidence of brief occupations and abandonment behaviour. In sum, once I had developed an appropriate methodology to unravel the settlement data, my analysis of the Calvert site revealed that Early Iroquoian communities were more organized than originally thought and made long-term planning decisions concerning their village. The development of such methodology and the interpretations arising from it were greatly enhanced by Bruce’s own views on Iroquoian development; they have since contributed not only to Bruce’s current beliefs on how the Ontario Iroquoians evolved (Trigger 1999, 316; 2001, 6), but also to his view that the examination of specific topics of Ontario Iroquoian archaeology is making a significant contribution to the resolution of “mainline anthropological problems” (Trigger 1998, 83; 2001, 11).

g a ry wa r r i c k Prior to attending McGill University to undertake doctoral studies with Bruce Trigger, I had written my master’s thesis on Ontario Iroquoian village layout (Warrick 1984). Basing my analysis explicitly on Bruce’s (Trigger 1968, 1981) work on settlement archaeology, I interpreted temporal change in village layout as a reflection of changes in sociopolitical organization. One of the interesting aspects of my thesis was that it was carried out in the Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, a school devoted to the aims of processual archaeology. In fact, I was considered somewhat of a heretic when I selected Bruce’s theoretical writings as a paper topic for a theory course taught by Brian Hayden. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Bruce (Trigger

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1978a, 1978b) critiqued the excessive materialism and nomothetic goals of processual archaeology. Instead seeing archaeology as a way to discover general truths about human behaviour, Bruce believes that the goal of archaeology should be to explain the past in its complex and particularistic reality (Trigger 1989). Archaeology is fundamentally a historical endeavour – that is, it involves writing history largely or entirely in the absence of written accounts of that past. This view of archaeology strongly influenced my decision to attend McGill University to undertake doctoral studies with Bruce Trigger. Studying with Bruce Trigger is exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. Bruce is famous for his three-hour weekly or biweekly sessions with each of his doctoral students that leave one mentally exhausted. During these sessions, students should be prepared to receive a personal reading from one of the hundreds of books in Bruce’s office library – and Bruce has been known to do these readings while standing on his work table! Bruce also requires each student to attend a seminar course. By the conclusion of the course, one comes to learn that much of archaeological theory is dogmatic and can generate tautological explanations of the past – that is, the present is read into the past. Bruce Trigger instils in all of his students the desire “to see the past as it was, not as they wish it to have been” (Trigger 1989, 411). My (1990) doctoral study has the trademark of Bruce Trigger stamped all over it. The work is a population history of the WendatTionontate (Huron-Petun) from a.d. 900 to 1650. Population numbers are estimated for a 700-year period on the basis of the size in hectares of 460 village sites, which represent 60–80 per cent of all of the Wendat-Tionontate villages that ever existed (Warrick 2000, 2003a). The study, which closely follows the methodology of Bruce’s (1965) own doctoral study of population change in pre-Dynastic and Dynastic Nubia, demonstrated a dramatic population increase in the 1300s and a population collapse in the 1630s (Warrick 1990). The population increase coheres with a Malthusian response to improved nutrition. The population collapse was a result of first contact with epidemics of European disease. The study found no evidence of sixteenth-century depopulation from European disease (Warrick 1990), supporting Dean Snow’s (1995, 1996a) work on Mohawk population. In fact, my findings and Snow’s do not support Henry Dobyns’s (1983) declaration of sixteenth-century pandemics and continental population collapse, which had resulted in the estimate that the

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population of North America in 1492 was probably about two million people (Ubelaker 1992). While my research interests have drifted away from the Wendat, I continue to pursue “Triggerian” archaeology in my study of the early nineteenth-century Six Nations Iroquois of the Grand River, Ontario (Warrick 2002, 2003b). Bruce Trigger (1980, 1997) reminds us that archaeologists who study the past of the indigenous people of North America have a responsibility to the descendants of the people whose artifacts and settlements are disturbed in the pursuit of that past. Native history is a worthwhile study in its own right and is best achieved by the weaving together of data from archaeology, bioarchaeology, spoken history, linguistics, and ethnology. However, without involving aboriginal communities in the archaeological study of their past, archaeology will continue to be irrelevant and, even worse, disrespectful to them. In light of this, I am pursuing community-based archaeology with Six Nations in order to provide data relevant to everyday issues in the community and build a more truthful picture of the past (Warrick 2003b). I will continue to follow the wisdom of Bruce Trigger – “a holistic knowledge of what has happened to specific groups of people in the past is a matter of great humanistic as well as scientific interest” (Trigger 1989, 376).

references Chang, Kwang-chih, ed. 1968. Settlement Archaeology. Palo Alto: National Press Books Crawford, Gary W., and David G. Smith. 1996. “Migration in Prehistory: Princess Point and the Northern Iroquoian Case.” American Antiquity 61 (4): 782–90 – 2003. “Paleoethnobotany in the Northeast.” In People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America, edited by Paul Minnis, 172–257. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books Crawford, Gary W., David G. Smith, and V.E. Bowyer. 1997. “Dating the Entry of Corn (Zea Mays) into the Lower Great Lakes Region.” American Antiquity 62:112–19 Crawford, Gary W., David G. Smith, D.G. Desloges, and A.M. Davis. 1998. “Floodplains and Agricultural Origins: A Case Study in South-Central Ontario, Canada.” Journal of Field Archaeology 25:123–37

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Dobyns, Henry. 1983. Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press Dodd, Christine, Dana Poulton, Paul Lennox, David G. Smith, and Gary Warrick. 1990. “The Middle Ontario Iroquoian Stage.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 321–60. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 Fitzgerald, William R. 1990. “Chronology to Culture Process: Lower Great Lakes Archaeology, 1500–1650.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal Flannery, Kent. 1968. “Archaeological Systems Theory and Early Mesoamerica.” In Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas, edited by Betty J. Meggers. Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington Fox, William A. 1990a. “The Middle to Late Woodland Transition.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 171–88. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 – 1990b. “The Odawa.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 457–74. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 – 2002a. “Shaking the Earth: Turtle Shell Rattles among the Ontario Iroquois.” Paper presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association, Ottawa – 2002b. “Thaniba Wakondagi among the Ontario Iroquois.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 26 (2):130–51 – 2003a. “The Calvert Village Underworld.” kewa 03–3:2–7 – 2003b. “Horned Panthers and Erie Associates.” In A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, edited by James V. Wright and J-L. Pilon, 327–58. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 164. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization Fox, William A., and J.E. Molto. 1994. “The Shaman of Long Point.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 57:23–44 Fox, William A., and Robert J. Salzer. 1999. “Themes and Variations: Ideological Systems in the Great Lakes.” In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology, edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Christopher M. Watts, 237–63. Toronto: eastendbooks Heidenreich, Conrad. 1963. “The Huron Occupance of Simcoe County, Ontario.” Canadian Geographer 7 (3):131–44

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– 1971. Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600– 1650. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Jamieson, J. Bruce. 1982. “The Steward Site: A Study in St. Lawrence Iroquoian Chronology.” Master of arts thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1983. “An Examination of Prisoner-Sacrifice and Cannibalism at the St. Lawrence Iroquoian Roebuck Site.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 7 (2):159–75 – 1990. “The Archaeology of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 385–404. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 Lennox, Paul, and William Fitzgerald. 1990. “The Culture History and Archaeology of the Neutral Iroquoians.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 405–56. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 Lerner, Harry J. 2000. “Static Types to Dynamic Variables: The Methods of Prehistoric Chipped Stone Tool Documentation and Analysis.” Master of arts thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal MacDonald, Robert I. 1988. “Ontario Iroquoian Sweat Lodges.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 47:17–26. – 1992. “Ontario Iroquoian Semi-subterranean Sweat Lodges.” In Ancient Images, Ancient Thought: The Archaeology of Ideology, edited by A.S. Goldsmith, S. Garvie, D. Selin, and J. Smith, 323–30. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Chacmool Conference, University of Calgary, Calgary – 2002. “Late Woodland Settlement Trends in South-Central Ontario: A Study of Ecological Relationships and Culture Change.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal MacDonald, Robert I., and Ronald F. Williamson. 1995. “The Hibou Site (AlGo-50): Investigating Ontario Iroquoian Origins in the Central North Shore Area of Lake Ontario.” In Origins of the People of the Longhouse: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Symposium of the Ontario Archaeological Society, edited by André Bekerman and Gary Warrick, 9–42. Toronto: Ontario Archaeological Society – 2001. “Sweat Lodges and Solidarity: The Archaeology of the Hubbert Site.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 71:29–78 Noble, William C. 1984. “Historic Neutral Iroquois Settlement Patterns.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 8 (1):3–27

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Pearce, Robert J. 1984. “Mapping Middleport: A Case Study in Societal Archaeology.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1990. “Human Effigy Pipes from the Lawson Site.” London Museum of Archaeology Palisade Post 11 (2):4–5 – 1996. “Mapping Middleport: A Case Study in Societal Archaeology” (revised). London: London Museum of Archaeology Research Report 25 – 2003a. “Items and Means of Personal Adornment among the Neutral: Evidence from the Lawson Site.” kewa 03-6/03-7:1–31 – 2003b. Stories of PreHistory: The Jury Family Legacies. London Museum of Archaeology Pihl, Robert, David Robertson, and Ronald F. Williamson. 1997. “Summary of 1996 Research by Archaeological Services Inc.” Eighth Annual Archaeological Report, Ontario, n.s., 9:31–6 Robertson, David, and Ronald F. Williamson. 2002. “Pre-contact Farmers of Mississauga: The Antrex Site.” In Mississauga: The First Ten Thousand Years, edited by Frank Dieterman, 90–105. Toronto: eastendbooks – 2003. “The Archaeology of the Dunsmore Site: 15th Century Community Transformations in Southern Ontario.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 27:1–61 Robertson, David, Stephen G. Monckton, and Ronald F. Williamson. 1995. “The Wiacek Site Revisited: The Results of the 1990 Excavations.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 60:40–91 Schiffer, Michael B. 1987. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press Smith, David G. 1983. “An Analytical Approach to the Seriation of Iroquoian Pottery.” London: London Museum of Archaeology Research Report 12 – 1987. “Archaeological Systematics and the Analysis of Iroquoian Ceramics: A Case Study from the Crawford Lake Area, Ontario.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1990. “Iroquoian Societies in Southern Ontario: Introduction and Historic Overview.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 279–90. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 – 1991. “Keffer Site (AkGv-14) Pottery and Ceramic Smoking Pipes.” London: London Museum of Archaeology Research Report, no. 23 – 1995. “An Analysis of the Pottery and Pipes from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons and the Heron Site.” In Before and Beyond Sainte-Marie: 1987–1990

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Excavations at the Sainte-Marie among the Hurons Site Complex, edited by Jeanie Tummon and W. Barry Gray, 61–103. Dundas, Ont.: Copetown Press – 1997a. “Radiocarbon Dating the Middle to Late Woodland Transition and Earliest Maize in Southern Ontario.” Northeast Anthropology 54:37–73 – 1997b. “Recent Investigation of Late Woodland Occupations at Cootes Paradise, Ontario.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 63:4–16 Smith, David G., and Gary W. Crawford. 1995. “The Princess Point Complex and the Origins of Iroquoian Societies in Ontario.” In Origins of the People of the Longhouse: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Symposium of the Ontario Archaeological Society, edited by André Bekerman and Gary Warrick, 9–42. Toronto: Ontario Archaeological Society – 1997. “Recent Developments in the Archaeology of the Princess Point Complex in Southern Ontario.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 21:9–32 Snow, Dean R. 1995. “Microchronology and Demographic Evidence Relating to the Size of Pre-Columbian North American Indian Populations.” Science 268:1601–4 – 1996a. “Mohawk Demography and the Effects of Exogenous Epidemics on American Indian Population.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 15:160–82 – 1996b. “More on Migrations in Prehistory: Accommodating New Evidence in the Northern Iroquoian Case.” American Antiquity 61 (4):791–6 Stewart, Frances L. 1998. “Proto Huron/Petun and Proto St. Lawrence Iroquoian Subsistence as Culturally Defining.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 2000. “Variability in Neutral Iroquoian Subsistence, A.D. 1540–1651.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 69:92–117 Stewart, Frances L., and William D. Finlayson. 2000. “Subsistence at the Irving-Johnston Village and the Question of Deer Tending by the Neutrals.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 24:17–40 Stothers, David. 1977. The Princess Point Complex. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 58. Ottawa: National Museum of Man Sutton, Richard E. 1996. “The Middle Iroquoian Colonization of Huronia.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton Timmins, Peter. 1985. “The Analysis and Interpretation of Radiocarbon Dates in Iroquoian Archaeology.” London: London Museum of Archaeology Research Report 19 – 1997. The Calvert Site: An Interpretive Framework for the Early Iroquoian Village. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 156. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization

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Trigger, Bruce G. 1962. “The Historic Location of the Hurons.” Ontario History 54 (2):137–48 – 1963. “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation at the Time of Contact.” American Anthropologist 65 (1):86–101 – 1965. History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 69. New Haven: Yale University Press – 1967. “Settlement Archaeology – Its Goals and Promise.” American Antiquity 32 (2):149–60 – 1968. “The Determinants of Settlement Patterns.” In Settlement Archaeology, edited by K.C. Chang, 53–78. Palo Alto: National Press Books – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1970. “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 14: 3–48 – 1978. “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” In Archaeological Essays in Honor of Irving B. Rouse, edited by Robert C. Dunnell and Edwin S. Hall, Jr, 275–310. The Hague: Mouton Publishers – 1978b. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. New York: Columbia University Press – 1979. “Sixteenth Century Ontario: History, Ethnohistory and Archaeology.” Ontario History 71:205–23 – 1980. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1981. “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study.” In Foundations of Northeast Archaeology, edited by Dean Snow, 1–50. New York: Academic Press – 1982. “Concluding Remarks on the 1982 McMaster Symposium – ‘The Ontario Iroquois Tradition Revisited.’” Arch Notes, no. 82–5:9–13 – 1985. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press – 1991. “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis for Archaeological Explanation.” American Anthropologist 93 (3):551–69 – 1994. “Discussion.” In Great Lakes Archaeology and Palaeoecology: Exploring Interdisciplinary Initiatives for the Nineties, edited by Robert I. MacDonald, 433–41. Quaternary Sciences Institute Publication, no. 10. Waterloo: University of Waterloo

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– 1997. Foreword to At a Crossroads: Archaeology and First Peoples in Canada, edited by George P. Nicholas and Thomas D. Andrews, vii–xiii. Publication, no. 24. Burnaby: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University – 1998. “Reflections on Encounters with Archaeology.” In Bringing Back the Past: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Archaeology, edited by P.J. Smith and D. Mitchell, 77–92. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 158. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization – 1999. “Master and Servant: A Conference Overview.” In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology, edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Christopher M. Watts, 303–22. Toronto: eastendbooks in association with the Ontario Archaeology Society – 2001. “The Liberation of Wendake.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 72:3–14 Ubelaker, Douglas H. 1992. “North American Indian Population Size: Changing Perspectives.” In Disease and Demography in the Americas, edited by J.W. Verano and D.H. Ubelaker, 223–36. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press van der Merwe, Nicholas, Ronald F. Williamson, Susan Pfeiffer, Stephen Cox Thomas, and K. Oakberg. 2003. “The Moatfield Ossuary: Isotopic Dietary Analysis of an Iroquoian Community, Using Dental Tissue.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22:245–61 von Gernet, Alexander. 1982. “Interpretation of Intra-Site Artifact Spatial Distribution: The Draper Site Smoking Pipes.” Master of arts thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1985. “Analysis of Intrasite Artifact Distributions: The Draper Site Smoking Pipes.” London Museum of Archaeology Research Report, no. 16, London – 1989. “The Transculturation of the Amerindian Pipe/Tobacco/Smoking Complex.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1992. “New Directions in the Construction of Prehistoric Amerindian Belief Systems.” In Ancient Images, Ancient Thought: The Archaeology of Ideology, edited by A. Goldsmith, S. Garvie, D. Selin, and J. Smith, 133–140. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Chacmool Conference. Calgary: Archaeological Association University of Calgary von Gernet, Alexander, and Peter A. Timmins. 1987. “Pipes and Parakeets: Interpreting Meaning in an Early Iroquoian Context.” In Archaeology as Long-Term History, edited by Ian Hodder, 31–42. New York: Cambridge University Press Warrick, Gary. 1984. Reconstructing Ontario Iroquoian Village Organization. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 124. Ottawa: National Museum of Man

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– 1990. “A Population History of the Huron-Petun, A.D. 900–1650.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1996. “Evolution of the Iroquoian Longhouse.” In People Who Lived in Big Houses: Archaeological Perspectives on Large Domestic Structures, edited by G. Coupland and E.B. Banning, 11–26. Monographs in World Archaeology, no. 27. Madison: Prehistory Press – 2000. “The Precontact Iroquoian Occupation of Southern Ontario.” Journal of World Prehistory 14 (4):415–66 – 2002. “The Application of Archaeology to Contemporary Native Issues.” Paper presented at 35th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association, Ottawa – 2003a. “European Infectious Disease and Depopulation of the WendatTionontate (Huron-Petun).” World Archaeology 35:258–75 – 2003b. “Historical Archaeology of the Six Nations of the Grand River.” Paper presented at 36th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association, Hamilton Willey, Gordon R. 1953. Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley. Bulletin 155. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Williamson, Ronald F. 1983. “The Robin Hood Site: A Study of Functional Variability in Late Iroquoian Settlement Patterns.” Ontario Archaeological Society, Monographs in Ontario Archaeology, no. 1 – 1985. “Glen Meyer: People in Transition.” Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal – 1986. “The Mill Stream Cluster: The Other Side of the Coin.” In Studies in Southwestern Ontario Archaeology, edited by W.A. Fox, 25–31. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 1 – 1990. “The Early Iroquoian Period of Southern Ontario.” In The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650, edited by Chris Ellis and Neal Ferris, 291–320. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 5 – ed. 1998. The Myers Road Site (AiHb-13): A Prehistoric Iroquoian Village, Cambridge, Ontario. Occasional Publication of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, no. 7 – 2004. “The Search for the Iroquoian Longhouse: Replication or Interpretation.” In The Reconstructed Past: The Role of Reconstructions in the Public Interpretation of Archaeology and History, edited by John H. Jamieson, Jr, 147–65. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press Williamson, Ronald F., and Robert I. MacDonald. 1997. In the Shadow of the Bridge: The Archaeology of the Peace Bridge Site (AfGr-9), 1994–1996

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Investigations. Occasional Publications of Archaeological Services Inc., vol. 1. Toronto: Archaeological Services Inc. – 1998. Legacy of Stone: Ancient Life on the Niagara Frontier. Toronto: eastendbooks Williamson, Ronald F., and Susan Pfeiffer, eds. 2003. Bones of the Ancestors: The Archaeology and Osteobiography of the Moatfield Ossuary. Mercury Series Paper 163. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization Williamson, Ronald, F., and David Robertson. 1994. “Iroquoian Regional Interaction: Peer Polities beyond the Periphery.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 58: 27–48 – eds. 1998. “The Archaeology of the Parsons Site: A Fifty Year Perspective.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 65/66 Williamson, Ronald F., Shaun Austin, and Stephen Cox Thomas. 2003a. “The Archaeology of the Grandview Site: A Fifteenth Century Iroquoian Community on the North Shore of Lake Ontario.” Arch Notes 8 (5):5–49 Williamson, Ronald F., Andrew Clish, George Clark, and Susan Pfeiffer. 2003b. “The Archaeology of the Moatfield Site.” In Williamson and Pfeiffer 2003 (133–59)

10 Bruce Trigger and the Children of Aataentsic MARTHA LATTA

When I was asked to speak of Bruce Trigger’s contributions to Iroquoian archaeology, I accepted gladly. Bruce is one of the pillars of our field, an individual whose contribution is so massive and pervasive that one is delighted to have the opportunity to say “thank you” in return. With that said, it is difficult to decide how to approach a career that spans forty years and produced more than fifty articles, six books (some regularly reissued in both English and French), and seminal editorships of the Handbook of North American Indians (volume 15, Northeast, 1971) and The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (volume 1, North America, 1996) – and these are only the works that have contributed to Iroquoian archaeology. Bruce Trigger has trained a generation of scholars, many of whom have contributed to this volume. They and their subsequent research have expanded and enriched our understanding of aboriginal culture in the Great Lakes, to the great benefit of Ontario archaeology. In many ways, Bruce Trigger’s influence on Iroquoian studies has been so overwhelming that it is frequently taken for granted by a younger generation of archaeologists, having become part of the natural “way things are.” To a considerable extent, Trigger’s vision of the Iroquois-speaking peoples of Canada and the United States has shaped the contemporary archaeological paradigm. For more than a generation, archaeology students have been introduced to Canadian prehistory through Trigger’s 1969 monograph, The Huron: Farmers of the

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North, a volume in the highly influential series published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. In this deceptively simple text, most recently republished in 1990, and in his great two-volume study, The Children of Aataentsic (1976), Trigger summarized the vast ethnohistorical and ethnological resources that enrich and daunt the archaeological researcher. It is surprising, then, that Trigger has never, to my knowledge, carried out archaeological research on a historic Iroquoian site, nor has he been extensively engaged in analytical evaluations of Iroquoian material culture. To understand the nature of Trigger’s contribution to Iroquoian archaeology, it is therefore necessary to summarize the state of the field before his time. Few would argue today that both traditional history and material culture studies provide partial but incomplete measures of the past. We would all agree that the prehistory of any region should recognize and respect the traditional values of its aboriginal peoples. This has not always been the case, of course, and the evolution of Iroquoian archaeology is a microcosmic projection of the evolution and maturation of North American archaeology as a whole. From its earliest beginnings, Iroquoian archaeology in northeastern North America has been a history-based discipline, focused on sixteenth-century French occupations and activities. This focus was driven by a massive historical record: the memoirs of Samuel de Champlain, the eerily modern insights of Gabriel Sagard-Théodat, the travel stories of Mark Lescarbot, and the seventy-three volumes of The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents edited by Reuben Thwaites (1896– 1901). Altogether, the region experienced what has repeatedly been referred to as a tyranny of the documentary record. Not surprisingly, archaeology began as a search for evidence of these French explorers and missionaries. In the early twentieth century, such archaeological evidence attracted worldwide public attention through the movement for canonization of the six Jesuit martyrs of 1649. This led to vigorous, occasionally libellous, debates on the authenticity of sites associated with soon-to-be-saints Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, as well as of those associated with Cahiagué, the town described by Champlain in 1619, and the villages visited by other French writers of the seventeenth century. For the most part, however, the native peoples were ignored in these studies, except where their activities complemented the prevailing Eurocentric mythology. They provided a background for the delineation of French heroes. As depicted in the illustrations in seventeenth-century

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publications, native people were viewed as standing around the edges of the historical landscape, lending colour and suggesting an awe-filled contemplation of the central European figures. They were, so to speak, part of the landscape. A reaction to this perspective arose in the years following World War II as archaeological studies of pre-European sites became more common. Under the influence of J. Norman Emerson of the University of Toronto, archaeologists began to examine ways of studying the Huron people in their own right. For the most part, in early years, this involved attempts to establish cultural chronologies through seriation, but this seemingly modest goal generated yet another public clash – the socalled Ontario Iroquois Controversy – this one over the question of whether the Hurons originated in the Toronto area and marched north to Huronia or whether they originated in Huronia and marched south to Toronto. This feud vanished, thankfully, without a trace with the introduction of radiocarbon dating, but it is notable here in one respect: in one of Bruce Trigger’s earliest-published articles (1962), while he embraced the northward-moving hypothesis, he also argued that archaeologists had to consider not only the archaeological evidence of population movements but also why such movements might have occurred. As we know, the early computer era of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound impact on archaeology, and the discipline enthusiastically joined the newly scientific “social sciences.” In Ontario, as elsewhere, this change involved the artifact-based orientation of the New Archaeology and its intellectual kin. It was a very appealing notion that one might enter every bit of relevant data into a computer and have the computer generate Truth – something like conducting a Star Trek search for aliens on the Enterprise. The positive result of this change in focus was that aboriginal sites could be evaluated independently of their association with ethnohistoric documents. When linked with increasingly available carbon-14 dating technology, archaeologists such as J.N. Emerson and J.V. Wright set out to map the pre-French history of Ontario, creating a maze of interlocking phases, foci, and traditions. At the time I entered the field, archaeological research was simple. The sole source of culture change was understood to be time – that is, the random and cumulative events that occur over time. All that was needed to fully understand a prehistoric site was an assemblage of two hundred ceramic rim sherds that could be divided into defined types and mechanically sorted to reveal a linear order that was presumed to be chronological. As the weaknesses of this approach speedily became

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apparent, later researchers became more demanding. Statistical tests were required, questions of sampling were invoked, and issues of confidentiality of data crosscut the growth of archaeological science. Nevertheless, in this statistical universe, the indigenous peoples were almost more invisible than they had been in the ethnohistoric era. No longer even part of the landscape, native people were best represented by a “mechanical Indian” machine that carried out repetitive bonecutting operations with stone tools made by the researcher. Most statistics assume a normal universe, one in which variability can be attributed to a small number of clearly defined causes. In order to eliminate troublesome sources of variability, archaeology assumed that prehistory was generic, sexless, and ageless, consisting entirely of a limited universe of cultural choices that were derived from earlier peoples in the same geographic location. Throughout this period, Bruce Trigger published articles that discussed the impact of issues other than time on prehistory. Influenced by the philosophy of V. Gordon Childe, Trigger’s early work stressed economic and geographic factors that promoted cultural complexity. Economic geography was a central theme in his first book, The Huron: Farmers of the North (1969), and in his first major papers, “The Destruction of Huronia: A Study in Economic and Cultural Change, 1609–1650” (1960), “The Historic Location of the Hurons” (1962), and “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation at the Time of Contact” (1963). In subsequent publications, Trigger examined the impact of trade, the growing social inequality, and the increasingly structured sociopolitical structure reflected in the growth of fortified settlements in the late prehistoric and contact period Huron. He drew upon a growing body of archaeological data, the historical record, and philosophical theory to create a perspective of human culture that transcended the limited views of the individual disciplines. Unlike his predecessors, Trigger took an interest in the Huron people that has always been both specific and theoretical. He was certainly interested in the Hurons as an ethnic group. More important, I believe, was the issue raised by L.H. Morgan (1851), reiterated by Marx and Engels (cf. Trigger 1967), and expanded by Childe (1951, 1956; cf. Trigger 1980c, among many others): “[T]o what extent do the Iroquois reflect a recurring pattern of human cultural development, and how does this pattern inform our understanding of culture change in other parts of the world?”

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In addressing this question, Trigger contrasted the well-documented Huron record with Old World cultures that were at roughly similar developmental levels but were of completely separate and independent origins. Like Childe, Trigger has been one of the few archaeologists who has actually attempted to test theories of the origin and growth of cultural complexity by using the New World as a control population. In so doing, he has written a shelf of books on archaeological and historical theory, and has influenced the course of archaeological theory throughout the world. It is clear from the ethnohistoric records that individual Hurons did not all behave the same way and that differences in individual behaviour – either consistently or on notable occasions – were likely to have had an impact on events. There were important social divisions within Huron society, and the effect of these divisions was to create change, not to promote normalcy. But to what extent were these effects systemic? Did similar events (may we call them triggers?) promote the same consequences in Huronia and Nubia? If not, were there underlying factors that altered the impact of these triggers? Is human evolution sustained, patterned, and predictable, or is it entirely a matter of local accident? I think it is fair to say that in the process of his research Bruce became uncomfortable with the degree to which archaeologists had managed to distance themselves and their research from the descendants of their study group – the living First Nations. The Hurons are not a group of two hundred rim sherds. They are a living people who have ideas and concerns about their world and the ways in which they are pictured. Studies of potsherds or settlement patterns had too often avoided recognizing that artifacts were unimportant and perhaps meaningless without an appreciation of the people who made and used these objects. In his more recent works – we may note “Colonizers and Natives: Toward a More Objective History of New France” (1980b), “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian” (1980a), “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage” (1988), and Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (1985) – Trigger stressed the centrality of aboriginal peoples in any reconstruction of the past and the necessity for any such reconstructions to speak to issues relevant to aboriginal peoples in the present. Trigger was clearly moved by Childe’s views of revolutionary events in world history – a perspective that presaged in many aspects the current evolutionary model of punctuated equilibrium. Invasion, an

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obvious and influential trigger of culture change, has been a feature of human occupations from earliest recorded history, and it doubtless occurred in the prehistoric past as well. Invasion, as the Hurons experienced it, was not a gentle process of gradual change in style but an abrupt, typically violent, confrontation of values. The Huron archaeological record thus does not consist of neat, linear, unstressed changes in styles; it also consists of death and destruction on both the individual and the cultural planes (cf. Trigger 1981, 1984). The impact of the Europeans’ invasion of the New World is still being resolved today. Thus, Bruce Trigger’s most important contribution to Iroquoian archaeology is the recognition that the human past, not just the prehistory or history of any particular region, is the true field of archaeological research. The nature and consequences of interactions between natives and newcomers are, or ought to be, of concern to all of those who promote globalization as a force for human development. As we study the Hurons – or the ancient Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Australian Aborigines – we seek to understand the nature of the past and the consequences of our actions in the present. The world of the twenty-first century is more difficult and complicated than the world of 1960, and archaeology has an active role to play. Thanks to Bruce Trigger, Iroquoian archaeology is ready to expand beyond narrow geographical limits and assume a global perspective.

references Childe, V. Gordon. 1951. Man Makes Himself. New York: New American Library – 1956. “The New Stone Age.” In Man, Culture, and Society, edited by Harry L. Shapiro. New York: Oxford University Press Morgan, Lewis H. 1851. The Destiny of the Indian. New York: Rochester Press Thwaites, Reuben G., ed. 1896–1901. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Company. Reprint, New York: Pageant Book Company, 1959. The original French, Latin, and Italian texts, with English translations and notes Trigger, Bruce G. 1960. “The Destruction of Huronia: A Study in Economic and Cultural Change, 1609–1650.” Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute, vol. 33, pt 1, no. 68:14–45 – 1962. “The Historic Location of the Hurons.” Ontario History 54 (2):137–48

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– 1963. “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation at the Time of Contact.” American Anthropologist 65 (1):86–101 – 1967. “Settlement Archaeology – Its Goals and Promise.” American Antiquity 32 (2):149–60 – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1976. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – ed. 1978. Northeast. Vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution – 1980a. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1980b. “Colonizers and Natives: Toward a More Objective History of New France.” In XVe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Rapports II, Section Chronologique, 279–87. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania – 1980c. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson; New York: Columbia University Press – 1981. “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study.” In Foundations of Northeast Archaeology, edited by Dean Snow, 1–50. New York: Academic Press – 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70 – 1985. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1988. “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage.” Culture 8 (1):71–85 Trigger, Bruce G., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, eds. 1996. North America. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press

11 In the Land of the Lions: The Ethnohistory of Bruce G. Trigger TOBY MORANTZ

In the same year that Bruce Graham Trigger made his ethnohistory debut in the Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute (1960) and while he was still four years away from earning his p hd,1 professional scholars were gathered at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Indian Ethnohistoric Conference at Indiana University. The proceedings, published a year later in 1961, focused on such questions as what is ethnohistory, how should it be done, and what are its virtues. Fred Eggan (1961, 8), the noted student of North American Indian ethnology, expressed the view that historians who “have written on the American Indian have, with some exceptions, been primarily concerned with the significance of the Indians for American history.” It was his hope, however, that “future writers on ethnohistory will give us the other side of the coin, emphasizing the Indian’s view of his world and of the events which have transpired – as well as the changes wrought in White Society and culture.” In his 1960 paper on the economic and cultural changes leading to the destruction of the Hurons, Trigger, the first-year graduate student, established what was to be recognized as one of the hallmarks of his great scholarship – his ability to anticipate scholarly directions and most often to direct them. This chapter, as the only focused ethnohistory retrospective in this volume, cannot be expected to cover all of Trigger’s inestimable contributions to ethnohistory; each practitioner has derived from Trigger’s writings specific principles that facilitate his or her methodology and

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interpretation of a region or topic of study. I will draw on a few of his main contributions but also be mindful that some of these themes are covered in the archaeology papers presented here, though the context will be somewhat different. This raises the point of Trigger’s persona. As a colleague in the same Department of Anthropology at McGill University, I can attest that he is not an academic schizophrenic. I cannot imagine that Trigger ever bothers considering whether he is writing as an archaeologist, an ethnohistorian, or a theorist. He is a classical anthropologist in that he is seeking answers to questions in the cultural and theoretical worlds, drawing on all the subdivisions of anthropology or any other discipline2 that bear on the issue. Although I am an ethnohistorian, my particular region and documents of study, oral and written, emanate from eastern James Bay. The fur trade was the dominant meeting ground of Crees and English, and so I focused my studies on the period beginning about three decades later than Trigger’s study of the Hurons, in the late 1600s when the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc) established its first post on the Rupert River (Francis and Morantz 1983; Morantz 1983, 2002). The documents Trigger used, in addition to the archaeological record, were The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Thwaites 1896–1901). These French records also have some relevance for the history of the Cree people of eastern James Bay and of an earlier period, but the Crees were hunters and the Jesuit missionaries preferred farmers, such as the Hurons, so that they could gather around them larger clusters of people for sustained periods of time. For this reason, the Jesuits, always short of priests and funding, made little effort to establish missions among the Crees. Consequently, The Jesuit Relations are far less informative or conducive to extracting information about Cree social and economic relations than they are with respect to the Hurons. Nevertheless, as befits a festschrift, in the second part of this paper I have drawn on principles and methodologies that Trigger fashioned for the Hurons. That section presents a review of the earliest documented history of eastern James Bay, prior to the arrival of the English fur trade, drawing on the existing archaeological records and the seventeenth-century writings, primarily those of the Jesuits. In consulting The Jesuit Relations, I developed an even greater appreciation of the depth of understanding Trigger derived from them, as well as an admiration for his reading through all seventy-three volumes. Much in the Relations is religious bravado, not pertinent but valuable for the occasional insight into the native peoples’ lives. Thus, the inspiration for the

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title “In the Land of the Lions” comes from volume 51, dated 1667, in which is reported the wanderings of Father Claude Allouez at Lake Superior, where he meets some Crees and Sioux. An old man gave him an account of the “great Bay” (which Allouez deemed to be “Hutson”) and then of other northern peoples in whose lands dwelt beasts with long claws which he “deemed highly probable … are lions” (Thwaites 1896– 1901, 51:116). The title, then, symbolizes both the opaqueness of the written records (lions in the boreal forest!) and the pre-eminent role Trigger has played in bringing the Hurons, and many of the Algonquian peoples, out of the depths of the forest.

h u ro n s o c i e t y i n t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u ry: tr i g g e r ’ s te a c h i n g s The Contours of the Research In his 1960 paper, Trigger recognizes that the then existing explanations for the sudden collapse of Huron society were not sufficient. The analyses, based on external factors, were facile judgments that had not taken into account any social context, such as economic dependence resulting from the fur trade or the might of the Iroquois. Trigger chooses to look to these internal social conditions, recognizing that Huron society was a “system of complex trends.” He contends that “an adequate explanation must depend on a full examination of Huron culture both as it was before contact, and of the changes within it during the contact period” (Trigger 1960, 15). He also advocates the need to examine the role of the “various types” of Europeans who were agents of contact, namely the traders, government officials, and priests. This was a methodology that he would pursue and refine in his later monographs on the Hurons (The Children of Aataentsic, 1976) and the heroic age (Natives and Newcomers, 1985). Less surprising but still novel for the times (and sadly so still today) was Trigger’s commitment to integrating the archaeological record with the documentary one. For him, both sets of data should be equally called upon to provide evidence so that the reader cannot determine which is being cited unless the authors are recognizable. Another remarkable feature of this finely detailed and argued thirty-page study of the Huron defeat is Trigger’s very early recognition of the interdependence of the Hurons and neighbouring Algonquians. Unlike many of the anthropological writers of the day, he does not isolate and focus only on the Hurons; moreover, he studied

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them through time from a pre-contact period to the mid-1600s. Here, already, in Trigger’s very first analysis of the geopolitics of the early seventeenth century involving Hurons, Iroquois, and French, we find a number of the themes and analyses he continued to build upon, as well as his methodological approaches. Trigger’s narrative style, with its easy flow and crispness, is also evident in his 1960 writings. That his monographs on the Hurons have had such wide readership is due to his ability to produce a narrative that is a good story – an ability that is, of course, the hallmark of a distinguished historian. If I were to name Trigger’s single most important and enduring contribution to the discipline of ethnohistory, I would say it is his demonstration that the historic native peoples have voices. Others writing in the same period (the 1970s and 1980s) worked with the same sources of information on the Hurons and other peoples visited by the Jesuits or early explorers, but no other ethnohistorian has provided a history as centred on the indigenous population. The Huron story, as it unfolds in The Children of Aataentsic, is one of Huron history, first and foremost, as the Hurons determined it before the French arrived and after. In part, it is a history of how they coped with the external conditions set in motion by the French and the French-Anglo-Iroquois hostilities. By breathing life into Hurons as people and centring them in this history, Trigger truly portrays them as the independent, self-governing nation they were rather than as “merely an extension of colonial history” (Trigger 1976, 25). Trigger’s approach to writing the history of Canada’s native peoples still stands as a model for other historians.3 Moreover, he has recaptured for Hurons, and others, the wisdom of their ancestors and bestowed on them an understanding of their place in history, no small benefit for peoples who had long been relegated to an inconsequential position in history and society. This “gift” did not escape the Hurons (in Wendake), and they have honoured Bruce Trigger in a ceremony of adoption into the Great Turtle Clan.4 The history of the Hurons in the 1600s is short and tragic, but Trigger has woven a lengthy and masterful tale of the complex relations that initially brought the Hurons growth and prosperity but then led to their doom and dispersal. He begins The Children with a portrayal of the society based on early seventeenth-century writings and archaeological findings. This section is as thorough an ethnography as one could imagine for a society never visited by a fieldwork anthropologist, extending beyond the usual topics to examine such specific areas as childhood, courtship, adult ambitions, games, psychotherapy, and women’s roles.

