Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T09:40:54.871Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Archaeology and Oral Tradition: The Scientific Importance of Dialogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Peter M. Whiteley
Peter M. Whiteley*
Affiliation:
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York, 10024
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scientific archaeology and indigenous oral traditions have long been estranged. While there appears to be something of a thaw in recent years, the terms of epistemological engagement are unclear. Are these different modes of constituting the past heuristically compatible at all? Or should they, as the postmodernists would avow, simply be treated as alternative narratives in the intractable culture wars, where the privileged truth-claims of science are dismissed as a spurious arrogance? Focusing on an example from Hopi oral tradition, this paper argues that objective archaeological explanation can gain a great deal, without any loss of analytical rigor, by treating oral traditions not as scientifically unassimilable myths but as a primary source of evidence and interpretation of past social formations. The need for dialogue, then, is important not just as a matter of multicultural diplomacy, but for the enhancement of scientific explanation itself.

Résumé

Résumé

Hace mucho tiempo que se apartan la arquelogía científica de las tradiciones orales indígenas. No obstante que recientemente ha aparecido algo de mejoramiento, todavía falta aclarar las condiciones de empeño epistimológico. ¿Son en modo alguno heuristicamente compatibles estos modos diferentes de constituir el pasado? ¿O, como mantienen los postmodernistas, se deben tratar como narrativas alternativas en las peleas culturales intractibles, en que se rechazan las pretensiones de verdad privilegiadas de la ciencia como una arrogancia espuria? Enfocado en un ejemplo de la tradición oral hopi, este artículo razona que la explicación arqueológica objetiva puede aprovechar mucho—sin ningún daño de rigor analítico—por tratar las tradiciones orales no como mitos no asimilables a la ciencia, pero como una fuente primaria de evidencia y interpretación de las formaciones sociales pasadas. Así, la necesidad del diálogo es importante no sólo como un asunto de diplomacía multicultural, sino tambien para el encarecimiento de la explicación científica misma.

