New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology
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New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology
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Overview
In this landmark book, experienced scholars take a retrospective look at the developing routes that have brought American archaeologists into the 21st century.
In 1996, the Society for American Archaeology's Committee on the History of Archaeology established a biennial symposium
named after Gordon R. Willey, one of the fathers of American archaeology, to focus on the history of the discipline. This volume grew out of the
second symposium, presented at the 1998 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Interest in the intellectual history of the field is certainly nothing new—the first such volume appeared in 1856—but previously, focus has been on individuals and their theories and methods, or on various government agencies that supported, developed, or mandated
excavations in North America. This volume, however, focuses on the roots of Americanist archaeology, including its pre-1915 European connections, and on some of the earliest work by women archaeologists, which has been largely overlooked.
Full of valuable insights for archaeologists and anthropologists—both professional and amateur—into the history and
development of Americanist archaeology, New Perspectives will also inspire and serve as a model for future research.
David Browman is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology at Washington University. Stephen Williams is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Harvard University.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817313258 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 390 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2002 The University of Alabama PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1128-5
Chapter One
The Strait of Anian A Pathway to the New WorldStephen Williams
The question of what the Strait of Anian1 was and why it should be important to scholars interested in the history of archaeology must be answered at once. This strait, now called the Bering Strait, has played a central role in the discussion of the origins of the American Indians for many centuries (see discussion in chapter 2). This strait of Arctic water separates the two great continents, Asia and America, and seems surely to have been part of the major pathway into the New World for tens of thousands of years for the inhabitants who first colonized the Western Hemisphere. To begin, this chapter provides a brief history of our knowledge of this important geographical phenomenon though the ages of literacy and mapmaking as a background for the larger inquiry.
1500 B.C.-A.D. 1200: Geographic and Cartographic Beginnings
An understanding of the world and its organization must, for Europeans and the cultures descended from them, start with a Near Eastern foundation, beginning with the first explorations of the eastern Mediterranean, to be followed about 1000 B.C. by Phoenician navigators, and later by many developments in the Greco-Roman world. The careful mapping ofthe Mediterranean Sea was expanded in both lateral directions as far west as Britain and as far east as the Indian Ocean, as seen in Ptolemy's "world map" (ca. A.D. 150). This map also shows the extent of Roman knowledge of the Far East, as China was already known from its silk trade (Whitfield 1998:9-11). Less well known to many Europeans were the cartographic efforts conducted by their peers in the Middle East and China.
Important travelers to the New World late in the first millennium A.D. were the Vikings, but they have left us no cartographic data (Whitfield 1998:18-21), the Yale "Vinland map" notwithstanding (McNaughton 2000). However, the recent volume Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (Fitzhugh and Ward 2000) provides new, up-to-date information on both the proven data from Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland (Fitzhugh 2000:11-25) and much suggestive information on even more North American contacts (Sigurdsson 2000:232-237, and companion chapters by other authors). It has been suggested by some researchers (Fitzhugh 2000:13) that explorers such as Columbus and the Cabots, after visits to Iceland, also knew about these earlier Norse trips before they too set off to "find" America.
A.D. 1200-1500: Openings to the East; Beginning of Major Voyages of Discovery
Important understanding of the Far East (China) and its culture began much earlier with overland trade between the Mediterranean and Chinese peoples via the ancient Silk Route. But it was not until after the rise of Genghis Khan around 1200 that many actual direct European contacts were made because of great interest in not only silk but the spices known from there. Among the earliest Mediterranean travelers (but not the first) were the Polo brothers-Niccolò and Maffeo-who visited China first from 1255 to 1269 and then returned in 1271 with Niccolò's son, Marco. They stayed in China for 17 years-hardly the brief visit many folks seem to think it was-and did not get back to Venice until 1295. Interestingly, the Polos, who had made most of their trips via land previously, came back this last time via a mainly sea voyage down through the Strait of Malacca and around India, adding the data they observed to European geographic knowledge.