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It well prepares us to assess the Huron responses in the post-contact era. Then, 100 pages later and continuing for another 750 or so pages, Trigger discusses the forces that shaped and eventually destroyed the Huron society of southern Ontario. He takes us through the archaeological records in the pre-agricultural era within “Iroquoia” and identifies the earliest horticultural economy in southern Ontario as the Princess Point culture, dating to before a.d. 500 (Trigger 1976, 122). The increasing complexity of Huron society, a society now based on a corn horticultural economy and trade and revolving around the village structure and political divisions, is always seen in relation to the cultural traditions that Trigger has so carefully delineated. This is especially the case with the arrival of the French in the Huron country in 1615. The rootedness of Huron decisions and activities is evident in their long-standing cultural practices, in trade, in religion, and in their diplomatic relations with the French. Trigger details the growing prosperity that the fur trade brought to both the Huron country5 and New France, and he was the first scholar to recognize that this era of prosperity and peace reinforced and even enhanced traditional Huron political institutions and religious ceremonies. Here he diverged from historians of the time, who saw in the contact with Europeans the collapse of “the weaker, more primitive Indian tribal life” (Careless 1970, 22). As a result of competition over the fur trade and the epidemics that took many lives in the 1630s throughout the Northeast, the five Iroquois nations to the south, long-standing enemies of the Hurons, carried out a series of raids in the Huron country. The previous historical accounts end here, the assumption being that it was the Iroquois might that had destroyed Huron society in 1649, but Trigger, the consummate anthropologist, looks to conditions internal to Huron society for an explanation. Aside from the grave Huron losses from the epidemics – half the population (Trigger 1976, 598) – Trigger sees another causal factor in the Hurons’ growing dependence on the French for imported manufactured goods. This new lifestyle weakened their independence and made them vulnerable to Iroquois attacks on their long voyages to trade at Montreal or Quebec (Trigger 1976, 598, 607–8). Trigger also attributes the Hurons’ increasing vulnerability to the work of the missionaries in the Huron country. Although there for a relatively short period, the missionaries gained converts to Christianity, and with this success, they became meddlesome and inflexible, causing dissension among the Hurons, even within families (Trigger 1976, 567–70). This is another analysis with important implications

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for the ethnohistorians who followed Trigger. Trigger has never been one to avoid difficult topics, and conversion is – even today, with live informants – an elusive and difficult subject. In The Children, he opens up new areas of thinking as he identifies the variety of reasons that led the Hurons to accept Christianity. In doing so, he portrays the missionaries as individuals and as agents of French business interests, as well as of God. In bringing forth all the characters and thus the complexity of their interrelations, Trigger has made another fundamental contribution, leading to a deeper understanding of the Huron history. Additionally, reaching beyond the study of Huron society, The Children embraces all native peoples of the East with whom the Hurons were in contact, friend and foe. For each of these other societies, The Children remains the best and most complete early seventeenthcentury history, to date. Lessons for Canadian History In Natives and Newcomers, Trigger sets out to communicate his findings to a broader readership while at the same time offering historians of New France new insights into the dynamics between the French traders and their aboriginal allies in the “heroic age” – that is, to 1663, before Louis XIV took control of the colony. It was, as Trigger concludes, “a time when two major groups of peoples, with radically different cultures, were attempting to solve mutual problems of coexistence” (Trigger 1985, 142). It was these good relations, he claims, that made possible the colonization of the St Lawrence Valley. Trigger reaches out to inform this book’s widened readership about the state of Canadian historiography, summarizing the trends in historical writings, which, as he says, had been “a chronicle of the pursuits of a chosen few” (Trigger 1985, 343). Similarly, he exposes his readers to the negative images of indigenous peoples in Canadian writing, showing how this tendency may have changed in content but never really improved – that is, it evolved from bloodthirsty representations to none at all. Trigger often reverts to this theme in his writings, asking how aboriginal people today can receive fair treatment given their depiction in history. A further lesson aimed at the general reader can be found in Trigger’s discussion of the esoteric practices of archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians. Undoubtedly, many readers have been captivated by this narrative, which gathers the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquins,

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Montagnais, and French, ordinary and chiefly, into one coherent story, well-founded and credible. Above all, it is this work of Trigger’s, Natives and Newcomers, that is responsible for undergraduates lurking in the hall outside his office to catch a glimpse of their hero. A glance at Trigger’s very long list of writings on ethnohistory is sufficient to foretell that I am not going to review each one, but I will draw attention to a few of the principles that recur in his work and that resonate with ethnohistorians, no matter what their region or era of study. Methodological Principles in the Study of the Huron Country I begin with Trigger’s pioneering methodology. For the period before the Recollet priests were accepted in the Huron country in 1623, Trigger had to rely on the observations of Samuel de Champlain, who, despite his “ethnocentric and inflexible” and less sympathetic manner (Trigger 1976, 274–5), did impart some notions of Huron life but, more than that, covered a good deal of the processes and events. These sparse and sometimes harsh accounts were tempered with the writings of the Recollet priest Gabriel Sagard, who lived among the Hurons for ten months in 1623–24. In Trigger’s estimation, Sagard’s observations could be viewed as constituting one of the world’s earliest substantial ethnographies (Trigger 1969, 4). Subsequently, the Jesuits arrived in the Huron country in 1634, reporting annually to their superiors in Quebec. The Jesuit Relations, the letters that the mission priests wrote to the superior of the New France mission in the period from 1634 to 1650, are remarkable documents for a host of reasons but mainly for bringing life and substance to individual natives. While their main purpose was to report on the attempts to convert the natives, they also served to convey their authors’ impressions of the quotidian lives of the native peoples. As the priests met with considerable resistance there, the Relations are also a treasure trove of the Hurons’ arguments, although ethnohistorians today are well aware that the Jesuits’ renderings of speeches might well be literary devices (Blackburn 2000, 142–3 n. 5) or “propaganda” (Trigger 1969, 5). The Relations, then, are a rich source of information about the daily life of the Hurons and, to a degree, their perceptions of the world. Remarkable as these documents are, equally remarkable is the methodology that Trigger devised that allowed him to interpret events and activities from a quite probable Huron perspective. Few anthropologists ever chart their methodology. In a 1975 article Trigger does so very explicitly. To breathe life into the Hurons and the

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French, he chose to study social interaction, using interest groups as his analytic instrument. This method, he argues, runs a middle course between biography (even if one had enough information on one individual) and gross structural analysis (Trigger 1975, 52). He explains why an interest group “provides ethnohistorians with a method of approaching as near as the data will allow an investigation of historical events in terms of their real agents, individual human beings. In particular it encourages a far more detailed examination of events and processes than does the study of contact as interaction between two totally different cultural systems” (Trigger 1975, 53). Well aware of the unavoidable bias in his interpretation of Huron behaviour, Trigger has also applied an analytic technique that he learned from the writings of Bertolt Brecht. To examine impartially the common group interests, he created a distancing effect and used the understanding he derived in this way to explain behaviour under each set of circumstances (Trigger 1975, 55). He has identified motivations within the interest groups that reflect the roles of the groups’ members and represent their general position. Thus, an interest group of the French and Hurons (e.g., the interest group of traders) constitutes one example of an interest group in a specific set of circumstances. Several examples of Trigger’s interest groups and his distancing tactic serve to better explain his approach. I ought to first mention that throughout his analyses he provides as much information and background on individuals or groups as possible. Such is his informed discussion of the donnés (lay assistants to the Jesuits) in The Children, for example (Trigger 1976, 667–8). Moreover, Trigger’s thoughtful consideration and interpretation of the documents is reflected in his understanding of why the priests were tolerated during the devastating epidemics of the 1630s, for which the Hurons blamed the priests’ sorcery. Trigger sees the segmentary nature of Huron society (even though a confederacy) as an important factor in the Jesuits’ lives being spared – the tribes and villages with their clan segments and lineages were each competing for closer trading relations with the French (Trigger 1976, 595). A measure of good historiography is the scholar’s ability to explain the examples that run contrary to other evidence. Trigger accomplishes this over and over again, providing the reader with an analysis that I think of as a glass prism each time I read his work. One sees each of the facets as he substantiates it – or discredits it – and then pulls all of them together into an explanation that takes its place in the development of the account. So, in his discussion of the alleged Iroquois attack on

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Quebec in 1622, Trigger comments on the evidence provided by Guillemette Couillard in her seventieth year and discredited by other historians: “[Although] much exaggerated, there is, however, a small amount of evidence which suggests that it might contain a kernel of truth” (Trigger 1976, 549). He then goes on to explain this conclusion, drawing on earlier promises made by Champlain. This and so many other discussions are models of the finest of history writing. There are other ways in which Trigger involves the reader in his interpretation of motivations and events. In much the way that archaeologists use contrasting filler in reconstructions of buildings to indicate what has been added to the original materials, Trigger uses the conditional tense. We are never subjected to an authoritative viewpoint when the evidence is not certain; instead we are made aware that Trigger is making suppositions. Unlike one of his very few detractors (Eccles 1986, 481), who complained there were too many suppositions, I, like so many others, welcome knowing just how solid the ground is on which Trigger is basing his conclusions. Moreover, his reasoning is highly insightful. By way of illustration, here are a few examples of his suppositions: “the Mohawks may have been challenging the hegemony of the French” (Trigger 1976, 149); “the apparent success of the Sillery scheme must have encouraged Lalemant” (Trigger 1976, 578); “[the Huron] and their allies probably mistrusted Champlain” (Trigger 1976, 516); and “the Huron-Wyandot use of the term ‘father’s sister’ to refer to ‘mother’s brother’s wife’ … suggests that, at some time in the past, the Huron and their neighbours may have practised cross-cousin marriage” (Trigger 1976, 136). Or, in reference to a “fort des Hiroquois” mentioned in 1632 by the Recollet friar Gabriel Sagard, which historians and archaeologists assumed was linked to the ruins of Stadacona, Trigger, thinking otherwise, suggests that it could be a temporary Iroquois fort associated with war parties (Pendergast and Trigger 1972, 74). Twenty years later, in a meticulously researched paper, Charles Martijn (1993, 140) lauds Trigger for this “astute observation” and supports his claim. Overwhelmingly, Trigger’s history is shaped by definite notions of what transpired, but this recourse to indicating a note of uncertainty is interpreting history honestly. Without these suppositions, based on his well-informed analyses, the rendering of this story would be much poorer and our appreciation of seventeenth-century native history diminished. This approach also deals with one of the weaknesses he has perceived in what this history has been. In his view, much has been

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written about the native peoples that is “benevolent and well intentioned” but the literature has failed to promote, as he says, “a genuine understanding of the Indians as people” (Trigger 1975, 55). Economic Rationalism as Undercurrent Underlying Trigger’s analysis is his belief that a “practical reason” transcends culture (Trigger 1991a, 1197). In the preface to the second edition of The Children, he staunchly defends this position even when he sees the anthropological theoretical tide turning against rationalism and towards romanticism6 in interpretations of native actions (Trigger 1987, ix–x). There and previously (Trigger 1986b), he argues that in their earliest contact with Europeans, natives assessed the newcomers and their imported goods from within their cultural limits, specifically their supernatural universe. Thus, they viewed the first Europeans as gods, coveted the glass trade beads for their “life-giving” powers, and interpreted guns as thunder (Trigger 1986b, 73). However, this classification of Europeans as sacred gradually faded as the natives came to see them as the imperfect human beings they were, unable to achieve many of the tasks considered normal by natives. Contributing to this changing perception were the stories of the few native individuals who had been taken to France and, on return, were highly critical of the inequality in wealth and the poverty of many in that country (Trigger 1986b, 74). Trigger suggests that as the opportunities for direct contact increased, the natives began to recognize the advantages of the European trade goods and demanded greater access to European technology. These shifts, he says, “involved the Indians’ rationally assessing the performance of persons and goods and a desire to adopt a technology that would reduce their expenditure of energy on some routine tasks and improve the quality of their products” (Trigger 1991a, 1212). Trigger also looks to economic rationalism to explain the Iroquois and Neutral aggression in the 1640s against the Hurons, claiming they needed to raid for “enough beaver pelts to satisfy their growing demand for European goods” (Trigger 1985, 260). Conrad Heidenreich, also a student of Huron society, challenges Trigger’s economic interpretation of Iroquois motives, arguing instead that cultural considerations relating to warfare, the need for captives, and religious obligations better explain events such as the so-called beaver wars (Heidenreich 1986, 143, 147). Trigger, though, had dismissed such explanations, arguing that although the Iroquois took captives to replace their dead (from the

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epidemics), they lost many warriors in so doing. Moreover, the Hurons, although culturally similar to both the Iroquois and the Neutrals, did not resort to warfare for this reason (Trigger 1985, 260). Here, in 1986 and 1987, were the seeds of a debate between rationalism and romanticism that presaged a later, more vocal debate between Marshall Sahlins (1985, 1995) and Gananath Obeyesekere (1992). Despite Trigger’s defence of rationalism, his ethnohistorical writings are examples that bear out Ian Hodder’s comment that a closer reading of Trigger’s work indicates that he is “more nuanced” and is “seeking ... [a] non-dichotomous position” (Hodder, this volume, page 16). In his review of James Axtell’s After Columbus, for example, Trigger is critical of Axtell’s position on native conversions to Catholicism: “Axtell draws perilously close to Lucien Campeau’s insistence that European religion and culture were superior to those of Native People and that conversion was a rational recognition of this” (Trigger 1989a, 246). Trigger goes on to fault Axtell for not assessing the behavioural data. This critique indicates that Trigger does not accept a rationalist explanation unless it truly is one; here he is suggesting that Axtell’s analysis is representative of a cultural evolutionism. Yet, in a later publication, Trigger writes that “in spite of this disagreement, I have the greatest respect for Axtell’s ability to combine rationalistic and relativist approaches to understanding the behaviour of native peoples” (Trigger 1991a, 1213 n. 41). In Support of Oral Tradition Although Trigger writes of approaching his analyses from the viewpoint of someone who believes that a practical reason transcends culture, he is firmly attached to the study of culture and often remarks on the desirability of a return to a more holistic anthropology (Trigger 1986a, 262). This is evident in his recent far-reaching paper on the anthropological understanding of human behaviour and what anthropological guidance there could be for the future (Trigger 2003). Since Trigger’s 1980s writings on methodology (Trigger 1982, 1986a), ethnohistorians have been enlarging the research field. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethnohistoric writings were based primarily on the handwritten archival records, and ethnohistorians congratulated themselves on having persisted and produced narratives. It was only later, with time to reflect on what was accomplished, that many ethnohistorians came to understand that they were excluding other entrées into the native societies’ thinking and perceptions (Morantz 2001). Trigger’s study of the Hurons ends in the

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mid-1600s with their dispersal. As a result, he had no oral tradition or linguistics to consult, unlike most other ethnohistorians, who study the history of societies still functioning on their ancestral lands. Yet, Trigger recognizes the importance of the study of the oral tradition and a society’s language in understanding a culture. On oral tradition, he writes: “The challenge to ethnohistorians is to combine a respectful study of traditional native views of history and causality with what we regard as more conventional historical or ethnohistorical investigations. The study of oral traditions may play a significant role in bridging the gap between these two approaches” (Trigger 1982, 7). A few years later, he qualified his support of the native oral tradition when he compared the native tradition with the oral tradition that Jan Vansina (1985) had been recording in central Africa among centralized societies, where traditions were often memorized to validate the rule of the elite. In Trigger’s view, northeastern societies were egalitarian and so would not hold such a rigorous approach to oral tradition; he cautioned that oral traditions could best be used to complement the (written) historical data (Trigger 1986a, 261). He offered this opinion at a time when ethnohistorians lacked any study comparable to Vansina’s for egalitarian societies in the Northeast. We now know that rules and conventions are followed in the transmission of oral traditions and that they do impart very useful cultural meanings (Cruikshank 1991; Vincent 2002). Still, Trigger is correct in saying that the two sources of historical traditions should be combined. Semantic analysis, or ethnosemantics, is another approach that Trigger has identified as crucial for providing a thorough understanding of culture (Trigger 1986a, 262), but he laments that this approach has remained wholly “unexploited.” Alas, almost twenty years later, no progress can be reported for this very important aspect of cultural translation – and for the same reason given by Trigger in 1986: “linguistic talents … are currently in short supply” (Trigger 1986a, 262). Trigger as Activist and “Communitarian” Trigger’s immense scholarship, the histories, the theoretical discussions, the methodologies he devised and recorded in a number of books and a greater number of articles – all this is but one component of his very substantial contribution. Another is his activism. Having studied the Hurons embroiled in a colonial situation, in the 1600s and as depicted in written histories of Canada, Trigger has consistently brought the

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lessons of the past to bear on the present. The Beacon Herald of December 10, 1991, carries the headline “History Has Lied about Natives, Expert Tells Central Students” (Trigger’s alma mater), and this theme appears many times over in different writings. In fact, most of his articles end with a reference to the present-day situation of native peoples or to their status in Canadian history texts (Trigger 1986a, 1986b, 1989, 1991a). Prior to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, the Lubicon Crees, to protest the Canadian and Alberta governments’ lack of good faith in resolving outstanding land claims, called for a boycott of the Glenbow Museum’s exhibit “The Spirit Sings,” which showcased First Nations and Inuit art. Trigger responded in several ways. First, he joined a demonstration, placard and all, in front of Montreal’s Hôtel de Ville (to which I can attest). Second, he resigned as honorary curator at the McCord Museum to protest their refusal to participate in the boycott of the Glenbow exhibit, stipulating as another condition to his returning to the McCord that they hire a native curator.7 Third, by writing articles and engaging in a radio debate, he took a public stand on the issue of the responsibility of academic institutions to the native peoples (Trigger 1988; Ames and Trigger 1988). His service to the academic community is immeasurable and very likely unprecedented. He served as editor of volume 15 (Northeast, 1978) of the Handbook of North American Indians, for which he also wrote five articles. In 1985 he played a major role in the organization of the Fifth North American Fur Trade Conference, handling the prima donnas masterfully and editing the proceedings in 1987.8 He was on the editorial board for volume 1 of The Historical Atlas of Canada (1987) and produced two of the plates. He authored three articles for and edited, with Wilcomb Washburn, the two-volume edition of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (Trigger and Washburn 1996). Those who have edited works such as these know how draining the undertaking is in time and psychic energy; I invite readers to review his bibliography to see that throughout all the years leading up to the publications of these edited volumes, he was publishing books and articles in his own research areas. All the while, he was always available to help colleagues and students with their queries (his office door is always open). He was also instrumental, through his writings, in establishing Alfred G. Bailey’s (1937) work, The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures 1504–1700, as North America’s first identifiable ethnohistory (Trigger 1989b). In my view, the

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most stunning of Trigger’s “service” articles is one published in 1990 in The Literary History of Canada in which he reviews the state of anthropological literature in both official languages, beginning in 1862, not just in his fields of research – archaeology, ethnohistory, native peoples – but throughout all the anthropological domains to which Canadian researchers have contributed to the present. He reviews and perceptively discusses works on pastoral peoples, on symbolism, on African societies, on childbirth, on language, on everything we in Canada have produced. In all, he is responsible for a most remarkable and outstanding advancement in scholarship in North America and internationally.

s e v e n t e e n t h - c e n t u ry ja m e s bay: le projet global Although I was asked by the editors of this volume to discuss Trigger’s contributions to ethnohistory, which I have been very pleased to do, I thought Trigger, always the student, might appreciate even more an abridged “bilan” of the archaeological and documentary evidence for seventeenth-century eastern James Bay that locates its inhabitants in time and place.9 About twenty-five years ago, I was one of a number of archaeologists and ethnohistorians working in the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula who held a series of meetings with the intent of combining our research efforts. We called our effort “Le Projet Global,”10 and its main objective was to crack the puzzle of the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi linguistic continuum that linguists had identified (Mackenzie 1980, 242).11 The dialect subgroupings, according to Marguerite Mackenzie, have come about through the spread of linguistic innovations that “correlate with patterns of social contact, due to marriage, trade and political factors” (Mackenzie 1980, 243). The question we all wished answered in the 1980s was whether the contemporary distinction of Cree, Montagnais, and Naskapi societies was a pre- or post-contact development. We began by looking to the archaeological record for the key, but for a variety of reasons, the Projet Global was abandoned. Aside from the likelihood that the funders were losing interest, another problem began to dawn on researchers – the length of time it would take to conduct sufficient archaeological research over the whole of the vast peninsula. I continue to be intrigued by this question, as it goes to the heart of our understanding of social change in these northern Algonquian societies and of the ways the European fur trade affected them. What I have

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set out in this paper is a very preliminary survey of the archaeological findings and the documentary record, namely The Jesuit Relations for the seventeenth-century James Bay region. In fact, Trigger long ago identified the main events and encounters in the interior of Quebec (the Saguenay–Lake St Jean region), and his discussions (1976, vol. 1; 1985) are integrated with his history of the Hurons. Here I wish to unravel the effects of these early contacts northwestward into the James Bay region. In my analysis, I am guided by three principles that I learned from Trigger’s work: (1) the native societies had their own histories (as discussed above); (2) the earliest trade in the proto-contact period transformed the Hurons in substantial ways, as in their settlement patterns (Trigger 1981),12 but also enriched the society (Trigger 1985, 220); and (3) there occurred what Trigger calls a “cognitive reorganization” (Trigger 1991a, 1210). Microcosmic vs Macrocosmic Outlooks The last principle, if looked at first, is difficult to argue because it is not transparent. Here, though, I am liberally borrowing Trigger’s notion of cognitive reorganization and using it in a somewhat different way. He sees this reorganization following from European contact whereby traditional (religious) beliefs give way to a more rationalistic perspective (Trigger 1991a, 1212). In the case of James Bay, I suggest that contact must have led to some form of cognitive reorganization, although I am unable to identify it. The acknowledgment of such change was also a premise to which Robin Horton ascribed in the 1960s, one that helped him understand the indigenous peoples’ relatively quick conversion to Christianity in Africa. Horton distinguished two spheres of life, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. The microcosm included village life, where religion focused on ancestral spirits. When major social change took place, the boundaries of the microcosm began to disintegrate and macrocosmic forces came into operation (Horton 1967). For the native people in the James Bay area, perhaps their awareness of the French at Tadoussac (a distance of only several weeks’ travel from the Bay) or the sudden appearance of an iron blade or copper kettle in the early 1600s or even the return of Attash from England, taken there from the Bay in 1674–75 (Rich 1945, xviii), had corresponding macrocosmic effects. Pierre Dumais and Jean Poirier (1998) have offered a similar but more sophisticated argument for focusing on cognitive reorganization in James Bay, arguing that archaeologists must understand the relationship

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between culture and space if they wish to find sites. They present Father Laure’s map of 1731, which they assume was drafted with the help of a native guide, as one example of this. What they find curious is that the route mapped to Lake Nemaska passes by Lake Mistassini and deliberately by the sacred site nearby, even though a more direct, easier route could have been taken (Dumais and Poirier 1998, 14–15). Following this argument, while we cannot fathom how the Europeans’ arrival influenced the aboriginal people’s conception of the spiritual realm, we might imagine that the seventeenth-century Crees underwent some refocusing of their relationship to the land (and of their thinking) as a result of the fur trade, the location of the European traders, and, probably above all, the terrifying Iroquois raids. This can only be imagined; there is no way of demonstrating this presumed cognitive reorganization. At present, however, I am on record for suggesting that there was continuity in James Bay social institutions (but not necessarily mental processes), well into the historic period (Morantz 1983), along the lines of Trigger’s non-directed change (Trigger 1985, 224). Culture History: Three Societies and Three Geographic Zones A discussion of the effects of contact on native social institutions yields more evidence, though not necessarily enough to provide a full cultural understanding. In historic times, the three societies – Cree, Montagnais, and Naskapi – occupied different ecological niches. The Crees on the lowlands and the interior of James Bay hunted and fished a variety of fauna; besides fish, the mainstay of their diet was caribou and beaver, though it also included a host of small mammals and fowl. The Montagnais (today also known as Innu) tended to exploit the interior of the middle north shore of the St Lawrence in the winter months; they were more dependent on caribou and, in the spring and summer, the great fish resources of the St Lawrence. The Naskapis were basically caribou hunters, occupying the more open forested areas and tundra, inland from Hudson Bay and to the north of the Crees and Montagnais. Our understanding might have been advanced had the peoples of the peninsula used these societal names to identify themselves. They did not. “Montagnais” is a seventeenth-century ethnonym, bestowed on them by the French because of the mountainous area in which they lived (Thwaites 1896–1901, 23:302) and used by the French to denote a widespread linguistic grouping composed of a large number of smaller groups. “Naskapi” was a pejorative term used in the nineteenth century

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to distinguish the “primitive Indians” from the “more civilized” Montagnais (Mailhot 1986, 405), although the original name, in print, dates back to 1643 as “Ounachkapiouek” (Mailhot 1986, 390). The designation “Cree” was imposed by the Anglican missionary E.A. Watkins in 1853 (Francis and Morantz 1983, 11), borrowed from the name ascribed to the people on the west coast of James Bay. The one ethnonym that carries forward in time is “Mistissini” (and versions thereof), referring to the people of the sacred great rock located near Lake Mistassini (Thwaites 1896–1901, 24:154).13 Lake Mistassini figures largely in both the archaeological records and The Jesuit Relations as the gateway to coastal James Bay, while the gateway to Lake Mistassini is the Saguenay–Lake St Jean region. Hence both these regions will appear here in accounts of James Bay. From the archaeological findings and from Champlain’s writings of 1603, based on Montagnais informants as previously discussed (Biggar 1922, 1:124), we learn of the water route from the Saguenay River to Lake Mistassini to Lake Nemiscau and then to the coast of James Bay via the Rupert River. It is deemed a relatively easy route to traverse (Langevin 2004, 194). Another path to James Bay could be through the Abitibi area, but the evidence for this, to date, is not as compelling.14 The Archaeological Record Within the eastern James Bay regions, two zones have undergone relatively extensive archaeological investigation: Lake Mistassini and sites along the La Grande River and east as far as Lake Caniapiscau.15 Thus, archaeologists have some understanding of habitation in the southern and northern reaches of the territory. With little evidence of ceramics, stone tools are used for dating, while the type of stone used in toolmaking helps establish intergroup relations. One of the prized sources was the Mistassini quartzite taken from the “colline blanche”; tools made from this stone are found over a very wide area within the peninsula. The earliest known (to date) human occupation of the Lake St Jean region dates from 5500 to 5000 b.p.,16 which is about 1,500 years earlier than the earliest occupation along the La Grande River, in the northern reaches of James Bay (Denton 1998, 21). These earliest sites in the highlands were occupied for short durations (“workshops”; see Séguin 1995, 19) and may, according to David Denton, have been used by groups moving in from the Labrador region to hunt caribou rather than by a southern population moving north (Denton 1998, 24). After

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1700 b.p. there began what Denton calls the “colonization” of the La Grande and Caniapiscau regions and the lowlands of James Bay. The presence of Mistassini quartzite indicates ties with the south. This second phase of occupation has been continuous to the present day (Séguin 1995, 19),17 and beginning about 1000 b.p., the sites were occupied in the summer by groups of thirty to sixty people, some in longhouses. On the basis of lithic debris such as Ramah chert from Labrador, Nastapoka chert from the Hudson Bay lowlands, and Mistassini quartzite (McCaffrey 1989), archaeologists have determined that the occupation of this territory involved movement and ties in all directions. The development of longhouses and the circulation of people also can be seen on the lower North Shore in the same period (Moira McCaffrey, personal communication, October 2004). Writing about the “shield woodland” period in the subarctic, Norman Clermont (1998) is adamant that there would have been frequent contact between groups and ongoing exchanges of goods and information. Nothing in the archaeological record contradicts such conclusions. The evidence for proto-contact is scanty. Sites for the contact period, in general, are under-represented compared with the pre-contact ones (Denton 1994, 84–5 n. 4). Excavations at Lake Caniapiscau have yielded some metal fragments from kettles, retooled into a point and a single bead. Radiocarbon dates and the bead have led Denton to suggest that this one site dates to the first half of the seventeenth century (Denton 1994, 78). On the basis of this site, as well as later ones occupied into the nineteenth century, he concludes that the manufacture of stone tools continued quite late in this northern James Bay region but that the extent of the trade or exchange in the lithic materials probably declined. Denton wonders whether new strategies of shifting territories arose, centred on the fur trade posts (Denton 1994, 84). The Published Record The documentary evidence from the seventeenth-century French records18 confirms the presence of small bands in the James Bay region (as in the area of Lake St Jean) and a fluidity or circulation of groups of people, but for other reasons. The fur trade likely got underway at Tadoussac, on a small scale, with the Basque whalers as early as 1550 (Trigger 1976, 209). The sheer number of ships (twenty to thirty) whaling in the St Lawrence by 1578 meant an increased demand for furs, and this would have had a ripple effect throughout the Lake St Jean region. The

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Montagnais both supplied the furs and acted as middlemen throughout the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula. By 1603 Champlain had already charted an existing route to James Bay from the Saguenay and had heard Montagnais speak of the “sea with salt.” Along this route, in the earliest days, might there not have travelled, if not trade goods, then at least news, such as the sensational story of the sixteen Frenchmen left by merchants to winter in 1599 without adequate housing or clothing? The men were taken in by the local Montagnais (Biggar 1922, 3:309– 10). Tadoussac must have been an attraction, again in news or rumour if not directly, as it was the centre of the European whaling fleet in the summer and also the meeting place of other Algonquian-speaking peoples, as in 1633, when Algonquians returned from war with nine Iroquois captives (Thwaites 1896–1901, 5:25). The Jesuits did not visit the James Bay coastal region until 1672, but we can assume that the hunters among whom they lived in the Lake St Jean region were not unlike the peoples of James Bay. According to a 1626 description by Father Jérôme Lalemant, writing from Tadoussac, many nations inhabited the country,19 “about thirty-eight or forty” that had been named to him as well as those that were unknown. Lalemant adds that, to find game animals, these peoples were “wanderers” only during six months of the year, two or three families erecting their “cabins” in one place. For the rest of the year, twenty or thirty people came together on the shore of the river (St Lawrence) near Tadoussac (Thwaites 1896–1901, 4:203). Moreover, Father François de Crépieul, who travelled for a brief time with some Montagnais and Abitibi people in 1673, notes several families in one lodge. These families built two cabins for thirty-four persons (59:29). De Crépieul also touches on their land system, writing that those he was travelling with were preparing for their winter quarters, “each band to their own district” (59:27).20 Linguistically, the Jesuits liken the difference in the dialects they heard in 1633 – for example, the distinctive Algonquin and Montagnais dialects – to the difference between Provençal and Norman (5:115). The Jesuits said that the people they encountered from James Bay spoke like the Montagnais and that they (the Jesuits) could understand them (41:185, 1656). Ethnonyms as Evidence It is not easy to distinguish the ethnonyms for these numerous small nations. Like many other ethnonyms, the name “Attikameques” for

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people north of Trois-Rivières (Haute-Mauricie) disappeared from the records only to reappear in translation, first as “Poisson Blancs” and then in the 1700s as “Têtes-de-Boule” (Gélinas 2000, 13); today this people are known as the Attikamekw. Others seem not to be translatable. For the James Bay region, the one enduring name is “Mistissini,” mentioned above. “Kilistinon” is another early name applied to people of eastern James Bay; it merits a brief discussion because this name, probably originating with the Ojibwa, was later abridged to “Cree” (Bishop 1981, 158). In one reference to the Kilistinon (Thwaites 1896– 1901, 46:249), many surrounding nations were said to be embraced under this general name, seemingly on both sides of James Bay but also extending westward to people around Lake Superior (Bishop 1981, 247).21 Yet, several references in the mid-1650s suggest that the name was also applied to eastern James Bay people as “Kilistinons,” “a people on the North Sea” (Thwaites 1896–1901, 44:241), or as “Nisibourounik Kilistinons” (44:249; 51:55). One must caution that the Jesuits were deriving their information through hearsay. When Father Albanel arrived in James Bay in 1672, he noted that the “Kinistinons [sic]” (56:201) lived westward of James Bay and he furnished names of other small nations to the northeast. Thus, the name “Kinistininon” disappeared from eastern James Bay, only to be applied again, as noted above, as “Cree” in 1853. There is no corresponding word for “Cree” in their language; they call themselves “Iiyuu,” “the people.” Another general designation for the James Bay peoples was “stinkards,” in the sense that they lived by salt (dirty) water (Thwaites 1896–1901, 41:185), but when Albanel writes of the peoples he encountered in 1656, interestingly he does not use ethnonyms. In 1672 he refers to the populous nation at Lake Nemiscau but does not name it (56:183). The people of the sea were those living along the River Miskoutenagasit (Eastmain), and again they are not named. However, Albanel mentions that the “Pitchiboutounibuek”22 and the “Kouakouikouesiouek” are settled to the northeast (56:201), peoples I assume he did not meet. Similarly, when a Hudson’s Bay Company trader first visited the region of Richmond Gulf in 1744, he wrote of other peoples, such as the Pishepoce, the Nepiscuthenues, the Eartiwinipecks, and the Naschcoppees (Francis and Morantz 1983, 68–9). These ethnomyns, too, are given once, and then, when the English begin a regular trade in the region, they disappear from the records. As in the region south of James Bay, the hbc ascribes them only a geographical designation, such as “inland,” “southern,” “northern,” or “far-off Indians.” There

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are even “French Indians,” indicating those who traded with the French (Francis and Morantz 1983, 59). I fear that a number of us have devoted too much time attempting to trace the peoples of James Bay, as well as of the interior of Quebec, with the use of these ethnonyms. It is evident that the names for the local groups (excluding linguistic group names such as Montagnais and Algonquin) are the ones designated by other groups. Once the French or English lived among a people, they adopted the local group’s naming practice, evidently a geographic designation. As an example, the Eskimo of yore would not have referred to themselves with the pejorative designation of “Eskimo” had it not been imposed upon them by the state.23 “Montagnais” or “Cree” were also official state designations. “Mistissini” did not disappear, possibly because, unlike other group names (e.g., “Kakouchak” for the Porcupine Nation), it originated as a geographical designation (Thwaites 1896–1901, 14:287 n. 13). Continuity despite Dislocation, Disease, and Destruction The combining of the archaeological and documentary records in this most preliminary overview demonstrates continuity in the lifestyle of, and in the occupation of James Bay by, a number of small hunting groups in the seventeenth century.24 It is certain these groups moved about to meet the middlemen, carry their furs to trade, or socialize, as well as obtain valuable lithic and other materials. Even in the early nineteenth century, the James Bay peoples were said to think nothing of going to the St Lawrence, as there were “no hostile Indians” (hbca b.186/e/9:13). In the literature on family hunting territories, there is a split between those who see this quasi form of private ownership as predating the fur trade to accommodate the husbanding of beaver and those who see it as arising to meet the new conditions (Bishop and Morantz 1986). What we learn from the French records is that the mid1600s was a period of great turmoil and dislocation in James Bay, and thus one of shifts in territorial occupation. We have known about the turmoil (Trigger 1976, 643; Francis and Morantz 1983, 20–2; Ray 1996, 274–5), but a close reading of the French records, focused on James Bay, indicates just how devastating these years were. In 1635 the Jesuits were writing that the trajectory linking Lake St Jean and James Bay had served as the conduit for the smallpox that ravaged the Algonquians at Trois-Rivières in the 1630s and was said to be universal (Thwaites 1896–1901, 8:87). This was elaborated in the

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following year with the claim that the famine of the past winter had almost exterminated the nations of the North (9:197), while the subsequent year’s journal claimed that “smallpox ravaged all of Canada in 1637” (12:2). As a result, the Montagnais asked the French governor for aid, only to be told that they would receive it if they moved to the mission at Sillery. With claims such as these, one would assume that the James Bay peoples were not immune to this terrible disease, which would have also affected their hunting, hence the reference to famine. Smallpox epidemics, though seemingly not as virulent, broke out again in 1669–70, as reported from Tadoussac (53:59). On the other hand, the Crees were visited by the English in 1668 at Waskaganish on the Rupert River, then named Charles Fort. Ship captain Zachariah Gillam, hired by English business interests that in 1670 would become the Hudson’s Bay Company, provided a report to the Royal Society of London on his two sojourns to Waskaganish, in the years 1668 and 1670. A description of the people he encountered occupies a minor part of his observations, but there is no suggestion of their having suffered through an epidemic (Morantz 1992), nor is there in the account by Father Albanel, who was on the Eastmain River in 1672 (Thwaites 1896–1901, 53; 56). Distances are vast in the James Bay territory, and quite possibly because of the terror of the Iroquois raids, the James Bay peoples did not undertake their well-travelled routes to the Lake St Jean area until after peace was re-established in 1667 (56:187–9). The first epidemic was said to have ended in 1640 (Thwaites 1896– 1901, 18:109), but that was the year the Iroquois attacks began north of the St Lawrence and fear reigned everywhere. By 1642, the Jesuits were writing of the “remnants of the smaller nations who live inland” (22:235) and saying that they were “so greatly reduced” owing to disease, war, and famine (25:13). They write that remnant nations “consist almost entirely of women, widows or girls who cannot find husbands,” reminding us of the terrible social costs and lasting effects. Peace between the Mohawks and the French was made in 1646 (28:13). Hostilities broke out again in 1651, when the Iroquois attacked the Attikameques (Thwaites 1896–1901, 37:69). In 1661–62 the Iroquois attacks drew nearer to James Bay. At Lake Nicabau they captured a number of people. One who escaped brought word to the French that the invaders intended to move on to the “North Sea” and that “all the lands of the North, which had never before seen any Iroquois, have become so infested with them that there is no cavern in those vast regions

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of rocks dark enough to serve as a place of concealment, or any forest deep enough to be entrusted with one’s life” (47:151–3). If not in that summer, the Iroquois probably reached James Bay by 1665. In that year a party of thirty Iroquois destroyed or captured almost three times their number at Lake Nemiscau (50:37), and by 1672 the Iroquois caused the entire abandonment of the place (56:183). The Iroquois and the French made a peace agreement in 1667 that lasted a decade. Despite Albanel’s assurances to the inhabitants of James Bay that “the Iroquois has ceased to disturb you” (56:187–9), the Iroquois invaded the Lake Mistassini region in 1674 and “fear reigned everywhere” (59:39). Luckily for the Mistissini, however, the Iroquois headed off in another direction, perhaps towards James Bay. To give some idea of the devastation, there are figures from Tadoussac. In the period 1720–36, the priests said they had once served three thousand (individuals) but these were now reduced to twenty-five families (68:79). By 1750, they referred to “sad remnants of an astonishing multitude of savages who inhabited the lands sixty or seventy years ago” (69:113). The outcomes of these raids, beyond the obvious, are several. The Iroquois were said to control a number of the rivers, thereby preventing the Lake St Jean and other peoples from using their usual travel routes and taking their trade to a French post. Fear pushed various peoples to disperse. The James Bay region was similarly affected. In 1660–61 the panic was said to have reached the “sea-coast” (Thwaites 1896–1901, 46:290–1). This may account for a delegation of emissaries from “the north” that went to Quebec seeking a missionary, returning in 1663 with three French traders who had reached Lake Nemiscau via Lake Mistassini, where they had traded. The French traders had stopped at Lake Nemiscau because the local people, never having seen Europeans, were mistrustful and suspicious (Francis and Morantz 1983, 17). The Mistissinis, too, felt compelled to seek the protection of Governor Frontenac (Thwaites 1896–1901, 59:45). In addition to the aggression and death that must have been deeply traumatic, the James Bay peoples had to cope with other disruptive elements.25 The North Sea, we are told in 1659–60, was “where various Algonquin Nations have sought a retreat, fleeing from the Iroquois” (Thwaites 1896–1901, 45:219). We can say, then, that James Bay became a home for a number of the neighbouring Algonquian nations, and this might explain why there is such linguistic variation in James Bay, where three subdialects of East Cree are identified (Rhodes and Todd 1981, 56). Mackenzie (1980, 237) has identified

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intermarriage as a possible source of linguistic innovations, but a fuller understanding of the seventeenth-century emigration from, and immigration to, the James Bay region provides a better basis on which to undertake such analyses.

conclusions From this very preliminary foray into the archaeological reports and the early European records we learn that although the James Bay region of the seventeenth century saw movements of populations and crises such as wars, famines, and epidemics, the challenges facing the ancestors of the Crees may still not have been as acute as they were for other societies of the time. The population shifts into James Bay seem to have occurred within a relatively homogeneous linguistic and sociocultural matrix; this was unlike the fate of the Hurons or Algonquins, who were driven from their homelands in a time of great suffering. This analysis of seventeenth-century James Bay peoples sorely misses the kinds of insights and cultural understandings that distinguish Trigger’s writings about the Hurons. Until the archaeologists, linguists, and ethnohistorians join forces, the history of this region, and period, will remain poorly defined and deprived of the synergistic effects that can be gained by combining these different sets of data, the hallmark of Trigger’s ethnohistories (Trigger 1985, 203). On the other hand, we could greatly advance the process and produce a most insightful and elegant history if we could convince Bruce G. Trigger to undertake yet another enquiry.

ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s First and foremost I would like to thank Bruce Trigger for his friendship, guidance, and daunting scholarly example. I am also grateful for having had the very rewarding opportunity, with this paper, to review his ethnohistoric writings in a consolidated and systematic manner. More than a decade ago, three graduate students contributed to the research and discussion of some of the enquiries into early seventeenth-century James Bay history. I wish to thank Carole Blackburn, Trefor Smith, and Bill Wicken for their valued participation. In writing the paper I benefited from the very helpful comments of Moira McCaffrey, Charles Martijn, Richard Preston, and Ron Williamson, to whom I express my appreciation.