Type
Forum
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , July 2002 , pp. 405 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Adams, E. C. 1991 The Origin and Development of the Pueblo Katsina Cult. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Bahr, D., Smith, J., Allison, W., and Hayden, J. 1994 The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth: The Hohokam Chronicles. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Basso, K. 1996 Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Beach, D. 1998 Cognitive Archaeology and Imaginary History at Great Zimbabwe. Current Anthropology 39:47–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, M. 1989 Ritual, History, and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology. Athlone, London.Google Scholar
Cohn, B. 1980 History and Anthropology: the State of Play. Comparative Studies in Society and History 22:198–221.Google Scholar
Collins, J. 1998 Understanding Tolowa Histories: Western Hegemonies and Native American Responses. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Connerton, P. 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Crown, P. (editor) 2000 Women and Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power and Prestige. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Deloria, V., Jr. 1995 Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. Scribner, New York.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. 1961 [1912] The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Collier, New York.Google Scholar
Echo-Hawk, R. 2000 Ancient History in the New World: Integrating Oral Traditions and the Archaeological Record in Deep Time. American Antiquity 65:267–290.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. 1994 The Hopi Indians, with Special Reference to their Cosmology or World-View. In Kachinas in the Pueblo World, edited by Schaafsma, P., pp. 7–16. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Faubion, J. 1993 History in Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 22:35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fentress, J., and Wickham, C. 1992 Social Memory. Blackwell, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Ferguson, T. J. 1998 Öngtupka niqw Pisisvayu (Salt, Salt Canyon, and the Colorado River), the Hopi People and the Grand Canyon. Final ethnohistoric report for the Hopi Glen Canyon Environmental Studies. Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, Kykotsmovi, Arizona.Google Scholar
Ferguson, T. J., Kuwanwisiwma, L., Yeatts, M., and Dongoske, K. 1997 The Hopi People, the Operation of Glen Canyon Dam, and Management of Cultural Resources in the Grand Canyon. In Making Protection Work: Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Research and Resource Management in Parks and on Public Lands. The George Wright Society, Hancock, Michigan.Google Scholar
Fewkes, J. 1900 Tusayan Migration Traditions. In Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1897-98), pp. 573–633. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1978 The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. Pantheon, New York.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1980 Truth and Power. In Power/Knowledge, by Foucault, M., edited by Gordon, C., pp. 109–133. Pantheon, New York.Google Scholar
Fowler, L. 1987 Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings: Gros Ventre Culture and History, 1778-1984. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.Google Scholar
Gates, H. L. Jr. 1986 Introduction: Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes. In “Race,” Writing, and Difference, edited by Gates, H. L. Jr., pp. 1–20. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Geertz, A. 1983 Book of the Hopi: The Hopi's Book? Anthropos 78:547–556.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1980 Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Hastrup, K. (editor) 1992 Other Histories. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Hill, J. (editor) 1988 Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.Google Scholar
Hoffman, A. 1984 Reliability and Validity. In Oral History: an Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by Dunaway, D. K. and Baum, W., pp. 67–73. American Association for State and Local History, Nashville.Google Scholar
Jackson, D. (editor) 1990 Black Hawk: an Autobiography [1833]. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.Google Scholar
Kohl, P. 1998 Rhetoric and Reality: Discourses from the Divan. Current Anthropology 39:171–174.Google Scholar
Krupat, A. 1989 The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon. University of California Press, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layton, R. 2000 Anthropology and History of Franche-Comte: A Critique of Social Theory. Oxford University Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, E., and Aycock, D. 1983 Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966 The Savage Mind. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1967 The Story of Asdiwal. In The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, edited by Leach, E. R., pp. 1–47. Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1970 The Raw and the Cooked. Jonathan Cape, London.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1964-72 Mythologiques, I-IV. Plon, Paris.Google Scholar
Lowie, R. 1915 Oral Tradition and History. American Anthropologist 17:597–599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1948 [1926] Myth in Primitive Psychology. In Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays, by Malinowski, B. , pp. 72–124. Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Malotki, E. 1990 Language as a Key to Cultural Understanding: New Interpretations of Central Hopi Concepts. Baessler Archiv 39:43–75.Google Scholar
Malotki, E. (editor) 1993 Hopi Ruin Legends: Kiqötutuwutsi. Narrated by Lomatuway’ma, M., Lomatuway’ma, L. , and Namingha, S. Jr. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.Google Scholar
Martin, C. 1987 An Introduction aboard the Fidèle. In The American Indian and the Problem of History, edited by Martin, C., pp. 3–26. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Mason, R. 2000 Archaeology and Native North American Oral Traditions. American Antiquity 65:239–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mindeleff, V. 1891 A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola. In Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (for 1886-7), pp. 3–228. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. Google Scholar
Nabokov, P. 1996 Native Views of History. In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol 1: North America, edited by Trigger, B. and Washburn, W., pp. 1–60. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Price, R. 1983 “ First-Time”: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Price, R. 1990 Alabi's World. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Cohen and West, London.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, R. 1980 Ilongot Headhunting, 1873–1974: A Study in Society and History. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1981 Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1985 Islands of History. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1995 How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, for Example. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaafsma, P. 2000 Warrior, Shield, And Star: Imagery and Ideology of Pueblo Warfare. Western Edge Press, Santa Fe.Google Scholar
Schmidt, P., and Patterson, T. (editors) 1996 Making Alternative Histories: Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. Google Scholar
Schoenberg, K. 1998 Commentary on Heinrich Harke. Current Anthropology 39:38–39.Google Scholar
Shryock, A. 1997 Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. University of California Press, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, A. B. 2001 Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa's Past. Cambridge University Press, New York CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, N., Dongoske, K. , Anyon, R., and Downer, A. (editors) 1997 Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.Google Scholar
Teague, L. 1993 Prehistory and the Traditions of the O’Odham and Hopi. The Kiva 58:435–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, D. 2000 Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology and the Battle for Native American Identity. Basic Books, New York. Google Scholar
Thompson, L. 1950 Culture in Crisis: A Study of the Hopi Indians. Harper, New York.Google Scholar
Turner, T. 1988 Ethno-Ethnohistory: Myth and History in Native South American Representations of Contact with Western Society. In Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past, edited by Hill, J., pp. 235–281. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1967 The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. 1985 Oral Tradition as History. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.Google Scholar
Voth, H. 1905 Traditions of the Hopi. Field Columbian Museum Publication 96, Anthropological Series No. 8. Chicago. Google Scholar
Ware, J., and Blinman, E. 2000 Cultural Collapse and Reorganization: Origin and Spread of Pueblo Ritual Sodalities. In The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond, edited by Hegmon, M., pp. 381–110. University of Colorado Press, Boulder.Google Scholar
Waters, F. 1963 Book of the Hopi. Viking Press, New York.Google Scholar
Whiteley, P. 1988 Deliberate Acts: Changing Hopi Culture through the Oraibi Split. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Whiteley, P. 1998 Rethinking Hopi Ethnography. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Wiget, A. 1985 Recovering the Remembered Past: Folklore and Oral History in the Zuni Trust Lands Damages Case. In Zuni and the Courts, edited by Hart, E., pp. 173–187. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence.Google Scholar
Yava, A. 1978 Big Falling Snow: A Tewa-Hopi's Life and Times and the History and Traditions of His People, edited by Courlander, H.. Crown, New York.Google Scholar