Indigenous People Have Been Here Forever. Why Won't Archeologists Believe It?

[Judi Lynn]

An Indigenous archeologist on how her discipline has shaped the view of the ground beneath our feet.

Crawford Kilian 24 May 2022 TheTyee.ca
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere
Paulette F.C. Steeves

University of Nebraska Press (2021)Well into The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, Paulette Steeves wearily observes: “Disagreements between archeologists over the peopling of the Americas have been so fierce that the field has been described as a battleground and an archeological badlands.”

A battlefield might be a strange place to find Steeves: she is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Healing and Reconciliation, as well as an associate professor of sociology, at Algoma University. Of Cree-Métis ancestry, she is a force to be reckoned with on any academic battlefield.

Steeves argues, on good evidence, that Indigenous peoples are not just recent Asian immigrants, but peoples long and deeply entangled in what we call the Americas. Both they and their lands transformed one another thousands of years before the Europeans belatedly stumbled in. In that sense, they have indeed been here “forever.”

Yet many archeologists refuse to believe it and reject or ignore the evidence. Worse yet, they discourage research that might prove them wrong. American archeology is indeed both a battlefield and a badlands.

More:
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/05/24/Conservatism-In-Archeology/

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

I started out wanting to study archeology but found too many problems with closed minded inquiry so I decided on cultural/linguistic study instead.

But I also found that getting two anthropologists to agree on much is like trying to get two geologists to do the same, you might get them to agree at a cocktail party but beyond that, good luck.

I like this approach and now am interested in the rest of this story.

[wnylib]

12. Have you met Dr. James Adovasio or

read anything that he has written on the peopling of the Americas?

Adovasio is the archaeologist who supervised the excavation at Meadowcroft Rockshelter in PA, near Pittsburgh. He later became the director of the Archaeogical Institute at Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA and eventually became Provost.

Adovasio's techniques were known to be meticulous, yet when he came up with dates as old as 14,000 years ago at Meadowcroft, the archaeology world immediately jumped on his findings and developed numerous alternative "explanations" for the date. Additional scrutiny did not support the alternative claims of layer intrusions from different time periods, but critics of Adovasio clung to that belief.

In one response to his critics, Adovasio referred to them as "the Clovis Mafia" and said that true progress in American archaeology would not develop until the Clovis generation had died off.

[2naSalit]

14. I never met him...

Though I wish I had, sounds like we might have hit it off. And I agree, the Clovis Mafia have to die off for more open minded theories to emerge. I read 1491, which is quite the retelling if a lot of how the Americas were peopled. I suspect his offerings were involved in the composition of that work but it's so massive and includes finding s of many so I don't know if anything he offers is in it but sounds like it could be.

[wnylib]

15. Erie PA is my hometown

and is within a couple hours drive from where I live now in NY state. I considered taking anthropology courses at Mercyhurst so the admissions officer there introduced me to Adovasio's staff. He was not in at the time. I had a chance to speak with them about their views on how and when people first arrived in North America. They favored a coastal route across the Bering Strait when it was narrowed by falling sea levels, before glaciers reached the Pacific Coast of North America. They also proposed a coastal route along the southern shore of Beringia after the Bering Strait was closed off.

Adovasio's staff cited an archaeologist whose name I don't remember now who proposed e geographical upside down "horseshoe" region of culture extending from northeastern Asia across the southern shore of Beringia to the northwestern coast of North America, where Canada's British Columbia and the US State of Washington exist now. Beringia would have cut off the icy Arctic waters, making southern Beringia and even NW North America tolerable for human life until the glaciers reached the Pacific Coast.

As the glaciers encroached on the Pacific Coast of North America, and even before then, people could have followed the coast of modern Oregon and California southward. Some would have gone inland along creeks and riverbeds into the interior of North America. This would explain how people reached the Meadowcroft area so long ago. The 14,000 years ago date for Meadowcroft is the most known date (and accepted now by most archaeologists), but there were older dates below that level, as far back as 20,000 years ago.

Adovasio's assistant told me that they had a field study dig coming up that summer (back in the 1990s) for students to get field practice. I was invited to join them as a volunteer. So I did. The dig was in the National Forest in PA, southeast of Erie. In previous years, they had uncovered evidence near there of the ancient Hopewell culture extending that far north and east, even up into southwestern NY.