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notes 1 Trigger’s doctoral dissertation was on an entirely different topic – Nubian settlement patterns (Trigger 1965). It was thousands of miles away spatially, but less so conceptually. 2 At a seminar, I have even heard him compare aspects of the fur trade with the banana markets in the Caribbean. 3 Despite Trigger’s persuasive demonstration of how historians ought to be centring on the native populations, most historians do not go that extra measure to provide a fuller understanding of the native peoples’ own history or their relations with the Europeans. Nor have many American or Canadian historians heeded his calling attention to their “well-marked” tendency to specialize in the history of one side or other of the Canada-U.S. border (Trigger 1971, 277), although his article on the Mohawk-Mahican War is convincing evidence that historical explanations should not stop at the border. The one striking exception that does include cross-border studies is The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, edited by Trigger and Wilcomb Washburn (1996). 4 For Trigger’s moving account of his adoption, see the preface to the French edition of The Children of Aataentsic (Trigger 1991b, xxi). 5 Initially Trigger wrote of “Huronia,” but as he was working on The Children, he decided to suppress that designation in favour of “the Huron country,” not wishing to imply that Huron society was territorially based (Trigger 1976, xxii). 6 Trigger defines “romanticism” as behaviour that is determined by its own particular cultural pattern (Trigger 1987, x), while “rationalist explanations” are calculations that are cross-culturally comprehensible (Trigger 1987, xxi). 7 To this day, since 1987, Trigger has not been back to the McCord Museum. 8 For that volume (Trigger et al. 1987), every researcher had his or her paper in on time. This was unheard of, and I viewed it as a tribute, on everyone’s part, to Trigger. 9 This is not a discovery that Trigger needs to make. He knows the archaeological findings through the works of several of his graduate students, including David Denton and Moira McCaffrey, and of course he has read The Jesuit Relations many times over. 10 If memory serves me correctly, the project grew out of the recognition by the anthropologists working for La Société d’energie de la baie James of the need to produce a synthesis of the archaeological and ethnohistorical findings for the James Bay region, the northern regions of which were undergoing massive hydroelectric development along the La Grande River. 11 For their dictionaries and grammars, linguists working in James Bay are focusing on Cree as it is spoken today. This is important for the communities

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themselves, but the neglect of studies on the historical development of the Algonquian languages leaves academics in a quandary. Almost forty years ago, Frank Siebert (1967) proposed that proto-Algonquian developed about 1,500 years ago in southern Ontario, an age that takes into account the relative homogeneity of Algonquian languages, although Goddard (1978, 587) suggests 2500–3000 b.p. as a date. Even so, we are then left to identify the first occupants of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula 3,000–6,000 years ago. This 1981 article is a reassessment of Trigger’s earlier view that the sole effect of this early French contact was an enrichment of Huron society. “Mistissini” is used for the people, but “Mistassini” for the lake and the region. During the Middle Woodland period, Abitibi people used lithic materials from the Mistassini region (Côté 2004, 125), and in 1686 the Chevalier de Troyes passed through the Abitibi region on his way to attack the English posts on James Bay (Kenyon and Turnbull 1971). Mistassini was first studied by Charles Martijn and Edward Rogers in 1969, and because of the efforts of Martijn, the Quebec government made the “colline blanche” a protected site (Denton 1998). The far more extensive archaeological research along the La Grande River has been the result of salvage operations conducted in advance of the construction of the hydroelectric development in the 1970s. At present, to the south, archaeological salvage work is underway or planned for the Eastmain and Rupert River regions. The discovery of several plano type points at Lake Robertson in the Abitibi region dating to earlier than 5000 b.p. suggests to Côté (1998, 128, 134) that Martijn’s earlier suggestion of a 6000 b.p. date for habitation in the Mistassini region may well be correct. The first occupation of Tadoussac is said to be about 7500 b.p. (Archambault 1998, 150). In Séguin’s analysis (1995) of the La Grande sites, she finds a hiatus in the occupation of the region of about 800 years, roughly from 2100 b.p. to 1300 b.p. This rupture in occupation accords well with the suggested timing for the arrival of the Algonquian-speakers. Only Champlain’s and the Jesuits’ accounts yield detailed information on the populations of James Bay. The official French correspondence known as C11A, les Archives des Colonies, on deposit in the National Archives of Canada, scarcely mentions “la baye du Nort,” but when it does it is in passing only, referring to the competition of the fur trade or the military undertakings, as in 1686. No discussions could be found relating to the populations in the region other than the expression of the fear that the natives might take their trade to the English if the French traders did not treat them well (C11A, 28 Oct. 1706, ff.163–5, Mémoire de François Hazeur à Monsieur L’intendant).

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Beginning in 1684, there was an intermittent French post at Lake Nemiscau, along the route to James Bay, as well as posts on Lakes Temiscaming, Mistassini, Nicabau, and Chamouchouane (Francis and Morantz 1983, 36). In Thwaites, where the French text reads “nation,” the English translation is almost always given as “tribe.” Unless quoting directly, I will use the original “nation,” as I think this term is better understood in Canada. The English translation is a departure from the original French, which reads: “Aqui se disposèrent à aller hiverner chacun de leur côté” (Thwaites 1896–1901, 59:29). The wide geographical distribution of this ethnonym, “Kilistinon,” leads us to ask whether the assumed movement of Crees westward from northwards of Lake Superior occurred before inland fur trade posts were established or whether it was simply the application of the name “Kilistinon” that spread – this is an ongoing debate (Bishop 1981, 160; Greenburg and Morrison 1982). For an overview of the early history, see Ray 1996. The Pitchiboutounibueks, or Pitchiboureniks, are identified as dwelling to the southeast of Hudson Bay and on a 1703 map are located on a river north of the Eastmain River. The Hurons had traded with them at Rupert Bay in 1648 (Chamberland et al. 2004, 50, 156). Most of these early names are not recognizable to linguists (Doug Ellis, personal communication 1983). Similarly, when the English first set foot in James Bay in 1668, their journals note the presence of a “king,” a “prince,” and a “chancellour.” Quite quickly they adjusted their terminology, and these native leaders were demoted to “captains” (Morantz 1983, 130). I do not wish to give the impression, though small, that these were weak groups. For example, in 1640 Father Paul LeJeune was denied permission to accompany some young Montagnais men inland to the more distant nations because the men were unwilling to let the French gain knowledge of their trade (Thwaites 1896–1901, 21:99). There were beneficiaries of these Iroquois hostilities: the Europeans. The Jesuits admitted that when the Iroquois were a threat, the Algonquians became Christian, but when the Algonquians were prospering, they ridiculed the Jesuits (Thwaites 1896–1901, 38:45, 1652–53). It also became clear to me that the English, the Hudson’s Bay Company, benefited from the fear the Iroquois had provoked. I would think that until the early 1700s, when this fear finally subsided, many hunters felt safer travelling to the Bay with their furs than to Lake St Jean, which was more exposed, via its waterways, to incursions of the Iroquois.

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– 1986b. “Evolutionism, Relativism and Putting Native People into Historical Context.” Culture 6 (2):65–79 – 1987. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 1976. Reprint, with a new preface, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1988. “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage.” Culture 8 (1):71–85 – 1989a. Review of After Columbus, by James Axtell. Canadian Historical Review 70:245–6 – 1989b. “Alfred G. Bailey – Ethnohistorian.” Acadiensis 18 (2):3–21 – 1990. “Anthropological Literature.” In Literary History of Canada, edited by W.H. New, 4:241–62. 2nd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press – 1991a. “Early Native North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations.” Journal of American History 77:1195–215 – 1991b. Les Enfants d’Aataentsic: L’histoire du peuple Huron. Montreal: Libre Expression – 2003. “All People Are [Not] Good.” Anthropologica 45:39–44 Trigger, Bruce G., T. Morantz, and L. Dechêne. 1987. Le Castor Fait Tout: Selected Papers of the Fifth North American Fur Trade Conference. Montreal: Lake St Louis Historical Society Trigger, Bruce G., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, eds. 1996. North America. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press Vansina, Jan. 1985. Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press Vincent, Sylvie. 2002. “Compatibilité apparente, incompatibilité réelle des versions autochtones et des versions occidentales de l’histoire: l’exemple.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 32 (2):99–106

12 The Influence of Bruce Trigger on the Forensic Reconstruction of Aboriginal History ALEXANDER VON GERNET

A number of years ago I published a book chapter on the use of oral traditions as evidence in aboriginal litigation – a modest contribution that nevertheless created a stir, partly because it rejected the fashionable notion that, in assessing aboriginal versions of the past, one should not use critical approaches derived from the Western intellectual tradition. Of course, this was not a novel argument, but it was influenced by my own academic training. Indeed, I deliberately chose to title the essay “What My Elders Taught Me” in order to emphasize that non-aboriginal scholars who are engaged in reconstructing the past have respected mentors much like the native elders who pass on their wisdom and skills to subsequent generations. While there were others, the most important elder I had in mind was Bruce Trigger (von Gernet 2000c). I must attribute at least some of Trigger’s influence to the sheer weight of his published record – a corpus so voluminous and multifarious that in some instances it has become difficult for scholars to avoid citing it. To the Wendat (Hurons) he is known as Nyemea, an honorary member of the Great Turtle Clan. But for me, his role as elder is more than honorary, for I was privileged to have been one of his graduate students. Throughout his career, Trigger not only has attempted his own reconstruction of specific pasts in places as diverse as Egypt and Canada, but has also undertaken a reflexive analysis of how anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians go about the business of reconstructing the past, or constructing a variety of pasts, from evidence available in the

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present. His opinions on the more general epistemological questions have practical applications in various reconstructions, including those attempted in forensic anthropology. Recognizing that this might conjure up images of crime scenes and skeletal remains, I hasten to add that, in its most general sense, forensic anthropology connotes no more than the application of anthropological knowledge to legal problems. The specific application I have in mind involves the reconstruction of a relatively remote past for the purpose of assisting courts mandated to adjudicate claims to aboriginal rights, aboriginal title, and treaty rights. Anthropology has had a long connection with such legal matters. While a species of “ethnohistory” had arisen earlier in the context of anthropological studies of acculturation, after 1946 the development of ethnohistorical methodology was encouraged and shaped in part by the experience that many anthropologists gained from using archival materials while doing research for land claims (Axtell 1981, vii; Trigger 1984, 18–19; 1985a, 165–6; 1985b, 24; 1986a, 257; Washburn and Trigger 1996, 100). One need only peruse early issues of the journal Ethnohistory, published a half century ago, to find numerous papers outlining the participation of anthropologists on both sides of disputes before the American Indian Claims Commission (Ray 1955; Manners 1956; Lurie 1956). The same year that Julian Steward published his influential Theory of Culture Change, he also wrote of his experiences as an expert witness in Indian claims (Steward 1955). Such involvement by anthropologists has continued to this day in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In Canada we are blessed with a relatively new constitution that specifically mentions three classes of aboriginal peoples: Indians (First Nations), Inuit, and Métis. Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 says unequivocally that “[t]he existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed” (Elliott 1997, 231). While the protected rights are collective rather than individual in nature, they are not held uniformly by all aboriginal peoples and vary in accordance with the variety of cultures. Not surprisingly, the framers of our constitution left it to the courts to determine the precise nature of the rights enjoyed by any one of the hundreds of aboriginal collectivities in this country. In a landmark decision known as Van der Peet, the Supreme Court of Canada set out the test to be used by the courts below. Briefly, in order for an aboriginal practice to be enjoyed today as a constitutionally protected right, it must, among other things, have been “an element of a practice, custom, or tradition integral to the

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distinctive culture” of the aboriginal group during “the period prior to contact between Aboriginal and European societies” or “prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America” (Lamer et al. 1996b, par. 46, 60, 61). In the unique case of the Métis, who had a post-contact ethnogenesis, the test has more recently been modified to protect practices, customs, and traditions that arose after first contact but prior to the “effective control” of Europeans or the “imposition of European laws and customs” (McLachlin et al. 2003, par. 37). A different test developed specifically for claims to aboriginal title requires that the claimant group establish that it occupied the land in question at the “time at which the Crown asserted sovereignty over the land subject to the title” (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 144). The test for treaty rights refers not only to the text of a given treaty, but also to “extrinsic evidence of the historical and cultural context of the treaty,” which may date to the period shortly before or after the instrument was signed (Lamer et al. 1999, par. 11). Recognizing that the determination of practices that were defining features of a culture “is no easy task at a remove of 400 years,” the Supreme Court of Canada has cautioned that the constitutional rights “should not be rendered illusory by imposing an impossible burden of proof.” Hence, the rules of evidence and the interpretation of evidence must be approached “with a consciousness of the special nature of aboriginal claims” (McLachlin et al. 2001, par. 27, 32). In light of the temporal scope of the legal tests, hundreds of civil litigations, prosecutions, and other court proceedings involving aboriginal plaintiffs or defendants cannot be resolved through the usual eyewitness testimony and necessarily have recourse to three major classes of evidence used in reconstructing the past: archaeological data, written documents, and oral traditions. Since many anthropologists have experience with these types of materials, they are often called upon to prepare voluminous expert opinion reports (e.g., von Gernet 2001). These reports are filed in court, where they assist judges who hand down written decisions which themselves are sometimes hundreds of pages in length and cover half a millennium of history (e.g., Barry 2003). It is a happy circumstance that Trigger has published influential insights on the strengths and weaknesses of all three classes of evidence encountered by the courts and has written extensively on the methodologies used to illuminate cultures shortly before and after their first contact with newcomers. Much of his 1985 book Natives and Newcomers is devoted to the early contact experience and as such is particularly germane to the questions posed by the Van der Peet test.

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“Let us face it, we are all here to stay,” were the last words of Chief Justice Lamer at the conclusion of an important Supreme Court of Canada decision on aboriginal title (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 186). Since the purpose of section 35 of the Constitution Act is to reconcile the prior presence of aboriginal peoples with the assertion of Crown sovereignty, the inquiry required by Canadian law necessarily involves a consideration of a shared, intercultural history. For instance, the Van der Peet test adds the caveat that an aboriginal practice arising solely as a response to European influences does not meet the standard for recognition of an aboriginal right, while the same test contains an allowance for the evolution of pre-contact practices into modern forms. Either way, the courts require an understanding of cultural change and continuity as natives and newcomers came into contact over the course of centuries – precisely the type of understanding ethnohistorians have attempted to gain for a generation. The legal determination of treaty rights also leads to a consideration of intercultural history, as the test goes beyond a simple reading of the surviving written instrument and calls for an understanding of the “common intention” or what was in the mutual contemplation of the native and non-native signatories. Over the past five hundred years, natives and newcomers in North America have each formed part of a single historical trajectory that makes it impossible for any single individual to have an insider’s view of the total picture (Washburn and Trigger 1996, 110). Whether of aboriginal or other descent, we are all in a sense outsiders looking back at people who in many respects had ideas and practices markedly different from those familiar to us in the twenty-first century. While Trigger has long advocated for a decolonization of anthropology, history, and museum studies through the recruitment of native scholars (Trigger 1985b, 35; 1988, 77–8; 1997, xi; Washburn and Trigger 1996, 110–11), he has also come to recognize that historical disciplines are collaborative and open to all. No sound arguments can be advanced for restricting the study of the past to members of the group being investigated, or for giving any group exclusive proprietary rights to its history. On the contrary, as Trigger illustrated by example in The Children of Aataentsic (1976) and later observed in passing (1982a, 8; 1986a, 263), the history of any people is greatly enriched because individuals from outside the group study it. When I attended McGill University some twenty years ago, my mentor had occasion to serve as an expert witness in a trial involving George W. Adams, an Akwesasne Mohawk charged with fishing for perch without

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a licence in a widening of the St Lawrence River about ninety-five kilometres west of Montreal. The defendant’s conviction in 1985 was upheld on appeal to the Quebec Superior Court and on further appeal to the Quebec Court of Appeal. Finally, in 1996, the Adams case ended up in the Supreme Court of Canada, which, having only months earlier formulated the Van der Peet test, was in a position to apply it for the first time. After reviewing the trial record, the Court noted: “Dr. Trigger, an anthropologist and a recognized expert on the history of the Huron people during the period prior to 1660, was the key expert witness for the appellant. In light of the shared linguistic heritage of the Hurons and the Mohawks, the similar economies of the two peoples, and the complex relationship between the Huron and the Mohawk (the precise nature of which we need not closely examine in this appeal), Trigger’s studies closely followed the history of the Mohawks in the upper St Lawrence valley prior to 1660” (Lamer et al. 1996a, par. 40). In part on the basis on Trigger’s testimony at trial, the Court found that “either because reliance on the fish in the St Lawrence for food was a necessary part of their campaigns of war, or because the lands of this area constituted Mohawk hunting and fishing grounds, the evidence presented at trial demonstrates that fishing for food in the St Lawrence River and, in particular, in Lake St Francis, was a significant part of the life of the Mohawks from a time dating from at least 1603 and the arrival of Samuel de Champlain into the area” (Lamer et al. 1996a, par. 45). In short, the Van der Peet test had been met and the appellant’s conviction was set aside. The Adams decision itself became another legal landmark, since it established for the first time that aboriginal rights were not inexorably linked to aboriginal title and could be exercised on lands or waters lying outside areas in which an aboriginal claim to title could be made out. The decision also reaffirmed that the evidence required to meet the test need not come directly from the pre-contact period, but could also be derived through analogical reasoning from the record of contact: “Further, where there is evidence that at the point of contact a practice was a significant part of a group’s culture (in this case fishing for food in the fishing area) then the Aboriginal group will have demonstrated that the practice was a significant part of the Aboriginal group’s culture prior to contact. No Aboriginal group will ever be able to provide conclusive evidence of what took place prior to contact …; evidence that at contact a custom was a significant part of their distinctive culture should be sufficient to demonstrate that prior to contact that custom was also a

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significant part of their distinctive culture” (Lamer et al. 1996a, par. 46 [italics in original]). This ruling had its origins in Van der Peet, in which the chief justice held that since producing “conclusive” evidence about aboriginal practices prior to contact with Europeans is a “next-toimpossible task,” the evidence relied upon may relate to aboriginal practices “post-contact,” provided these have their “origins pre-contact” or “can be rooted in the pre-contact societies.” This was apparently intended to overcome “the evidentiary difficulties in proving a right which originates in times where there were no written records” (Lamer et al. 1996b, par. 62, 68). What the Court failed to understand is that the written records generated during the period after European contact and the oral traditions collected in recent times are not necessarily more conclusive than the archaeological evidence that serves as the basis for much of our knowledge about pre-contact life. Furthermore, as I have pointed out elsewhere (von Gernet 2000c, 114), if it is indeed “next to impossible” to produce evidence from pre-contact times, how is anyone to overcome the hurdle of demonstrating that the post-contact practices have their “origins precontact” or “can be rooted in the pre-contact societies”? Overall, the Court’s circular reasoning could have profited from the more sophisticated anthropological treatment of the protohistoric period found in Natives and Newcomers. In that work, as he so often did in other contributions (1979, 208; 1982a, 13; 1982b, 142–51; 1983, 439–40, 447–8; 1984, 19–21; 1985b, 26–9; 1986b, 335), Trigger emphasized that the documentary record of early contact often described a native lifestyle that had already been affected by the presence of Europeans in North America. “It is clear,” he concluded, “that most of what we can hope to know for certain about changes that occurred in native cultures as a response to a European presence in North America but prior to historical records must be learned from archaeological data” (Trigger 1985a, 118). While the Adams decision was puzzling, what I did learn from Trigger’s experience was that anthropologists have an important role outside the ivory tower. The courts are making important decisions that affect the lives of natives and newcomers alike, and they will continue to do so with or without our input. Since history is never unproblematic and since the record of the past does not lend a priori support to only one side, all parties in a dispute deserve access to sound academic scholarship and the courts benefit from the presentation of more than one opinion. This realization was one of the principal reasons why, since 1992, I have produced thousands of pages of opinion and agreed

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to serve as an expert witness in eighteen proceedings held in jurisdictions throughout North America. Trigger’s most important influence on jurisprudence has not been in the form of direct, personal attendance as a witness. Rather, his voice is most often heard in court by proxy, as his publications are used in support of evidence given by other witnesses. When Trigger testified two decades ago, he did so through viva voce testimony and without having first been engaged to prepare an expert opinion report. More recently, it has become commonplace for expert witnesses to prepare such reports, which are generally accompanied with copies of all sources on which they rely. Consequently, judges have before them not only the opinions of scholars who have been qualified specifically for a case, but also opinions given in learned treatises written by individuals who do not testify and who are usually not even aware that their work has become the subject of judicial notice (for a discussion, see von Gernet 1994). It is instructive to turn to an example of how Trigger’s work has been so employed. In Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory, Trigger outlined the strengths and weaknesses of various types of evidence used in the study of past cultures. Included was a brief passage on oral traditions (Trigger 1968, 10–11) that was later revised to form part of his influential Time and Traditions: Such [oral] traditions frequently reflect contemporary social and political conditions as much as they do historical reality, and even in cultures where there is a strong desire to preserve their integrity, such stories unconsciously may be reworked from generation to generation. The oral traditions of Polynesia, which were famous for the fidelity with which they were supposed to be transmitted, are now known to be out of line with archaeological and other sorts of evidence … Hence it is no wonder that many anthropologists doubt the historical reliability of all oral traditions … The scientific study of oral traditions is obviously an exacting task and requires a careful evaluation of the reliability of sources, the identification of stereotyped motifs that may distort historical evidence, the checking of the stories told by one group against comparable information supplied by others, and, finally, the checking of these stories against independent sources of information such as archaeological evidence. Used in this way, oral traditions may supply valuable information about the not too distant past. Used uncritically, however, they can be a source of much confusion and misunderstanding in prehistoric studies. (Trigger 1978b, 127–8)1

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These comments might well have remained buried in the sediments of Trigger’s enlarging mound of contributions to archaeology had not the weight of the author’s authority been combined with a pressing social need for such expertise. Canadian courts mandated to adjudicate aboriginal claims were also confronted with the problem of assessing the reliability of aboriginal oral traditions as historical evidence, and they began taking judicial notice of what authorities had opined on the subject. While the issue had been broached before, it came to a head during the action now known simply as Delgamuukw. This trial, which took place in the late 1980s, continues to rank among the most important in Canadian jurisprudence. It involved fifty-eight thousand square kilometres of northwestern British Columbia claimed by fifty-one hereditary chiefs of the Tshimshanic-speaking Gitksan and Athabaskan-speaking Wet’suwet’en people. As well as to archaeological evidence and written documents, the plaintiffs referred to adaawk, which were collections of sacred oral reminiscences about the ancestors, histories, and territories of the Gitksan people. Also tendered as evidence were kungax, the spiritual songs or dances that tied the Wet’suwet’en people to their land and portrayed their perception of their history. The trial had scarcely begun when Chief Justice McEachern of the British Columbia Supreme Court was obliged to rule on the admissibility of the adaawk, kungax, and similar hearsay testimony (McEachern 1988). The trial judge decided that it was prudent to invoke an exception to the rules of evidence and hear the testimony as a matter of admissibility, although he reserved the right ultimately to subject it to considerations of weight. After all the testimony was in and it came time to weigh the oral traditions against other forms of evidence, the chief justice wrote a 455-page judgment in which he took notice of Trigger’s views as published in Time and Traditions (McEachern 1991, 245–6). He quoted the entire passage given above (italicizing for emphasis the last two sentences) and went on to make this ruling: “Except in a very few cases, the totality of the evidence raises serious doubts about the reliability of the adaawk and kungax as evidence of detailed history, or land ownership, use or occupation. I say this reluctantly, without intending any affront to the beliefs of these peoples, but I am reminded by many learned authors to be cautious. Trigger warns that tribal societies have little interest in conserving an accurate knowledge of the past over long periods of time” (McEachern 1991, 259). In the end, much of the evidence tendered by the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en either through viva voce testimony or in the form of

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written affidavits was given little weight. Justice McEachern held that the plaintiffs did not prove they owned the entire territory, although they were entitled to residence and sustenance rights in respect to some of the land, particularly in the vicinity of their settlements. It was not long before the passage from Time and Traditions, as quoted in the Delgamuukw trial decision, found its way into the scholarly literature on evidence issues in law, where it was described as the “opinion of the eminent archaeologist, Dr. Bruce Trigger” (Gover and Macaulay 1996, 67). From here, the words of this “noted anthropologist” were copied by the author of a controversial book on Canadian policy on aboriginal issues (Flanagan 2000, 164). Hence, an opinion first published in 1968 remained influential decades later by virtue of the “learned,” “eminent,” and “noted” status of the author. Meanwhile, Justice McEachern’s “Reasons for Judgement” created an unprecedented tumult that generated more than a half-dozen books and over fifty articles by anthropologists, historians, political scientists, lawyers, and others. Much of the scholarly discourse had an intemperate tone, a reaction that was warranted in some instances but ill-considered and unjust in others. Several critics, including Julie Cruikshank (1992), took the chief justice to task for his approach to oral tradition evidence, alleging that this approach was influenced by his personal predilections and the ideology of his profession and intimating that it was not in line with mainstream academic opinion. These criticisms were off the mark for several reasons, including the fact that the chief justice had been “reminded by many learned authors,” including Bruce Trigger, to treat oral traditions cautiously (von Gernet 2000c, 110–12). Dara Culhane (1998, 258) implied that it was inappropriate for Justice McEachern to have cited Trigger in a British Columbia context, as his work was “based in Huron and other eastern Aboriginal peoples’ oral history.” Of course, Trigger’s observations on oral traditions had been stimulated by a much broader reading – including a seminal study on the subject by the africanist Jan Vansina (1965) – and were clearly intended to be generally applicable. Robin Fisher complained that the chief justice had not gone far enough and should have cited Trigger’s opinion on other forms of evidence as well: “Bruce Trigger is one of the leading exponents of ethnohistory in Canada, and he is selectively quoted by McEachern on the limitations of oral history. The judge does not, however, quote Trigger, or any other historian, on the limitations of the written record” (Fisher 1992, 47).

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Fisher suggested that the chief justice could have benefited from a perusal of Natives and Newcomers, in which Trigger drew attention to the highly specific set of problems involved in interpreting the written records of Europeans who described their early dealings with native peoples. While many of these eyewitnesses recorded what they saw accurately, the motives they ascribed to aboriginal peoples were often erroneous and ethnocentric. For this reason, ethnohistorians must understand the cultural values of both the observer and the observed. The values of the descendants of the latter may, under certain circumstances, be derived from modern ethnographic knowledge, although such knowledge cannot simply be projected into a remote past without an understanding of culture change (Trigger 1985a, 168; see also Trigger 1978a, 18–19). A call to adopt Trigger’s circumspection was sage advice, for had it been followed it might have tempered Justice McEachern’s simplistic approach to the written record as revealed in this statement: “Lastly, I wish to mention the historians. Generally speaking, I accept just about everything they put before me because they were largely collectors of archival, historical documents. In most cases they provided much useful information with minimal editorial comment. Their marvellous collections largely spoke for themselves” (McEachern 1991, 251). At the end of the day, Justice McEachern was dammed for a critical approach to oral traditions and chastised for an uncritical approach to written records. By not accepting oral traditions on their face, by taking note of the context in which they were generated, by evaluating them for internal consistency, by comparing them with other available evidence, and by carefully weighing them, he did precisely what his critics suggested he should have done with the written historical documents put before him by academic historians (von Gernet 2000c, 112). This was far from the end of the story, for the Supreme Court of Canada had yet to pronounce on the “important practical problem relevant to the proof of aboriginal title which is endemic to aboriginal rights litigation generally – the treatment of the oral histories of Canada’s aboriginal peoples by the courts” (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 3). The appeal of the Delgamuukw decision offered an opportunity for such a pronouncement. Reviewing Justice McEachern’s judgment, the Court found that he had not properly considered the unique difficulties inherent in adjudicating aboriginal claims. Since conclusions on issues of fact might have been very different had the trial judge assessed the oral histories “correctly,” the Court ruled that his factual findings could not stand and that a new trial was warranted (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 107,

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108). Oral histories given by aboriginal people must be “accommodated and placed on an equal footing with the types of historical evidence that the courts are familiar with, which largely consists of historical documents” (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 87). This unhelpful ruling was not accompanied by any substantive advice on how the lower courts should handle such evidence in the future. While the Court noted that the ultimate purpose of the fact-finding process at trial was “the determination of historical truth” (Lamer et al. 1997, par. 86), its rejection of Justice McEachern’s approach to oral history could easily have been interpreted as an abandonment of the rigorous scrutiny that is essential to the positivist orientation of the judicial process. Any temptation to abandon rigorous scrutiny was, however, soon quashed by the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Mitchell, a case involving Akwesasne Mohawks in which I served as an expert witness at trial. The Court emphasized that a consciousness of the special nature of aboriginal claims does not negate the operation of general evidentiary principles: “There is a boundary that must not be crossed between a sensitive application and a complete abandonment of the rules of evidence.” Generous rules of interpretation “should not be confused with a vague sense of after-the-fact largesse.” Evidence advanced in support of aboriginal claims, like the evidence offered in any case, can run the gamut of cogency from the highly compelling to the highly dubious. Claims must still be established on the basis of persuasive evidence demonstrating their validity on the balance of probabilities. Placing “due weight” on the aboriginal perspective, or ensuring its supporting evidence an “equal footing” with more familiar forms of evidence, means precisely what these phrases suggest: equal and due treatment. While the evidence presented by aboriginal claimants should not be undervalued [just because it does not conform to certain common law standards], neither should it be artificially strained to carry more weight than it can reasonably support. If this is an obvious proposition, it must nonetheless be stated. (McLachlin et al. 2001, par. 38–9)

In this case, the focus was less on oral traditions and more on archaeological data. After applying the freshly articulated principles of interpretation to the specific evidence tendered, the Court overturned the decision of the trial judge and ruled that the Mohawk claimant, Grand Chief Michael Mitchell, did not have an aboriginal right to bring goods across the international border between the United States and Canada without paying the usual duties (McLachlin et al. 2001, par. 51, 60).

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This ruling was consistent with a lengthy opinion report I wrote in advance of my testimony at trial in which I drew attention to the absence of evidence for a north-south trade across the St Lawrence River by the Mohawks prior to, at the time of, and shortly after first European contact (von Gernet 1995). More recently, other appellate courts have shown a willingness to overturn decisions if they sense that the trial judge, in the furtherance of a well-intentioned desire to be sensitive to the traditions adduced by aboriginal parties, crosses the “boundary that must not be crossed” (Nadon et al. 2003, par. 23). A good example is the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Benoit, an Alberta case involving Cree oral traditions about an alleged treaty promise for a blanket tax exemption. The trial judge had accepted the traditions at face value, had given them preferential treatment, and had made no effort whatsoever to assess critically the evidence presented. This, the appellate court concluded, crossed the boundary and thus constituted a reversible error (Nadon et al. 2003, par. 110). The learned justices then went on to quote page after page of my written opinion, including the following brief excerpt that was clearly inspired by the work of Bruce Trigger: In my opinion, the most useful approach recognizes the legitimacy of self-representation and acknowledges that what people believe about their own past must be respected and receive serious historical consideration. At the same time, it assumes that there was a real past independent of what people presently believe it to be, and that valuable information about that past may be derived from various sources including oral histories and oral traditions. It accepts that both nonAboriginal and Aboriginal scholars can be biased, that various pasts can be invented or used for political reasons, and that a completely value-free history is an impossible ideal. Nevertheless, it postulates that the past constrains the way in which modern interpreters can manipulate it for various purposes. While the actual past is beyond retrieval, this must remain the aim. The reconstruction that results may not have a privileged claim on universal “truth,” but it will have the advantage of being rigorous. The approach rejects the fashionable notion that, because Aboriginal oral documents are not Western, they cannot be assessed using Western methods and should be allowed to escape the type of scrutiny given to other forms of evidence. Ultimately, the perspective is in accord with the belief of the highly-regarded anthropologist Bruce Trigger: public wrongs cannot be atoned by abandoning scientific standards in the historical study of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. (Nadon et al. 2003, par. 111, quoting von Gernet 2000a, 6; see also von Gernet 1996; 2000c, 117)

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The Court noted that this was “undeniably a proper approach” (Nadon et al. 2003, par. 112) and expressed agreement “that oral history evidence cannot be accepted, per se, as factual, unless it has undergone the critical scrutiny that courts and experts, whether they be historians, archaeologists, social scientists, apply to the various types of evidence which they have to deal with” (Nadon et al. 2003, par. 113). In reaching the opinion that was later adopted by the Federal Court of Appeal, I had been guided in part by Trigger’s 1982 summary of the general state of ethnohistorical research. In that essay, Trigger expressed the view that respect for traditional cultures should not exclude a scientific study of their histories. Allowing standards to be undermined or letting modern sympathies for aboriginal peoples interfere with an assessment of the record will only generate speculative, revisionist exercises. If scholars “allow a past-as-wished-for to subvert their endeavour to understand the past as it really was, they will fail to provide a valid, and hence a useful, guide to understanding past relations between EuroAmericans and native people” (Trigger 1982a, 6–8). Here, he echoed earlier work in which he had concluded that sympathy as a prime motive does not always lead to understanding (Trigger 1975, 55) and that little of lasting value will be accomplished if the old stereotypes about aboriginal peoples are simply replaced by shallow works of a sentimental or apologetic variety. “To realize its full potential,” he once wrote, “Indian history must aspire to the highest standards of objectivity and scientific skill” (Trigger 1978a, 22). Those who apply this advice in forensic contexts must avoid the temptation to side automatically with an aboriginal party in a dispute. Indeed, court cases in which I have been called to testify have obliged me to lay aside the strong sympathies that I, as an anthropologist, have for the political aspirations of indigenous peoples, so that I may properly rebut expert evidence adduced in support of claims such as the alleged right to discriminate against women, the alleged right to resources that were not of traditional interest, or the alleged right to territories not associated with the aboriginal claimants until relatively recent times. The fact is that not all aboriginal claims and causes are supported by the available evidence. My point is perhaps best illustrated by what happened recently during the prosecution of certain Mi’kmaq individuals who were engaged in the commercial logging of crown land forests in Nova Scotia. These Mi’kmaq had been charged and, at their trial, sought acquittals on the

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basis of constitutionally protected treaty rights or aboriginal title. A Mi’kmaq chief, on account of his university training and a curatorial position at a museum, was called to testify as an expert witness (ethnohistorian) for the defendants. This chief was, moreover, also a putus, or official wampum keeper and custodian of Mi’kmaq traditions. During the course of his testimony, he related an oral tradition evidently originating with his grandmother and publicly affirmed and accepted by the Mi’kmaq Grand Council. The recollection of this tradition was aided by one of the most elaborate mnemonic devices ever contrived, a spectacular wampum belt, of which a meticulously crafted replica was brought to court and photographed as an exhibit. The story “read” from this replica was rich in detail and purported to describe an agreement between the Mi’kmaq Chief Membertou and the French in 1610 (von Gernet 2000b, 39–42). After locating the original wampum belt in a basement storehouse of the Vatican and applying standard scientific techniques, including physical and stylistic analyses, I was able to show that this specimen dated to the early nineteenth century. More importantly, written documentation surfaced revealing that the belt had been fashioned and sent to the Pope in the 1830s by the Algonquin and Iroquois at Kanesatake, proving beyond doubt that it was neither of Mi’kmaq provenance nor a seventeenth-century object. Since the mnemonic was intended to preserve an entirely different message (as established by a letter from its originators to the Pope), the Mi’kmaq story and its association with the wampum turned out to be a neo-tradition invented in relatively recent times. Significantly, this was an honestly held belief communicated by one of the most qualified elders in the Mi’kmaq community. Yet, all the internal checks and balances did nothing to protect the reliability of this aboriginal version of history (von Gernet 2002b). The evidence I had uncovered was so overwhelming that, upon reading my report, the lawyer for the Mi’kmaq defendants tried to withdraw the testimony of their own witness and to encourage the Court to take no notice of what the chief had said. The trial judge said that this unprecedented request amounted to an acknowledgment that the chief was wrong; he “would consider that error” when it came time to weigh any other evidence given by this witness. Overall, the judge concluded that “the massive written record is far more convincing than the minimal oral evidence” (Curran 2001, par. 56–65). On appeal of the provincial court’s conviction of the defendants, the

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Supreme Court of Nova Scotia reviewed this incident, agreed with the trial judge, and added the following: “Both Van der Peet and Delgamuukw make it clear that oral evidence is important in terms of conveying Aboriginal perspective. That does not mean it must be accepted as being historically accurate if there is convincing evidence to the contrary. Oral tradition is not any better than documentary evidence and it is not to be blindly accepted over a mountain of documentary evidence. The risks associated with oral history or oral tradition become very apparent when as in the present case it became obvious that the wampum belt was not part of Mi’kmaq history” (Scanlan 2002, par. 116). This is by no means a cautionary tale only relevant to lawyers and judges, for it is not hard to see how it can relate to the academic literature produced outside the courtroom. In fact, a book written by a prominent aboriginal intellectual from the perspective of post-colonial theory relies on this same wampum belt in formulating a decolonized history of Mi’kmaq-European relations. The author advances an argument for the existence of an agreement between the Mi’kmaq Nation and the Holy See by which Mi’kmaq territory became an independent Catholic republic during the seventeenth century. He says he obtained most of his evidence from oral traditions, which he accepts as “a valid source of Mi’kmaq law and history.” Treating the wampum as if it were a written treaty, he grounds his study in the accompanying oral tradition in order to “avoid those colonial biases and fallacies found in secondary materials.” Curiously, he frequently has recourse to the very written documents he had hoped to avoid. While he is meticulous in selecting and referencing these documents, he does not apply the same rigorous standards to the oral traditions and ends up with a wholly unconvincing argument that at times verges on the preposterous (Henderson 1997). It is not without significant embarrassment that his elaborate edifice came crashing down in a court of law. History, whether “decolonized” or not, is ill-served when founded on stories that are demonstrably false and describe events in the past that never took place. Physical vestiges – which in the example just given included an original wampum belt and documents describing the meaning given to it by its creators – serve as powerful constraints on the range of possible interpretations of past events offered by modern aboriginal and non-aboriginal scholars. I return here to Trigger’s thoughtful advice that any effort to tell the story of the past requires both a constant awareness that our

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interpretations are subjectively influenced by the social and political milieu in which they are generated and a commitment to the positivistic ideal of historical objectivism. Trigger has been particularly effective in arguing that these are not contradictory and that it is possible to situate oneself on a comfortable middle ground (Trigger 1980, 662). His exploration of the history of archaeology in particular has demonstrated that the material we study from the past exists independently of our minds and serves as a constraint on our interpretations in the present. Hence, the cumulative result of decades of archaeological work is more than speculative (Trigger 1989b; 1989a, 380–1, 400–41). He has what he himself has described as “a long-standing personal conviction” that, even if interpretation is forever subject to bias, the data constrain the imagination and over time will move us to a more objective understanding of the past. “Subjectivity and truth are not mutually exclusive” (Trigger 1997, ix). In short, Trigger appears to have come to a conclusion shared by a number of prominent historians: while an actual past is beyond retrieval, this must remain the aim.

notes 1 This was not Trigger’s last word on the subject. He later noted that native oral traditions avoid the distortions inherent in documents produced by alien cultures and may provide a valuable record of former beliefs and values. He also cited the case of nineteenth-century Ojibwa traditions about late seventeenth-century wars with the Iroquois as an example of historical information preserved over long periods of time. Thus, the past “can sometimes be recaptured by the diligent and sensitive researcher.” Nevertheless, he urged caution, since oral traditions are subject to frequent modification as circumstances change, and hence are unreliable for all but the recent past. Furthermore, tribal societies generally have little interest in conserving an accurate knowledge of the past over long periods of time for its own sake. For this reason, he was “not optimistic that much can be learned about historical events from oral traditions alone, especially for small-scale egalitarian societies.” The use of such traditions requires a detailed understanding of their derivation and a critical comparison of alternative versions. In general, external corroboration or some form of independent verification is required before such traditions can be accepted as accurate historical accounts (Trigger 1983, 413; 1985a, 55, 167; 1986a, 261; 1986b, 333; 1997, ix; Washburn and Trigger 1996, 61).