During his stay, young Marco Polo worked directly for Kublai Khan, whom his father and uncle had gotten to know well during their first stay. Now, like all romantic heroes (and that is what Marco Polo has become), there are those who honor him and those who berate him as a liar. He is the subject of numerous books, but my take on him, prejudiced by the reading of Henry Yule's classic and revised volumes that span 20 years, is that Polo was a fine reporter of historical and geographic data, especially anthropological and natural history (Yule 1921). More recently, Whitfield (1998:22-30) lauds Polo with one hand and then throws in suspicions about his data with the other.
Yes, there were times when Polo's adjectives were a bit purple and extravagant, but read his reports on "Tartaria"-what we now call Siberia-and his descriptions ring true. He was the first to report on the great wealth of furs in this northern region, which he says he did not actually visit. His descriptions included the native lifeways, with sleds pulled by dogs and the use of skin houses, as well as semi-subterranean ones, and hunting with bow and arrow. He also reported that there were white bears seven feet tall. That last statement was clearly false, said many readers of his time, but then polar bears were not very well reported in 1300.
Marco Polo did not write his book directly. While he was in a Genoese jail as a result of a mischance in a local Italian war, Polo dictated his story to a fellow prisoner named Rusticello, who put it down in French in 1298-1299. It was best known in a Latin manuscript version translated around 1300. It was a very popular document, as over 140 copies are still recorded today. In 1477 the first printed version came out, and yes, Christopher Columbus had a copy and read it, making notes on it (Whitfield 1998:27).
Polo's volume, in its earliest version, had a great impact on cartography, despite the fact that there were no maps therein. One of the major cartographic efforts of this period was the "Catalan Atlas" (1375), rendered by the famous Majorcan Cartographic school. This atlas was strongly influenced by Marco Polo (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1999-2000). It made obvious use of Polo's descriptions of his own overall trip to China, and his return ocean voyage via the Strait of Malacca and around India to the Middle East, and then by land back to Venice. But also hidden in Polo's lengthy disquisition of peoples and places were some simple names of Chinese provinces, such as "Tollman" and "Anin." Yes, that is what this chapter is all about, as we shall see.
But it was surely Polo's description of other riches that really set off the great oceanic explorations in the Age of Discovery from 1450 to 1550: the Spice Islands had to be found. Early on, the Portuguese opted mainly for the long voyage around Africa, past India and its ocean, and then through the Strait of Malacca to the edge of China and even finally to Japan. The Spanish would much later try the western route across the Atlantic, but we all know about Columbus and his four trips from 1492 to 1499.
Now it is clear that Columbus had a good knowledge of the Spice Islands and of mainland China via Marco Polo's volume. What he did not know was the exact distance between Spain and those locations. Not until Magellan's circumnavigation from 1519 to 1522 did it become clear that the Pacific Ocean was of such great magnitude. As most readers will know, Columbus's fixation on the fact that he had "discovered" the legendary Spice Islands led him to name some of the Caribbean Islands after them, and he seems to have gone to his grave in 1506 still believing in this fiction. Dreams die hard.
A.D. 1500-1600: New Steps in Knowledge; the World Enlarged
So far our narrative has mainly looked at this wonderful expansion of world knowledge and challenge from the perspective of the Mediterranean area of Europe. Indeed, about this time, with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, later ratified by a papal bull, the Spanish and Portuguese divided up the exploration of the world, with the Portuguese taking Africa and the eastern path to the Spice Islands and the Spanish opting for the western voyage to the same destination. But surely the inhabitants of those little British Isles on the western edge of Europe were not going to let such an opportunity go to waste. Shortly after Columbus, the English sent John Cabot (actually Giovanni Cabato from the Mediterranean) to see what could be found in the North Atlantic, far away from Spanish claims to the south. Cabot's voyages (1497, 1498)-the last one being a fatal one-did indeed show what the Vikings had known for centuries: yes, there was a North American continent not too far to the west (Harrisse 1896/1968; Morison 1971:157-209); but no, it was not China, although it might have profitable resources and other mysteries as well. Morison (1971:497) has even suggested that Cabot's voyages were also spurred by a desire to find "a short cut to the Indies."