But the summer that I was there, there were no new findings, just more recent evidence of Iroquoian occupation of the area. Adovasio kept in touch with the Seneca people of that region to get permission to continue the studies. He is very respectful of Native cultures.

While we volunteers (there were about 5 non student volunteers) waited for the students to get set up, a forest ranger took us on a tour of the area, showing us how the Iroquois had planted and maintained trees along river and creek banks to prevent erosion and keep their water routes open for distant travel and trade. He also pointed out how they had maintained land pathways by controlled burning of underbrush, which also kept down the insect and vermin population, while preventing widespread forest fires.

Adovasio has written a book on the peopling of the Americas and other books on the Meadowcroft site. They are available at Amazon. The physical anthropology department at Mercyhurst has participated in several criminal investigations in northwestern PA and southwestern NY.

I was briefly I introduced to Dr. Adovasio during the dig, but his assistants worked more closely with students and volunteers. Unfortunately, I could not stay throughout the dig because I only had limited vacation time from work to be there. But I followed their work through local news articles and e-mails to and from the department.

They have also done archaeology work in the past in southeastern Europe, near Ukraine.

[2naSalit]

16. That's cool!

Last edited Wed Jun 1, 2022, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)

I didn't have much access to such places in the east. I am more knowledgeable about western US indigenous cultures though we addressed several in the east briefly. I live in an active zone so artifacts are lying around everywhere, it seems, and it;s not unusual to encounter them on a day hike in some areas. Plus, there are many reservations in the region.

I am intrigued with the Hopewell history and occasionally seek out something to read about them. Sounds like I now have a new researcher's works to pursue.

Thanks!

[wnylib]

17. Farmers around here often find artifacts

when they plow or cut down trees. My father grew up on a farm in a very isolated area south of Erie, PA. He saved some of the arrowheads and spearheads that he had found as a child and showed them to me when I was about 8 years old. He also told me about cutting down a tree and finding a tomahawk buried in it, where part of the tree had grown around it.

When I was a child, my older brothers used to take me with them on walks through the woods and down to the creek bed when we visited my grandfather's farm. They enjoyed showing off to me the things that they had learned in Boy Scouts and in their science classes.

Some of the trees on grandpa's farm were very, very old. Not quite virgin forest, but next generation old growth. They showed me a tree stump with a huge circumference and told me that it was a petrified tree stump. In my childish naivete, I thought they meant that the tree had been terrified into the top breaking off. Naturally, they laughed at me, the "dumb girl" who did not know yet what petrified wood meant, but then explained it to me.

We used to find fossils in the creek bed, too, and they explained to me what they were.

So my interest in archaeology started early.

[2naSalit]

18. My interest started early too.

But what got me were the ancient ruins of Greece and Italy since my eldest sibling preferred to tell me stories from mythology (?) based in those places. America was too new for anything of archeological interest, or so I was led to believe back then. And Egypt was another interest.

But by the time I got into college in a western state, late at 35, I found the Anthropology dept. was a place of great interest. That several of my fellow students were from local tribes helped shift my focus toward their history and cultures.

[wnylib]

19. My focus on American archaeogy and anthropology

came from the artifacts I was exposed to early on and from having some Native ancestry through the grandparents who had that farm where my father collected artifacts and my brothers showed me fossils and a petrified tree trunk.

The anthropology interest came very early, too, because of exposure to different cultures and languages. My mother's parents had been German immigrants as very young children. The house that we lived in when I was young was in an Erie neighborhood that my mother's immigrant family had lived in. (My parents bought their first house from an old family friend.) Besides German immigrants, there were also older Italian, Czeck, and Polish immigrant families there. My German born great aunt lived with us. She was fluent in English, but switched to German when her older friends visited her. Our neighbors often spoke Italian with each other.

My father's siblings all (except one "white sheep" in the family) had Native physical traits and coloring, although they were not enrolled tribal members and were mixed, Native and British. They self-identified as White, but had pride in their Native ancestry.

My father was a supervisor in a manufacturing plant that employed several African Americans who had moved North after WWII. Several of the White employees were from poor Appalacian backgrounds who had also moved to northern cities for jobs. So I met these people and their families at company picnics and Christmas parties.