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references Axtell, J. 1981. The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. New York: Oxford University Press Barry, J. (Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador). 2003. Newfoundland v. Drew et al., [2003] N.L.S.C.T.D. 105 Cruikshank, J. 1992. “Invention of Anthropology in British Columbia’s Supreme Court: Oral Tradition as Evidence in Delgamuukw v. B.C.” BC Studies 95:25–42 Culhane, D. 1998. The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations. Burnaby, B.C.: Talonbooks Curran, P.C.J. (Nova Scotia Provincial Court). 2001. R. v. Marshall (S.F.) et al., [2001] 191 N.S.R. (2d) 323; A.P.R. 323 Elliott, D.W. 1997. Law and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. 3rd ed. Canadian Legal Studies Series. Toronto: Captus Press Fisher, R. 1992. “Judging History: Reflections on the Reasons for Judgement in Delgamuukw v. B.C.” BC Studies 95:43–54 Flanagan, T. 2000. First Nations? Second Thoughts. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Gover, B.J., and M.L. Macaulay. 1996. “‘Snow Houses Leave No Ruins’: Unique Evidence Issues in Aboriginal and Treaty Rights Cases.” Saskatchewan Law Review 60:47–89 Henderson, James (Sákéj) Youngblood. 1997. The Míkmaw Concordat. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing Lamer, C.J., et al. (Supreme Court of Canada). 1996a. R. v. Adams, [1996] 4 C.N.L.R. 1 – 1996b. R. v. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 – 1997. Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010 – 1999. R. v. Marshall, [1999] 3 S.C.R. 456 Lurie, N.O. 1956. “A Reply to ‘The Land Claims Cases: Anthropologists in Conflict.’” Ethnohistory 3:256–79 McEachern, C.J.S.C. (British Columbia Supreme Court). 1988. Delgamuukw et al. v. The Queen in Right of British Columbia et al., [1987] 40 D.L.R. (4th) 685 – 1991. Delgamuukw et al. v. The Queen in right of British Columbia et al., [1991] 79 D.L.R. (4th) 185 McLachlin, C.J., et al. (Supreme Court of Canada). 2001. Mitchell v. Canada (Minister of National Revenue), [2001] S.C.C. 33 – 2003. R. v. Powley, [2003] S.C.J. 43

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Manners, R.A. 1956. “The Land Claims Cases: Anthropologists in Conflict.” Ethnohistory 3:72–81 Nadon, J.A., et al. (Federal Court of Appeal). 2003. R. v. Benoit, [2003] F.C.A. 236 Ray, V.F. 1955. “Anthropology and Indian Claims Litigation: Papers Presented at a Symposium Held at Detroit in December, 1954.” Ethnohistory 2:287–91 Scanlan, J.E. (Supreme Court of Nova Scotia). 2002. Keith Lawrence Julien et al. v. Her Majesty the Queen, [2002] N.S.S.C. 057 Steward, J.H. 1955. “Theory and Application in a Social Science.” Ethnohistory 2:29–22 Trigger, B.G. 1968. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1975. “Brecht and Ethnohistory.” Ethnohistory 22 (1):51–6 – 1976. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1978a. “Ethnohistory and Archaeology.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 30:17–24 – 1978b. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. New York: Columbia University Press – 1979. “Sixteenth Century Ontario: History, Ethnohistory and Archaeology.” Ontario History 71:205–23 – 1980. “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 – 1982a. “Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects.” Ethnohistory 29 (1):1–19 – 1982b. “Response of Native Peoples to European Contact.” In Early European Settlement and Exploitation in Atlantic Canada: Selected Papers, edited by G.M. Story, 139–55. St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland – 1983. “American Archaeology as Native History: A Review Essay.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 40 (3):413–52 – 1984. “Indian and White History: Two Worlds or One?” In Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies, edited by Michael K. Foster, Jack Campisi, and Marianne Mithun, 17–33. Albany: State University of New York Press – 1985a. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1985b. “The Past as Power: Anthropology and the North American Indian.” In Who Owns the Past? edited by Isabel McBryde, 11–40. Melbourne: Oxford University Press – 1986a. “Ethnohistory: The Unfinished Edifice.” Ethnohistory 33 (3):253–67

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– 1986b. “The Historians’ Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from Charlevoix to the Present.” Canadian Historical Review 67 (3): 315–42 – 1988. “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage.” Culture 8 (1):71–85 – 1989a. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1989b. “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 – 1997. Foreword to At a Crossroads: Archaeology and First Peoples in Canada, edited by George P. Nicholas and Thomas D. Andrews, vii–xiii. Publication, no. 24. Burnaby: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University Vansina, J. 1965. The Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. Chicago: Aldine von Gernet, Alexander. 1994. “Archaeology as Discourse.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 57:3–22 – 1995. The Mohawks and Akwesasne: Territory, Political Relations and Trade. (Grand Chief Michael Mitchell v. Minister of National Revenue) Federal Court of Canada Trial Division (Action T-434-90). Federal Department of Justice, Ottawa – 1996. Oral Narratives and Aboriginal Pasts: An Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature on Oral Traditions and Oral Histories. 2 vols. Ottawa: Research and Analysis Directorate, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada – 2000a. Oral Traditions, Treaty Eight and Taxation. 52 pp. and 89 supporting documents (Charles John Gordon Benoit et al. v. The Queen). In the Federal Court of Canada Trial Division (T-2288–92) Parlee McLaws and Macleod Dixon, Calgary, Alberta – 2000b. Oral Traditions, Wampum Belts, Land and Logs: An Assessment of Testimony in a Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq Case. 108 pp. and 172 supporting documents (Her Majesty the Queen v. Stephen Frederick Marshall et al.), Province of Nova Scotia. In the Provincial Court (nos. 853504, 853508, etc.). Special Prosecutions, Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service, Halifax, Nova Scotia – 2000c. “What My Elders Taught Me: Oral Traditions as Evidence in Aboriginal Litigation.” In Beyond the Nass Valley: National Implications of the Supreme Court’s Delgamuukw Decision, edited by Owen Lippert, 103–29. Vancouver: Fraser Institute – 2001. The Origins and Early History of the Mi’kmaq in Newfoundland: An Analysis of the Oral Traditions, Archaeological Evidence and Written Records. (Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Newfoundland v. Ken Drew.)

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In the Supreme Court of Newfoundland Trial Division (1996 St. J. no. 1022). Department of Justice, Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, St John’s, Newfoundland Washburn, W.E., and B.G. Trigger. 1996. “Native Peoples in Euro-American Historiography.” In North America, part 1, edited by Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn, 61–124. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

13 The Awakening of Internalist Archaeology in the Aboriginal World ELDON YELLOWHORN

A search for syncretism is awakening an internalist archaeology in the aboriginal world. This awakening is a response to aboriginal people’s ongoing dialogue about the past and describes their growing awareness that perceptions of antiquity are unique experiences. With this understanding comes a quiet shift in attitude whereby archaeology is recognized as something other than an instrument of oppression wielded by a colonizing society. Such historical antagonism is giving way to the view that archaeology is a mode of research that offers a bundle of methods that are useful in investigating the ancient remains of ancestral cultures. The result has been the introduction of the aboriginal voice into the archaeological conversation. Rather than merely reiterating standard discourse, aboriginal people are opting instead to appropriate archaeological methods in order to pursue internally defined objectives, such as researching customary knowledge. Engaging the discipline poses new challenges and dilemmas that will influence the practice of archaeology in aboriginal communities. First among these is the realization that a secular antiquity exists that is independent of the sacred versions related in traditional narratives. Archaeology with an internalist dimension has the potential to bridge the distance between sacred and secular world views because the desire to explore ancient traditions with the use of modern methods is real. “Indigenous archaeology” has been offered as a name for this movement. In the volume Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian

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Values and Scientific Practice, Joe Watkins (2000) described it as “archaeology as a discipline developed with the control and influence of indigenous populations around the world” (xiii). Internalist archaeology is used here because it emanates from an internal dialogue on the nature of secular antiquity. This dialogue on heritage is a symptom of modern life. It reflects a growing acceptance that archaeology is the product of a hegemonic world view, but also the conviction that native people can internalize archaeology to better understand their history in a secular context. Reassessing aboriginal people’s historical relationship with the archaeological community will be necessary because of the expanding corps of aboriginal people who choose this career path. Artifacts and sites are the products of past human labour and as such form a unique cultural legacy that must be understood within the context of a generalized world history. One conclusion in this debate is that professionalism will become the driving force that will challenge the biases that supported earlier protests. Consequently, a theoretical framework needs to be developed to sustain aboriginal perspectives. Since archaeological field methods are well established, the most enduring contribution from this movement may be the interpretations that organize local cultural sequences. Thus, the intent of internalist archaeology is to construct the bridges between the aboriginal community and the broader discipline. It will mediate between a local understanding of antiquity and the ancient history of humanity on a global scale.

encountering archaeology Archaeological sites, by their very nature, are defined by their geographical location. Archaeology appeared on the radar of First Nations when their growing populations demanded improved housing and economic opportunities, leading to greater pressures on the limited reserve lands. More recently, land-claims settlements in Canada have brought large tracts of land under the control of native people whose future plans are not predicated on continuing the bucolic lifeways of their hunting and gathering ancestors. In developing their settlement lands, the First Nations will inevitably have some impact on heritage sites. The effect of modern times is to introduce modern problems for aboriginal people, who wish to tread lightly on the legacy created by their ancestors. The novel conundrum for the present generation is to find ways to lessen their own impact on the archaeological record. One approach is

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to appropriate the methods of archaeology. However, aboriginal people are not content with simply importing the bundle and baggage of standard archaeology. They are searching for a brand of archaeology that begins with recognized field and analytical methods to examine an ancient history that is the foundation of their cultural traditions. They also wish to define an approach that respects their internal dialogue on the past. For such reasons, internalist archaeology is a necessary bridging device so that they can appraise secular accounts of antiquity on their own terms. For the First Nations, archaeology expresses a perspective that is neither nomothetic nor monolithic. A fitting analogy may be a fractal. The endlessly replicable contours, reiterated at ever-decreasing scales, is a suitable metaphor of post-processualism, where standard archaeology provides the main pattern and all the subalterns employing it are its microcosmic copies. Survey methods may be adequate to comply with federal laws, so there is little to be gained from searching for nomothetic laws governing human behaviour when research is motivated by practical goals. Nativist thought is not monolithic because no single voice represents the spectrum of opinion rising from aboriginal communities. Therefore, imagining a single, all-purpose, theoretical perspective would be naive. Nevertheless, internalist archaeology requires direction lest it drift into some intellectual backwater, there to stagnate into nonimportance. The fractal analogy of archaeology practised by aboriginal people captures well their unique experiences as they reiterate the broad methods at a local scale. Field methods begin with the humble shovel and quickly progress to ever more complex techniques involving laboratory methods of conservation and description. These are the tools of the trade, and there is no plausible reason to reinvent them. Regardless of their complexity, they are just methods. Quibbling about field methods is an unnecessary distraction that obscures the larger project. Field and laboratory methods are designed to amass data, which in turn fuel the need for analytical methods to help organize these data by time, space, and cultures. The more distant the methods are from fieldwork, the more abstract they become. As with any observational science, the analysis of data requires specific steps. These procedural steps will in turn lead to archaeological theorizing, and here the absence of an aboriginal perspective is most noticeable. Conventional archaeology has enjoyed a long, uninterrupted monologue about ancient times; native archaeologists, however, are not

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inclined to parrot the extant theories about their history. But rejecting mainstream theories and holding no loyalty to any specific interpretations of artifacts and sites, and especially not to the grand theories espoused about the peopling of the Americas, invariably leaves gaps. Contending with such lacunae invites native archaeologists to put forward their own proposals. At present, there is no standard theoretical program to guide aboriginal people who are willing to implement archaeology’s methods but reject its current theories. While no manual has been designed to be a practical guide for imagining the past from an internalist perspective, archaeology does offer the opportunity to represent antiquity in a manner that is simultaneously rational and familiar. Mainstream archaeology failed to count aboriginal people as part of its constituency. Antiquity was produced, packaged, and presented for the larger society with little consideration for the people whose ancestors produced it. The implicit assumption was that modern prehistory was accessible only by employing archaeological methods – data accumulation and analysis. Aboriginal history, as related in myths, was relegated to the margins of modern society and discounted as an implausible source of explanations for antiquity. Internalist archaeology draws on cultural traditions to motivate aboriginal scholars to undertake fieldwork and to study local history. To fill its theoretical vacuum, it benefits by revisiting these ancient stories. While archaeological work often responds to pragmatic concerns – for example, by assessing the impacts of terrain-altering developments or by rescuing sites that are endangered – there is a desire to include mythology in explaining antiquity. Internalist archaeology is an analytical tool that will play a prominent role in rehabilitating oral narratives by deploying a variety of methods to search for the signatures these narratives would have left in the archaeological record. It provides one approach to examining folklore and ensuring that the lived experience contained in aboriginal history will be respected in archaeological discourse. One complaint that aboriginal people often use to dismiss archaeology is that they do not see themselves being represented in the stories about their past. Indeed, given the “archaeologist’s privileging of temporal chronology” (Nabokov 2002, 49), they were often treated as superfluous to the goals identified by scholars. This has been an annoying impediment and may account for the paucity of aboriginal people who undertake studies in archaeology or pursue archaeology as a career. Archaeological interpretations motivated by an internalist perspective will naturally emphasize oral traditions as sources of explanations because

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they constitute an essential element of an internal dialogue about ancient history. The broader goal of proposing theories to compete with those extant in the mainstream may seem paradoxical for an enterprise committed to understanding local history. However, by accepting that archaeology is not the antithesis of aboriginal history, we can see a clearer approach to explaining certain manifestations in the archaeological record and enhancing a people’s sense of their past. Failing to articulate a rational paradigm for local projects where internalist archaeology is most visible may serve only to alienate the people whose history is the subject of research. More troubling would be to accept without question interpretations of the past that plainly abuse antiquity and promote a pseudo-scientific version that bears no resemblance to reality. Reactionary theories about the past that pay little attention to scientific accuracy and rely on half-truths based on suspect research and faulty logic do not offer the credible alternatives that aboriginal people deserve. Selective citations and uncritical acceptance of fringe data do not advance the cause of research in the realm of legitimate scientific work. Therefore, internalist archaeology responds to skepticism and alienation by articulating a theoretical foundation constructed on archaeological theories that can withstand critical scrutiny and contribute new knowledge to nativist thought. One strand will not create a whole network, but it will serve to bind disparate impressions of antiquity. Internalist archaeology is guided by it own landmarks as it attempts to organize antiquity. Its criticism of mainstream analytical tools necessitates some alternatives. Internalist perspectives can play an active role in tearing down the image of the past produced by traditional archaeology and consumed in the popular culture, an image that relies on a long chronological period known as prehistory and that is inhabited by anonymous ancestors with no particular connection to the aboriginal people of today. If this past remains unknown and archaeological data are the accepted standard for our knowledge about it, then scientific perspectives become the only legitimate version of antiquity. And, by extension, if traditional narratives are kept in a subordinate position, oral traditions that relate cultural history will continue to be regarded with skepticism. For example, the history/prehistory dichotomy is problematic because it makes aboriginal historical identity contingent on a European presence. While periodization is a standard tool of historians and archaeologists, it does exert its own form of chronological oppression. Another example is the long-favoured, thoughtless period called

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the Archaic. To unravel the implied stereotypes, internalist archaeology will need to apply techniques similar to periodization so that antiquity will mean more than just the time before Europeans, or the unchanging, outdated era occupied by aboriginal cultures. To fill this gap, native archaeologists must propose their own schemes for organizing the broad periods that are distinguishable in the archaeological record. These vernacular taxonomies will insert a familiarity that will extend beyond the mere classification of projectile points. The entrenched terminology of the discipline will linger on, and supporting modes of thinking will not disappear from mainstream archaeology simply because aboriginal people disapprove of the labels and categories that distinguish eras and archaeological cultures. At least for the near future, reserves and other aboriginal communities will represent the locus of this variety of internalist archaeology. Nevertheless, aboriginal people have come to learn how archaeological terms and categories have been developed with the purpose of claiming a cultural affinity for their creators. As western settlement expanded over Indian land, native toponymy was systematically erased and transformed into a Euro-Canadian cultural landscape. In a like manner, the practices and terms adopted by the archaeological establishment in naming type sites ensured that a Canadian identity superseded the aboriginal provenance. In the current process of land claiming, toponymy has resurfaced as a convenient tool to establish the edges of customary lands. Aboriginal researchers will find that in recalling and mapping their traditional lands, they can also reclaim, rediscover, and research the folklore of the landscape. Potentially new archaeological sites can be discovered because the ancient toponyms recorded the activity conducted at these locales. Taking a lesson from the land-claims experience, native researchers might begin by adopting more aboriginal names for archaeological cultures, which would encourage ties to ancient peoples through terms and categories. With or without the internal dialogue on archaeology, symbols from antiquity are already directing the discourse of aboriginal people. Too often archaeologists are unwilling to admit the influence of popular culture on notions of the past, dismissing or underestimating its impact on scholarly research. However, misinformation, coupled with the tendency to revere a putative aboriginal utopia, has led some to embrace the veracity of concepts attributable to an ancient wisdom, when in fact these concepts are little more than feel-good messages contrived by contemporary shamans catering to a New Age sensibility. A case in point is

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the holistic ideology ostensibly embodied by the stone circles that are known on the plains as medicine wheels and have emerged as muchloved analytical tools. Blackfoot-speakers refer to them as o’takainaka’si (plural, o’takainaka’siksi), or wheel, and the medicine comes from the implied sacred mystery. Perhaps his close association with Blackfootspeakers had inspired George Bird Grinnell when he introduced the phrase “medicine wheel” in an 1895 issue of the popular outdoor magazine Forest and Stream. He used it to describe a stone construction atop Medicine Mountain in Wyoming that was said to resemble Mesoamerican calendar stones (Grinnell 1922). Curiosity as to its origin, meaning, and antiquity led S.C. Simms (1903) to undertake an expedition to find people among the Sioux and Crow who could provide some details about this “peculiar structure” and its meaning, but his queries were soon frustrated by the meagre data provided by his informants and by the vagaries of translation. George Bird Grinnell (1922) leapt back into the fray to elucidate what had eluded his colleague. He attributed the monument alternately to stories that gave credit to “little people” who lived in caves scattered around the mountain, to Shoshonian tribesmen for whom the monument symbolically represented their bands, and to Cheyennes for whom it represented a medicine lodge in ground plan. After this minor debate subsided, medicine wheels sporadically rolled off the presses in scholarly journals over the next few decades (Brumley 1988), although explaining their origin in the absence of systematic archaeological study still required deft mental contortions (Wilson 1981). Medicine wheels began to circulate again in popular culture with the publication of Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm (1972), an Oglala Sioux writer who presented his vision to a new generation eager to find meaning in these stone circles. Ostensibly founded on traditional Sioux philosophy and liberally spiced with fantasy, fiction, and invented narratives, the symbol was fervently accepted in the popular imagination with all its alleged Siouan significance. Ignoring the anthropological research on these stone structures and despite near-unanimous denunciation of his scholarship, the author combined rustic illustrations with florid prose to squeeze “traditional native thought” into a circle of stones and in doing so produced an instant classic. Perhaps the preceding decade had thrown the doors of perception off their hinges, but before long the volume was a must-read for every flower child going to seed. Coeval with Storm’s paperback volume was a Science magazine article by James Eddy (1974), an astronomer by vocation but an

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archaeologist by avocation who purportedly discovered astronomical alignments radiating from the cairn, spokes, and rim of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming. Subsequently, medicine wheel inquiry began to follow two trajectories. A self-selected coterie investigated the wheels as archaeological phenomena but declined to ascribe any specific ceremonial function to them. No such misgivings were apparent in the other camp, whose members were intent on ascribing meaning, power, and totemic animals to the cardinal directions, as well as lessons for achieving psychic harmony with the universe. These spiritual teachings ultimately became fodder for New Age philosophy, and medicine wheels became emblematic of high plains ideology. Medicine wheels may not have resonated with the same New Age theme when mobilized by aboriginal scholars as analytical tools, but in aboriginal communities they have become an inexplicably important part of visualization methods of healing, learning, and empowerment. Given the notions encapsulated in the pseudophilosophical discourse of Seven Arrows, no one should wonder why the enigmatic medicine wheel should metamorphose from an arcane reminder of antiquity to a malleable icon of aboriginal spiritual enlightenment. The real surprise is the rapidity with which it crossed the divide from fringe concept to mainstream thought. Wherever writers invoke the philosophy of the medicine wheel, their vision comes from the same blueprint described by Storm (1972) and they preserve the basic text used to denote the power associated with each point of the spiritual compass. Reinventing the medicine wheel has obscured a sincere desire on the part of aboriginal people to invoke the traditions of their cultures as they discover new career paths and to make their career choices comprehensible to their audience. Whether the medicine wheel will persist as an analytical tool or fall by the wayside as yet another deflated fad will become clear in time. One more point has to be made about this dialogue. Aboriginal people developed unique concepts of antiquity in the absence of Western archaeological thought, and these form the basis of traditional narratives. If internalist archaeology is to reflect that uniqueness, it must use the stories from ancient times to balance the influence of Western archaeology. Fortunately, archaeology is tailor-made for imagining the past within an oral tradition, since both archaeology and oral traditions tap into history from unwritten sources. Because aboriginal archaeologists seek ways to make meaningful contributions to the broader discipline, they must take the lead in defining the details that will bring

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substance to an internalist sense of the past. Unfortunately, aboriginal people have not been well served by archaeology, as it has tended to be dismissive of their folklore when it did not conform to scientific explanation. In archaeological texts and articles, folklore has been invoked in an ad hoc manner that leaves the impression of a chaotic, rambling sermon rather than an exercise in constructing archaeological theory. Advocates of a scientific version of the past saw no room for it in their research and explicitly warned against “accepting folk knowledge – let alone implicit folk knowledge – as the basis for describing the past” (Binford 1981, 25). Distrust of traditional narratives and oral histories was a founding tenet of anthropological thought, so there is no reason to expect that this situation will change any time soon. Therefore, the burden falls on internalist archaeology to elevate the status of folk knowledge from storytelling to research paradigm. As an antidote to this anthropological bias, native archaeologists have to undertake the task of rehabilitating oral tradition and in this way bring coherence to an internalist sense of the past. They should begin this exercise by examining the structure of traditional thought and sorting through its levels of abstraction to reveal its inherent lucidity. Organizing devices become necessary because internalist archaeology will require a theoretical template to motivate and guide future research. If traditional thought is organized by degrees of abstraction, the apparent chaos typically associated with oral history is removed and the patina of irrationality is lifted off folklore. Instead, traditional practices interact with a world view through messages transmitted by oral narratives. Information is blended into the storyline, which acts to bind these messages together in a legend and transmit them across time. The acts of hunting and gathering are informed by ecological parameters, and creative tales are the beguiling deposits in mnemonic libraries. By distinguishing these activities through the effective application of archaeological methods, internalist archaeology can determine the time depth of the ideas expressed in cultural narratives.

an internalist guide for managing abstraction Since, in the traditional world view, mythology acts as a mediating device connecting higher with lower levels of abstraction, as represented by customs, the goal of internalist research is to decipher the ecological messages encrypted in oral narratives. Those old stories transmitted

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from ancient times allow each generation to engage in a dialogue via the meaning embedded in a myth. For internalist archaeology, mythology is a reservoir of explanation that has been ignored by mainstream research but that can be the basis for this brand of archaeological research. Since the current generation wishes to participate in this dialogue, its contribution may begin with its appropriating archaeological methods for this purpose. Beyond field and laboratory methods lies the greater challenge of managing abstraction and contending with theorizing. Like the methods that archaeologists borrow from other disciplines, the lessons learned in the development of the social sciences, such as sociology, are instructive in this instance. Writing on sociological theory in the post–World War II years, Robert Merton (1945, 1948) decried his colleagues’ use of the term “theory.” Some researchers, he opined, had got lost in their empirical studies, while others were prone to dispense with data gathering in their rush to present explanatory scenarios (Merton 1945). The former group sought assurance in statistics, even though they often stopped short of explaining the significance of their numbers. The latter group disregarded the triviality of observations, preferring to seek the sociological laws that govern human interactions. However, in constructing sociological theory, both groups tended to confuse methodology with theories of human behaviour in large societies. The problem lay in the growing pains of a fledgling discipline, unsure of its footing in an academic milieu. The mature sciences, such as chemistry or physics, which could deal with higher orders of abstraction, were no model for sociologists, because thousands of careers had already been devoted to finding explanations for the obvious. Sociology enjoyed no such luxury of devotees. Therefore, it could not be confident of articulating “sociological laws” and instead had to content itself with statements of general orientation, sociological concepts (for example, status, Gemeinschaft, or anomie), post factum sociological interpretations, and empirical generalizations. Therefore, Merton surmised, the discipline should assess concepts and the methodology that contributed data for sociological theorizing in order to strengthen connections between theorybuilding and empirical research. One of the problems had been that sociologists concentrated on the destination without examining the approach, so that all the intermediary steps appeared disconnected and discontinuous. The result was a medley of statements called sociological theory, a theory that seemed to eschew rational steps in favour of leaps of logic. The remedy, Merton

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advised his colleagues, was “to create small families of empirically verified theorems” rather than attempting immediately “to create total systems of sociological thought” (Merton 1948, 165). This route would potentially lead to connections between “empirical research, on the one hand, and systematic theorizing unsustained by empirical test, on the other” (Merton 1945, 172). He urged sociologists to emulate mature sciences in the way they dealt with their observations and search for sociological theories for specific types of phenomena. His prescription depended on their creating theories suited to limited ranges of data and thus advancing in orderly procession to higher levels of abstraction, rather than drifting aimlessly towards a vaguely defined destination. Like the sociology of Merton’s era, internalist archaeology is just now finding its footing, and like any fledgling discipline, it faces the challenges of managing abstraction and theorizing. In fact, the sociology of that era was further along because by Merton’s time many careers had been devoted to the subject. Like those sociologists, native people who wish to examine their culture’s ancient lore must find specific observations that are testable within a research regime. For an internalist sense of the past to invite serious consideration of its explanations for artifacts, it must consist of more than opinions and general orientations. Folklore research in archaeology is a social instrument that aboriginal people can use to manage their environment to their advantage. Since it is a social construct, the lesson contained in the sociological debate might save internalist archaeology from endless, needless rumination on an unattainable global summary. The real benefit might be found in looking for special theories to explain particular customs. The smallest steps make incremental progress towards the distant, albeit undefined, destination. The fact that traditional lifeways persisted successfully for so many generations shows their high degree of effectiveness. Even so, to draw them into a research strategy, internalist archaeology must find ways to demonstrate their potency so that they may withstand the critical scrutiny of peer review. Simply stating “We say it, so therefore it is” will never be an acceptable answer for a skeptical audience in a media-savvy world. General statements, too, bring no clarity. For example, the environmental movement habitually portrays the noble savage as the poster boy for a healthy earth. Such caricatures express opinion; they do not show us how to construct a testable hypothesis. Indeed, the daunting task of implanting folklore in a modern research milieu might seem a little like trying to practise a bush economy in the heart of a modern

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city. However, the only reason it is difficult to define the qualities that folklore can bring to research is that folklore has not received much attention beyond ethnographic analogy. Making the connection between environmental cues and narrative themes can aid in narrowing the parameters in a search for empirical confirmation, or refutation, of specific customs. What is needed is a predictive model, refined to be sensitive to those cues and based upon the ecological messages in a story. Rather than expending time, effort, and resources scouring the whole environment, researchers can confine their areas of study to specified limits, such as proximity to rivers, where specific habitats might have higher probability for data collection. Sampling methods, which are well developed in archaeology, can contribute specific observations. With a predictive model in tow, researchers can proceed to higher levels of abstraction by proposing an experiment designed to test a hypothesis based on a traditional narrative. The prediction builds on the notion that there is substance to the narrative-based hypothesis. Testing it may entail finding evidence while sampling according to the guidelines of the predictive model, given the environmental cues embedded in a story. Approaching the highly abstract concept of world view might include re-examining the environmental basis of ritual culture. For aboriginal people, whose cultures and identities are found in oral narratives, each generation must determine how best to use such knowledge. They must seek ways to gain a fuller understanding of particular customs and then disseminate the result to the larger community of archaeology. The present generation continues this practice by adapting such narrative lessons, and one way to do this is to construct theories for ancient artifacts visible in the archaeological record. A reasonable starting point might be to implement methodological procedures borrowed from the broader discipline to investigate narrative properties systematically so that they acquire new meaning for a modern audience. Internalist archaeology seeks to add clarity to research problems by defining theories based upon the accumulation of data. Organizing customs and legends in a hierarchy aids the search for a viable structure that is familiar to and compatible with mainstream archaeology. Under such circumstances, folklore acts as the functional equivalent of middle-range theory in modern archaeology. The intent of such limited-range theorizing is not to nullify ancient customs, but rather to contribute new insights for a better understanding of cultural practices.

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Traditional narratives are to a culture’s world view what middlerange theorizing is to archaeology: both play the role of binding high levels of abstraction to observed data. Therefore, they can function easily in an equivalent role. Middle-range theory “is widely regarded as a useful means by which archaeologists can reconstruct human behaviour from a materialist and rationalist perspective” (Trigger 1995, 450). While its merits are debatable, especially those concerning the uniformitarianism implied in its use, there is no doubt that middle-range theory has been an influential guiding force in archaeology in the last few decades. As applied by processualists, it seeks to infer patterns of human behaviour predicated on the assumption that past and present human cognition are interchangeable. Limited-range theorizing aids sociologists in their efforts to make inferences about behaviour within extant social systems in the same way that middle-range theorizing helps scholars make inferences about behaviour in long-extinct societies (Raab and Goodyear 1984). Internalist archaeology can benefit by employing a similar device to find meaning in the customs associated with traditional cultures. In pursuing its goals, internalist archaeology can validate traditional thought, construct theories based on folklore, and determine the antiquity of folklore in a culture system. Research into ancient lore actually offers us the option of finding something – for a change – instead of always losing something.

concluding remarks Internalist archaeology is the corollary of a dialogue that began when aboriginal people encountered the world system. The First Nations witnessed the transformation of their cultural landscapes when nation-states annexed their lands and appropriated their natural wealth to fuel capitalist economies and bankroll nationalist aspirations. That archaeology should be a convenient creation of hegemonic powers intent on usurping Indian land is not reassuring and may account for much of the indifference to, or antipathy directed towards, the discipline. An internal dialogue is necessary because the undercurrent of suspicion concerning the nature and character of archaeology runs deep in the aboriginal community. Aboriginal people begin their internal dialogue by setting up an agenda that does not merely parrot that of the mainstream. Their concern is to do more than employ the methods of mainstream archaeology in their investigation of antiquity. It is the voice that articulates nativist thought in the dialogue with the larger world. It is the vehicle that

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conveys the perspectives that aboriginal people hold about antiquity. Perhaps because archaeology is an imported discipline that introduces uncertainty, its practitioners are vulnerable to the charge that they create explanations that are ideologically driven and thus unacceptable. The internal dialogue confronts the world out there to allay latent suspicions about what was considered alien and dangerous. One benefit that comes with researching antiquity with archaeological methods is the opportunity to strengthen cultural ties to ancient peoples so as to mitigate the impact of a modern world on cultural traditions. Just as the passage from protest to professionalism requires a set of tenets inspired by aboriginal people’s sense of the past, moving beyond protest and resistance will require some form of rapprochement with archaeology. The reality is that professional accreditation is assigned by the institutions that sponsor archaeological research. The dearth of aboriginal authors is but one symptom of the under-representation of internalist perspectives. The only way to insert some parity is to encourage aboriginal students to consider archaeological careers. The need to resist the hegemony of imperialist archaeology may yet prove to be the most compelling reason why aboriginal people should embrace careers in archaeology. In the longer term, such an orientation will become the point of departure for those who hope to propose competing theories that will assert their sense of ancient history. Once they are beyond protest, they will need to articulate those tenets so that internalist archaeology will have a practical guide for imagining the past. The awakening of internalist archaeology in the First Nations is a natural response to secular antiquity. Formerly, a perception of the past as a spirit nation brought the mythic era into the daily lives of aboriginal people. Secularism and modernity brought different ways of explaining ancient times because the modern age could not accommodate the mythic past. Mythology seemed destined for the fringes of explanation when absolute chronology and modern research methods overruled the relative timing of mythic events. Internalizing archaeology is the antidote, since it occurs within a community that has its own sense of the past. Since Euro-American archaeologists find nothing of their ancestry in America’s antiquity, they can only present externalist perspectives – like spectators to some ancient drama. Aboriginal people can present an internal viewpoint – like actors in that ancient drama. Therefore, internalist archaeology finds its parallels not in the colonial brand practised in America but in the archaeology of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Colonized people – such as those in Australia or Polynesia – whose

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history mirrors that of North American aboriginal people, will find their way to a similar appointment with archaeology. Their experience will inevitably follow its own unique trajectory because it is a specific heritage within general human history. Each group may have its own version of antiquity, but their hypotheses must convince even those who are disinterested listeners. If theorizing about the past becomes a form of propaganda, only a narrow audience will hear the opinions that ignore broader explanations. Politically motivated research is always hazardous; all we can do is offer an alternative based on a rational understanding of antiquity. If internalist explanations contribute real insight about the past, they will be contrasted with competing theories. The success of internalist archaeology will be measured by the universal appeal of theories that emanate from this discourse.

references Binford, L.R. 1981. Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths. London: Academic Press Brumley, J.H. 1988. “Medicine Wheels on the North Plains: A Summary and Appraisal.” Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series, no. 12. Edmonton Eddy, J.A. 1974. “Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel.” Science 184:1035–43 Grinnell, G.B. 1922. “The Medicine Wheel.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 24:299–310 Merton, R.K. 1945. “Sociological Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 50 (6):462–73 – 1948. Discussion of “The Position of Sociological Theory.” American Sociological Review 13 (2):163–8 Nabokov, P. 2002. A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Raab, L.M., and A.C. Goodyear. 1984. “Middle-Range Theory in Archaeology: A Critical Review of Origins and Applications.” American Antiquity 49 (2):255–68 Simms, S.C. 1903. “A Wheel-Shaped Stone Monument in Wyoming.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 5 (1):107–10 Storm, H. 1972. Seven Arrows. New York: Ballantyne Books Trigger, B.G. 1995. “Expanding Middle-Range Theory.” Antiquity 69:449– 58

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Watkins, J. 2000. Indigenous Archaeology. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press Wilson, M. 1981. “Sundances, Thirst Dances, and Medicine Wheels.” In Megaliths to Medicine Wheels: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Chacmool Conference, edited by M. Wilson, K.L. Road, and K.J. Hardy, 333–70. Calgary: University of Calgary Yellowhorn, E.C. 2002. “Awakening Internalist Archaeology in the Aboriginal World.” p hd dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University

14 Wise Counsel: Bruce Trigger at McGill University MICHAEL S. BISSON

introduction This chapter highlights the profound impact that Bruce Trigger has had on the Department of Anthropology at McGill University and on the university as a whole. As his colleague for thirty years, I have been privileged to work with Bruce and to see first-hand his steadying influence on the operation of the department and on the delivery of our teaching programs. Long before mentoring of new staff became an official policy at McGill, Bruce took on that function both with our younger colleagues and with many of our graduate students. I was one of many to benefit. As chair for the past six years, I have many times sought his advice and counsel. It is from the perspective of both a colleague and a friend that this account is written. Other than a year of teaching at Northwestern in Illinois while he was completing his dissertation, Bruce Trigger has spent his entire career at McGill University. His loyalty to Canada, McGill, and Montreal has repeatedly caused him to spurn lucrative offers from elsewhere. He was recruited in 1964 by Richard Salisbury and at the time became the sole archaeologist among seven anthropologists in a joint department of sociology and anthropology (Trigger 1997). Indeed, he was initially hired not strictly because he could teach archaeology, but because he could teach courses in sociocultural and physical anthropology as well and specifically because his Egyptian expertise qualified him to teach

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“Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East.” Salisbury, who was concerned with building the international reputation of McGill, could not have made a better choice, but perhaps even he did not anticipate the extent to which Bruce would become not only an exceptional scholar, but also an outstanding teacher and a discrete yet highly influential voice in the administration of the department, the Faculty of Arts, and the university. It is impossible for words to do justice to all of the contributions Bruce has made to McGill, but here I would like to touch on the highlights in the following areas: his influence on the intellectual life and direction of the department; his contributions to and influence on the direction of the university; his philosophy of teaching; and his contributions to the broader community, both academic and non-academic.

th e i n t e l l e c t u a l l i f e o f t h e d e p a r t m e n t It has been through leading by example that Bruce Trigger has most profoundly influenced the intellectual life of the anthropology department. By demonstrating that it is possible to be a highly productive scholar while carrying a full teaching load and doing more than a normal share of administrative tasks, he has set a standard for all of us to emulate. Beyond this more general influence, he has played a key role in shaping the growth of the department. The Department of Anthropology split from Sociology in 1968. Under the leadership of Richard Salisbury, it had as its primary focus the anthropology of development, a subject in which Salisbury was a world authority. But opinion on the way development should be approached was not unified. Salisbury’s theoretical orientation was fundamentally empirical and pragmatic. He believed that it was possible for scholars to work in cooperation with governments for the benefit of aboriginal peoples, and he was involved in those years in the negotiations between aboriginal communities and the Quebec government over the development of the massive James Bay hydroelectric scheme. A second approach to development took a Marxist, and more confrontational, perspective, and it was centred around the other senior development specialist at McGill, Peter Gutkind. These two powerful personalities gathered around them like-minded colleagues and graduate students, and by the 1970s and 1980s their rivalry had become a significant problem. The battle between the two factions focused on the nature and theoretical orientation of course offerings and other topics. In retrospect it may seem trivial, but it was magnified by an

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accident of history, coinciding with circumstances, both economic and political, that created significant growth in the university. Nothing brings out misbehaviour among academics more than conflicts over hiring, promotion, and tenure. The decision-making process in the department was, and still is, highly democratic. All academic staff, as well as representatives of both graduate and undergraduate students, have both voice and vote on all important decisions, including hiring. However, instead of using formal votes to decide issues by majority rule, the department – by long tradition – had always tried to reach consensus. Votes were rarely taken before substantial agreement had been reached. In practical terms, this was a recipe for paralysis, and meetings were often long and acrimonious. Although he had not been at McGill long, Bruce had already established himself as a first-rate scholar and as someone who was seen as both fair and at arm’s length from the rival factions. He was therefore elected department chair, serving from 1970 to 1975. This was a period of large-scale turnover in the department, with many new professors being hired, and consequently, debate over replacements and new programs was vigorous. Bruce did not remain neutral. He had strong ideas about the direction the department should take. But he was always open to opposing views, and his handling of meetings was very even-handed. By serving as an honest broker, he successfully maintained peace in a time of considerable ferment. His ability to mediate between the two factions may well have prevented the department from splitting. The department certainly owes much of its current relaxed state of collegial relationships to Bruce Trigger’s calm leadership during those difficult times. From the beginning, Salisbury had envisioned a “four fields” p hd program, yet almost all those he hired were development specialists. His hiring of Bruce helped to address this problem. As noted above, Bruce was hired in large part because he could teach a full-year graduate course covering linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology to prepare students for their comprehensive exams; he also taught an undergraduate course on the ethnology of the Middle East. As chair, Bruce presided over a major expansion of the department, and he used his considerable political skills to broaden our disciplinary coverage, bringing in other archaeologists, for example. This permitted the institution of a graduate program in archaeology. His influence also resulted in the expansion of the department’s expertise in topics other than development. One was the study of the nature and evolution of social inequality, a subject currently being investigated from a

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variety of perspectives by fully a third of the department, including both archaeologists and sociocultural anthropologists. Following his term as chair, Bruce has continued, on a more practical level, to shoulder his fair share of the everyday duties of running the department. He has never avoided a committee assignment and has served in nearly every post, from first-year undergraduate adviser to chair of the graduate committee. His service in the latter post was extremely valuable and fortuitous. His lengthy tenure as graduate chair coincided with the period of maximum ideological division within the department. Given the strong tutorial orientation of our graduate program, personal and working relationships between advisers and students were, and are, particularly important. The charged atmosphere of ideological division between staff members, and often between their students as well, created high levels of stress among some graduate students. Bruce’s fairness, openness, tact, and concern for the success and well-being of all the graduate students, no matter what their ideological orientation, diffused many potentially difficult situations.

contributions to the university Like many other universities, McGill routinely tries to draft its finest academics into administrative posts. Bruce has resisted taking high office in the faculty, preferring to pursue his many scholarly projects, but he has nevertheless played an active role in and had a strong influence on both faculty and university affairs. Because of his diplomatic skills and his reputation for fairness, honesty, and wisdom, he has been repeatedly called upon by the university to serve on or lead committees dealing with particularly difficult and sensitive issues. At various times he has chaired the Faculty of Arts Curriculum Committee, participated in the cyclical reviews of departments, and served on advisory committees to select the dean of arts (three times), the vice principal research, the vice principal academic (twice), and the principal. One of his most sensitive tasks was as chair of the Joint Committee of McGill University and the Joint Board of Theological Colleges. It fell to the committee to clarify the relationship between the independent Faculty of Religious Studies and the rest of the university after an ill-advised attempt to restructure that faculty’s administrative relationship had created serious rifts. Bruce’s service to the university culminated in his election for two consecutive terms as one of two representatives of academic staff on the Board of Governors. In that capacity, he played a

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major role in representing academic interests on a board that is strongly dominated by members of the business community who see the university through the lens of a corporate model (of the board’s approximately forty members, only two are elected academic representatives and two are professors appointed by the Senate). His resistance to that model was based on his belief that understanding the world can best be achieved in an atmosphere of academic freedom and theoretical diversity unconstrained by short-term or strategic economic considerations. Although these important posts may be the most noteworthy, Bruce personally enjoys the smaller administrative tasks where he feels he can make a difference to individuals. These include his long-term involvement with the Redpath Museum and his service in the dayto-day advising of undergraduate and graduate students. His contributions to the Redpath Museum are a good example of the way he has helped build McGill. Founded over a century ago by William Dawson, the Redpath Museum remains the only natural history museum in Montreal. Although it primarily served as a repository for Dawson’s large palaeontological and geological collections, as well as for extensive biological collections, the museum did receive some ethnological and archaeological donations, particularly in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. These included important collections of ethnographic material from the South Pacific; a large amount of African material culture gathered by the McGill Congo Expedition of 1933; archaeological artifacts from Egypt, including an excellent sample of predynastic pottery; part of the large collection of European Palaeolithic stone tools made by Henry Ami in the 1920s and 1930s; and a sample of artifacts from the famous excavations by Dorothy Garrod and Theodore McCown in the Mount Carmel Caves, Israel. Although the museum had already displayed some of its ethnographic material by the time Bruce arrived at McGill, almost all of the material had been placed in storage and much of it had been moved to another location. Some specimens had been loaned to other institutions for safekeeping. Bruce was interested in seeing the Egyptian material and was shocked to discover that the ethnographic collection was being stored in boxes in an unheated garage. When he first saw the storage area, he found some of the boxes under a broken window with snow accumulating on top of them. Over the next decade, acting as the “honorary curator of ethnology” at the museum, he was able both to get the material back in safe storage within the museum and to repatriate most of the

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objects on loan (such as collections of Roman jewels and coins). He convinced the university to hire a professional conservator to prevent deterioration of the ethnographic specimens, and urged that the storage room be renovated to bring it up to modern standards. He was instrumental in recruiting Barbara Lawson, who began as a conservator and has become the first full-time curator of ethnology, and in 2004 he saw the culmination of his efforts with the opening of an entire floor of the museum as a permanent ethnography gallery. An equally important contribution, both to McGill and to Canadian academia as a whole, has been Bruce’s long-standing advocacy of the independence of universities from the constraints imposed by government and corporate funding. These ideas were presented in a series of public lectures (Trigger 1992, 2002, 2003a), one of which has been published by the Royal Society of Canada. In brief, Bruce agrees with the consensus that higher education is essential to the functioning of a modern society and is a “birthright of all who can benefit from it” (Trigger 2003a, 5). He observes that the original role of the university as both keeper and creator of theological, philosophical, artistic, and scientific knowledge has undergone a radical shift in the past few decades. The trend is to turn the university into a factory, one based on a strict business model. In this “knowledge factory” paradigm, the job of the university is to turn out products consisting of an appropriately trained workforce and to generate knowledge that is treated “as a commodity or resource to be invested in and exploited rather than as information that is worthwhile for its own sake or because it provides individuals with a basis for making informed judgments about issues relating to themselves and their society” (Trigger 1992, 59). In decrying the quid pro quo relationship of business and government, where business argues that universities should be more self-funding but at the same time encourages government to fund “targeted” research at universities (i.e., research of direct use to business), Bruce notes that this model binds universities to the same short-term goals as business. It gives both patrons and government officials undue and ultimately dangerous influence over the direction of university research, an influence that undermines the ability of universities to “question the basic assumptions of international consumer society” (Trigger 1992, 61). To resist this trend, the university must avoid being co-opted by short-term political and business agendas and instead adopt a long-term perspective towards its research programs. As noted above, Bruce’s beliefs guided his participation on the Board of Governors.