Now, some of the maps of this period (1490 to 1510) are masterpieces of invention. In Johannes Ruysch's 1507 "World Map," the eastern Asia outline shows its heritage to Marco Polo, while its western Europe configuration benefits from centuries of on-site mapping. In between the two continents are scattered the Postcolumbian knowledge of the Caribbean and South America. For example, Cape Cod and Greenland are grotesquely attached to the Asian continent, while Iceland sits very properly to the northwest of Britain (Whitfield 1998:57). In Contarini's 1506 "World Map," we see a rather good representation of eastern Siberia, but if you run due south of the Kamchatka Peninsula you find yourself basking on the shores of the Caribbean islands (Whitfield 1998:55). Columbus's view of where he had landed was a mercifully short-lived misunderstanding of the scale of the earth, and most especially the size of the Pacific Ocean, the largest water mass on the planet.
The Portuguese mariners had primarily been engaged in coasting along the African shores into the Indian Ocean and on to the Pacific, from 1415 onward, long before Columbus set off across the Atlantic (Whitfield 1998:31-46). Thus they knew that route to the Orient well. It was one of these well-trained Portuguese navigators, Ferdinand Magellan, who "jumped ship" and went over to the Spanish in 1519 to carry out what Whitfield (1998:91) calls "the longest and most hazardous voyage in history"-his trip from Spain around the world with his fleet of five ships. In 1522 only one ship remained to sail into the Seville harbor, with only 20 survivors. Magellan had been killed in the Pacific well before the venture had made a successful landing in the "real" Spice Islands.
After this trip, the scale of the Pacific Ocean was really known, and the true global spread between the Asian and American continents was finally understood. Out of this geographical understanding would come the cartographic "need" of a strait or a land connection between these two great landmasses. Thus arose the concept of the "Strait of Anian," very probably named for Polo's adjacent northern Chinese province "Anin" with a coastline facing the New World. This Chinese coast and its northern extension into regions of eastern "Tartaria" were known in European terms first to Marco Polo in 1280, and much later by over-land-traveling European Russians (Cossacks) in 1579.
The Age of Discovery led to an explosion of knowledge, coming from both the explorers themselves and the mapmakers who codified their observations. With all of these attempts to get to China one way or another in the sixteenth century, there was a burst of cartographic use of the concept of the "Strait of Anian," referring to the strait between the great landmasses of Asia and North America. My review of historical map sources (Kohl 1911 and Whitfield 1998, among others) suggests that the very first use of the term on a published map was by Giacomo Gastaldi in 1560, followed shortly by two other Italian mapmakers, Florani and Camocio (Whitfield 1998:87). Bolognini Zaltieri's lovely map of the New World, done in 1566, is widely known because it also shows what is now the western United States for the first time as a result of Coronado's trip there; it also shows the Strait of Anian (Whitfield 1998:87)
Northern European mapmakers such as Gerardus Mercator, the Flemish geographer, were soon to follow. Mercator's well-known map of the world in 1569 shows the Strait of Anian very clearly, as also did the map of Abraham Ortelius (the Dutchman Oertel) the next year (Kohl 1911:31). Whitfield (1998:101) refers to Ortelius with the adjective "Great," and indeed he was famous for his impressive 1570 atlas. His world maps show the Strait of Anian clearly and have the name "Anin" boldly in what is now known as western Canada (Van Ermen 1990:8-11). But less frequently referred to is Ortelius's 1570 very detailed map of the Strait of Anian region, which is said to be very unreliable (Van Ermen 1990:17). I would agree, as there is little or no resemblance between his "Tartaria" and Siberia. Interestingly, the place-name "Anin" is now back in Asia. Apparently, Ortelius was not a stickler for continuity.