Some of them had businesses on the side, e.g. trash collecting and doing handyman repairs. So they were the ones that my father hired when he needed help or trash hauled away. He often invited them in for a beer when they worked on these home jobs. He told me that most of them had very little formal education and some were not literate at all due to school segregation and sharecropping in the South. He taught some of them the basics of reading and how to sign their names, register to vote, and apply for home loans.

So, I was always shifting from one culture to another as a kid, before we moved into the suburbs. Kids do that naturally, to "fit in" without consciously thinking about it. It seemed so natural to me to be around various cultures that anthropology became a natural interest as I got older.

[2naSalit]

20. Mine was a bit different.

I grew up, mostly, in New England, we had a little bit of every culture there so I was exposed to numerous languages, foods, dance, attire... the insides of their homes and the fact that half of these people also didn't necessarily speak English at home was normal for me. It was okay to retain some of the "old ways" but many learned English and refused to teach their young the first language of the parents as was the case in my family. They were Finnish, and used it at home except when they spoke directly to us. So I heard it, could not learn it along with English in parallel with no guidance. Since it was Maine, for much of my early years, we had French in school because there were a lot of Acadian French who stayed south of the river when the US formed. Still a large population there.

We had a few stints in other parts of the country, dad being in the military, but I was in that region until my late teens, then I went west and stayed there.

I encountered a lot of languages in my travels through classical music, started working with bel canto before I was ten, most lyrics are not in English, especially things like Mass and such. I picked it up again in college and had a great ten years of performing in an ensemble and used it as my practicum for my BA with the linguistics component. I can identify languages I don't speak or read and have sung in about eight, only three of which can I read with any comprehension. I also am amazed at how language travels through the populations over time. There's a lot to ponder there.

[wnylib]

22. We had similarities in being exposed to other languages

besides English and other cultures besides the "mainstream" Anglo one.

I also heard German spoken but was not allowed to learn it at home. I found my great aunt's primer that she had used as a child to learn English. I thought I could use it to learn German, but when Aunt Emma discovered that I had it, she took it away and said, "You are American. You should speak English." But I did pick up a few German phrases from her because she reverted to German whenever she was upset at my misbehavior.

Plus, I picked up a few Italian swear words and hand gestures from kids in the neighborhood who got them from their grandparents

I also have picked up the ability to recognize what a language is when I hear it, even though I do not know any words in the language. The rhythm and voice inflection patterns are identifiable, as well as repetitive vowel or consonant sounds. I have trouble, though, distinguishing between Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian, but can identify that it is a Slavic language.

I had Latin and German in high school and Spanish in college, so I can distinguish between Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, even though I only know Spanish. I can recognize Urdu when I hear it. Also French, of course, which is easy for most people, I think. And I can hear the difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

Exposure to different languages teaches you to recognize their patterns even when you don't know the language.

[Dr. Shepper]

2. I've been listening to "Origin"

By Jennifer Raff

She argues that indigenous peoples were here before the typically accepted 13,000 years ago and describes some of the controversy. Her theory is that the Americas were peopled via the coasts and not the land bridge. I had never thought of that before and it makes sense that could be the case.

I’m not an anthropologist, but I am trained in some of the techniques she describes and find her work fascinating.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/origin-book-first-americans-genetics-controversy

[2naSalit]

21. The Book...

1491, Charles C. Mann 2005.

One of the main themes of 1491 is upending the idea that prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Americas were an undisturbed wilderness. This theme is an example of Eurocentric narratives that underestimate and de-emphasize the abilities of the Native civilizations encountered in the Americas.

Though this is his premise, he spends a good deal of ink on the time-frame indicated here and argues that our interpretation of how populations made it here. He presents several studies arguing much the same theory as Dr. Raff. Perhaps her studies were inspired by those studies, or not.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. The appearance of the Cuna Indians in Panama and

Those of Asians has been used as evidence that such a human migration did occur at one time.

[niyad]

4. As ever, thank you for sharing such fascinating information. Putting the book

on my request list.

The same kind of blind prejudice exists in studying, or even acknowledging, the pre-patriRchal cultures.

[Higherarky]

5. I just want to chime in

Last edited Sun May 29, 2022, 10:35 AM - Edit history (1)

& comment on how much I've enjoyed your informative posts over the years.