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At the core of Bruce’s beliefs about the university’s role in society is his view that an important responsibility of academics in the humanities and social sciences is to discover and promote ways to solve social problems. In particular, the university must be free to investigate major problems, to identify developing problems that are not yet obvious, and, perhaps most important, to propose solutions. As an antidote to the “moral illiteracy” that comes from an overemphasis on technology and economy, students should be encouraged to pursue independent reflection about themselves and their societies, so that the knowledge that the university creates and that its students gain can be used to “benefit, not harm, humans” (Trigger 1992, 64). They must be taught to evaluate, not just absorb, the great welter of information that new information technologies are bombarding them with daily. Thus, the responsibility to continue the growth and dissemination of knowledge throughout society rests not only with universities as institutions, but also with the students. Universities are subject to complex and variable funding sources over which they often have little control. These include government subventions, tuition, and the earnings on endowments that can fluctuate dramatically with changes in governmental policy or turns in financial markets. As Bruce emphasized in his convocation address at the University of Toronto, alumni must not abandon the institutions that helped prepare them for both professional and personal fulfilment (Trigger 2003a). They should actively support the preservation of a university environment in which the unrestricted search for knowledge and understanding in all fields supersedes the short-term strategic interests of governmental and corporate funding sources. Those who have gained success in life through a university education must guard against the temptation to abandon the principle of taxpayer support of universities in favour of ever-higher tuition, as such an approach risks limiting access for deserving but less-affluent students. Bruce urged the graduates, as responsible citizens, to help return to society the benefits they have received by supporting generous government funding of higher education (2003, 6).

p h i l o s o p h y o f te a c h i n g In teaching, Bruce has always expected excellence, both from himself and from his students. In many universities, the most productive scholars often use their distinguished research records to negotiate reduced teaching loads. Bruce, in contrast, has unfailingly undertaken any

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courses the department has asked him to teach, including, as noted above, courses in ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology. The tremendous breadth of his knowledge has enabled him to be the most versatile teacher in the department. At the graduate level, Bruce began serving on committees as soon as he arrived at McGill, and he supervised three ma theses in ethnology from 1969 to 1975. However, he did not begin supervising p hd students until the graduate program in archaeology was instituted in 1976–77. His first completed archaeology supervision was Ronald Williamson’s ma thesis in 1979, and his first p hd student to complete the doctoral program was Robert Pearce in 1984. From that time to the present, Bruce has produced a total of ten ma and fourteen p hd students; in addition, as an active committee member, he has worked with many other students, primarily in archaeology but also in sociocultural anthropology. His graduate supervision has always required his students to meet the highest standards of performance; yet it is conducted in a friendly and collegial manner that encourages an exchange of ideas that has benefited both the students and Bruce. He is justly famous for his quick turnarounds and thorough comments on paper and thesis drafts. Even lengthy manuscripts are inevitably returned to students promptly, complete with substantive comments and suggestions for improvement, and they are always thoroughly copy-edited. In his care for his students and his dedication to the completion of their programs, he has no equal in the department. Much of Bruce’s graduate supervision has had a specific focus. Beginning in the late 1970s, he began recruiting students interested in Ontario Iroquoian archaeology, training them in the study of settlement pattern analysis. It can fairly be said that he is responsible for the entire generation of Iroquoianists that came to exist two decades later. Moreover, in keeping with his dedication to Canadian scholarship, the greater part of his graduate supervision has focused on Canadian native peoples. Virtually all of his graduates have successfully entered careers in archaeology, holding both academic and museum posts and serving as heads of archaeological research firms dealing with cultural resource management. It should be noted that he has also had a major influence on students he did not formally supervise. His research accomplishments and his diligent supervision have inspired his students to excel in their studies and in their later careers. Finally, Bruce has excelled as an undergraduate teacher. As the person who designed the first course evaluation questionnaires used in the

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department, I have systematically monitored the results of those evaluations for over two decades. Bruce has consistently achieved outstanding levels of student satisfaction, as well as, significantly, equally high ratings on the “this course is intellectually challenging” question. Although he taught a wide range of courses in his first years at McGill, over the past fifteen years he has settled into a rotation of two intermediate-level courses, “Ancient Egyptian Civilization” and “Social Institutions of Early Civilizations”; a core course, “History of Archaeological Theory”; and a seminar, “Current Issues in Archaeology.” These classes are outstanding examples of the positive results of cutting-edge research in combination with excellence in teaching. Anyone familiar with Bruce’s writing and teaching might immediately make the following observation about two of his most widely influential books: A History of Archaeological Thought (1989) is an outgrowth of his history of theory course, while the monumental Understanding Early Civilizations (2003a) was derived from his course on social institutions. Many of Bruce’s writings have become important teaching tools at the university level. One of his first books, Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory (1968), a small book that today, more than thirty years later, remains a basic primer on the study and interpretation of prehistoric settlement patterns, was widely adopted as a methods text in the decade after it was published. A History of Archaeological Thought, a revised edition of which is now in press, is the definitive text used in advanced courses in archaeological theory throughout the world. Bruce has consistently used his teaching as a sounding board for new ideas and explanations. He modestly credits the feedback from students in undergraduate courses as well as in his current issues seminar and graduate tutorials as playing an important role in refining his ideas and in forcing him to clarify their presentation. He has been fortunate over the years to have taught so many excellent undergraduates, men and women who have gone on to distinguish themselves in postgraduate studies and professional careers. In turn, his students both appreciate and respond to the fact that he values their work and treats their views seriously. Bruce has also served as an outstanding representative of McGill to Montreal, Quebec, and Canada. Indeed, he sees informing the public of the results and significance of scholarly research to be an essential duty of professional academics. He has been featured in both press and television interviews, primarily on subjects related to the role of First Nations in Canadian history and culture. Although he is not well known outside of academia, his work has had a significant impact on how

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Canadians view the past and the native peoples who make up a fundamental part of our national heritage. One of the key reasons for his success is that his writings consistently challenge readers to question widely accepted beliefs and stereotypes. In The Children of Aataentsic (1976), a monumental two-volume work (900 pages) focusing on the Hurons and the fur trade, he showed that, far from being mindless savages, passive observers, or helpless victims of the colonization of New France, the aboriginal peoples played a complex and active role in determining events. This role had gone unrecognized by historians, who had traditionally relied on the self-serving accounts of missionaries and government officials. Bruce expanded on this theme in Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (1985), whose message is that it is impossible to comprehend the history of Canada without understanding the crucial role played by the people who were here first. It could be argued that these books have transformed Canada’s perception of its history. The importance of Bruce’s work has also been widely recognized by indigenous Canadians. In 1989 he was inducted into the Great Turtle Clan of the Hurons and given the name Nyemea, meaning “one who knows how to do” or “one who finds the way.” He values this honour more than he does many of his conventional academic distinctions.

conclusion Finally, it is impossible to take the measure of Bruce Trigger without mention of his commitment to the creation of a moral and just society. In his life, in his teaching, and in his research, Bruce works for a better, more humane world. His humanitarian principles are manifested in his quest to understand the origins and nature of power and human inequality, in his contributions to First Nations identity, and in his support for the protection of their rights. Just as he has asked, “Who owns the past?” he now forcefully asks, “To whom do universities belong?” Given the difficulties faced by universities in the present economic and political climate, he is deeply concerned with the need to maintain the independence of thought and enquiry that is at the core of university life. As an intellectual leader, Bruce Trigger has had a profound influence on his colleagues, on the structure of the department, and on the university. As he has always done, Bruce continues to provide wise counsel for students and colleagues alike. His intellectual influence extends well outside of anthropology. His work is animated by his knowledge that

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archaeology is unique in providing us with the big picture of human cultural evolution and, further, that archaeology’s necessary focus on material culture helps to mitigate the influence of ideological and elite concerns on the discipline. That being so, archaeology is the only discipline to look at material culture as an environment in which we live and that we both relate to and relate through. In the context of the social sciences, this is a novel perspective. In providing it, Bruce not only has enlivened the department, but has provided stimulating ideas for many other scholars at McGill. In all these ways, Bruce Trigger has been a central figure in McGill University for four decades.

references Trigger, Bruce G. 1968. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1976. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1985. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1992. “The University and the longue durée.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 6th ser., 3:57–77 – 1997. “Loaves and Fishes: Sustaining Anthropology at McGill.” Culture 17 (1/2):89–100 – 2002. “Producing Knowledge for Society.” Public lecture delivered at the symposium on “The Evolving University,” McGill University, Montreal – 2003a. “Convocation Address.” University of Toronto, Toronto – 2003b. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press

15 Bruce Trigger: Ambassador for Archaeology BRIAN FAGAN

What a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard … the crown of life, I’d say. There’s nothing better than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realm and banqueters up and down the palace sit in rank, enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixingbowl, the steward makes his rounds and keeps the wine cups flowing. (Fagles 1996, 211)

Archaeologists ultimately tell stories that describe and explain the past, not only for each other, but for the wider world. We are a modern-day equivalent of the tribal storyteller, recounting a tale by a flickering hearth or in a Homeric banquet hall. Our stories are as sophisticated as the most intricate of Homeric tales. In this volume, we are honouring Bruce Trigger, a master storyteller in archaeology, someone who has probed deeply into the past and made it sing. It has been a “fine thing” to read and listen to him expound some of archaeology’s deepest mysteries over many years. Bruce Trigger is a major voice inside and outside the narrow world of our discipline. The great French historian Le Roy Ladurie, famous for his studies of European wine harvests and climate change, once remarked that there were two types of historians: parachutists and truffle hunters (Ladurie 1971). The parachutist observes the past from afar, floating slowly down to earth, surveying the vast landscape of ancient times. The truffle hunter, fascinated by treasures in the soil, keeps a nose close to the ground. Ladurie’s characterization applies with equal relevance

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to archaeologists. Most of us are truffle hunters, content to spend our careers in specialist realms. There is nothing wrong with this, for archaeology would not exist without us. Bruce Trigger is one of the few people who are both a parachutist and a truffle hunter, concerned as much with the general as the particular. Consider for a moment his extraordinary contribution to the literature of archaeology: 1 Major contributions to Nubian and Egyptian archaeology that lie outside the conventional frontiers of Egyptology (Trigger 1976b, 1993) 2 Detailed multidisciplinary researches into the archaeology and history of the Hurons that have changed the face of Iroquoian archaeology (Trigger 1976a) 3 Paper after paper, referred to in these pages, engaging the major theoretical issues of the day, not taking sides but concerned with dispassionate analysis (we may not agree with his analysis, but we cannot do without it) 4 Major synthetic works, including his seminal A History of Archaeological Thought (1989) and his recent comparative study of preindustrial civilizations (2003) All of us are in awe of the range and wealth of Bruce’s seminal contributions. But there is one aspect of his career that has received scant public mention. We live in tumultuous times, in a rapidly changing world where the value of archaeology, of the remote past, is questioned by many – for political motives, because of ignorance or disinterest, or simply because it gets in the way. I think that when all the dust settles and our descendants assess Bruce Trigger as an archaeologist, they will remember him first and foremost not as an expert fieldworker or seminal theoretician – he is both of those – but as an ambassador for archaeology. Bruce Trigger is a successful parachutist in Ladurie’s lexicon because he has always extended the disciplinary boundaries of the subject, taught students topics rather than narrow archaeology, and insisted that our discipline has a vital role to play in today’s society. Bruce was one of the first to celebrate, and insist on, the close links between Native American history and the archaeological record, to recognize the value of oral tradition (Trigger 1976a, 1986). He was a leader in linking archaeology with nationalism, in proclaiming that

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archaeology has no territorial boundaries, that it is a global concern (Trigger 1984, 1985). How many archaeologists of today have their work dissected in pitiless detail in Australia, India, Japan, and New Zealand – apart from the usual stamping grounds? Bruce Trigger is one of the few. Ambassadors have serious responsibilities, and those for archaeology are no exception. Bruce has assumed a leading role in telling the world that archaeology is important, that it is part of the essential fabric of the contemporary world. He believes, and states on every possible occasion, that archaeology is among the most important of the social sciences. And archaeological colleagues, academics in other disciplines, policy-makers, and the wider world take him seriously – which is more than you can say for many of us. The development of scientific archaeology was one of the great intellectual triumphs of the twentieth century. Bruce Trigger, the master storyteller, the parachutist and truffle hunter, has played a major role in archaeology’s coming of age, and he remains on the cutting edge today. We are fortunate that this extraordinary scholar is among us. All of us have learned more from him than perhaps we admit or realize. We all know that Bruce is a modest and self-effacing person. But we want him to know that we are awed by his erudition and perception, by his breadth of knowledge. We are grateful for his intellectual generosity and infinitely wiser because of him. This volume salutes Bruce Trigger as one of the great archaeologists of this generation, indeed of all time.

references Fagles, Robert. 1996. Homer: The Odyssey. New York: Viking Penguin Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. 1971. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the year 1000. Translated by Barbara Bray. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Trigger, Bruce G. 1976a. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1976b. Nubia under the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson – 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19:355–70

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– 1985. “The Past as Power: Anthropology and the North American Indian.” In Who Owns the Past? edited by Isabel McBryde, 11–40. Melbourne: Oxford University Press – 1986. “Prehistoric Archaeology and American Society.” In American Archaeology Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology, 1935–1985, edited by David J. Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, 187–215. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press – 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1993. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press – 2003. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press

16 Retrospection BRUCE G. TRIGGER

As the symposium out of which this book has grown drew closer, I found myself thinking about the past and trying to make sense of my career. The symposium and numerous informal discussions that followed it further stimulated this process. Consequently, I already had some ideas in mind when the editors asked me for an autobiographical sketch to accompany this publication. Most academics like to imagine that they are free agents waging a Promethean struggle to impose their novel insights and superior understandings on others. In reality, most of what we believe, we have acquired in one way or another from our diverse social milieu. Social scientists must struggle to overcome the prejudices inherent in such ideas by systematically seeking to discern their logical inconsistencies and the failure of events to correspond with what they predict should happen. In the course of doing this, researchers learn about the origin and limitations of conventional ideas and this permits them gradually to replace old ways of thinking with new ones. The history of the social sciences is littered with brilliant theories that were supposed to explain all the problems of human behaviour but which sooner or later fell in whole or part by the wayside. This being the case, I perhaps should not have been as surprised as I was to discover how far back in my own life I could trace many of the key concerns that have shaped my career.

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first memories As far back as I can remember, I have sensed the complexity of factors that shape human behaviour. Because of this, I have rarely encountered a social scientist, no matter how much we disagreed, who did not have something to say that I found to be of interest. I believe that this openness resulted from the particular circumstances in which I grew up in the ethnic mosaic of southwestern Ontario during the charged years of World War II. I was born in the town of Preston, Ontario, now part of Cambridge, in June 1937. My father, John Wesley Trigger, was of English descent and had grown up on his father’s dairy farm near St Thomas, Ontario. He worked as an operator at the Ontario Hydro station in Preston, a government position that paid a modest salary but provided steady employment during the economic depression of the 1930s. I recall my mother saying how embarrassed she felt carrying meat home from the butchers through a park where unemployed men, who could not provide such luxuries for their families, were passing the time. Because my father worked a night shift every third week and my mother disliked being alone at night, a few years after they married they moved in with her parents in a house near the centre of Preston. My maternal grandmother, Maria Hoffman, was of German descent and my grandfather, Harry Graham, was of mixed Scottish and German ancestry, although he had grown up in a purely Scottish farm district not far from Preston. He was the youngest of ten children and had become a self-employed labourer who specialized in landscaping and the construction of basements, usually assisted by one or two employees. During the Depression he kept busy by investing some of his savings in land and building houses that he sold after World War II. He loved farm horses and kept a team of them at his house after they were no longer strictly necessary for his work. My grandfather and grandmother both had numerous relatives living nearby, and it seemed to me that Waterloo County, where Preston was located, was entirely populated by people of German and Scottish descent. I soon learned that my older relatives from each ethnic group expected very different behaviour from a child. My father’s English relatives regarded children as a different species from adults. They assigned them their own culture, contacts with adults were on an invitation-only basis, and children were expected always to display respect and selfcontrol in an adult’s presence. Among my German relatives, children

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Charles Wesley Trigger, Bruce’s grandfather (left); John Wesley Trigger, Bruce’s father; and Bruce. Photo taken in Preston on the occasion of a visit by Bruce’s grandfather.

and adults did not inhabit separate spheres. Children were expected to obey adults and were punished for not doing so, but nothing was kept from them. I can remember my grandmother and her sisters, in the presence of their young grandchildren, engaging in detailed discussions of reports of recent grisly murders and domestic violence. I am still not certain whether they thought we did not understand what they were talking about or believed that we should know about such things; perhaps it was some of both. My grandfather’s Scottish relatives likewise welcomed the participation of children in the routines of family life. They were remarkably tolerant and respectful of individual differences, but in return expected children to learn to be similarly respectful of the rights of others. While I personally preferred the approach of my Scottish relatives, I accepted the need to know how different branches of my family expected a child to behave and to conduct myself accordingly in their presence. Adapting to these requirements constituted a crash course in cultural relativism and the toleration of individual differences. As I grew older, I also became aware of the many ways in which these ethnic groups both wilfully and innocently misunderstood one another. After World War II, Ontarians of English origin frequently attributed Nazi atrocities to the nature of Germans. On the basis of what I knew about my own relatives, such claims were obviously nonsensical. Not

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only were my German relatives gentle and caring human beings but, as descendants of liberals who had fled Germany after 1848, they actively loathed German militarism and anti-Semitism. The presence of refugees from Nazi Germany in Preston had also provided a first-hand source of information about what was going on across the ocean. Next door to my grandparents lived a German teenager whose entire family had been murdered by the Nazis because they had been Social Democratic Party activists. I also realized, however, that my German relatives still exhibited much of the fear of authority that had led their ancestors to leave Germany. What they interpreted as the arrogance of English Canadians seemed to me to be a healthy and admirable self-confidence. In the extended family in which I lived, my contacts with my grandparents were more pervasive and influential than those with my parents. My father frequently had to sleep during the day, and although my mother did not work outside the home, she was able to leave me with my grandmother, which allowed her to pursue an active social life with few hindrances. As a result, I learned a great deal from my grandparents. My grandfather had grown up in a culture that preserved many of the traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment. A strong advocate of public education and government responsibility for social welfare, he was active on the left wing of the local Liberal Party organization. From my earliest days, he impressed on me the importance of social action and the need never to consider any individual or group as inherently better or worse than any other. It was never clear to me whether he was a deist or atheist, but he passionately believed in the inherent goodness of human beings and the perfectibility of human society. In her mid-twenties, my grandmother had recovered from an advanced case of Pott’s disease (tuberculosis of the spine) after she embraced Christian Science, not in the hope of being cured but in order to escape from the fears of damnation that her traditional Lutheran upbringing had instilled in her. Christian Science also teaches that human beings are inherently good. Hereafter, in gratitude for her recovery, she devoted her life to helping the less fortunate. Thus, from my grandparents, despite their very different beliefs, I learned to be self-reliant, to believe in human goodness, to treasure knowledge, and to consider the welfare of others. Every person had the right to enjoy the fruits of their labour, but no one had the right to profit while creating misery for others. Because my grandparents had little formal education, I also learned early on that such education is not a prerequisite for the development of a profound understanding of human affairs. Later in life I was also to realize that formal education does not always ensure the development of such knowledge.

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Beatrice Cooper, Bruce’s aunt (left); Bruce; and Gertrude Graham, Bruce’s mother. Photo taken in Preston about 1944.

From my family I also inherited religious tolerance. My grandmother appears never to have held my grandfather’s silence on matters of religion against him, and she was very fond of my father, who, in the spirit of James Fraser’s The Golden Bough, believed Jesus of Nazareth to be a corn myth rather than a historical person. Members of the rest of my extended family embraced Roman Catholicism and almost every Protestant church and sect. Religion was a significant aspect of life, but I saw it from a relativistic rather than a dogmatic perspective. There never was a fixed viewpoint for me to rebel against.

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During my first ten years, I also became interested in archaeology. In 1943 or 1944 my father caught chickenpox from me and, while he was confined at home, shared with me a lavishly illustrated book about ancient Egypt that he was reading. I was wonderstruck, and as soon as I had recovered, I quickly made my way through all the children’s books dealing with ancient Egypt in the public library located next to our house. After I had exhausted that source, Helen Wallis, the welcoming chief librarian, gave me permission to borrow books on Egypt from the adult section of the library. My interest in Egyptian archaeology stimulated an awareness of Ontario archaeology that was probably sustained by frequent reports in newspapers and magazines about Kenneth Kidd’s excavations at Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons between 1941 and 1943 and Wilfrid Jury’s ongoing excavations in Huronia. This interest was further encouraged by my great uncle Theodore C. Trigger, who took me to visit the Southwold Earthworks, a heavily fortified Iroquoian settlement located a short distance west of St Thomas, and introduced me to his own small collection of aboriginal relics. An innovative dentist, he is, to my knowledge, the first person bearing the surname Trigger who ever published a book: Notes on Methods of Filling Teeth with Gold Inlays (1910). My elderly Graham uncles also gave me the aboriginal artifacts that they had ploughed up on their farm, and they told me about the Ojibwas who in their childhood had still visited the graves of their ancestors in the farm bush. But my uncles kept the locations of those graves secret. In 1947 my father became chief operator at the hydroelectric station in St Marys, Ontario. Although, during the Depression and wartime, multigenerational households were common (there were at least three others on our block in Preston), I was delighted at the prospect of receiving more attention from my parents and welcomed the move. Unfortunately, patterns were set and my parents paid little more attention to me in St Marys than they had in Preston, a situation exacerbated as both of them suffered from bouts of poor health. A further move to Stratford in 1951 again disrupted the friendship networks I had established and left me rather isolated. As a consequence, I turned increasingly to my interest in ancient Egyptian and Iroquoian archaeology. These passions were accompanied by subsidiary interests in palaeontology, historical geology, and astronomy. While these interests resulted in my learning much about the historical sciences, none of them had any relevance to the high school curriculum of that period. I performed reasonably in my school work, but my heart and mind were elsewhere. My

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guidance counsellor told me that I should study history at university so I might qualify to become the head of a high school history department. I was, however, determined to study archaeology. To do that, I had to seek admission to the only undergraduate anthropology program in eastern Canada, which was at the University of Toronto. The extreme reliance on common sense explanations and the total lack of comparative perspective in the first-year history course I encountered at the university confirmed my preference for anthropology. Another possibility would have been to specialize in Near Eastern Studies, also at the University of Toronto, but the Egyptological focus in that department was heavily philological and hence unappealing to me.

university studies The University of Toronto, which I attended from 1955 to 1959, was an intellectual feast. The anthropology department was a small unit, with only seven full-time teaching staff. Yet the anthropologists were devoted to their students and a cleverly designed honours curriculum compensated for the small size of the department by exposing students to anthropologically related courses in other departments. I now realize that all of my subsequent major research projects have been influenced in some way by what I learned, or became interested in, at the University of Toronto. While Thomas McIlwraith, the head of the department, still taught a course on material culture using as a textbook R.B. Dixon’s The Building of Cultures, published in 1928, Edmund Carpenter instructed us in recent developments in communications and cognitive studies that introduced us to the work of Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis; William Dunning exposed us to all that was new in British social anthropology; and Ronald Cohen brought us up-to-date on what was happening in American cultural anthropology. Over two summers, Norman Emerson effectively taught me and many other students the rudiments of archaeological fieldwork. William J. MayerOakes offered a course on New World archaeology that introduced students to the latest developments in settlement pattern studies and ecological archaeology. In addition, Walter Kenyon, who worked at the Royal Ontario Museum, and Paul Sweetman, a member of the Ontario Archaeological Society, encouraged my archaeological interests. In other departments, the classicist Fritz Heichelheim taught a remarkable course on Greek and Roman history that in reality traced economic development in the Middle East and Europe from Palaeolithic

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Bruce Trigger working with two volunteers, Ault Park site, Ontario, 1957. (Courtesy Ontario Hydro, St Lawrence Power Project)

times until the end of the Roman Empire; L.C. Walmsley familiarized us with traditional Chinese culture; J. Walter Graham, a leading expert on the architecture of Bronze Age Cretan palaces, introduced us to the art history of the ancient world; the geneticist Norma F. Walker dealt with the biological basis of human behaviour; and the human geographer Georges Potvin convincingly argued the case for geographical possibilism. Two sociologists, Jean Burnet and Oswald Hall, exerted a major influence on my understanding of general social science theory and encouraged my professional development to an extent for which I will forever be grateful. The leisurely pace of undergraduate instruction in those days left ample time for students to discuss what they were learning, as well as anything else that interested them, with appropriate degrees of levity or

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seriousness. For me, one of the main forums for such discussions was Hutton House, a thirty-student, then all male, unit within the Sir Daniel Wilson Residence at University College, where I lived for four academic years. Hutton House was inhabited by students from across Canada, as well as from the West Indies and Germany. They were a culturally, politically, and individually diverse lot working to realize a broad range of academic and professional ambitions. The other major meeting place was the coffee shop at the Royal Ontario Museum, where undergraduate anthropology students met between and after classes. By my fourth year, this group included Richard Pearson and George MacDonald, who were to obtain their doctorates from Yale University before taking up posts at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Museum of Civilization respectively. Thomas Charlton and Peter Harrison also went on to the United States, where they studied Mesoamerican archaeology, but they did not return to Canada. Among the social anthropology students was Richard Lee. The wide-ranging discussions in these and other settings were an education in their own right. My early awareness of the complexity of human behaviour made me slow to reach firm conclusions about such matters. Those who knew me as an undergraduate will remember that when anthropological theories were being discussed, I usually had little to say. I often wondered if I would ever have anything to contribute that was theoretically worthwhile. I must have appeared to be an unpromising future professional archaeologist on such occasions. Throughout my career, writing, which can be done slowly and painstakingly, has remained my favourite mode of expression. Yet I was gradually shaping a theoretical position. Potvin’s course on human geography irrevocably convinced me of the untenability of ecological determinism. Likewise, my exposure to Boasian anthropology and British social anthropology, and to the very different cultural patterns of aboriginal North America and Africa, permanently immunized me against the attractions of unilinear evolutionism. These two convictions later made it impossible for me to embrace processual archaeology. On the other hand, the combined influence of Dunning’s and Cohen’s courses persuaded me to privilege the study of behaviour and processual change at the expense of culture, thereby aligning my thinking in at least one respect with what would soon characterize processual archaeology. As a result of my summer engagements with Ontario archaeology, I became totally disillusioned with culture-historical archaeology. The

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main issue being debated at that time was whether the Hurons had originated in the Toronto area and migrated north to the shores of Georgian Bay or had originated in the north and migrated south. No one seemed interested in why they might have done one or the other. Heichelheim had recommended that I read Gordon Childe’s more recent theoretical works, and when The Prehistory of European Society was published in 1958, I was delighted by Childe’s argument that the theoretical focus of archaeology should not be on culture but on the comparative study of prehistoric social and political organization. I was dismayed, however, by his frank admission that he could not discover how such studies might be done. Under pressure from McIlwraith, who held archaeology in low esteem, I thought of doing graduate work in social anthropology, going as far as to consider focusing on the relation between economics and political organization in the Hadhramaut region of southern Arabia. The solution to my dilemma came when Mayer-Oakes set me to read Gordon Willey’s Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru (1953). This monograph introduced a new sort of database and new techniques for studying prehistoric social and political organization. It is strange that Childe should have failed to consider such an approach, since, even if he did not read much about New World archaeology, he himself had used settlement pattern data to infer neolithic populations on the Scottish island of Rousay in the 1940s. I also began to investigate aspects of social science theory that were not at that time high priorities in archaeology. In the 1950s, there was widespread awareness of relativism in the social sciences. In the 1930s and 1940s, the idea that interpretations of archaeological evidence are unconsciously influenced by the beliefs of archaeologists had played an important role in the writings of the British classical archaeologist R.E. Collingwood, but by the 1950s his work had sunk into relative obscurity. On the other hand, the idea that the teaching of history was a form of political indoctrination was widespread among social scientists. From my reading of Childe’s works, I became familiar with the Marxist ideas of true and false consciousness and how, in the course of social change, progressive ideas can become reactionary ones. Through Childe, I was led to undertake a more detailed study of Marxist ideas. I accepted it as axiomatic that only materialist explanations could account for the behaviour of a species that was a product of biological evolution, and Marxism offered explanations for many aspects of human behaviour that ecological explanations failed to address. I found Marx to be a mediocre economist and recognized his

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unilinear evolutionism, which claimed to foretell the future as well as to explain the past and which he totally contradicted in some of his more analytical and less polemical writings, to be just another Victorian “god surrogate” that permitted atheists to go on deluding themselves that some kind of moral order was inherent in the universe. As a politician, Marx also left much to be desired. I did, however, find him to be an interesting commentator on current events, an insightful historian of the rise of capitalism, and above all a great social theorist. I was especially impressed by his productive synthesis of the key propositions that all human beings are shaped by the cultural traditions into which they are born but that as a species they are predisposed, when circumstances permit, to try to alter the status quo by promoting new social options that better serve their self-interest. I was also inspired by his demonstration that human beings collectively have the ability gradually to create a moral order that transcends narrow self-interest. That resonated with the Enlightenment liberalism that I had been exposed to as a child. My undogmatic reading of Marx was reinforced when I later encountered Jean-Paul Sartre’s Search for a Method (1963), a work that sought to rescue Marxism from Soviet dogmatism by stressing how it could be combined with a respect for cultural differences and individual freedom. For several years this impressive book, and the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960) from which it was drawn, remained at the centre of my thinking. In my final undergraduate year, I wrote a paper for Ronald Cohen in which I compared Gideon Sjoberg’s (1960) concepts of the pre-industrial city with detailed information about urban centres in five pre-industrial societies. This paper documented diversity that far exceeded what Sjoberg’s model had allowed for. The likelihood that this might be so was initially suggested by my knowledge of ancient Egyptian urban centres. This paper awakened my interest in comparative studies. The 1950s were a period of optimism in Canada. Contrary to their fears that the economy would fall back into recession after World War II, Canadians experienced a time of full employment, unprecedented general prosperity, and narrow and disciplined certainties that older people contrasted favourably with the miseries of the 1930s. Rapid technological advances were making life easier and more interesting, and medical science eliminated the fear of tuberculosis, polio, and many other infectious diseases. People believed predictions that increasing automation would soon create a three-day workweek. There was, of course, a pervasive threat of nuclear war, but people were encouraged to imagine

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that, should the worst happen, they might save their lives by crawling into jumbo-sized, brown paper bags that were claimed to be somewhat radiation proof. We were oblivious to the threat of strontium-90 from above-ground atomic tests and of the pollution that the burgeoning industries of which Ontarians were so proud were inflicting on the environment. Young Canadians, myself included, were proud of what our country was achieving and viewed American domination and its economic exploitation of our resources as the main threat to our future. Apart from those who came from intensely conservative families, we now thought of Canada as our only homeland. We unwittingly became the first generation of unhyphenated Canadians. In 1959 I won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to begin graduate studies at Yale University. Since there was no established graduate program in anthropology in Canada, there was no alternative to going abroad to study. Yet I went to the United States intending to return and work in Canada as soon as a teaching position became available, which is what I did. I find both erroneous and offensive the suggestion made by some younger colleagues that Canadians of my generation who studied in the United States are in some undefined way not really Canadian anthropologists. As graduation approached, McIlwraith told me that I would find anthropology at Yale to be a decade or more ahead of anything I had encountered at Toronto. He suggested that when I arrived I should keep my mouth shut and my ears open in order not to disgrace myself and my alma mater. This turned out to be unnecessary. My undergraduate training at the University of Toronto appeared to have been somewhat more idea-oriented and less factually grounded than that of the American anthropology students I encountered. Yet it had prepared me well for what lay ahead. I spent two years at Yale taking courses and reading for a set of comprehensive examinations covering all fields of anthropology. Some of the courses were very interesting and provided me with opportunities to write papers that contributed significantly to my professional development. I especially enjoyed learning about the development of anthropological theory from George Peter Murdock, cross-cultural research from Clellan Ford, the anthropology of law from Leo Pospisil, cultural change from Edward Bruner, economic anthropology from Sidney Mintz, and the Middle East from Maurice Freedman (visiting from the London School of Economics) and Rabbi Zigmond. For a course taught by James Bennyhoff on Andean archaeology, I wrote a paper on the

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symbolic nature of Mochica art that I have ever since wished I had revised for publication. I found myself learning much from those with whom I disagreed ideologically. They included Murdock and Pospisil, who were both politically right wing. I regarded studying for the comprehensives as largely a waste of my time and was not sorry when they were abolished a few years later. In the summer of 1959, I had examined the archaeological site files at the Royal Ontario Museum, hoping there might be enough information about Iroquoian sites in Ontario for me to produce a p hd thesis in the form of a settlement analysis modelled on Willey’s study of the Virú Valley. It soon became obvious that this was not the case. At Yale, I was invited by William K. Simpson to join the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Nubia, which was carrying out rescue archaeology within the area about to be flooded by the Aswan High Dam. I soon discovered that sufficient data had been collected in Lower Nubia by a series of systematic surveys carried out since 1907 to allow me to write a thesis analysing changing patterns of settlement in that region from about 4000 b.c. to a.d. 1500. Early in 1962 I was in charge of excavating the Meroitic to early Christian portions of a large settlement at Arminna West. I also had a chance to bring the database concerning Lower Nubian archaeological sites up-to-date by familiarizing myself with what other expeditions were discovering. Over the next twelve months, I wrote my doctoral thesis, which was published as History and Settlement in Lower Nubia (1965). In it, I sought to demonstrate that four factors – environmental change, technological innovation, trade, and war – accounted for most of the changes in overall population size and in settlement distribution in Lower Nubia. My thesis was clearly processual, in the sense that I was seeking to identify factors that accounted for change, but it was historical insofar as I did not claim that the complex of variables I had identified had any universal validity. Indeed, both the ecological setting and the geographical location of Lower Nubia were sufficiently unusual to severely limit the potential for cross-cultural comparison. Michael Coe and Simpson were the co-supervisors of my thesis. Coe introduced me personally to Gordon Willey and to the work of Robert Adams and provided the perfect combination of discreet criticism and encouragement for which every graduate student hopes. Kwang-chih Chang began teaching at Yale in my final year. Our common interest in settlement patterns gave rise to a warm and lasting friendship, even though over the years his own approach grew increasingly idealist and therefore unlike my own.

