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Arch Debate
2
Kennewick Man: The Ancient One
Archaeologists' Perspective
Kennewick Man: "The Ancient One"
"Wherever science, ethics and history collide, easy answers don't exist."
NPR
"Wherever science, ethics and history collide, easy answers don't exist."
NPR
Our Position
What are we arguing for?
Recognizing Archaeology's Troubled Past
- Morgan and the Grand Order
- Lake Mohonk and Assimilation
- Grave robbing, massacres, and personal collections
- Fletcher and Cultural Bias
Recognizing The Past
But
we are not arguing for that
Framing Our Debate
- respect for all individuals & culture
- collaboration and consultation
Our Objective:
Access (thereby ability) to study Kennewick Man's remains using legitimate scientific methods in a way that respectfully tells his story and helps us learn about humankind through him as a representative of 9000 years ago
Framing Our Debate
What does 9000 years look like?
9000 years
Common Ancestor
Ancestry
"The fact is the absolute rarity of documented ancient human remains in America means that each new discovery represents a vitally important addition to knowledge of the lives and deaths of the first Americans."
Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an
Ancient American Skeleton
What does the DNA show?
How far back do we have to go to find the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today?
3000 years
(even taking account of distant isolation and local inbreeding)
BBC
“...I think we can say that Colville is very closely related to Kennewick Man.”
BUT
“We can’t say that the Colville are the closest living descendants of Kennewick Man, because the reference panel is too small,” Willerslev
Nature
Cultural Sensitivity
Culture
"Native American" meaning of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the US
--NAGPRA Definition of Native Americans
Identity & Culture
"We cannot know who first told a narrative, or the circumstances, or the identity of the intervening links in the chain, or whether the narrative has been altered, intentionally or otherwise, overtime"
District Court
"Possibly long extinct people"
--District Court
"he was deliberately buried in an extended, prone position, faceup, the head slightly higher than the feet, with the chin pressed on the chest, in a grave that was about two and a half feet deep."
Smithsonian
"The five tribes practice the Washat religion, so their burial ceremony isn’t the same as burial rites practiced 9,000 years ago."
Seatle Times
“the problem facing archaeologists is to assign identities to the remains of the past using the political definitions of the present”
Skull Wars 226
Political Identity
Modern-Day Disputes
"Although the modern people of the Qaanaaq were too polite to say so, many felt that the Qisuk would not have wanted his bones brought back home."
Skull Wars 219
Modern-Day Disputes
Belief, Science, and the Law
Beliefs, Science, and Laws
Inevitable Conflict
Knowledge
Native American Beliefs and Knowledge:
Oral tradition--came from the land, did not migrate from Siberia, therefore any ancient remains are a part of their tribe and culture
Scientific Evidence:
DNA shows that KM was Native American and has close relation to NW tribe (though may not be closest)
How do you reconcile
differing knowledge systems?
It is important to give credit to oral tradition
and approach these issues with cultural sensitivity
However
If we prioritize oral tradition over science, whose do we listen to and where do we draw the line?
... so what do we do?
Is NAGPRA enough?
NAGPRA:
"a reasonable relationship"
"preponderance of the evidence" = 51%
Scientist:
"regulations like NAGPRA require far too little evidence proving a cultural connection to modern-day native communities." (Weiss)
Harvard Peabody, NPR, Skull Wars
Struggle for Power
"None of these clashes exists in a vacuum; they often come on the heels of decades, if not centuries, of genocide and erasure aimed at indigenous peoples and their ways of life. And so an object of scientific interest, be it a bone or a mountain, can come to stand for an entire civilization."
NPR
Public Interest
20 years in science and previous theories
Public Interest
What we know now
What we know now...
- Kennewick Man was a traveler from the far north (evidenced by diet and water that he drank)
- possible seal hunter
- knapped spear points
- threw spears
- "surfer's ear" = immersion in cold water
- squated on his heels
- right handed
- six broken ribs before death
- stocky, muscular, about 5' 7" and 160 lbs
- died around 40
Preston, NPR, Smithsonian
What we could learn...
“But while scientists may never get another chance to study these remains, even as biomolecular science is ‘advancing so rapidly that within five to ten years it may be possible to know what diseases Kennewick Man suffered from and what caused his death,’”
NPR
What we could learn
Counters
Counters
Native Americans
Native Americans
Scientific Disputes
Eske Willerslev:
"very little genetic DNA about modern Native Americans to make comparisons. There might be other tribes more closely related to Kennewick Man.”
“We will never be able to say who is, in fact, the closest living relative of Kennewick Man.”
Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian
Does not believe that the evidence is sufficient enough to satisfy the repatriation law.
NPR
US Army Corps of Engineers
US Army Corps of Engineers
Careless Handling
1. Wanted to hand over remains without confirming descent as dictated in NAGPRA
2. Mishandled remains: “substandard, unsafe conditions"
3. Destruction of the site
4. Misled or deceived the court on multiple occasions: government acting in “bad faith”
5. Arbitrarily limited archaeologists' research
Smithsonian
Asatru Folk Assembly
Asatru Folk Assembly
"Caucasoid"
1. “little scientific utility”
2. Morphology does not equal biological evidence
3. Neo-Nazi connections
Skull Wars (114-118)
Compromise
Compromise
"...there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to working with native communities. He finds some of the North American Arctic groups he works with eager to contribute to his research, others are less so; and their opinions shift over time" (O'Rourke)
Nature
"Just weeks before Kennewick Man's remains were discovered, researchers working in Alaska discovered a 10,000-year-old human skeleton. They notified local tribes and quickly came to an agreement that allowed them to excavate and study the remains and keep the tribes involved in the research."
Nature
“As a person who worked directly with the skeletal remains, I’d like to see them in peace,”
"As a scientist, I would hate to see one of the most complete North American skeletal remains be put back into the ground for political reasons.”
(James Chatters, anthropologist who excavated Kennewick Man)