Thank you very much, Judi Lynn.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Interesting...

It's the first I've read of evidence of human activity 100's of thousands of years ago in the Western Hemispere. I have certainly heard of a lot more human civilization here than is commonly taught when I grew up, the Mound Builders being an obvious example.

I've always known that "history" has been largely white-washed. It's nice to see some alternative hypotheses being presented that respect the traditional and oral histories of the indigenous peoples.

[wnylib]

13. I remember when Louis Leakey

proposed dates as old as 100,000 years and older for rock tools he examined in Montana. Despite his renown for his discoveries in Africa, he was immediately discredited for his claims about rock tools in North America. He was called senile by some people. Others said that he did not have sufficient background in American prehistory to correctly evaluate rock findings here. The shapes that Leakey attributed to human creation of scrapers and cutters were called "natural formations" which could not have been human made because there were no humans in North America that long ago.

However, there has been a land bridge between northeastern Asia and Northwestern North America more than once in the geological and history of earth.

There were Homo erectus ancestors of Homo sapiens in eastern Asia 900,000 years ago. We know that Homo erectus had developed the use of fire long before Homo sapiens evolved. So is it impossible that some ancient Homo erectus made their way into North America?

A land bridge like Beringia does not develop overnight. It happens in a decades or centuries long process of lowering sea levels. At some point, there would have been a period when Asia and North America were nearly connected, separated only by shallow "straits" or lakes that could be easily crossed on foot or on rafts. The Western shore of North America would not yet have been solidly covered in glacial snow and ice right up to the Pacific Ocean. The spread of glaciers takes time, too, and does not happen instantly.

So Homo erectus and later Homo sapiens could have crossed into North America and followed the coast. Once past the southernmost reach of the Canadian glaciers, they could easily have traclveled inland from the Pacific Coast along the southern edge of the glaciers. The edges of glaciers are rich with water sources from melting that creates rivers and lakes. Grass and plant life flourish there, drawing herds which draw people to hunt them.

I think that it is possible that there were Homo sapiens in North America 50,000 years ago and perhaps also their (and our) ancestral Homo erectus relatives 100,000 or more years ago.

[Chainfire]

7. Perhaps it is easier to excuse the displacement and slaughter of the original population

If they had only been here a few thousand years before the Europeans found them. It then becomes a situation of competing with them for the land rather than stealing it.

Old habits die hard, but the archeologists have to go where the evidence leads it is to be a viable science.

[plimsoll]

8. They do believe it, but you want a special definition of forever.

In human contexts even 5000 years is forever. I know for a fact that the indigenous people of the Americas were here before that. There is disagreement as to when, but not if. There are archaeologists who have truly strange religiously driven objections to when humans arrived in the Americas but mostly people want evidence. That 15000 BP number is pretty solid and you can say yes it happened, things before that start to look like special pleading. When you accept the special pleading for one case you'll have to accept it for others as well.

Try this example on, there is huge funding to prove the accuracy of the accounts of the Bible. Apparently people believe this will prove the existence of God. If you accept their special pleading you'll have to accept that the archaeological evidence for the Trojan war is stronger and they have written accounts as well. Using the special pleading, doesn't that prove the Greek Pantheon exists?

The indigenous people of the Americas where here so long ago that it is forever. If you doubt that consider that English as we know it has only existed since about 1580, and we'd have a hard time understanding them. Additionally there is no evidence that the people we call English were there 10000 years ago. People yes, English? Define that for me, they didn't speak what we'd call English so you'd have to say no.

They have to be conservative because what we are learning about American prehistory will ruffle someones feathers, be it Native Americans or biblical literalists who can't really explain how they got here at all, but insist the C14 dates are bogus and must have been contaminated.

This is a disagreement that has gone on for decades, and as with all science extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Re: time of arrival: fascinating topic, poor article, though it does contain good info

The question of time of arrival is a fascinating one and a controversial one. This is true. But the article is not clear on the issue by the point where it gets into the weeds of this study and that.

What I would have liked to have seen is it set out three levels of certitude: iron-clad (well studied, widely distributed, and widely accepted) dates, evidentiary dates, and suggestive / indicative dates.