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Bruce Trigger (standing, left) with his crew at the site of Arminna West, Nubia, March 1962. (With the permission of Professor William K. Simpson)

In the office where I wrote my thesis was a large Meroitic tombstone discovered just north of Arminna, at Toshka West, in 1962. The Meroitic language had been studied by F.L. Griffith early in the twentieth century, but interest had lagged and it remained largely untranslated. In my spare moments I started to study the long inscription on this stone and eventually transliterated and deciphered it to the extent that Griffith’s work made possible. My findings were published by the

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Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1962. I then went on to compare what was known about Meroitic with Joseph Greenberg’s recent classification of African languages and wrote a second paper suggesting that Meroitic might be an Eastern Sudanic language. While, because of limited evidence, this proposal remained tentative for a long time, it now appears to have been confirmed by the exhaustive research of Claude Rilly. As a result of this work, Simpson asked me to prepare for publication a substantial number of Meroitic funerary texts that were discovered at Arminna West in 1963. I did this work in collaboration with the extremely able French Meroiticist André Heyler, our joint report being published as a volume of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt series in 1970. This was one of the most enjoyable and personally rewarding collaborations of my career. I was appalled when Heyler died at a relatively young age in December 1971. His last letter informed me that he was discovering more evidence that Meroitic was an Eastern Sudanic language. I had long realized that I lacked the formal linguistic training to pursue the study of the Meroitic language on my own, and after Heyler died, I withdrew from the field. After I completed my doctoral thesis, I spent the summer of 1963 preparing a report on the Meroitic, Ballana, and Early Christian excavations at Arminna West, together with the results of a surface survey of the site. This appeared in 1967 as a volume of the Pennsylvania-Yale series. Since my thesis had been based largely on published material, I felt obliged to produce this report quickly as evidence of my practical qualifications as an archaeologist. In 1969 I published a study of Meroitic iron working in which I raised the possibility that iron working had been invented separately in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. My last substantial publication on Nubia was Nubia under the Pharoahs (1976b), a study of Egyptian colonialism in Nubia. This work reflected an interest in the archaeological study of political organization that had led me to edit an issue of World Archaeology on “The Archaeology of Government” (1974). During my first year at Yale, I spent much time looking northward out of the windows of the anthropology graduate students’ study in the Sterling Memorial Library daydreaming about Canada. My nostalgia was not ordinary homesickness. The imperial America in which I was living was a society whose citizens almost unanimously agreed that their way of life was the most advanced and perfect in human history and a model that other peoples should admire and try to imitate. The

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energy, enthusiasm, and self-confidence of Americans were inspiring, and I continue to admire the respect they accord to scholarship for its own sake. Yet, to my dismay, I saw around me people who habitually divided everything into good and evil and celebrated the use of force to ensure the supremacy of what they judged to be good. This Manichaean attitude severely limited the range of political debate compared with what was normal in Canada. It also made it easier for the American government to serve the interests of big business, at home and abroad, at the expense of ordinary citizens. The American government’s role in plunging Guatemala into a murderous civil war after its democratically elected government dared to impose a trivial export tax on bananas served as a warning about what might happen to other foreign governments that stood in the way of American free enterprise. The more I learned about American society, the more I came to view Canada, with its political decentralization, its endless debates and political compromises, its citizens’ ability to see many things in tones of grey rather than black and white, and its growing dedication to international peacekeeping, not as a weak, semi-colonial nation but as a model of what the world would have to be like if humanity were to survive. I became more determined than ever to do what I could to ensure that Canada and its distinctive traditions might prosper. That, however, required understanding not only Canada but also the contemporary world in which Canada existed. Over the years I have found critiques of American society by conservative thinkers, such as the Canadian philosopher George Grant and the American novelist Gore Vidal, to be far more insightful than those coming out of the Marxist tradition. This is because such writers generally address the specificities of American society and culture rather than treat the United States simply as a typical example of an “advanced capitalist society,” a mistake Marx himself would never have made. I sublimated my nostalgia by producing a series of studies on Canadian themes, each of which foreshadowed later works. The first was a long paper analysing early seventeenth-century French-Huron contact written for Bruner’s course on cultural change. On McIlwraith’s generous recommendation, this paper was published in 1960 in the Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute. A second ethnographic paper dealing with Huron law, written for Leo Pospisil, was published in 1963. I also wrote a paper on “The Historic Location of the Hurons” (1962a) in which I argued that ecological considerations might explain why all the Hurons had settled near the shores of Georgian Bay by the

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early seventeenth century. A more general study of Iroquoian adaptation, titled “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation,” appeared in the American Anthropologist in 1963. Yet another paper, “Trade and Tribal Warfare on the St. Lawrence in the Sixteenth Century” (1962b), sought, in contrast to current simplistic treatments, to document the diversity of Iroquoian settlement in that region. These papers were written as diversions while I was working on my doctoral dissertation. During this period, my awareness of the importance of ethnohistory and its significance for studying Iroquoian history was strengthened by informal contacts with William N. Fenton and Elisabeth Tooker, both of whom generously encouraged my work. At Yale, Floyd Lounsbury taught me what I needed to know about historical linguistics, especially as it related to the Iroquoian languages. I was joined over the years at Yale by Richard Pearson and then by George MacDonald. Together with Erika Wagner, who was from Venezuela, we made up a substantial contingent of foreign graduate students specializing in archaeology.

at mcgill In 1963 I was tentatively offered a position at McGill University, but funding was not forthcoming. I accepted instead a tenure-track appointment as an African archaeologist at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. Close contacts with the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago provided me with a month of archaeological research in Sudanese Nubia that greatly helped me to revise and update my thesis. From Raoul Naroll I learned more about comparative research, from Francis Hsu about Chinese culture, and from Elizabeth Colson about social anthropology. By December, however, I had accepted an appointment at McGill for the following academic year. Naroll urged me not to accept this appointment, arguing that in Canada I would find myself in an academic backwater from which all the best students would gravitate to the United States to do graduate work. I thought to myself that if Canadian academics did not return home, such a brain drain would certainly continue. If I and others did return home, the situation might change. My mind was made up. Since 1964, I have had the good fortune to live in Montreal, a vibrant city where most animosities are focused on issues relating to language, making for an otherwise open, welcoming, and civilized community where people know how to balance work and pleasure. In the autumn

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of 1965, during a campaign to open up more of the McGill Faculty Club to use by female faculty, a mutual friend introduced me to Barbara Welch, a geographer who had recently come from England to teach at McGill and study agricultural land use in the Eastern Caribbean. My life was changed forever. At our wedding in London, the minister Peter Barraclough, suspecting that he was dealing with two headstrong academics, warned us that marriage was like using a two-handled saw – a metaphor that has now guided our lives together for almost thirty-six years. Although each of us has our own beliefs, we share the same social values, which we hope we have passed on to our two daughters. Barbara’s cheerfulness, her loyalty to friends and the causes she supports, her commitment to excellence in all she does, her ability to tell me kindly but firmly when I am being foolish, and her unswerving support when I require it are happy and enriching realities of my life. We share an interest in comparative research, and I know no one who is a more perceptive critic of my work than she is. We are still exploring together the subtle ways in which British and Canadian English differ and have an irresolvable disagreement about the proper length of written sentences (I prefer shorter ones). For the child expelled from Eden at age ten, Montreal became an earthly paradise regained. The Canada I returned to in 1964 was greatly changed from the country I had left five years earlier. A vast expansion of governmentfunded higher education was underway, encouraging an unprecedented increase in the number of young Canadians attending university. Social welfare, including medical care, was becoming a government priority, and Canadian cultural life, also with government support, was flourishing as never before. The political and social ferment that was to produce a dynamic bilingual and multicultural Canada was also underway. There was a tacit agreement, cutting across all political parties, that it was the duty of democratic governments to serve as effective instruments of public good. I recall the sense of optimism and pride as I stood on the steps of the Arts Building at McGill at noon on February 15, 1965, watching the new Canadian flag rising over the public and commercial buildings of central Montreal. My principal teaching duties, beginning in 1964, were to cover introductory undergraduate archaeology and to prepare anthropology graduate students to pass the obligatory p hd comprehensive examination in archaeology, physical anthropology, and historical linguistics. It was understood that for the time being graduate students would be accepted only in social anthropology and more particularly in the field

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Bruce and Barbara at Elbow Beach on one of their many family visits to Bermuda.

of development anthropology. Nevertheless, I had a chance in the early years to teach many excellent graduate students, such as Gillian Sankoff, Henry Rutz, and Marilyn Silverman, who now hold senior positions in Canadian and American universities and claim to have benefited from this course. The hiring of Fumiko Ikawa-Smith as a second archaeologist also provided hope that a graduate archaeology program would eventually be initiated. Perhaps my greatest asset from the point of view of the department was my ability to teach a much desired course on the ethnology of the Middle East. This course attracted many students because, among other things, it provided an unbiased forum to discuss Arab-Israeli relations. After the p hd comprehensive examination was abolished in 1968, I began teaching undergraduate courses that more closely reflected my archaeological interests and which over the years played a significant role in facilitating my research. I also realized that the future demand for graduate training at McGill would be mainly in Canadian, not African, archaeology. To this end, I decided to train myself in St Lawrence Iroquoian archaeology, beginning with the study of the artifacts recovered from a site adjacent to McGill that had been discovered by workmen in 1859. I soon discovered,

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however, that James F. Pendergast, a lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian Army and an established authority on St Lawrence Iroquoian archaeology, was already at work on this material. In February 1965 we agreed to work together, he studying the archaeology and I the ethnohistorical aspects of the site. The result was a lasting friendship between ourselves and our families and a jointly authored book, Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (Pendergast and Trigger 1972). More generally, by combining archaeological and ethnohistorical data, the two of us were able to establish that the St Lawrence Iroquoians were not, as was generally believed, Onondaga or Oneida Iroquois who had expanded north into the St Lawrence Valley in late prehistoric times but a number of Iroquoian-speaking peoples indigenous to the area who had developed a sedentary style of life alongside the Iroquois to the south and the Hurons and Neutrals to the west. Establishing this view involved long and rancorous debates in which I was frequently cast as a troublesome and poorly informed interloper. The most subversive of my contributions to Iroquoian studies at this time was “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory” (1970), which called into question the assumed self-evident ethnic significance of archaeological cultures, even for the historical period. As a result of my collaboration with Pendergast, I never did become expert in the analytical details of St Lawrence Iroquoian archaeology. In 1968 I published Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory, in which I explored the relation between traditional culture-historical archaeology and the new behaviourally oriented societal archaeology that I had been advocating in my settlement pattern research. In my Nubian work, it had become obvious that one could not assume, as many settlement archaeologists did, that populations had expanded and contracted only as a result of internal processes and not as a consequence of migration. It was also obvious that detailed chronological controls of the archaeological evidence were even more vital for societal interpretations than they had been for most culture-historical ones. My conclusion that culture-historical archaeology was a vital part of any societal interpretation of the archaeological record belatedly recognized the importance of Irving Rouse’s work, which I had not duly acknowledged previously. This effort at theoretical reconciliation clearly did not accord with the goals of the early processual archaeologists, who were intent on replacing culture-historical archaeology with their new approach. This publication led to an invitation from J. Desmond Clark to write a chapter on “The Rise of Egyptian Civilization” for volume 1 of The

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Cambridge History of Africa, which he was editing. This chapter was later reprinted with three others as Ancient Egypt: A Social History (1983), a work which, although now sadly out of date, continues to occupy a distinctive place in the literature of Egyptology and to sell well. This paper deepened my association with mainline Egyptology. Throughout the 1960s, in a series of case studies, I examined the relation between ecological adaptation and human behaviour in Nubia and among the Iroquoians, always coming down on the side of ecological possibilism. These studies culminated in “Archaeology and Ecology” (1971). In other papers, I distinguished behavioural and culture-historical approaches and argued that while human behaviour was constrained by ecological and other factors, the complexity of these factors and of the parameters at play in any given situation made its outcome unpredictable. While this argument was similar to the historical views held by palaeontologists, it too was unwelcome among the processual archaeologists. Both culture-historical and processual archaeologists had their own reasons for ignoring the processual aspects of my work and tried to characterize me as an old-fashioned culture-historical archaeologist. At this point, I decided that I wished to become deeply engaged with a substantial body of data, and I decided to write a history of the Huron people, from their prehistoric adoption of an agricultural economy to their dispersal by the Iroquois in the mid-seventeenth century. This was to be primarily an ethnohistorical study but one in which archaeological data played a greater role and the temporal perspective extended further back into prehistory than was the case with most ethnohistorical studies. Such combining of ethnohistorical and archaeological data never became popular in North America, but it evolved separately in Australia as I was to discover in the 1980s. My goal was once again to qualify myself to train archaeologists to study North America. In the course of researching The Children of Aataentsic (1976a), I produced The Huron: Farmers of the North (1969, revised edition 1990), an ethnography of the historic Huron (Wendat) people. At the invitation of William C. Sturtevant, I also edited the Northeast volume of the Handbook of North American Indians (1978a). I thought that massive endeavour would be a good way to acquire the general background knowledge of the region needed to view Huron development in its broader setting. The main methodological conclusion that emerged from my study of the Hurons was that Huron history had to be understood not in terms of indigenous peoples competing with Europeans, but in terms of the

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various interest groups that formed among the Hurons, other indigenous peoples, and the French, and that cooperated and competed with one another in different ways in their pursuit of varied and often conflicting goals. The result was normally an outcome that no single interest group expected. It was also clear that Huron culture flourished as a result of European contact so long as the Huron people were not dominated by Europeans, a conclusion that my McGill colleague Richard Salisbury had also come to for the indigenous peoples of highland New Guinea in his book From Stone to Steel (1962). It further became evident that the Hurons were not so committed to their cultural beliefs that they could not respond to new opportunities in terms of personal economic and social interests. These hard-won conclusions would protect me against new forms of cultural determinism that were to invade archaeology in the 1980s. Boyce Richardson’s review article on The Children of Aataentsic, which appeared in Saturday Night (July 1986) and compared the importance of my work with that of Harold Innis, Northrop Frye, and Marshall McLuhan, represented one of the high points of my career. In 1985 I published Natives and Newcomers, which sought to explain how to combine ethnohistorical and archaeological data to study aboriginal history. It also explored the relevance of aboriginal history for understanding the early history of New France. I argued that if it was impossible to understand seventeenth-century Huron history without reference to the history of New France, it was equally impossible to understand the history of New France without reference to the history of the Hurons and other aboriginal peoples. This argument was welcomed by economic historians and those interested in minority histories, but it was received coldly – as just more of the rot that was threatening Canadian national identity – by some of those historians who believe that only political history is real history. A graduate program in prehistoric archaeology was launched at McGill in 1976 following the hiring of Michael Bisson as a third fulltime archaeologist by the anthropology department. I soon found myself directing a growing number of students interested in Iroquoian studies. The hallmark of this program was a settlement pattern approach in which the main focus was no longer to trace the development of cultures but to study the history and transformation of specific communities. The prolegomenon to this research was my paper “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study,” published in Dean Snow’s Foundations of Northeast Archaeology (1981). The

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frequent relocation of Iroquoian communities made it possible to track changes in settlements over relatively short intervals of time. For me, the late 1970s and 1980s were especially enjoyable and productive years as Ronald Williamson, David Smith, Bruce Jamieson, Alexander von Gernet, Peter Timmins, Robert Pearce, William Fitzgerald, Gary Warrick, Frances Stewart, Robert MacDonald, and I benefited from each other’s work. Out of this collective endeavour emerged new understandings of Iroquoian site functions, community development, changing subsistence patterns, the significance of artifacts, and population dynamics that forever changed the understanding of Ontario Iroquoian history and prehistory and of how that history should be studied. An increasingly detailed picture emerged of a growing reliance on agriculture and the development of larger communities, tribes, and confederacies. Peter Timmins’s use of pottery cross-mends to transform the disordered profusion of post moulds at the Early Iroquoian Glen Meyer Calvert village site into a sequence of ordered arrangements of structures representing different phases in the site’s use and Warrick’s employment of post mould evidence of repairs to house walls to estimate how long structures had been inhabited are only two examples of the analytical innovativeness of these students. Warrick’s lack of evidence of significant Huron population decline prior to the 1630s was also a finding of major importance for estimating the late prehistoric population of North America. The work this group has done, first as graduate students and later as professional archaeologists, has transformed the prehistoric archaeology of southern Ontario from being a study of cultures to being a study of communities. I equally enjoyed supervising the doctoral dissertations of Brian Deller, Eldon Yellowhorn, Stephen Chrisomalis, and Jerimy Cunningham. It was also a great pleasure to work closely with other graduate students, such as Wendy Anderson, Clare Fawcett, Junko Habu, Barbara Lawson, Moira McCaffrey, and David Denton. In all these cases, I was anxious not to impose specific views on my students but to encourage them to consider all possible options and to draw their own conclusions. This often led me to play the role of devil’s advocate. It sometimes took startled students a while to determine that my support for diametrically opposed views on two consecutive days was something other than evidence of incompetence or lunacy. As early as 1967, in a paper titled “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” I had begun to use a historical approach as a means of assessing the objectivity of archaeological

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interpretations. Through the 1970s, I explored the use of this method in greater depth, producing several of the essays that appeared for the first time in Time and Traditions (1978b). Ian Hodder’s demonstration in Symbols in Action (1982) that material culture can distort or negate, as well as reflect, social reality called into question a main epistemological premise of processual archaeology and soon encouraged the development of various forms of hyperrelativism, making the evaluation of archaeological truth claims more vital than ever before. Hodder’s findings also justified the revival of a cultural approach to archaeological interpretation, alongside the behavioural one long favoured by processual archaeologists and myself. These developments drew to my attention the importance of Marxist theory as a way to explore the relation between culture and behaviour within a materialist framework. Marx argued that while people became socialized within a particular culture, they possessed the ability to try to transform such cultures to better serve their own interests. If archaeology is to contribute to understanding this process, archaeologists must seek to determine how the interaction of cultural heritage and self-interest is expressed in terms of material culture. This theoretical opening up of archaeology challenged me to pull together the research I had been doing on the history of archaeology to produce A History of Archaeological Thought (1989). Twice before, in the early 1980s, I had started such a history but had abandoned the project because I feared that it would be read as simply another polemic directed against processual archaeology. Now, it was clear, there were broader, more significant, and more interesting issues to be discussed. The general conclusion of my critical examination of archaeological interpretation was that long-term trends in such interpretations supported a moderate relativism, or qualified objectivism, that was in keeping with the complexity and subjective components of their subject matter. The timing of the publication of this book, which was the outcome of a process of trial and error, ensured it a large and receptive readership. The work that had culminated in A History of Archaeological Thought made me realize the extent to which archaeological interpretation reflected and reinforced all sorts of prejudices, including those directed against indigenous peoples. Together with my research on Canadian First Nations history, this led me to reflect on the Canadian belief that Canada’s treatment of First Nations peoples had been honourable by comparison with what had happened in the United States. My support for the First Nations boycott of “The Spirit Sings” exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary in 1988 and my resignation as

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V. Gordon Childe conference. Conference speakers, chairpersons, and former colleagues and students of Childe gather on the steps of the Institute of Archaeology, Gordon Square, London, May 8, 1992. From left to right, front row: Geraldine Talbot, Michael Rowlands, John Mulvaney, Kent Flannery, David Harris, Bruce Trigger, and Leo Klejn; back rows: Katsuyuki Okamura, John Wilkes, Ellen Macnamara, Roy Hodson, Grahame Clark, Jay Butler, Sinclair Hood, Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop, Paul Mellars, Patricia Christie, Peter Gathercole, Charles Higham, George Eogan, Eve Evans, John Evans, and Colin Renfrew. (Photograph by Stuart Laidlaw, with the permission of Professor David Harris)

honorary curator of ethnology when the board of the McCord Museum refused to support that boycott underlined my increasing awareness of the economic, social, and political problems facing indigenous people in modern Canada and the little that Canadian society was doing to resolve those problems. In co-editing the North America volume of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (1996), Wilcomb Washburn and I sought to present a realistic history of aboriginal-white relations and the current situation of indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. My hope was that this volume might help to dispel some of the romantic ideas that Euro-Canadians had about their treatment of indigenous peoples. Although I was Canadian, an anthropologist, and on the political left, while Washburn was American, a historian, and a conservative, we made a good editorial team and learned much from one another. Washburn, unlike some right-wing academics, was adamant in his insistence that treaties with indigenous peoples could not be unilaterally abrogated.

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As editor, since 1988, of the Native and Northern series of McGillQueen’s University Press, I have also sought to publish works that would inform readers about the realities of relations between Canada and its indigenous peoples, both historically and at present. I have also been a strong advocate of the need to decolonize anthropology by training and recruiting indigenous people into the profession. The growing acceptance by Canadians of the rhetoric of a transnationally orchestrated campaign to promote continentalism made the 1980s and early 1990s a period of personal disillusionment for me. At the same time that business people and politicians called on ordinary Canadians to tighten their belts and make sacrifices for the sake of their country, many wealthy Canadians were busy remodelling Canada politically and economically for their own personal benefit. As ever larger numbers of Canadians realized what was happening, they too tended to put their private interests ahead of those of Canadians as a whole. Marxist theories helped me to understand what was happening, but they did not reconcile me to it. I felt a strong sense of betrayal and resented those who pretended to be patriotic Canadians while exploiting Canada to serve their own interests. One result of the rethinking these changes brought about was that I adopted a more critical attitude towards Canadian studies programs, with which I have been involved from time to time over the years both inside and outside of Canada. These programs seem easily to become vehicles for promoting neo-conservative and other sectarian views. More generally, by focusing on a single country, they divert attention from a comparative and international, and hence a more theoretical, understanding of the issues, with the result that they unwittingly ghettoize, trivialize, and disable the study of Canada. I believe that instead of having Canadian studies programs, every social science and humanities department in Canada should feel compelled to offer the study of Canadian topics from a comparative perspective. Canadian scholars should also aim to promote a better understanding of Canada abroad by producing reports on Canadian topics that are of sufficient theoretical interest that they become required reading abroad, not because they are Canadian but because they are good social science.

dealing with the big picture In 1989, as a follow-up to A History of Archaeological Thought, I began a study of seven early civilizations in order to investigate the

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relative utility of various types of theories for explaining cross-cultural similarities and differences. The comparative study of early civilizations had interested me since I was an undergraduate, and over the years I had published a series of papers dealing with such comparisons. For this study, I decided that it was necessary to have both textual and archaeological data to understand the nature of these societies. The first substantial product of this research was Sociocultural Evolution (1998). Without invoking unilinear evolution, I demonstrated that certain societies, despite their separate development, exhibited similar levels of complexity and hence might appropriately be compared. I also addressed how rapidly changing, technologically advanced societies might avoid succumbing to the ecological and political crises that inevitably will threaten their survival. I argued the need to construct new political structures that would ensure an unprecedented level of democratic political participation by all human beings at every level, from the neighbourhood to the global. This in turn would require higher levels of education and a more equitable distribution of wealth within and between nations. As a result of this research, I view the sadly ignored Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its guarantees of economic and cultural, as well as political and legal, rights to every human being on this planet, as being not only the supreme achievement of the twentieth century but a touchstone of the moral legitimacy of every political and social movement. Although dedicated to my grandfather’s memory, Sociocultural Evolution was written with my daughters and their futures in mind. It attempted to use knowledge of the past and present not to predict the future (which I believe is impossible) but to help to shape it. Above all, it attempted to question major assumptions of neo-conservatism and its appalling alliance with the postmodern culture of mysticism and social irresponsibility. Extreme relativism and subjectivism have effectively undermined faith in the ability of ordinary people to work together for their mutual benefit, while individuals increasingly seek relief from the anxieties of everyday life in religion, aesthetics, and self-cultivation. These have become the opiates not only of the masses but also of the intelligentsia. Unfortunately, while Sociocultural Evolution was written in an accessible style, it was poorly advertised, received few reviews, and as far as I can tell has not been widely read. In my next book, Understanding Early Civilizations (2003), I demonstrated that early civilizations that had clearly developed independently of one another shared many features in common. Many of

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these similarities could be explained either functionally or adaptationally. Yet their economies exhibited considerable variation because of environmental and political differences. Other features, such as art styles, varied idiosyncratically from one early civilization to another, although some of these features, such as the lifestyle of the elites, were not ones that might have been expected to do so, since they had considerable functional significance at the level of intersocietal interaction. Still other aspects of early civilizations, such as general patterns of religious belief, exhibited cross-cultural uniformity, although there was no obvious functional or adaptational explanation why they should do so. I concluded that many of these similarities resulted from specific aspects of human intelligence operating under similar conditions and hence were constrained by modes of thinking and emotional reactions hard-wired into human beings over long periods of biological evolution. While little is yet known about the role played by such biological traits, alongside culture and rational adaptation, in shaping human behaviour, I believe that this subject deserves careful examination. This is an idea that I would have been unwilling to entertain twenty years previously. In a general way, comparative ethology suggests that human nature, instead of being inherently generous or whatever culture dictates, is a mixture of sociability and competitiveness. The failure of socialist movements to take account of such innate tendencies may explain much of their failure to achieve their longterm goals in the course of the twentieth century. If humans are motivated mainly by self-interest and the human mind functions best when managing the affairs of small groups over short periods of time, how can the concept of self-interest be expanded to the point where modern technologies can be controlled and large-scale societies prevented from descending into violence and chaos? Confronted with problems of this sort, anthropologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists must work together to understand better the biological basis of human behaviour. If this problem is not thoroughly and carefully addressed, the vapid speculations about human nature by biologists, psychologists, and social anthropologists that currently are flooding the popular book market may prove to be as socially dangerous as racial explanations ever were in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While these findings have cast doubt on beliefs I have held all my life, I regard this not as an intellectual defeat but as a welcome challenge. Cherished ideas should not be abandoned lightly, but they also should not go unexamined.

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Bruce Trigger and Ursula Franklin, June 10, 2003, when Bruce received an honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto. Theirs is a long-standing friendship grounded in an initial common interest in palaeo-technology.

If I can find time, I would like to conclude my early civilization project by writing a history of ancient Egypt that focuses on explaining different rates of change in various aspects of ancient Egyptian society and culture. It would complement the comparative analysis of various aspects of culture in Understanding Early Civilizations with a contextual study of how these different aspects interacted with one another over a long period of time in a particular early civilization.

conclusions I realize, as a result of this review of my life’s work so far, that many of my commitments as an archaeologist have deep roots in my own consciousness. My interests in ancient Egypt and the Hurons began before I was ten years old; so too did my assumption of the complexity of factors shaping human behaviour and my understanding of cultural relativism. Other beliefs that I acquired as an undergraduate have remained constant, including my commitment to ecological possibilism rather than ecological determinism, my repudiation of unilinear evolution, and

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my conviction, derived by analogy from palaeontology, that while cultural change is explainable, it is not predictable. I also regard as irreversibly established Hodder’s observation that material culture can invert and distort as well as reflect social reality. On the other hand, at least for the present, Marxism has dissolved into a series of propositions, each of which is now evaluated on its own merits. Some of its tenets have become integral parts of mainstream social science; others are repudiated or ignored. The extent to which individuals can transcend their culture and the circumstances under which they do so is a subject of keen debate, one that has revealed the highly provisional nature of Marx’s formulation. My own research has led me to question, although perhaps not totally abandon, the belief I have held since childhood that people are innately altruistic (good). This ability to question at least some beliefs accords with my long-standing commitment to moderate relativism. I have also become aware of one important, but hitherto unconscious, pattern in my work. I have never thought of myself as a historical archaeologist. Yet virtually all the work I have done has had a historical as well as an archaeological component. My researches on Nubia and the Hurons all dealt with either historical cultures or ones which, for better or worse, were susceptible to study by means of the direct historical approach. This circumstance required me to develop skills in correlating archaeological and historical data. Studying the history of archaeology necessitated honing historiographical skills, while my comparative study of early civilizations required synthesizing archaeological and historical or ethnographic data. It seems no accident that already when I was an undergraduate my favourite social anthropological study was E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (1949), a historical work that sought to understand a social structure better by examining how it changed over time. The historical nature of the ancient Egyptian and Huron cultures that first attracted my interest may have influenced my broader view of archaeology and its problems. I also recognize that my recent investigation of early civilizations is as much an anthropological project as it is an archaeological one. At present, an unprecedented number of explanations of the archaeological record and the human behaviour that produced it are competing for attention. Yet, at the same time, a welcome sea change is occurring. Instead of continuing to embrace single, often monocausal, theories as explaining all behaviour and rejecting all competing theories, a growing number of archaeologists are recognizing the complex array of factors

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that shape human behaviour and the archaeological record. They are also seeking to determine in what ways different theories are useful and how they may be combined to produce more comprehensive explanations of the evidence. Rather than interpreting this as indicating growing “theoretical chaos,” I regard it as evidence that archaeology is at last becoming a normal social science. If my work has played any role in helping to bring this change about, I believe that my efforts have been well spent. The unanswered question for all the social sciences is whether social science theories are to remain forever opposed, conflicting, and bound to specific standpoints or whether eventually a megatheory can be formulated that will relate different theories to one another. Metaphorically, the question is whether an elephant really is present for the proverbial blind men to study or whether they only think there is one. On the basis of my experiences so far, I am prepared to bet on the elephant being there.

bibliography Childe, V. Gordon. 1958. The Prehistory of European Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Dixon, Roland B. 1928. The Building of Cultures. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons Evans-Pritchard, Edward. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon Press Hodder, Ian. 1982. Symbols in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Pendergast, James F., and Bruce G. Trigger. 1972. Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Richardson, Boyce. 1986. “Native Intelligence.” Saturday Night Magazine 10 (7):49–51 Salisbury, Richard. 1962. From Stone to Steel: Economic Consequences of a Technological Change in New Guinea. Victoria: Melbourne University Press Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1960. Critique de la raison dialectique (Précédé de question de méthode). Paris: Librairie Gallimard – 1963. Search for a Method. New York: Knopf Sjoberg, Gideon. 1960. The Preindustrial City. New York: Free Press Trigger, Bruce G. 1962a. “The Historic Location of the Hurons.” Ontario History 54 (2):137–48

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– 1962b. “Trade and Tribal Warfare on the St. Lawrence in the Sixteenth Century.” Ethnohistory 9:240–56 – 1963. “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation at the Time of Contact.” American Anthropologist 65 (1):86–101 – 1965. History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. New Haven: Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 69 – 1967. “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary Anthropological Theory.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 4:165–76 – 1968. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1969. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston – 1970. “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 14: 3–48 – 1971. “Archaeology and Ecology.” World Archaeology 2:321–36 – 1974. “The Archaeology of Government.” World Archaeology 6:95–106 – 1976a. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1976b. Nubia under the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson – ed. 1978a. Northeast. Vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution – 1978b. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Columbia University Press – 1981. “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study.” In Foundations of Northeast Archaeology, edited by Dean Snow, 1–50. New York: Academic Press – 1983. “The Rise of Egyptian Civilization.” Revised reprint in Trigger et al., Ancient Egypt: A Social History, 1–70, 349–52, 365–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1985. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press – 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1998. Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers – 2003. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press Trigger, Bruce G., B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd. 1983. Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Trigger, Bruce G., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, eds. 1996. North America. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press Trigger, Theodore C. 1910. Notes on Methods of Filling Teeth with Gold Inlays. Buffalo: Matthews-Northrup Works Willey, Gordon R. 1953. Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 155. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

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Bibliography of the Works of Bruce Trigger

1957 “The Burial Place of the Ancients Near Cornwall.” Stratford Beacon-Herald, September 19, 20 1958 “Sheek Island Explorations Terminate as Area Flooded.” Stratford BeaconHerald, September 13, 21 1960 “The Destruction of Huronia: A Study in Economic and Cultural Change, 1609–1650.” Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute, vol. 33, pt 1, no. 68:14–45 1962 “The Historic Location of the Hurons.” Ontario History 54 (2):137–48 “A Meroitic Tomb Inscription from Toshka West.” Postilla (Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University), no. 79 “Trade and Tribal Warfare on the St. Lawrence in the Sixteenth Century.” Ethnohistory 9:240–56 1963 “Order and Freedom in Huron Society.” Anthropologica, n.s., 5:151–69. Reprinted in Mark Nagler, ed., Perspectives on the North American Indians, Carleton Library Series 60 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 43–56

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“Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptation at the Time of Contact.” American Anthropologist 65 (1):86–101. Reprinted in Bruce Cox, ed., Cultural Ecology: Readings on the Canadian Indians and Eskimos, Carleton Library Series 65 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 35–53 “A Reply to Mr. Ridley.” Ontario History 55:161–3 1964 “Meroitic and Eastern Sudanic: A Linguistic Relationship?” Kush 12:188–94 Review of Studien zur Meroitischen Chronologie, by F. Hintze. Bibliotheca Orientalis 21:34–5 1965 History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. New Haven: Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 69. Chapter 1 reprinted as “The Study of Settlement in Archaeology,” in E.L. Green, ed., In Search of Man: Readings in Anthropology (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 312–20 “Coon’s Theory on the Origin of Races.” Anthropologica, n.s., 7:179–87 “The Jesuits and the Fur Trade.” Ethnohistory 12:30–53. Reprinted in J.R. Miller, ed., Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 3–18 Review of An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615–1649, by E. Tooker. American Anthropologist 67:807–8 Review of The Valley of the Six Nations, by M. Johnston. Ethnohistory 12:179–80 1966 “Amantacha,” “Cherououny,” “Chihwatenwa,” “Erouachy,” and “Garakontié.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, edited by George W. Brown, 1:58–9, 210–12, 302–3, 322–3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press “The Languages of the Northern Sudan: An Historical Perspective.” Journal of African History 7:19–25 “New Light on the History of Settlement in Lower Nubia.” In Contemporary Egyptian Nubia, edited by Robert A. Fernea, 1:21–58. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files “Sir Daniel Wilson: Canada’s First Anthropologist.” Anthropologica, n.s., 8:3–28 “Sir John William Dawson: A Faithful Anthropologist.” Anthropologica 8:351–9 “Who Were the ‘Laurentian Iroquois’?” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 3:201–13 Comment on “Estimating Aboriginal Indian Population,” by H. Dobyns. Current Anthropology 7:439–40

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1967 The Late Nubian Settlement at Arminna West. Publications of the PennsylvaniaYale Expedition to Egypt, no. 2. New Haven and Philadelphia: Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University “Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site.” In Iroquois Culture, History and Prehistory, edited by Elisabeth Tooker, 63–6. Albany: University of the State of New York “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary Anthropological Theory.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 4:165–76. Translated as Bruce G. Trigger and Friedrich Engels, Sobre el origen del hombre (Lisbon: Anagrama, 1974) “Settlement Archaeology – Its Goals and Promise.” American Antiquity 32 (2): 149–60 Foreword to An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615–1649, by Elisabeth Tooker, 7 pages. Toronto: Huronia Historical Development Council and the Ontario Department of Education “Nubia.” In New Catholic Encyclopaedia, 10:548–9. Washington: Catholic University of America Press “The Search for Cartier’s Hochelaga.” McGill News 48 (3):9–12 “Spoken and Written Meroitic: A Note on the Terminal Formulae in Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 53:166–9 Review of Men and Monuments on the East African Coast, by J. Kirkman. Journal of Asian and African Studies 1:288–9 Review of Most Ancient Egypt, by W.C. Hayes. American Anthropologist 69:94–5 Review of Red Land, Black Land: The World of the Ancient Egyptians, by B. Mertz. American Anthropologist 69:775–6 Review of Southern Africa during the Iron Age, by B. Fagan. Journal of Asian and African Studies 2:280–1 1968 Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reprint, New York: Irvington Publishers, 1982. Chapter 4 reprinted as “Culture Change,” in Brian M. Fagan, ed., Introductory Readings in Archaeology (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 297–325; E.L. Green, ed., In Search of Man: Readings in Anthropology (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 357–81; and, as “Culture Change in Archaeology,” in Brian M. Fagan, ed., Corridors in Time (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 73–98. Chapter 4 translated as “Lunwenhua de qiyuan,

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chuanbo yu qianyi” (On the issues of origin, diffusion, and migration of cultures), Wenwu Jihan/Journal of Chinese Antiquity 1994/1 (gen. no. 12), 1994, 81–94 “Archaeological and Other Evidence: A Fresh Look at the ‘Laurentian Iroquois.’” American Antiquity 33:429–40 “The Determinants of Settlement Patterns.” In Settlement Archaeology, edited by K.C. Chang, 53–78. Palo Alto: National Press Books. Reprinted as “Settlement Patterns in Archaeology,” in Brian M. Fagan, ed., Introductory Readings in Archaeology (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 237–62 “The French Presence in Huronia: The Structure of Franco-Huron Relations in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century.” Canadian Historical Review 49:107–41. Reprinted in R.D. Francis and D.B. Smith, eds., Readings in Canadian History: Pre-Confederation (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 14–44; S. Subrahmanyan, ed., An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History 1450–1800, vol. 8 of Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 303–38. Translated as “La Presencia Francesa en Huronia: Estructura de las Relaciones Franco-Huronas en la Primera Mitad de Siglo XVII,” in C.O. Mayo, ed., La Sociedad Canadiense bajo el Régimén Francés (Rosario, Argentina: Biblioteca Norte Sur, 1995), 31–76. Selected passages reprinted in M. Shore, ed., The Contested Past: Reading Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 267–9 “Major Concepts of Archaeology in Historical Perspective.” Man 3:527–41 “New Light on the History of Lower Nubia.” Anthropologica, n.s., 10:81–106 “Two Notes on Meroitic Grammar.” Meroitic Newsletter/Bulletin d’Informations méroitiques, no. 1:4–8 Review of Ausgrabungen in Sayala-Nubien 1961–1965, by M. Bietak. Bibliotheca Orientalis 25:190–2 Review of Die Felsgravierungen im Distrikt Sayala-Nubia, by R. Engelmayer. Bibliotheca Orientalis 25:335–6 Review of Iron Age Cultures in Zambia, by B. Fagan. American Anthropologist 70:631–2 Review of Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition, by A. Ross. Ethnohistory 17:437–9 Review of Romische Weinstuben in Sayala, by K. Kromer. Bibliotheca Orientalis 25:191–3 1969 The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston The Impact of Europeans on Huronia. Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company

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“Criteria for Identifying the Locations of Historic Indian Sites: A Case Study from Montreal.” Ethnohistory 16:303–16 “Hurons,” “Hurons of Lorette,” “Aradgi,” “Cagenquarichten,” “Gouentagrandi,” “Tekarihoken,” and “Tonatakout.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, edited by David M. Hayne, 2:xxx–xxxi, 21, 111–12, 255–6, 624–5, 631. Toronto: University of Toronto Press “The Myth of Meroe and the African Iron Age.” African Historical Studies 2:23–50 “The Personality of the Sudan.” In Eastern African History, edited by D.F. McCall, N.R. Bennett, and J. Butler, 74–106. New York: Frederick A. Praeger “The Royal Tombs at Qustul and Ballana and Their Meroitic Antecedents.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 55:117–28 “The Social Significance of the Diadems in the Royal Tombs at Ballana.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 28:255–61 “More on Models.” Antiquity 43:59–61 Abstract of La necropolis de Nag Gamus, by M. Almagro. Annual Egyptological Bibliography 1965:3–4 Review of Analytical Archaeology, by D. Clarke. Man 4:140–1 Review of The Archaeology of Early Man, by J. Coles and E. Higgs. Man 4:645–55 Review of Food in Antiquity, by D. and P. Brothwell. Man 4:655 Review of New Perspectives in Archaeology, by S.R. and Lewis R. Binford. Man 4:296–7 Review of The Prehistory of Nubia, by F. Wendorf. American Anthropologist 71:976–80 Review of Studien zur Chronologie der nubischen C-Gruppe, by M. Bietak. Man 4:298–9 Review of World Prehistory: A New Outline, by G. Clark. Man 4:465–6 1970 The Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West. With comments and indexes by André Heyler. Publications of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt, no. 4. New Haven and Philadelphia: Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University [Editor] Meroitic Newsletter/Bulletin d’informations méroitiques, no. 5. Montreal: Department of Anthropology, McGill University “Aims in Prehistoric Archaeology.” Antiquity 44:26–37. Reprinted in Brian M. Fagan, ed., Corridors in Time (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 24–38

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“The Cultural Ecology of Christian Nubia.” In Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in Christlicher Zeit, edited by E. Dinkler, 347–79. Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 14:3–48 Review of Olduvai Gorge, The Cranium and Maxillary Dentition of Australopithecus boisei, by P. Tobias. Journal of Asian and African Studies 4:310–11 1971 “Archaeology and Ecology.” World Archaeology 2:321–36. Reprinted in Brian M. Fagan, ed., Corridors in Time (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 98–112 “Champlain Judged by His Indian Policy: A Different View of Early Canadian History.” Anthropologica 13:85–114. Reprinted in O.P. Dickason, ed., To 1815, vol. 1 of The Native Imprint: The Contribution of First Peoples to Canada’s Character (Athabasca, Alta: Athabasca University Education Enterprises, 1995), 197–221 “The Mohawk-Mahican War (1624–1628): The Establishment of a Pattern.” Canadian Historical Review 52:276–86 [Editor] “Handbook of North American Indians, vol. XII – Northeast: Prospective.” Mimeographed [With H.D. Tuggle and N.P. Stanley Price] “Trigger and Prehistoric Archaeology.” Antiquity 45:130–4 [Contributing consultant] Anthropology Today. Del Mar, Calif.: Communications Research Machine, Inc. Author of chapter on “The Rise of Civilization, 251–63 Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 1, pt 1, by I.E.S. Edwards. African Historical Studies 4:388–9 Review of The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures, 1504– 1700, by A.G. Bailey, and The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, by A.F.C. Wallace. Canadian Historical Review 52:183–7 Review of Desert and River in Nubia, by K. Butzer and C.L. Hansen. Journal of Asian and African Studies 6:158–9 Review of Hagar bin Humeid, by G. Van Beek. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 12:200–1 Review of The Summer Island Site, by D.S. Brose. Man 6:496 1972 [With James F. Pendergast] Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press [Editor] Meroitic Newsletter/Bulletin d’informations méroitiques, no. 9. Montreal: Department of Anthropology, McGill University