Finally, in 1574 there was a little-known map published by Paulo de Fulani based on a document from a Spanish source, which has great detail on both sides of the Strait of Anian (Kohl 1911:302-303). It too has "Anian Regnum" in Siberia, and its geography seems to fit the real situation somewhat better than Ortelius's map does. Thus, despite little or no direct evidence, Continental cartographers believed in the Strait of Anian.
The sea voyages of this Age of Discovery were not just in the hands of the Spanish and Portuguese. I have already mentioned Cabot's voyages. We must remember that there were Norse settlements in Greenland from A.D. 980 on, just a few hundred miles from the North American continent. In the centuries following Cabot, both French and Basque fishermen also knew the Grand Banks very well (Morison 1971:220). Indeed, Basque whalers had a settlement on Red Bay, Newfoundland, in the mid-sixteenth century. However, most of this knowledge did not become widespread until much later.
Hence it should not be much of a surprise to find that other ways to the Spice Islands would be sought, especially by the English. Thus was born one of the most frustrating and costly geographic investigations of that era: the dual search for a Northwest Passage to the Pacific across the northern part of North America and a Northeast Passage to China over the top of Europe and Asia. There is no regular usable Northwest or Northeast Passage to the Pacific even today, but that was not known in the 1550s. Because the southern passages to China and the Spice Islands were in the hands of the Spanish and Portuguese, the English explorers decided to tackle these northern routes.
Thus in the time of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and James I (1603-1625) there were many seafaring Britishers willing to risk life and limb in this strange entanglement with the Strait of Anian. Both routes would putatively have made use of that Strait to reach their final destination-China. Although Martin Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert may not be well known to the reader, both of them caught "Strait fever." These gentlemen were in a circle of scholars surrounding John Dee (1527-1608), a Cambridge-trained geographer, who later was a member of Elizabeth's court (Cormack 1997:81). Dee had studied with the great cartographer Mercator, so he was well informed as to the current views of the world.
In the 1550s, some members of this circle, with advice from Dee, were ready to seek the impossible for much-sought fame and possibly great financial gain as well (Cormack 1997). Frobisher, with aid from the government and other London sources, made three unsuccessful attempts (1576, 1577, and 1578) to find a passage north of Newfoundland that would let him reach the Pacific. His investigations around Baffin Bay led him to think in 1577 he might have found gold instead. His third exploration, in 1578, proved that his find was merely "fools gold" (Fitzhugh and Olin 1993).
There was one positive result from Frobisher's overall investigations, however. In 1578, George Best, one of his shipmates, published his own report of the explorations, including a map of the region showing the Strait of Anian in its proper westerly position (Whitfield 1998:50) but connected across the continent by the imaginary "Frobisher Straits" that they had hoped to find. Both the Northeast and Northwest Passages to Cathay are boldly shown leading to the "Straight of Anian" (Morison 1971:546; Whitfield 1998:50). Because this map came out after the three Frobisher failures, its purpose was not promotion but to illustrate Best's volume on the Frobisher expeditions.
But Frobisher's lack of success did not stop other members of Dee's gang of true believers. Thus in 1576, as Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a close friend of Queen Elizabeth's, was preparing to undertake his search across the Atlantic, he produced an interesting heart-shaped map showing Anian and its strait on the left and Europe, Africa, and Asia on the right (Whitfield 1998:79). Now that we know more about Gilbert's background (Cormack 1997), it is clear that this is a direct effort by Gilbert himself to promote funds for his project. In 1578, Gilbert made his first attempt to make a late-summer crossing of the North Atlantic in his search for the Northwest Passage, but he turned back after bad luck and many problems with his other would-be fleetmates. In June 1583, after having raised a lot of money (including his own inheritance), Gilbert set out on his second attempt. He made a rough but successful crossing to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (Morison 1971:561-582). Gilbert was pleased with what he had found in these northerly lands, despite not finding the route to China, and he set sail with his now smaller fleet to return to England. However, they were hit by a very strong storm, and his smaller ship, the Squirrel, sank with all aboard, ending Gilbert's dream forever. Morison (1971:578) saw him as a brilliant but controversial pathfinder for the British's later colonization of North America.
(Continues...)
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