For the longest time, Clovis and dates of arrive in the 48 states area was accepted as about 12,000 years ago to 13k ya.

Then evidence was found that kept pushing out the time. I won't get into the weeds, but I became convinced that arrival was at least two to three times older though far from a final word. And it has been some time since I looked into it. So I am definitely not up to speed on latest research. But I wish the article spent more time on the research done and needed and less time on the case against racism.

We could say that the 12k ya is iron-clad, evidence I've seen discussed of 2-3x say 35k ya is more or less strong evidentiary, and the dates mention in the article of 250k are indicative. Definitely indicative of further research being needed. So in that sense I'm generally supportive of the goals of the article (more on indigenous oral tradition later).

The article mentions Australian indigenous boat building 60k ya, but then jumps to 200k and 250k without any connection or statement of the evidence other than mysterious and fascinating butchered bones in one study. But the other two studies used to buttress the argument are not discussed at all.

The article does make good cases for eradicating racism that has existed in archaeological study by non-indigenous researchers. But here in Canada, that seems known by the public and archaeologists, and is being worked on.

[Kali]

10. LOL

"Yet archeology is a conservative field where money is scarce for “controversial” projects."

implying lots/all the money goes to somehow bolstering one side fails to show the actual picture of funding arch research. not many are getting rich in the field, and that is worldwide.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. A possible outline of indigenous oral tradition research inspired by the article

The article at the end makes a case for using indigenous oral traditions, to apply "indigenous science" to archaeology.

So I looked up "indigenous science" on the internet, admittedly in a skimming cursory way via three links:
https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-knowledge-advances-modern-science-and-technology-89351
https://www.macleans.ca/society/how-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-indigenous-knowledge/
https://eos.org/articles/keeping-indigenous-science-knowledge-out-of-a-colonial-mold

The firehawks discussed in the second article got me to think of how indigenous knowledge differs from "scientific" knowledge. I realized that it is the difference between qualitative data and quantitative data, respectively. The existence of firehawks is qualitative indigenous knowledge passed down over time. "Science" would find it qualitatively, given enough time to collect large quantities of detailed data. But it didn't find (yet) what indigenous people knew.

How does indigenous culture arrive at knowledge? In some ways, the same way as "science" does: large quantities of detailed data. Indigenous culture does not tabulate it to arrive at conclusions as quickly as science does, but both cultures sift large quantities of data. Indigenous people do it over long periods of time, but only data that accords with reality survives the test of time.

Just how significant a role do firehawks play in quantity and severity of fires is yet to be determined and that would be a job for science, to collect enough data to compare sized of effects.

But indigenous culture knew (knows) where to look.

Which brings me to the oral traditions, especially as relating to legends and history. There is a huge store of sifted data in those traditions. Sifted, because they have been hammered into durable shape over time by the traditions.

If modern techniques of data analysis and data science were used in a research effort, many correlations could be made and facts about "pre-" history retrieved. I would call it "oralnomics" in analogy to genomics. That is a term I just created and search engine shows it is not a word in use anywhere.

For example, if it were to be found correlations in series of legends from different groups mentioning a cleft in hills in stories involving adultery among the gods, then there would be a point of departure for research into mentions of landscape features. There may have been some key event in one main culture transiting to the Americas, from which many tribes and groups descended. This is clearly a crudely fabricated example, but I am sure that interesting facts could be uncovered.

Genomics is essentially data science: bioinformatics. It includes tremendous string matching and organizing (strings of DNA codons) and correlating that with research data, such as crop yields and disease survival (at a crude level; actual research is much more sophisticated).

So, gather together masses of indigenous stories from all over the world, from hundreds and thousands of groups, and apply big data science to it and discover many "oralnomes".

This is how to bridge the gap between indigenous knowledge (qualitative) and science (quantitative). Science finds stuff but more like feeling around for things in the dark ("unknown unknowns&quot . Indigenous knowledge provides some light and pathfinding.

[Hekate]

23. The entire subject is fascinating. The book will be on order from our Library's system shortly...

#1 it makes me long to return to college and study the Americas
#2 I am reminded of my long-ago observations of what happens when academic disciplines are pried open and entered by scholars who aren’t white men. It is just astonishing what a different set of eyes reveals.