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“Determinants of Urban Growth in Pre-Industrial Societies.” In Man, Settlement and Urbanism, edited by P.J. Ucko, R. Tringham, and G.W. Dimbleby, 565–99. London: Gerald Duckworth and Company. Reprinted in R. Tringham, ed., Urban Settlements: The Process of Urbanization in Archaeological Settlements (Andover: Warner Modular Publications, 1973), R-11-1 to R-1125; Urban Place and Process, edited by Irwin Press and M. Estellie Smith (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1980), 143–67 Abstract of Aksha II, by A. Vila. Annual Egyptological Bibliography 1967:177–8 Comment on Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Society, by Berta Stjernquist. Norwegian Archaeological Review 5:13–17 Review of The Abyssinians, by D. Buxton. Journal of Asian and African Studies 7:325 Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 1, pt 2, by I.E.S. Edwards. International Journal of African Historical Studies 5:137–9 Review of Environment and Archaeology, by K. Butzer. American Scientist 60:795 Review of Igbo-Ukwu, by T. Shaw. Journal of Asian and African Studies 7:322–3 Review of The Prehistory of Africa, by J.D. Clark. Journal of Asian and African Studies 7:324 Review of Sein und Werden: Versuch einer Ganzheitsshau der Religion des Pharaonenreiches, by G. Tausing. Man 7:671–2 1973 Além da história: os métodos da pré-história [Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory]. Translated by Ulpiano Bezerra de Menenzes. São Paulo: Editoria da Universidade de São Paulo “The Future of Archaeology Is the Past.” In Research and Theory in Current Archeology, edited by Charles Redman, 95–111. New York: John Wiley and Sons “Meroitic Language Studies: Strategies and Goals.” Meroitica 1:243–72 “A Propos d’Hochelaga.” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 27:281 “Summary of Discussion and Final Comments.” Meroitica 1:337–49 1974 “The Archaeology of Government.” World Archaeology 6:95–106 “La Candace, personnage mystérieux.” Anthropologica, no. 77:10–17 “Hurons,” and “Hurons of Lorette.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 3:xxxv. Revised edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press [Editor, with Ian Longworth] Political Systems (issue title). World Archaeology 6 (1)

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Comment on “Anthropological Perspectives on Ancient Trade,” by R.M. Adams. Current Anthropology 15:253–4 Note on Huronia, by C. Heidenreich. Arctic 27:163 Review of A History of American Archaeology, by G. Willey and J. Sabloff. Man 9:632–3 Review of Huronia, by C. Heidenreich. Canadian Historical Review 55:444–5 1975 “Brecht and Ethnohistory.” Ethnohistory 22 (1):51–6 Comment on “Socio-archaeology,” by G. Gjessing. Current Anthropology 16:337–8 Review of Archaeology and History, by D. Dymond. American Antiquity 40:510–11 Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 2, pt 1, by I.E.S. Edwards. International Journal of African Historical Studies 8:300–2 Review of Culture and Nationality, by A.G. Bailey. American Anthropologist 77:636–7 Review of A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology, by Glyn Daniel. Antiquity 49:312–13 Review of Principles of Egyptian Art, by H. Schafer. Man 10:484–5 1976 The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Nubia under the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson. U.S. edition, Boulder: Westview Press “The Archaeological Base in Canada: Training, Facilities, Opportunities.” In New Perspectives in Canadian Archaeology, edited by A.G. McKay, 185– 201. Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada “Inequality and Communication in Early Civilizations.” Anthropologica 18:27–52 “Kerma: The Rise of an African Civilization.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 9:1–21 “Meroitic Studies: An Evaluation of the Semantic Aspects.” In Papers from Conference on Canadian Archaeology Abroad, edited by P.L. Shinnie, J.H. Robertson, and F.J. Kense, 97–107. Calgary: Archaeological Association Comment on “Meroitic North and South,” by W.Y. Adams. Meroitica 2:103–17 Review of Anthropology, History and Cultural Change, by M. Hodgen. Canadian Historical Review 57:309–10 Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 2, pt 2, by I.E.S. Edwards et al. International Journal of African Historical Studies 9:128–9

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Review of Nubian Rescue, by R. Keating. Antiquity 50:72 Review of Wege und Moglichkeiten eines indischen Einflusses auf die meroitische Kulture, by I. Hofmann. Man 11:445 1977 The Indians and the Heroic Age of New France. Historical Booklet no. 30. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association “The Classification of Meroitic: Geographical Considerations.” In Agypten und Kusch, edited by E. Endesfelder et al., 421–35. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag Comment on “Archaeological Classification and Ethnic Groups: A Case Study from Sudanese Nubia,” by Randi Haland. Norwegian Archaeological Review 10:20–3 Comment on “Trends and Consequences in Canadian Prehistory,” by J.V. Wright. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 1:10–11 Review of Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt, by K. Butzer. American Scientist 65:377 Review of Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain, by C. Heidenreich. Canadian Cartographer 14:189–92 Review of Maya Cities, by G. Andrews. Journal of Asian and African Studies 12:72 Review of Mirgissa I, by J. Vercoutter. Revue d’Égyptologie 29:238–9 Review of Spatial Archaeology, by D. Clarke. Man 12:538 1978 Les Indiens et l’âge héroïque de la Nouvelle-France [The Indians and the Heroic Age of New France (1977)]. Translation. Brochure Historique no. 30. Ottawa: La Société Historique du Canada Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. U.S. edition, New York: Columbia University Press [Editor] Northeast. Vol. 15 of Handbook of North American Indians. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Introduction to Handbook of North American Indians, 15:1–3 “Early Iroquoian Contacts with Europeans.” In Handbook of North American Indians, 15:344–56 [With J.F. Pendergast] “Saint Lawrence Iroquoians.” In Handbook of North American Indians, 15:357–61 [With G.M. Day] “Algonquin.” In Handbook of North American Indians, 15:792–7 “Cultural Unity and Diversity.” In Handbook of North American Indians, 15:798–804

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“The Ballana Culture and the Coming of Christianity.” In The Essays, edited by S. Hochfield and E. Riefstahl, 107–19. Vol. 1 of Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia and the Sudan. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum “Ethnohistory and Archaeology.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 30:17–24. Translated as “Arqueologia y Etnohistoria,” Cuicuilco 1 (2) (1980):12–17 “Iroquoian Matriliny.” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 47 (1–2):55–65 “No Longer from Another Planet.” Antiquity 52:193–8 “Nubian Ethnicity: Some Historical Considerations.” In Etudes Nubiennes – Colloque de Chantilly, 2–6 Juillet 1975, edited by J. Vercoutter, 317–23. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale “Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?” In The Essays, edited by S. Hochfield and E. Riefstahl, 27–35. Vol. 1 of Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia and the Sudan. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum “The Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory.” In Archaeological Essays in Honor of Irving B. Rouse, edited by Robert C. Dunnell and Edwin S. Hall, Jr, 275– 310. The Hague: Mouton Publishers “William J. Wintemberg: Iroquoian Archaeologist.” In Essays in Northeastern Anthropology in Memory of Marian E. White, edited by William E. Engelbrecht and Donald K. Grayson, 5–21. Rindge, N.H: Occasional Publications in Northeastern Anthropology, no. 15 Review of The Egyptians, by J. Ruffle. International Journal of African Historical Studies 11:169–70 Review of The Evolution of Social Systems, edited by J. Friedman and M. Rowlands. Science 201:1005–6 Review of Images de la Préhistoire du Québec, edited by C. Chapdelaine. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 2:165–7 Review of Nubia, by W. Adams. Antiquity 52:75 Review of World Prehistory in New Perspective, by G. Clark. Man 13:679 1979 “Egypt and the Comparative Study of Early Civilizations.” In Egyptology and the Social Sciences, edited by Kent Weeks, 23–56. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press “The Narmer Palette in Cross-Cultural Perspective.” In Festschrift Elmar Edel, edited by Manfred Gorg and Edgar Pusch, 409–19. Bamberg: Kurt Urlaub “Sixteenth Century Ontario: History, Ethnohistory and Archaeology.” Ontario History 71:205–23 General evaluation of Beitrage zur meroitischen Grammatik, by Fritz Hintze. Meroitica 3:145–54 Review of Analytical Archaeology, by D.L. Clarke, 2nd ed. Man 14:565–6

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Review of Beitrage zur meroitischen Chronologie, by Inge Hoffman. Bibliotheca Orientalis 36:317–18 Review of Cultural Materialism, by Marvin Harris. Science 205 (4409):890–1 Review of Etudes sur l’Egypte et le soudan anciens, edited by Jean Vercoutter. International Journal of African Historical Studies 12:697–8 Review of “Give Us Good Measure,” by A.J. Ray and D. Freeman. Journal of Historical Geography 5:358–60 Review of Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, edited by C. Redman et al. American Scientist 67:246 1980 Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson. U.S. edition, New York: Columbia University Press “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian.” American Antiquity 45 (4):662–76 “Colonizers and Natives: Toward a More Objective History of New France.” In XVe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Rapports II, Section Chronologique, 279–87. Bucarest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania. Translated as “Relations entre colonisateurs et autochthones en Nouvelle-France,” Recherches Amérindiennes au Quebec 11 (1981):199–204 [Et al.] “Trace-Element Analysis of Iroquoian Pottery.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 4:119–145 Review of Debeira West, A Medieval Nubian Town, edited by P. and M. Shinnie. Bibliotheca Orientalis 37:58–9 Review of The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Script, by Anon. International Journal of African Historical Studies 13:371–3 Review of Problems in European Prehistory, by C. Renfrew. Antiquity 54:76–7 Review of La Prospection archéologique de la vallée du nil au sud de la cataracte de Dal (Nubie soudanaise), fascicules 1–10, by A. Vila. International Journal of African Historical Studies 13:729–31 Review of Transformations: Mathematical Approaches to Culture Change, edited by C. Renfrew and K. L. Cooke. Man 15:201–2 1981 [Editor, with I. Glover] Regional Traditions of Archaeological Research, I (issue title). World Archaeology 13 (2) [With Ian Glover] “Editorial.” World Archaeology 13:133–7 “Akhenaten and Durkheim.” Bulletin du Centenaire (Supplément au bifao 81), 165–82. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale “Anglo-American Archaeology.” World Archaeology 13:138–55 “Archaeology and the Ethnographic Present.” Anthropologica 23:3–17

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“Ethnoarchaeology: Some Cautionary Considerations.” In Ethnography by Archaeologists, edited by Elisabeth Tooker, 1–9. Washington: American Ethnological Society “Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects.” Ethnohistory 29 (1):1–19. Reprinted in T. Crowley, ed., Clio’s Craft: A Primer of Historical Methods (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1988), 132–53 (with corrections); D.R. Muller et al., eds., The First Ones: Readings in Indian/Native Studies (Piapot Reserve #75: Saskatchewan Federated Indian College Press, 1992), 23–34 “If Childe Were Alive Today.” University of London, Institute of Archaeology, Bulletin 19:1–20 “Indians and Ontario’s History.” Ontario History 74:246–57 “Interest Groups, Alienation, and Humanity: A Reply to René Gadacz.” Anthropologica 24:19–25 “The Reason for the Construction of the Second Cataract Forts.” Journal for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 12 (1):1–6 “Reisner to Adams: Paradigms of Nubian Cultural History.” In Nubian Studies: Proceedings of the Society for Nubian Studies, Selwyn College, Cambridge, 1978, edited by J.M. Plumley, 223–6. Warminister: Aris and Phillips “Response of Native Peoples to European Contact.” In Early European Settlement and Exploitation in Atlantic Canada: Selected Papers, edited by G.M. Story, 139–155. St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland “The Rise of Civilization in Egypt.” In The Cambridge History of Africa, edited by J.D. Clark, 1:478–547, 954–6, 1030–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press “Concluding Remarks on the 1982 McMaster Symposium – ‘The Ontario Iroquois Tradition Revisited.’” Arch Notes, no. 82–5:9–13 Review of The Archaeology of Death, edited by R. Chapman et al. Man 17:560 Review of Economic Offices and Officials in Meroitic Nubia, by L. Török. Bibliotheca Orientalis 39:75–8 Review of Egypt before the Pharaohs, by M.A. Hoffman. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 248:77–8 Review of Etudes sur l’Egypte et le Soudan anciens, no. 5. International Journal of African Historical Studies 15:342 Review of The Origins of Civilization, edited by P.R.S. Moorey. Man 17:355–6 Review of Proceedings of the 1979 Iroquois Pottery Conference, edited by C.F. Hayes III. American Antiquity 47:693–4 1983 [With B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd] Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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“The Rise of Egyptian Civilization.” Revised reprint in Ancient Egypt: A Social History, by Trigger et al., 1–70, 349–52, 365–71 “American Archaeology as Native History: A Review Essay.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 40 (3):413–52 “Archaeology Advances?” Reviews in Anthropology 10:7–17 Broadcast interviews with Christopher Moore, ed. “Before the Reservation: Rediscovering Canada’s Early History.” cbc Transcripts, Ideas Presents, 4-1P-010, 31 (passim). Toronto: cbc Enterprises “The Deadly Harvest: Jesuit Missionaries among the Huron.” In Economy and Society during the French Regime, to 1759, edited by M.S. Cross and G.S. Kealey, 154–82. Vol. 1 of Readings in Canadian Social History. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Reprint composed of selections from The Children of Aataentsic, 499–500, 516–19, 522–6, 588–9, 595–8, 709–11, 714–22, 724 Review of Aksha I, by C. Maystre. Orientalia 53:436–7 Review of Archaeological Approaches to the Study of Complexity, edited by S.E. van der Leeuw. Man 18:211–12 Review of The British Museum and Ancient Egypt, by T.G.H. James. International Journal of African Historical Studies 16:494–5 Review of Contribution de la recherche ethnologique à l’histoire des civilisations du Cameroun, edited by C. Tardits. Man 18:433–4 Review of The Establishment of Human Antiquity, by D.K. Grayson. Science 220 (4595):834–5 Review of Etat et pasteurs au Moyen-Orient, by P. Briant. Nomadic Peoples, no. 13:69–72 Review of Partners in Furs, by D. Francis and T. Morantz. Canadian Historical Review 64:570–1 Review of Ranking, Resource and Exchange: Aspects of the Archaeology of Early European Society, edited by C. Renfrew and S. Shennan. Man 18:411– 12 Review of Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder. American Scientist 71:543 1984 “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” Man 19: 355–70. Reprinted in R.W. Preucel and I. Hodder, eds., Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 615–31. Translated as “Arqueologias Alternativas: Nacionalista, Colonialista, Imperialista,” in Traducciones y Commentarios, vol. 1 (San Juan, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Instituto de Investigaciones

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Arqueologicas y Museo,1987); “Borannakhadi Sam Beab” (Three types of archaeology), Muong Boran 21 (1995):353–64 (Thai adaptation) “Archaeology at the Crossroads: What’s New?” Annual Review of Anthropology 13:275–300 “Childe and Soviet Archaeology.” Australian Archaeology, no. 18:1–16 “Le deuxième voyage d’exploration (1535–1536).” In Le Monde de Jacques Cartier: L’aventure au XVIe siècle, edited by Fernand Braudel, 257–72. Montreal: Libre-Expression; Paris: Berger-Levrault “Les Micmacs de la Baie des Chaleurs.” In Le Monde de Jacques Cartier: L’aventure au XVIe siècle, edited by Fernand Braudel, 246. Montreal: LibreExpression; Paris: Berger-Levrault “History and Settlement in Lower Nubia in the Perspective of Fifteen Years.” In Meroitistische Forschungen 1980 (Meroitica 7), edited by F. Hintze, 367–80 “Indian and White History: Two Worlds or One?” In Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies, edited by Michael K. Foster, Jack Campisi, and Marianne Mithun, 17–33. Albany: State University of New York Press “Jacques Cartier à Hochelaga en 1535.” Vie des Arts 29 (115):37–40, 93–4 “The Mainlines of Socio-economic Development in Dynastic Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom.” In Origin and Early Development of Food-producing Cultures in Northeastern Africa, edited by L. Krzyzaniak and M. Kobusiewicz, 101–8. Poznan: Polish Academy of Sciences – Poznan Branch “Marxism and Archaeology.” In On Marxian Perspectives in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Harry Hoijer, 1981, edited by Jacques Maquet and Nancy Daniels, 59–97. Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications “The Road to Affluence: A Reassessment of Early Huron Responses to European Contact.” In Affluence and Cultural Survival, edited by R.F. Salisbury and E. Tooker, 12–25. Washington: American Ethnological Society. Reprinted in R. Fisher and K.S. Coates, eds., Out of the Background: Readings in Canadian Native History (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1988), 81–101; 2nd edition (1996), 4–16 [Et al.] “Parker Festooned Pottery at the Lawson Site: Trace-Element Analysis.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 42:3–11 Review of The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, by F. Jennings. Histoire sociale – Social History 17 (34):429–34 Review of Ces hommes dits sauvages, by F.M. Gagnon. Culture 4 (2):67–8 Review of Les chars rupestres sahariens des Syrtes au Niger, by H. Lhote. International Journal of African Historical Studies 17:341–2 Review of The Identity of Man as Seen by an Archaeologist, by Grahame Clark. Man 19:675–6

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Review of New Discoveries in Nubia, edited by P. van Moorsel. Bibliotheca Orientalis 41:107–10 Review of Oneota Studies, edited by G.E. Gibbon. American Antiquity 49:667–8 Review of The Present Past, by Ian Hodder. Man 19:676–7 Review of Studies in Egyptian Religion Dedicated to Professor Jan Zandee, edited by M. Heerma van Voss et al. International Journal of African Historical Studies 17:326 1985 Archaeology as Historical Science. Monograph of the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, no. 14. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reprinted 1986; first paperback edition 1986; published in U.K. by Manchester University Press, 1986 [With B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd] Historia del Egypto Antiquo [Ancient Egypt: A Social History]. Translated by Juan Faci. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica “Draper: Past and Prologue.” In William D. Finlayson, The 1975 and 1978 Rescue Excavations at the Draper Site: Introduction and Settlement Patterns, 5–18. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 130. Ottawa: National Museum of Man “The Evolution of Pre-Industrial Cities: A Multilinear Perspective.” In Mélanges offerts à Jean Vercoutter, edited by Francis Geus and Florence Thill, 343–53. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations “Generalized Coercion and Inequality: The Basis of State Power in the Early Civilizations.” In Development and Decline: The Evolution of Sociopolitical Organization, edited by H.J. Claessen, Pieter van de Velde, and M.E. Smith, 46–61. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey “Land and Trade as Patterns in Sudanese History.” In Studi di Paletnologia in Onore di Salvatore M. Puglisi, edited by M. Liverani, A. Palmieri, and R. Peroni, 465–75. Rome: Universita di Roma “La Sapienza” “Marxism in Archaeology: Real or Spurious?” Reviews in Anthropology 12:114–23 “The Past as Power: Anthropology and the North American Indian.” In Who Owns the Past? edited by Isabel McBryde, 11–40. Melbourne: Oxford University Press “Social Archaeology: From Where? To Where?” (banquet address). In Status, Structure and Stratification: Current Archaeological Reconstructions, edited

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by M. Thompson, M.T. Garcia, and F.J. Kense, 1–9. Calgary: Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary “Writing the History of Archaeology: A Survey of Trends.” In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, edited by G.W. Stocking, Jr, 218–35. Vol. 3 of History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press “The Innis-Gérin Medalist, 1985” (acceptance speech). Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 23:187–9 Review of The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, by F. Jennings et al. Man in the Northeast 30:131–3 Review of The Myth of the Savage, by O.P. Dickason. Canadian Historical Review 66:108–9 Review of Pharaoh’s People, by T.G.H. James. International Journal of African Historical Studies 18:737–8 Review of Theory and Explanation in Archaeology, edited by C. Renfrew et al. Man 20:163–4 1986 [Editor] Native Shell Mounds of North America: Early Studies. New York: Garland Publishing Introduction to Native Shell Mounds of North America, xi–xxiv “Ethnohistory: The Unfinished Edifice.” Ethnohistory 33 (3):253–67 “Evolutionism, Relativism and Putting Native People into Historical Context.” Culture 6 (2):65–79 “The Historians’ Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from Charlevoix to the Present.” Canadian Historical Review 67 (3):315– 42. Reprinted in R. Fisher and K.S. Coates, eds., Out of the Background: Readings in Canadian Native History (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1988), 14–44; D.R. Miller et al., eds., The First Ones: Readings in Indian/Native Studies (Piapot Reserve #75: Saskatchewan Federated Indian College, 1992), 91–102; J. Sawchuk, ed., Images of the Indian: Portrayals of Native Peoples, vol. 4 of Readings in Aboriginal Studies (Brandon, Man.: Bearpaw Publishing, 1995), 215–35; O.P. Dickason, ed., The Native Imprint (Athabasca, Alta: Athabasca University Educational Enterprises, 1995), 1:423–50. Selected passages reprinted in M. Shore, ed., The Contested Past: Reading Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 273–7 “Prehistoric Archaeology and American Society.” In American Archaeology Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology, 1935–1985, edited by David J. Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, 187–215. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press

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“Prospects for a World Archaeology.” World Archaeology 18:1–20 “The Role of Technology in V. Gordon Childe’s Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 19:1–14 Introduction to Studies in Southwestern Ontario Archaeology, edited by William A. Fox, vii–ix. Occasional Publications, no. 1. London: London Chapter of the Ontario Archaeological Society Review of Cultures in Contact, edited by W.H. Fitzhugh. Science 232:1023–4 Review of Fecundity Figures, by John Baines. Man 21:547 Review of Le pays renversé, by Denys Delâges. Culture 6:82–4 Review of Wadi Qitna and Kalabsha South, by E. Strouhal. Bibliotheca Orientalis 43:411–16 1987 The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 1976. Reprint, with new preface. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press [With T. Morantz and L. Dechêne, editors] Le Castor Fait Tout: Selected Papers of the Fifth North American Fur Trade Conference. Montreal: Lake St Louis Historical Society “Archaeology and the Future.” Distinguished Lecture, Faculty of Arts, McGill University, Montreal “V. Gordon Childe: A Marxist Archaeologist.” In The V. Gordon Childe Colloquium, Mexico, 1986, edited by Linda Manzanilla, 1–8. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 349. Translated as “V. Gordon Childe: Un Arqueologo Marxista,” in Coloquio V. Gordon Childe, edited by Linda Manzanilla (Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1988), 7–14 Plate 33, “The St. Lawrence Valley, 16th Century,” and Plate 47, “Native Resettlement, 1635–1740.” In The Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 1, edited by R.C. Harris. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. French edition, Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal Comment on “The Economics of Urbanization and State Formation at Teotihuacan,” by D.K. Kurtz. Current Anthropology 28:346–7 Comment on “Processual Archaeology and the Radical Critique,” by T.K. Earle and R.W. Preucel. Current Anthropology 28:523–4 Introduction to papers on the beginning of the fur trade. Man in the Northeast 33:27–30 Review of Black Robe, by Brian Moore. European Review of Native American Studies 1 (1):58–9

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Review of Gentlemen and Jesuits, by Elizabeth Jones. Canadian Historical Review 68:299–300 1988 “Archaeology’s Relations with the Physical and Biological Sciences: A Historical Review.” In Proceedings of the 26th International Archaeometry Symposium, edited by R.M. Farquhar et al., 1–9. Toronto: Archaeometry Laboratory “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage.” Culture 8 (1):71–85 “A Reply to Michael Ames.” Culture 8:87–8 “Who Owns the Past?/A qui appartient le passé?” Muse 6:13–5, 21–3 [With Michael Ames] “Share the Blame: I ‘The Spirit Sings.’” Vanguard 17 (2): 15–18 Reply to Julia D. Harrison, “‘The Spirit Sings’ and the Future of Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 4 (6):9–10 Review of Evolution of the Onondaga Iroquois, by J.W. Bradley. Canadian Historical Review 69:257–8 Review of The False Faces of the Iroquois, by W.N. Fenton. Canadian Historical Review 69:255–7 Review of La Mission des Jésuites chez les Hurons, 1634–1650, by Lucien Campeau. Canadian Historical Review 69:100–2 Review of Nubian Culture Past and Present, edited by Tomas Hägg. Antiquity 62:382–3 Review of Qasr es-Seghir, by Charles Redman. Man 23:172–3 Review of Victorian Anthropology, by G. Stocking. Antiquity 62:603–4 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paperback edition in Cambridge Paperback Library. U.S. edition, New York: Cambridge University Press The Indians and the Heroic Age of New France. Revised edition. Historical Booklet, no. 30. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association [With B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd] Storia Sociale dell’ Antico Egitto [Ancient Egypt: A Social History]. Translated by Francesco Sircana. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Reprinted in Biblioteca Storica Laterza Series, 2000 “Alfred G. Bailey – Ethnohistorian.” Acadiensis 18 (2):3–21 “Archaeology and Anthropology: Current and Future Relations.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 13:1–11 “Comments on Archaeology into the 1990s.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 22 (1):28–31

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“Educating about Native People: A Way to Right Chronic Social Problems?” Waterloo: History Department, Wilfrid Laurier University “History and Contemporary American Archaeology: A Critical Analysis.” In Archaeological Thought in America, edited by C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, 19– 34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (5):776–97 “In Memoriam: Richard Frank Salisbury.” Proactive 8 (2):2–4 “Is Tenure Worth Defending.” McGill Reporter 21 (18):3 Preface to Georges E. Sioui, Pour une autohistoire amérindienne, xi–xviii. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval “Richard Frank Salisbury 1926–1989.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 5th ser., 4:419–23 Review of After Columbus, by James Axtell. Canadian Historical Review 70:245–6 Review of Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, by S.J. Shennan. Man 24:687–8 Review of The Collapse of Complex Societies, by J.A. Tainter. Man 24:374–5 Review of The Indians’ New World, by J.H. Merrell. Canadian Historical Review 70:569–71 Review of A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634–1635, by C.T. Gehring and W.A. Starna. New York History 70:449–50 Review of Late Antique Nubia, by L. Török. Orientalia 58:542–6 Review of What Is Archaeology? by P. Courbin. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 13:237–9 1990 The Huron: Farmers of the North. 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Les Indiens, la fourrure et les Blancs: Français et Amérindiens en Amérique du Nord [Natives and Newcomers]. Translated by Georges Khal. Montreal: Boréal; Paris: Seuil. Boréal Compact edition, no. 38, published in 1992 “Anthropological Literature.” In Literary History of Canada, edited by W.H. New 4:241–62. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press “Egypt: A Fledgling Nation.” Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 27 (1–2):58–66 “Evolutionism and Ecology: Archaeology and the Dreams of Western Civilization.” Saeculum 41:255–72 “The History of African Archaeology in World Perspective.” In A History of African Archaeology, edited by Peter Robertshaw, 309–19. London: James Currey

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“Maintaining Economic Equality in Opposition to Complexity: An Iroquoian Case Study.” In The Evolution of Political Systems: Sociopolitics in SmallScale Sedentary Societies, edited by Steadman Upham, 119–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press “Monumental Architecture: A Thermodynamic Explanation of Symbolic Behaviour.” World Archaeology 22:119–32 “The 1990s: North American Archaeology with a Human Face?” Antiquity 64:778–87 Comment on “Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?” by J.S. Solway and R.B. Lee. Current Anthropology 31:134–5 Review of The Eighth Day, by R.N. Adams. Man 25:346–7 Review of The Huron, by Nancy Bonvillain. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 14:167–70 1991 Les Enfants d’Aataentsic: L’histoire du peuple Huron [The Children of Aataentsic, revised text]. Translated by Jean-Paul Sainte-Marie and Brigitte Chabert Hacikyan. Montreal: Libre Expression “Préface de la version française de The Children of Aataentsic.” In Les Enfants d’Aataentsic, xvii–xxii Rekishi Kagaka to-shite no Kokogaku [Archaeology as Historical Science]. Translated by Nobuhiro Kishigami. Tokyo: Yuzankaku Publishing Company “Nihongoban no tame no jo” (preface to the Japanese edition). In Rekishi Kagaka to-shite no Kokogaku, 1–7 Shijuan Yu Chuantong [Time and Traditions]. Translation. Beijing: San Liang Introduction to Chinese translation, Shijuan Yu Chuantong, 9–13 “Childe, V. Gordon (Vere Gordon).” In International Dictionary of Anthropologists, edited by C. Winters, 111–13. New York: Garland Publishing “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis for Archaeological Explanation.” American Anthropologist 93 (3): 551–69 “Early Native North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations.” Journal of American History 77:1195–215. Reprinted in A.L. Hurtado and P. Iverson, eds., Major Problems in American Indian History (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1994), 51–65; 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 63–77; European and Non-European Societies, 1450–1800 (vol. 27 of An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450–1800), edited by R. Forster (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), 1:191–211; Major Problems in American

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Colonial History, edited by R.O. Kupperman, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 39–44 (slightly abridged) “Inside from the Outside?” Antiquity 65:417–20 “Post-Processual Developments in Anglo-American Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 24:65–76 Review of Tracing Archaeology’s Past, edited by Andrew Christenson. American Antiquity 56:372–3 1992 Les Amérindiens et l’âge héroïque de la Nouvelle-France. Translation of 1989 revised edition. Brochure historique, no. 30. Ottawa: La Société historique du Canada Historia del Pensamiento Arqueológica [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Isabel García Trócoli. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica “Daniel Wilson and the Scottish Enlightenment.” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 122:55–75 “The University and the longue durée.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 6th ser., 3:57–77 “Black Robe.” Presbyterian Record 116 (4):5–6 “Brown Athena: A Postprocessual Goddess?” Current Anthropology 33:121–3 Foreword to For an Amerindian Ethnohistory, by Georges E. Sioui, ix–xv. English translation by Sheila Fischman. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press “Meiguo Xin Kaoguxue Shuping” (A commentary on New Archaeology in America). Wenwu Jikan 3:87–95 Comment on “Piltdown,” by P.V. Tobias. Current Anthropology 33:274–5 Review of The Cobra Goddess of Ancient Egypt, by S.B. Johnson. International Journal of African Historical Studies 25:149–50 Review of The Middle Ground, by R. White. Pacific History Review 61:421–2 Review of Objects of Change, by J. Rogers. Journal of American History 78:1419 Review of Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies, edited by R.W. Preucel, and Recovering the Past, by R. Gould. Journal of Field Archaeology 19:530–2 1993 Arkeologins Idéhistoria [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Öjevind Lång. Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag

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G. Clerc, and N. Grimal, 389–97. Vol. 2 of Hommages à Jean Leclant. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale “The Original Iroquoians: Huron, Petun, and Neutral.” In Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, edited by E.S. Rogers and D.B. Smith, 41–63. Toronto: Dundurn Press [With G.M. Day] “Southern Algonquian Middlemen: Algonquin, Nipissing, and Ottawa, 1550–1780.” In Aboriginal Ontario, edited by E.S. Rogers and D.B. Smith, 64–77 “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27:323–45 [With Michael Bisson and Barbara Lawson] “Excavating Collections: Archaeological Finds at the Redpath Museum.” Fontanus 7:53–71 Comment on “Monumentality and the Rise of Religious Authority in Precontact Hawai’i,” by M.J. Kolb. Current Anthropology 35:540–1 Foreword to Collected Curios: Missionary Tales from the South Seas, by Barbara Lawson, vii–viii. Fontanus Monograph Series, 3. Montreal: McGill Univeristy Libraries Letter to editor concerning “Where Was Hochelaga?” by M. Abley. Canadian Geographic 115 (1):12 “On Giving Lubbock His Due.” Current Anthropology 35:46–7 Review of Centuries of Darkness, by Peter James et al. American Historical Review 99:872–3 Review of Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonkian Culture in the Potomac Valley, by R.S. Potter. Pacific Historical Review 63:80–1 Review of Egypt: Ancient Culture, Modern Land, edited by J. Malek. International Journal of African Historical Studies 27:139–40 Review of The Near East: Archaeology in the “Cradle of Civilization,” by C. Maisels. Man 29:187–8 Review of Pitt Rivers: The Life and Archaeological Work of LieutenantGeneral Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, by M. Bowden. American Antiquity 59:390–1 Solicited dialogue on “A Never Ending Story: Historical Developments in Canadian Archaeology and the Quest for Federal Heritage Legislation,” by David V. Burley. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 18:101–3 1995 “Archaeology and the Integrated Circus.” Critique of Anthropology 15 (4): 319–35

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“Architecture, Power, and Politics in Early Civilizations.” In Anyplace, edited by C.C. Davidson, 210–20. Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press “Egyptology, Ancient Egypt, and the American Imagination.” In The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt, edited by Nancy Thomas, 20–35. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art “Expanding Middle-Range Theory.” Antiquity 69:449–58 “Romanticism, Nationalism, and Archaeology.” In Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 262–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press “A Reply to Tilley and Nencel.” Critique of Anthropology 15 (4):347–50 “Scholars Must Fight to Avert ‘Brain-dead Society.’” McGill Reporter 28 (7): 11. Reprinted in Simon Fraser News 5 (6) (1996):5 Review of Archaeological Dialogues 1 (1). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1:407 Review of From Farmers to Pharaohs: Mortuary Evidence for the Rise of Complex Society in Egypt, by K.A. Bard. Journal of Field Archaeology 22:366–7 Review of Men among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory, by A.B. Van Riper. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26:288–90 Review of Reckoning with the Dead, edited by T. Bray and W.K. Thomas. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1:836–7 1996 Arkeologiens Idéhistorie [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Toril Hanssen. Oslo: Pax Forlag [Editor, with Wilcomb E. Washburn] North America. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press [With W.E. Washburn) “Editorial Preface.” In North America, xiii–xix. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas [With W.E. Washburn] “Native Peoples in Euro-American Historiography.” In North America, pt 1, 61–124. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Storia del Pensiero Archeologico [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Gabriella Scandone Matthiae. Biblioteca di Storia 57. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice “Native American History: Problems of Success.” Canadian Review of American Studies 26:137–45

284

Bibliography: Bruce Trigger

“State, Origins of.” In The Social Science Encyclopedia, edited by Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, 837–8. 2nd ed. London: Routledge “Toshka and Arminna in the New Kingdom.” In Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, edited by Peter D. Manuelian, 2:801–10. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts [With W.R. Swagerty] “Entertaining Strangers: North America in the Sixteenth Century.” In North America, pt 1, 325–98. Vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Comment on “Agency, Ideology, and Power in Archaeological Theory” (three articles). Current Anthropology 37:63–4 Review of Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles, by M. Schiffer. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2:725–6 Review of L’Egypte et la vallée du Nil, vol. 1, by J. Vercoutter. Chronique d’Egypte 61:265–9 Review of Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom, by Jan Assmann. International Journal of African Historical Studies 29:424–6 Review of How “Natives” Think, by M. Sahlins. Journal of American History 82:1564–5 1997 Koko Haksa [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translation. Seoul: Hakyeun Munhwasa “Ancient Egypt in Cross-cultural Perspective.” In Anthropology and Egyptology: A Developing Dialogue, edited by Judith Lustig, 137–43. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press “Loaves and Fishes: Sustaining Anthropology at McGill.” Culture 17 (1/2): 89–100 “Charter for a New Elite?” In The Commission’s View of History: Judgement on the Past, Relevance for the Future, 17–20. Montreal: Working Papers from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada “Une carte pour une nouvelle élite?” Translation. Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 17:120–2 Foreword to At a Crossroads: Archaeology and First Peoples in Canada, edited by George P. Nicholas and Thomas D. Andrews, vii–xiii. Publication no. 24. Burnaby: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University “Nubia Rediviva.” Cambridge Archaeological Review 7:131–3 Review of Analytical Bibliography of the Prehistory and Early Dynastic Period of Egypt and Northern Sudan, by S. Hendrickx. Bibliotheca Orientalis 54:76–8 Review of Ancient Nekhen: Garstang in the City of Hierakonpolis, by Barbara Adams. Bibliotheca Orientalis 54:101–2

Bibliography: Bruce Trigger

285

Review of Aspects of Early Egypt, by J. Spencer. Bibliotheca Orientalis 54:626–30 Review of Colonial Indology, by D.K. Chakrabarti. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 7 (2):48–50 Review of Down from Olympus, by Suzanne Marchand. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 7 (2):43–4 Review of Egypt in Africa, edited by T. Celenko. International Journal of African Historical Studies 30:652–4 Review of Elkab v: The Naqada III Cemetery, by S. Hendrickx. Bibliotheca Orientalis 54:99–100 1998 Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm.” American Journal of Archaeology 102:1–34 “Childe as a Moralist.” Archaeologia Polona 35–6 (1997–98):357–62. Translated as “Childe Jako Moralista,” in V. Gordon Childe i Archaeologia w XX Wieku, edited by J. Lech and F.M. Stepniowski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe pwm, 1999), 77–83 “‘The Loss of Innocence’ in Historical Perspective.” Antiquity 72:694–8 “Reflections on Encounters with Archaeology.” In Bringing Back the Past: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Archaeology, edited by P.J. Smith and D. Mitchell, 77–92. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series Paper 158. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization “Writing Systems: A Case Study in Cultural Evolution.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 30:39–62 Review of Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World, edited by T. Pauketat and T.E. Emerson. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4:555–6 Review of The Rise and Fall of Culture History, by R.L. Lyman, M.J. O’Brien, and Robert C. Dunnell. Journal of Field Archaeology 25:363–6 Review of State Formation in Egypt, by T. Wilkinson. Bibliotheca Orientalis 55:105–9 1999 “Daniel Wilson.” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists, edited by Tim Murray, 1:79–92. Santa Barbara: abc-clio “Master and Servant: A Conference Overview.” In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology, edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Christopher M. Watts, 303–22. Toronto: eastendbooks in association with the Ontario Archaeological Society

286

Bibliography: Bruce Trigger

“Prehistoric Man and Daniel Wilson’s Later Canadian Ethnology.” In Thinking with Both Hands: Sir Daniel Wilson in the Old World and the New, edited by Elizabeth Hulse, 81–100. Toronto: University of Toronto Press “Shang Political Organization: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 1:43–62 “Vere Gordon Childe.” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists, edited by Tim Murray, 1:385–99. Santa Barbara: abc-clio “Reconnoitring Religion” (review of From Black Land to Fifth Sun, by Brian Fagan). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9:139–42 Review of Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use, by G.M. Lewis. Visual Anthropology 12:421–3 Review of The New Kingdom Royal City, by P. Lacovara. International Journal of African Historical Studies 32:224–5 2000 The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. Reprint, with a third preface. Carleton Library Series 195. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press “Roger Beefy’s Primer” (review of Archaeological Theory, by M. Johnson). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10:367–9 Review of Archaic States, edited by G.M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6:161–2 Review of The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires, by D.A. Welsby. International Journal of African Historical Studies 33:212–13 Review of The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology, by A.B. Kehoe. American Antiquity 65:776–7 2001 “Canada.” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries, edited by Tim Murray, 1:249–59. Santa Barbara: abc-clio “Historiography.” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries, edited by Tim Murray, 2:630–9. Santa Barbara: abc-clio “The Liberation of Wendake.” Ontario Archaeology, no. 72:3–14 “Childe, Vere Gordon (1892–1957).” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries, edited by Tim Murray, 1:300–1. Santa Barbara: abc-clio “Wilson, Daniel (1816–1892).” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries, edited by Tim Murray, 3:1324–5. Santa Barbara: abc-clio Review of Archaeology, Ideology and Society: The German Experience, edited by H. Härke. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 11 (2):9–13 Review of Graham Clark: An Intellectual Life of an Archaeologist, by Brian Fagan. Journal of Field Archaeology 28:229–32

Bibliography: Bruce Trigger

287

Review of James A. Ford and the Growth of Americanist Archaeology, by M.J. O’Brien and R.L. Lyman. Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 37:73–5 2002 “Editing a Cambridge History in a Postmodern Context.” In Anthropology, History, and American Indians: Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant, edited by W.L. Merrill and I. Goddard, 95–103. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press Comment on “Religion, Politics, and Prehistory: Reassessing the Lingering Legacy of Oswald Menghin,” by P.L. Kohl and J.A. Pérez Gollán. Current Anthropology 43:581–2 Review of Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage, edited by C. Renfrew and C. Scarre. American Journal of Archaeology 106:318–20 Review of Early Dynastic Egypt, by T.A.H. Wilkinson. Chronique d’Egypte, 77:151–3 Review of The Myth of the Noble Savage, by T. Ellingson. International History Review 24:136–7 Review of New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology, edited by D.L. Browman and S. Williams. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 12:28–30 2003 Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press “All People Are [Not] Good.” Anthropologica 45:39–44 “Archaeological Theory: The Big Picture.” In Grace Elizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture Series. Provo, Utah: Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University “From a letter of comment from Prof. Bruce Trigger.” In William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means, 120. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books “Return to the Heart of Cities” (review of The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, edited by M.L. Smith). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13:281–3 2004 História do Pensamento Arqueológico [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Ordep Trindade Serra. São Paulo: Odysseus Editora

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“Cross-cultural Comparison and Archaeological Theory.” In A Companion to Social Archaeology, edited by L. Meskell and R.W. Preucel, 43–65. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers “Producing Knowledge for Society.” In Knowledge Matters: Essays in Honour of Bernard Shapiro, edited by P. Axelrod, 74–81. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press “Settlement Patterns in the Postmodern World: A Study of Monumental Architecture in Early Civilizations.” In The Archaeologist: Detective and Thinker, edited by L. Vishnyatsky, A. Kovalev, and O. Scheglova, 237–48. St Petersburg: St Petersburg University Press “Writing Systems: A Case Study in Cultural Evolution.” In The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process, edited by S.D. Houston, 39–68. Revised reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [With Stephen Chrisomalis] “Reconstructing Prehistoric Ethnicity: Problems and Possibilities.” In A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, edited by J.V. Wright and J.-L. Pilon, 419–33. Mercury Series Archaeology Paper 164. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization 2005 Mia Istoria Arkhaiologikis Skepsis [A History of Archaeological Thought]. Translated by Vasliki Lalioti. Athens: Ekdosis Alexandreia [With B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd] Starovešký Egypt: Deš jiny Spolecš nosti [Ancient Egypt: A Social History]. Translated by Renata Landgráfová and Jana Mynáršová. Prague: Volvax Globator 2006 A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press

Honours, Awards, Special Lectures

h o n o u r s a n d aw a r d s 1976 1977 1978

Fellow, Royal Society of Canada Canadian Silver Jubilee Medal Guest at dinner given by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen as a “Tribute to Young Canadians Who Have Achieved Excellence in the Arts and Sciences,” October 17 1979 Cornplanter Medal for Iroquois Research (Cayuga Historical Society, Auburn, New York) 1980, 1982 Riddell Award, Ontario Historical Society 1985 Innis-Gérin Medal, Royal Society of Canada 1987 Doctor of Science (honoris causa), University of New Brunswick John Porter Prize, Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, for Natives and Newcomers 1989 Adopted as honorary member of the Great Turtle Clan of the Wendat (Huron) Confederacy, with name Nyemea 1990 Certificate of Merit, Social Sciences Federation, for The Children of Aataentsic as one of the twenty best works in social sciences, written in English and subsidized by the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme 1940–1990 Doctor of Letters (honoris causa), University of Waterloo (Convocation address)

290 1991

1993 1995 1999 2001 2003

2004

2005 2006

Honours, Awards, Special Lectures Prix Victor-Barbeau, Académie Canadienne-Française Honorary Member, Prehistoric Society, United Kingdom Prix Léon-Gérin (Prix du Québec) James R. Wiseman Book Award, Archaeological Institute of America, for A History of Archaeological Thought Honorary Fellow, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Doctor of Laws (honoris causa), University of Western Ontario (Convocation address) Doctor of Laws (honoris causa), McMaster University Officier, L’Ordre National du Québec Doctor of Laws (honoris causa), University of Toronto (Convocation address) Award for High Distinction in Research, Faculty of Arts, McGill University Celebratory Symposium, “The Works of Bruce G. Trigger: Considering the Contexts of His Influence,” organized by R. Williamson and M. Bisson, Society for American Archaeology, 69th Annual Meeting, Montreal Officer of the Order of Canada James R. Wiseman Book Award, Archaeological Institute of America, for Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study Lifetime Achievement Award, Society for American Archaeology

n a m e d a n d p l e n a ry l e c t u r e s 1981 1982 1983 1986 1987 1988

1989

Hoijer Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles Fourth Gordon Childe Memorial Lecture, University of London Guest Speaker, Annual Symposium, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra Seagram Lecturer, Department of History, University of Toronto McGill Faculty of Arts Distinguished Lecture Lansdowne Visitor and Lecturer, University of Victoria Distinguished Lecture, Northeastern Anthropological Association, Annual Meeting, Albany, New York Harry Hawthorn Distinguished Lecture, Canadian Ethnology Society, Annual Meeting, Saskatoon John Porter Lecture, Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Annual Meeting, Windsor, Ontario Connie O’Shaughnessy Memorial Lecture, McMaster University

Honours, Awards, Special Lectures 1990

1991 1992 1994

1995 1996

1997

2000 2002

2003

291

Banquet Speaker, Canadian Archaeological Association, Whitehorse, Yukon Student Silver Medal Presentation Lecture, Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo Distinguished Lecture, Archaeology Division, American Anthropological Association, New Orleans Annual Inaugural Lecture, Department of Archaeology, University College, Dublin, Ireland Distinguished Visiting Professor, American University in Cairo (four lectures on “Ancient Egypt as an Early Civilization”) Plenary Speaker, RATS! Conference, Binghamton, New York Plenary Address, Theoretical Archaeology Group, 16th Annual Conference, Bradford, U.K. John Henry Cardinal Newman Lecture, McGill University Invited Speaker, Anthropology Postwar/Premillennial Intergenerational Conversations series, University of Chicago Invited Lecturer, October Series of Lectures, Church of St Andrew and St Paul, Montreal (three lectures on “Native Spirituality and the Christian Experience”) The 1997 Context and Human Society Lecture Series, The Center for Archaeological Studies and Humanities Foundation of Boston University (three lectures on “Archaeology and Philosophy: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm”) Keynote Speaker, Ontario Archaeological Society Annual Symposium Centennial Lecture, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley The Albert and Charlotte Spaulding Memorial Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara Shallit Lecture, Brigham Young University

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Graduate Student Dissertation and Thesis Titles

phd R.J. Pearce

Mapping Middleport: A Case Study in Societal Archaeology (1984)

R.F. Williamson

Glen Meyer: People in Transition (1985)

D. Smith

Archaeological Systematics and the Analysis of Iroquoian Ceramics: A Case Study from the Crawford Lake Area, Ontario (1987)

B. Deller

The Paleo-Indian Occupation of Southwestern Ontario: Distribution, Technology, and Social Organization (1988)

A. von Gernet

The Transculturation of the Amerindian Pipe/Tobacco/ Smoking Complex (1989)

W.R. Fitzgerald

Chronology to Cultural Process: Lower Great Lakes Archaeology, 1500–1650 (1990)

G.A. Warrick

A Population History of the Huron-Petun, a.d. 900–1650 (1990)

P. Timmins

An Interpretive Framework for the Early Iroquoian Village (1992)

F.L. Stewart

Proto Huron/Petun and Proto-St. Lawrence Iroquoian Subsistence as Culturally Defining (1998)

294

Dissertation and Thesis Titles

E.C. Yellowhorn Awakening Internalist Archaeology in the Aboriginal World (2002) R.I. MacDonald

Late Woodland Settlement Trends in South-Central Ontario: A Study of Ecological Relationships and Culture Change (2003)

S.A. Chrisomalis The Comparative History of Numerical Notation (2003) A. Simpson

To the Reserve and Back Again: Kahnawake Mohawk Narratives of Self, Home and Nation (with C. Scott) (2003)

J. Cunningham

Household Vessel Exchange and Consumption in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali: An Ethnoarchaeological Study (2005)

ma M. Stott

Bella Coola Ceremony and Art (1969)

C. Rinke

Kin Knowledge in a French Canadian Family (1972)

M. Blaker

The Structure of Jesuit-Guarani Relations in Paraguay (1585–1641) (1975)

R. Williamson

The Robin Hood Site: A Study of Functional Variability in Iroquoian Settlement Patterns (1979)

D. Smith

An Analytical Approach to the Seriation of Iroquoian Pottery (1981)

J.B. Jamieson

The Steward Site: A Study in St. Lawrence Iroquoian Chronology (1982)

A. von Gernet

Interpretation of Intra-Site Artifact Spatial Distribution: The Draper Smoking Pipes (1982)

P. Timmins

The Analysis and Interpretation of Radiocarbon Dates in Iroquoian Archaeology (1984)

B. Lawson

Collected Ethnographic Objects as Cultural Representations: Rev. Robertson’s Collection from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) (1991)

H.J. Lerner

Static Types to Dynamic Variables: The Methods of Prehistoric Chipped Stone Tool Documentation and Analysis (2000)

Index

Abitibi: people, 160, 167n14; region, 158, 167n14, 167n16 aboriginal. See indigenous peoples; individual First Nations aboriginal rights, 175–8, 181–6 aboriginal title, 154, 175– 8, 181–7, 195, 199 Adams, George W., 177 Adams, Robert, 44, 237 Adams decision, 178–9 Africa, 33, 41, 56, 96, 98, 155–6, 182, 207, 214, 233, 239, 241, 243, 245; South Africa, 54; sub-Saharan, 239 Akazawa, Takeru, 86 Akwesasne (reserve), 177, 184 Albanel, Father Charles, 161, 163–4 Alberta, 154, 185 Algaze, Guillermo, 45 Algonquian peoples, 144, 147, 155, 160, 162,

164–5, 167n11, 167n17, 168n25, 187 Allouez, Father Claude, 144 “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist,” 4, 6, 13n2 Althusser, Louis, 72 American Anthropologist, 241 American Antiquity, 5, 9–10, 12n1, 13n2, 22, 54 American archaeology, 9, 11, 22, 58, 65 American Folklore Society, 105 American Indian Claims Commission, 175 American Indian Ethnohistoric Conference, 142 American Indian Movement, 67 American Journal of Archaeology, 54

Ancient Egypt: A Social History, 56, 244–5 Anderson, Wendy, 247 “Anglo-American Archaeology,” 13n2 Anglo-American archaeology, 22, 65, 81–2, 86 “Anthropological Literature,” 155 anthropology, 17–19, 22, 36, 47, 55, 57–8, 66, 72, 96–7, 104, 107–8, 110n3, 143, 152, 177, 239, 242, 246, 250; cross-cultural studies, 26, 36, 38–47, 55, 71, 236–7, 251–2; development, 211, 243; economic, 236; forensic, 175; physical, 67, 93, 210, 212, 217, 242; sociocultural, 42, 217, 231, 233–4, 241 Antiquity, 5, 12n1 archaeologists, as ethnographers, 57–8

296 “Archaeology and Ecology,” 245 “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm,” 30 “Archaeology and the Ethnographic Present,” 4 “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian,” 4, 6, 9, 13n2, 27–8, 67, 115, 139 Archaeology as Historical Science, 86 “Archaeology at the Crossroads,” 4, 12 “Archaeology of Government, The,” 239 Archaic period, 56, 199 Arctic Anthropology, 12n1 Arminna West, 57, 237–9 Arqueología social, 68, 72, 73 Artifacts and Ideas, 25 Athabaskan (language), 181 Attikamekw (Attikameques), 160–1, 163 Ault Park site, 232 Australia, 52, 98, 175, 207, 223, 245; Australian archaeology, 54 Axtell, James, 152 Bailey, Alfred G., 154 Ballana, 239 Basque whalers, 159 Beacon Herald, The, 154 Benin state, 37 Bennyhoff, James, 236 Benoit decision, 185 Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory, 17–18, 180–1, 218, 244 Big Horn Medicine Wheel, 201

Index Binford, Lewis R., 9, 10, 12, 13n2, 18, 118 Bisson, Michael, 246 Blackfoot, 200 Boas, Franz, 40–2, 47–8, 64, 233 Bogoraz, V.G., 104 Bourdieu, Pierre, 20 Bradley, Richard, 109 Brand, Adam, 97 Brébeuf, Jean de, 136 Brecht, Bertolt, 149 Breuil, Abbé Henri, 106–7 British archaeology, 11, 17– 20, 22, 65, 67, 72 British Columbia, 181–2; British Columbia Supreme Court, 181 Bruner, Edward, 236, 240 Burkitt, M.C., 106 Burnet, Jean, 232 Buryat, 103 Butler, Jay, 249 Cahiagué, 136 Calgary, 11, 154, 248 Calvert site, 123–4, 247 Cambridge (Ontario), 226 Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, 135, 154, 166n3, 249 Campeau, Lucien, 152 Canada, 8–9, 11, 17, 53, 135, 145, 153, 155, 163, 168n19, 174–5, 182–4, 195, 210, 218–19, 231, 233, 235–6, 239–42, 248–50 Canadian archaeology, 8–11 Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 5, 9–10, 12n1, 13n2 Canadian Museum of Civilization, 233 Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, The, 54

Caribbean, 45, 166n2; eastern, 242 Carneiro, Robert, 43, 45 Carpenter, Edmund, 231 Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (with James Pendergast), 4, 244 Catholicism, 152, 229. See also Christianity cave art, 95, 106–7 Champlain, Samuel de, 136, 148, 150, 158, 160, 167n18, 178 Chang, Kwang-chih, 114, 237 chaos theory, 74 Charlton, Thomas, 233 Chaunskii, Nikolaev, 98 Cheyennes, 200 Childe, V. Gordon, 6, 18– 20, 44, 52–3, 63–6, 68, 72–3, 76, 80–6, 118, 138–9, 234, 249; Gordon Childe conference (Institute of Archaeology), 249 Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, The, 4–5, 7, 13n2, 136, 144–51, 166n4, 166n5, 177, 219, 245–6 China, 37, 56, 97, 232, 241 Chrisomalis, Stephen, 247 Christianity, 98, 146–7, 156 Christie, Patricia, 249 Chukchi, 99, 103 Clark, Grahame, 18, 249 Clark, J. Desmond, 244–5 Clermont, Norman, 159 Coe, Michael, 237 Cohen, Ronald, 231, 233, 235 Collingwood, R.E., 234 “Colonizers and Natives: Towards a More

Index Objective History of New France,” 139 Colson, Elizabeth, 241 Constitution Act, 175, 177 Cooper, Beatrice, 229 Couillard, Guillemette, 150 Cree, 143–4, 157–8, 161– 5, 166n11, 168n21, 185; Lubicon, 154 Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi, 155 Crépieul, Father François de, 160 Crow, 200 Cruikshank, Julie, 182 Culhane, Dara, 182 Current Anthropology, 12n1 Daniel, Glyn, 65 Dawson, William, 214 Dayaks, 104 Delgamuukw decision, 181–3, 188 Deller, Brian, 247 Deloria, Vine, 67 Denton, David, 158–9, 166n9, 247 Depression, the, 226, 230 “Destruction of Huronia: A Study in Economic and Cultural Change, 1609– 1650, The,” 138, 142–5 “Determinants of Settlement Patterns, The,” 114, 121, 124 dialectic, the, 62, 72–4 disease, European: introduced in North America, 125 “Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Constraint and Freedom – A New Synthesis for Archaeological Explanation,” 4, 37 Dixon, Roland B., 105, 231 Dobyns, Henry, 125 Driver, Harold, 41

Dumais, Pierre, 156 Dunning, William, 231, 233 Eartiwinipecks, 161 Eastmain River, 161, 163, 168n22 Eddy, James, 200 Eggan, Fred, 41, 142 Egypt, 3, 17, 33, 37, 44–5, 52–3, 55–7, 140, 174, 210, 214, 222, 230–1, 239, 245, 253–4; Aswan Dam, 28, 237 Eliade, Mircea, 107 Emerson, J. Norman, 137, 321 Engels, Friedrich, 27, 31, 33, 63–4, 74, 84–5, 138, 247 “Engels on the Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” 27, 63, 247 England, 82, 156, 242 English: in North America, 143, 161–3, 167n14, 167n18, 168n23 Enlightenment, the, 71, 120, 235 Eogan, George, 249 ethnographic analogy, 115, 205 ethnographic collections at McGill: Egypt, 24; South Pacific, 214 ethnography, 38–9, 44, 48, 53, 57–8, 95–6, 99, 103– 4, 108, 183, 215, 254; of the Huron, 55, 145, 148, 240, 245; of Siberia, 96, 99, 103–5, 107–8 ethnohistory, 28, 36, 43–4, 55, 142–3, 148–9, 152– 5, 165, 175, 177, 182–3, 186–7, 241; of the Huron, 136–9, 145–8, 244–6

297 Ethnohistory, 12n1, 175 ethnology, 69, 93, 105, 126, 214–15, 217, 249; of Middle East, 212, 243; of North American Indian, 142 Europe, 82, 94, 96–102, 104–5, 107–8, 137, 140, 152, 207, 221, 231; and fur trade, 115, 143–4, 146, 151, 155, 157, 159, 162, 166n2, 167n18, 168n21, 219; and introduced disease (epidemic) in North America, 125; and ninetieth-century anthropology, 108; and whaling in North America, 160 European archaeology, 18, 84, 94 European contact with natives in North America, 27–8, 151, 156–7, 164– 5, 166n3, 168n25, 176– 7, 179, 183, 185, 188, 198–9, 245–6 European Palaeolithic, 105, 214 European prehistory, 65, 95–6; colonialist nature of, 93, 98–102, 144, 146 Evans, Eve, 249 Evans, John, 249 Evans-Pritchard, Edward, 47, 254 Fawcett, Claire, 80, 247 feminist archaeology, 11, 31, 54, 67–8 Federal Court of Appeal, 185–6 Fenton, William N., 241 Fisher, Robin, 182–3 Fitzgerald, William, 247 Flannery, Kent, 122, 249

298 folklore, 197, 199, 202, 204–6. See also oral history Forbis, Richard, 11 Ford, Clelland, 36, 236 France, 106, 151; and North America, 136, 143–50, 156–9, 162–4, 167n12, 167n18, 168n24, 187, 219, 240, 246 Franco, Francisco, 73 Frankfort, Henri, 44 Frankfurt school, 72 Franklin, Ursula, 253 Fraser, James, 229 Freedman, Maurice, 236 French archaeology, 106 French critical theory, 11, 72 Freudian psychoanalysis, 94, 104 Frye, Northrop, 246 Garrod, Dorothy, 214 Gathercole, Peter, 249 gender prejudice: in anthropology, 93–7, 99–101, 103–9; in archaeology, 54, 68 Georgian Bay (Ontario), 234, 240 Germany, 96–7, 100, 226– 8, 233; National Museum of Antiquities, 106; Nazi, 6, 227–8 Giddens, Anthony, 20 Gillam, Zachariah, 163 Gitksan, 181; adaawk, 181 Glenbow Museum, 154, 248; Spirit Sings, The, 154, 248 Goddard, Ives, 167n11 Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology, 4, 6, 52–3, 64–5, 81, 138 Graham, Gertrude, 229

Index Graham, Harry, 226 Graham, J. Walter, 232 Gramsci, Antonio, 72 Grand River (Ontario), 122, 126 Grant, George, 240 Green, Roger, 45 Greenberg, Joseph, 47, 239 Griffith, F.L., 238 Grinnell, George Bird, 200 Guatemala, 240 Gutkind, Peter, 211 Habu, Junko, 80, 247 Hall, Oswald, 232 Hamada, Kosaku, 82–3 Harris, David, 249 Harrison, Peter, 233 Hayden, Bryan, 9–10, 124 Hegelian Marxists, 74–5 Hegmon, M., 12, 22 Heichelheim, Fritz, 231, 234 Heidenreich, Conrad, 121, 151 Hewes, Gordon, 38 Heyler, André, 239 Higham, Charles, 249 Historical Atlas of Canada, The, 154 “Historic Location of the Hurons, The,” 4, 121, 138, 240–1 History and Settlement in Lower Nubia, 125, 166, 237 History of Archaeological Thought, The, 4–6, 17, 20–2, 27, 29, 54, 58, 68, 81, 93, 118, 218, 222, 248, 250 Hodder, Ian, 9–10, 19, 65, 69, 72, 118, 152, 248, 254 Hodson, Roy, 249 Hoffman, Maria, 226 Holmedale site, 122

Hood, Sinclair, 249 Horton, Robin, 156 Hsu, Francis, 241 Hudson Bay, 157, 159, 168n22 Hudson’s Bay Company, 143–4, 161, 163, 168n25 Human Relations Area Files (hraf), 38–9, 41–5, 48 hunting magic, 106–7 Huron (Wendat), 5, 12, 18, 52, 55, 117, 125, 137–9, 140, 142–53, 156, 165, 167n12, 168n22, 174, 178, 182, 219, 222, 234, 240, 244–7, 253–4; Great Turtle Clan, 145, 174, 219; Huron country (Huronia), 121, 137, 146, 148, 166n5, 230, 234 Huron: Farmers of the North, The, 4–5, 18, 55, 135–6, 138, 245 hyperrelativism, 16, 21–5, 27–8, 32, 69–70, 81, 248, 250 “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility and the Social Sciences,” 6, 27, 69, 81 Hyslop-Maxwell, Rachel, 249 Iiyuu (Cree), 161 Inca, 37 India, 56, 223 indigenous peoples: archaeologies of, 58, 67–8, 75, 194–5; relationships with archaeologists, 5, 9, 22, 53, 126, 138, 156, 186, 195, 219, 250; Siberian, 98, 101–4 Indus Valley, 45 Innis, Harold, 231, 246 Inuit, 154, 175

Index Iroquoians (Ontario): archaeology of, 115–26, 135–6, 140, 217, 222, 230, 234, 236–7, 240–1, 243, 245–7 Iroquois: Five Nations, 138, 144–7, 149–52, 157, 160, 163–4, 168n25, 187, 189n1, 244–5; Six Nations, 126. See also Mohawk; Oneida; Onondaga Israel, 214 James Bay, 143, 155–68, 211 Jamieson, Bruce, 247 Japan, 45, 83, 85, 223 Japanese archaeology, 80–7 Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, The, 136, 143, 148, 156, 158, 160– 3, 166n9, 167n18 Jesuits: in North America, 143, 145, 148–9, 160–3, 168n25 Jomon culture (Japan), 83– 5 Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 12n1 Jury, Wilfrid, 230 Kakouchak (Porcupine Nation), 162 Kamchadal, 103 Kamenskie, 98 Kanesatake (reserve), 187 Kelley, Jane, 11 Kemp, Barry, 56 Kenyon, Walter, 231 Kidd, Kennth, 230 Kilistinon (Kinistininon), 161, 168n21 Kirch, Patrick, 45 Klejn, Leo, 72 koekchuch, 101 Koike, Hiroko, 86

Kondo, Yoshiro, 85 Koryaks, 99, 103 Kouakouikouesiouek, 161 Kungax, 181 Kuper, Adam, 108 Labrador, 158–9 Ladurie, Le Roy, 221–2 La Grande River (Quebec), 158–9, 166n10 Laidlaw, Stuart, 249 Lake Caniapiscau, 158–9 Lake Chamouchouane, 168n18 Lake Mistassini, 157–8, 164, 167n13, 167n14, 167n15, 167n16, 168n18 Lake Nemaska, 157 Lake Nemiscau, 158, 161, 164, 168n18 Lake Nicabau, 163, 168n18 Lake Ontario, 121 Lake Robertson, 167n16 Lake St Francis, 178 Lake St Jean, 156, 158–60, 162–4, 168n25 Lake Superior, 144, 161, 168n21 Lake Temiscaming, 168n18 Lalemant, Father Gabriel, 136, 150 Lalemant, Father Jérôme, 160 Lamer, Chief Justice Antonio, 177 land claims. See aboriginal title Latin America, 68, 72–3 Laure, Father Pierre, 157 Lawson, Barbara, 215, 247 Lawson site, 118–19, 122 Lee, Richard, 233 LeJeune, Father Paul, 168n24 Leone, Mark, 65, 72

299 Linnaeus, Carl, 101 Literary History of Canada, The, 155 London (Ontario), 123 London School of Economics, 236 Lounsbury, Floyd, 241 MacDonald, George, 233, 241 MacDonald, Robert, 247 Mace, Ruth, 46 Mackenzie, Marguerite, 155, 164 Macnamara, Ellen, 249 maize: introduction into Ontario, 115, 117, 122 Malgonzei, 97 Malthusian, Thomas Robert, 125 Man, 54, 106 Mann, Michael, 45 Martijn, Charles, 150, 167n15, 167n16 Marxism, 6, 8, 19–21, 26, 31–2, 37, 53, 62–76, 81– 6, 138, 211, 234–5, 240, 248, 254. See also materialism; the dialectic materialism, 7, 16, 20–2, 26–7, 31, 33, 39–40, 61, 63–4, 66, 73, 84 Maya, 37 Mayer-Oakes, William J., 231, 234 McCaffrey, Moira, 166n9, 247 McCord Museum, 154, 166n7, 249 McCown, Theodore, 214 McEachern, Chief Justice Allan, 181–4 McGill-Queen’s University Press, 250 McGill University, 11, 80, 118–21, 124–5, 142, 177, 210–13, 215, 217,

300 241–3, 246; Board of Governors, 213, 215; Congo Expedition, 214; Department of Anthropology, 143, 210–13; Faculty Club, 242; Faculty of Arts, 211, 213; Faculty of Arts Curriculum Committee, 213; Faculty of Religious Studies, 213; Joint Board of Theological Colleges, 213; Joint Committee of McGill University, 213; Senate, 214 McIlwraith, Thomas, 231, 234, 236, 240 McLuhan, Marshall, 231, 246 Medicine Mountain, 200 medicine wheel, 200–1 Mellars, Paul, 249 Membertou, Chief, 187 Meroitic studies, 56–7, 237–9 Merton, Robert, 203–4 Mesoamerica, 44, 200; archaeology of, 56, 233 Mesopotamia, 37, 44–5 Métis, 175–6 Mexico, 37, 67–8 Mid-continental Journal of Archaeology, 5, 12n1 Middle East, 212, 231, 236, 239, 243 Mi’kmaq, 186–8 Mintz, Sidney, 236 Mistassini quartzite, 158– 9 Mistissini peoples, 161–2, 167n13, 167n16 Mitchell decision, 184 Mochica art, 237 Mohawk, 125, 150, 163, 177–8, 184–5 Mohawk-Mahican War, 166n3

Index Montagnais (Innu), 148, 155, 157–8, 160, 162–3, 168n24 Montelius, Oscar, 82 Montreal (Quebec), 146, 154, 178, 210, 214, 218, 241–2 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 40, 84–5, 138 Morse, Edward, 82 Mortillet, Gabriel de, 105– 6 Mulvaney, John, 249 Murdock, George, 36, 41, 46, 236–7 mythology, 83, 136, 197, 202–3, 207, 229 Naroll, Raoul, 37, 42–3, 241 Naschcoppees, 161 Naskapis, 157 Nastapoka chert, 159 National Archives of Canada, 167n18 Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered, 4–5, 116, 139, 144, 147–8, 176, 179, 183, 219, 246 Near Eastern studies, 45, 56, 84–5, 231 Nepiscuthenues, 161 Neutrals, 151–2, 244 New Age interpretations, 199, 201 New Archaeology, 7, 11, 17–19, 25–6, 53, 61, 64– 7, 137 New Zealand, 54, 223 Nezu, Masashi, 83 North American Fur Trade Conference, 154 Northeast Handbook of North American Indians, 4–5, 135, 154, 245

Northwestern University, Evanston (Illinois), 37, 210, 241 Nova Scotia, 186; Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 188 Nubia, 27, 52, 55–7, 125, 139, 166n1, 222, 237–9, 241, 244–5, 254 Nubia under the Pharaohs, 56, 239 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 152 Ob River, 102 O’Connor, David, 56 Ojibwa, 161, 189n1, 230 Okamura, Katsuyuki, 249 Okayama University, 85 Oneida, 244 Onondaga, 244 Ontario, 236; southern, 121, 146, 167n11, 247; southwestern, 118, 226 Ontario Archaeological Society, 231 Ontario archaeology, 135, 230, 233 Ontario Archaeology, 5, 12n1 Ontario Hydro, 226, 232 oral history, 5, 44, 182, 184, 186, 188, 202; need for rationalist approach, 180–2, 186–8, 198, 200 oral tradition, 153, 174, 176, 179–85, 188–9, 189n1, 197–8, 200–2, 222 Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, 241 Ostyak, 100, 102, 107 o’takainaka’si (o’takainaka’siksi), 200 Ounachkapiouek, 158 Pagel, Mark, 46 Palaeolithic archaeology, 95, 97, 108

Index “Past as Power: Anthropology and the North American Indian,” 4, 6, 13n2 Patagonia, 105 Patterson, Thomas, 64, 67 Peabody Museum of Natural History, 239 Peace Bridge site, 117 Pearce, Robert, 217, 247 Pearson, Richard, 233, 241 Peel, J.D.Y., 44 Pendergast, James F., 4, 244 Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition, 237, 239 Peregrine, Peter, 39–40, 45 Petrie, Flinders, 82 Petun country (Petunia), 121 Piette, Edouard, 106 Pishepoce, 161 Pitchiboutounibuek (Pitchiboureniks), 161, 168n22 Poirier, Jean, 156 Poisson Blancs, 161 Polynesia, 45–6, 180, 207 Pospisil, Leo, 236–7, 240 post-processual archaeology, 7, 10, 13n2, 16–17, 19–23, 54, 58, 61, 65, 69–72, 81–2, 196 Potvin, Georges, 232–3 “Prehistoric Archaeology and American Society,” 13n2 “Prehistoric Social and Political Organization: An Iroquoian Case Study,” 4, 115, 167, 246 “A Present of Their Past? Anthropologists, Native People and Their Heritage,” 139, 177, 181 Preston (Ontario), 226–30 Princess Point, 121–2, 146 processual archaeology, 7, 9–13, 17, 21–3, 26, 53, 61, 63–4, 68–9, 71, 80,

301

86, 124–5, 206, 233, 237, 244–5, 248 Projet Global, Le, 155

Soviet Union; Soviet archaeology Rutz, Henry, 243

Quebec, 8, 146, 148, 150, 156, 162, 164, 167n15, 211, 218; Court of Appeal, 178; Superior Court, 178 Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, 155, 160, 167n11

Sabloff, Jeremy, 65 Sagard-Théodat, Gabriel, 136, 148, 150 Saguenay-Lake St Jean, 156, 158 Saguenay River, 158, 160 Sahlins, Marshall, 43, 152 St Lawrence Iroquoian, 117, 243–4 St Lawrence Power Project, 232 St Lawrence River (Valley), 147, 157, 159–60, 162– 3, 178, 185, 241, 244 Sainte-Marie-among-theHurons, 230 St Marys (Ontario), 230 St Thomas (Ontario), 226, 230 Saitta, Dean, 73 Salisbury, Richard, 210–12, 246 Samoyed, 97–8 Sankoff, Gilliam, 243 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 235 scale analysis (Guttman scaling), 43 Schiebinger, L., 101 Schiffer, Michael, 9 Schnapp, Alain, 93 Science, 40, 200 semantic analyses (ethnosemantics), 153 Service, Elman, 38, 43 “Settlement as an Aspect of Iroquoian Adaptations at the Time of Contact,” 138, 241 settlement pattern studies, 56–7, 61, 82, 85–6, 114– 15, 118, 120, 122–5, 139, 156, 166n1, 217–18, 231, 234, 237, 244, 246

Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., 41 Ramah chert, 159 Recollet priest, 148 Redpath Museum, 214 Reinach, Solomon, 106 relativist approach to archaeology, 16, 20, 25–6, 28, 32–3, 68–70, 81, 152, 234, 248, 253–4 Renfrew, Colin, 22, 118, 249 Revue archéologique, 106 Richardson, Boyce, 246 Richmond Gulf, 161 Rilly, Claude, 239 “Rise of Egyptian Civilization, The,” 244 River Miskoutenagasit, 161 Rogers, Edward, 167n15 Rosenfeld, A., 107 Rouse, Irving, 45, 244 Rowlands, Michael, 249 Royal Ontario Museum, 231, 233, 237 Royal Society of Canada, 215 Royal Society of London, 163 Rupert River, 143, 158, 163, 167n15 Russia, 6, 65, 97; administration, 96–7; archaeology, 81; colonial expansion, 96; ethnography, 99, 103–4. See also

302 shamanism, 94–101, 103– 5, 107–8, 199 Shanks, Michael, 72, 81 Shoshonian, 200 Shternberg, Lev, 103–4, 110n2 Siberia, 95–101, 103–5, 107–8, 110n3. See also indigenous peoples Siebert, Frank, 167n11 Sillery, 150, 163 Silverberg, Robert, 67 Silverman, Marilyn, 243 Simms, S.C., 200 Simon Fraser University, 124 Simpson, William, K., 237– 9 Sioux, 144, 200; Oglala Sioux, 200 Sjoberg, Gideon, 235 smallpox, 162–3 Smith, David, 247 Smith-Ikawa, Fumiko, 243 Snow, Dean, 125, 246 Société d’energie de la baie James, La, 166n10 Society for American Archaeology, 80 sociocultural evolution, 40, 42, 61, 70–1, 118 Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency, 42, 70–1, 251 southern Arabia, 234; Hadhramaut, 234 South Pacific, 214 Southwold Earthworks, 230 Soviet archaeology, 72, 75, 81 Soviet Union, 65, 72, 75, 81; traditions of thought, 22, 235 Spain, 72–3 Spencer, Herbert, 40 Spengler, Oswald, 45

Index Stadacona, 150 standpoint theory, 31–3 Steward, Julian, 38, 64, 175 Stewart, Frances, 247 Storm, Hyemeyohsts, 200– 1 Stothers, David, 122 “Strategy of Iroquoian Prehistory, The,” 4, 244 Stratford (Ontario), 230 Sturtevant, William C., 245 Sudan, 28, 33, 53, 56–7; archaeology of, 27–8, 33, 241; Eastern Sudanic language, 239 Supreme Court of Canada, 175–8, 183–4 Sweetman, Paul, 231 Tadoussac, 156, 159–60, 163–4, 167n16 Tainter, Joseph, 45 taxonomy, 46, 64; objection to use of the term “Archaic,” 199 Taylor, Walter, 118 Teotihuacan, 45, 67 Têtes-de-Boule, 161 Tilley, Christopher, 29, 32, 72, 81 Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation, 13n2, 17– 19, 25, 61, 180–2, 248 Timmins, Peter, 247 Tooker, Elizabeth, 241 Toronto (Ontario), 137, 234, 236 Toshka West, 238 Toynbee, Arnold, 45 “Trade and Tribal Warfare on the St. Lawrence in the Sixteenth Century,” 241 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute, The, 142, 240

Trigger, Bruce: adoption by Wendat, 52, 145, 174, 219; on American society, 239–40; on authoritative histories of the Huron, 5, 12, 18, 55, 138–9, 142–56, 165, 166n5, 178, 219, 222, 234, 240, 245–7; on Canadian archaeology, 8– 10, 12; on childhood influences, 226–31; on colonialist nature of archaeologies, 5, 20, 27– 8, 32–3, 53–4, 56, 58, 66–7, 93, 145, 199, 239; on cross-cultural approaches, 26, 36–9, 42, 46–7, 55, 71, 166n6, 236–7, 251–2; on a dialectical approach, 6–7, 18, 22, 25, 62, 64, 73; on ecological possibilism, 26, 245, 253; as Egyptologist, 17, 53, 55–7, 210, 222, 235, 239, 253; as empiricist, 5, 8, 11–12, 28, 30, 72, 75–6; on ethnohistory, 139–40, 144– 55, 165, 182–3, 186, 241, 244–5; on his lessons for Canadian history, 147–8; on his methodological principles in the study of the Hurons, 148–51; on his roles in the administration of McGill University, 213–16; on historical approach to prehistory, 18– 19, 109, 115, 151, 247– 8, 254; on history of archaeology, 5–6, 17–18, 36, 53, 58, 67, 93, 189, 248, 254; on his university studies, 231–41; on human adaptation, 30–1,

Index 37, 245, 251–2; on hyperrelativism, 16, 21–2, 25, 27–8, 32, 69–70, 81; on ideology, 7, 61–2, 67, 72–3; on indigenous issues in archaeology, 22, 53, 87, 126, 145, 147, 180–1, 245–6, 248, 250; on indigenous issues in Canada, 249; on Marxism, 6, 8, 19, 21, 26, 32, 37, 53, 62–4, 66–74, 81– 2, 234–5, 240, 248, 250, 254; on materialist approach, 7, 16, 20–2, 26, 61, 69, 73, 125, 206, 234, 248; on McGill University, 241–50; on the middle ground, 7, 11–12, 123, 189; as moderate relativist, 25, 28, 30–1, 37, 68–9, 81, 248, 253– 4; on nature of higher education and research, 215–16; on plurality in archaeology, 7, 20, 34; on political context of archaeology, 5–6, 27–8, 37, 52–4, 58, 62–4, 66–71, 73, 75, 81, 189, 239; on positivist positions, 20, 22, 37, 53, 55, 62, 64, 189; on post-processual archaeology, 7, 16–21, 27, 54, 61, 69, 71–2, 81; on power of archaeological knowledge, 3, 10, 12, 34, 53, 56, 69, 139, 219; on practice of archaeology within societies, 3, 5– 6, 11, 67; on processual archaeology, 7, 12, 17, 26, 53, 61, 63–4, 68–71, 124–5, 233–4, 245, 248; on rationalist approach, 15–22, 166n6; on realist approach, 29–30, 72,

249; roles in Department of Anthropology at McGill University, 211– 13; as social activist, 153– 5, 248–9; on social context of archaeology, 5–7, 10, 18–22, 27, 32, 37–8, 52–4, 58, 62–72, 75, 81, 144, 149, 188–9, 225, 234; on social evolutionary theory, 3; on sociocultural evolution, 61, 70–1; as teacher, 116, 118–20, 125, 174, 210–12, 216– 18, 242–3; on teaching, 211, 216–19, 242–3; on unilinear evolution, 233– 5, 251, 253; on use of oral history (tradition), 152–3, 180–2, 186, 189n1, 222; on V. Gordon Childe, 6, 19– 20, 52–3, 63–8, 72, 80–2, 86, 138–9, 234; on Yale University, 236–41. See also titles of individual works Trigger, Charles Wesley, 227 Trigger, John Wesley, 226– 7 Trigger, Theodore C., 230 Trois Frères, Les, 106–7 Trois-Rivières, 161–2 Tshimshanic, 181 Tungus, 100, 103, 107 Tylor, E.B., 40 Understanding Early Civilizations, 7, 37–8, 46–7, 55–6, 71, 218, 251–3 United States, 9, 11, 17, 20, 57, 64, 110n3, 135, 175, 184, 233, 236, 240–1, 248–9 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 251

303 University of Arizona, 61 University of British Columbia, 233 University of Calgary, 11 University of Tokyo, 82 University of Toronto, 63, 80, 137, 216, 231, 236, 253; Department of Anthropology, 231–6; Near Eastern Studies, 231; University College, Sir Daniel Wilson Residence (Hutton House), 233 Uppsala University, 101 Ural Mountains, 97 Van der Peet decision, 175– 9, 188 Vansina, Jan, 153, 182 Vatican, 187–8 Vidal, Gore, 240 von Gernet, Alexander, 247 Wagner, Erika, 241 Wajima, Seiichi, 84–5 Walker, Norma F., 232 Wallis, Helen, 230 Walmsley, L.C., 232 wampum (putus), 187–8 Warrick, Gary, 247 Washburn, Wilcomb, 154, 249 Waskaganish (Charles Fort), 163 Waterloo County (Ontario), 226 Watkins, E.A., 158 Watkins, Joe, 194–5 Welch, Barbara, 242–3 Western archaeology. See Anglo-American archaeology Wet’suwet’en, 181 whaling: in North America, 160 White, Leslie, 38, 64

304 “Who Owns the Past? / À qui appartient le passé?” 4, 6, 219 Wilkes, John, 249 Willey, Gordon, 44, 65, 114, 234, 237 Williams-Lewis, David, 108 Williamson, Ronald F., 11, 122, 217, 247 Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 236 World Archaeology, 12n1, 239

Index World War II, 26, 72, 83–5, 137, 203, 226–7, 235 Wright, J.V., 137 Wylie, Alison, 9 Wyoming, 200–1 Yakut, 97, 99, 103 Yale University, 34, 57, 233, 236, 241; Sterling Memorial Library, 239 Yamanouchi, Sugao, 83, 85 Yayoi culture, 83, 85

Yellowhorn, Eldon, 247 Yoruba state, 37 Zigmond, Rabbi, 236