Fowler, Don D.
2001 A Laboratory for Anthropology: Science and Romanticisim in the American Southwest, 1846-1930. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Notes: xiii, 497 p.: ill., maps; 27 cm. ISBN: 0-8263-2036-8Reviewed 11 Feb 2002 by:
Charles C. Kolb <ckolb@neh.gov>
National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DCMedium: Written Literature Subject
Keywords:Anthropology - Southwest, New - History
Ethnological expeditions - Southwest, New - History
Indians of North America - Southwest, New - Public opinion
Anthropology in popular culture - Southwest, New
Indians in popular culture - Southwest, New
Indians of North America - Southwest, New - Public opinion
Public opinion - Southwest, New
Southwest, New - Discovery and exploration
Southwest, New - Description and travel
ABSTRACT: Fowler's assessment of the development of archaeological and ethnographic research in the Greater American Southwest, 1846 to 1930, emphasizes that the "American Southwest" is an idea, a cultural construct, invented by Euro- or Anglo-Americans. Further, ethnology metamorphosed into the scholarly discipline of anthropology, and the Southwest was a central place for this metamorphosis, a "laboratory for anthropology." Finally, European assumptions about the origins culture history of "Indians" also became Anglo assumptions. Using biography, and social and intellectual history, he documents the evolution of the discipline.
Historians and anthropologists working in the American Southwest and members of the preservation community know well the record of research and publications of Don Fowler, Mamie Kleberg Professor of Historic Preservation and Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Others recognize his stellar contributions to the history of American anthropology and archaeology, and his leadership as President of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) from 1985 to 1987. No one is more qualified to prepare a history of anthropological research in the American Southwest; see for example Meltzer, Fowler, and Sabloff (1986); and Fowler and Hardesty (1994). Indeed, since his initial fieldwork at an Anasazi site in 1957, through his first professional paper presented at the SAA meeting in Tucson in May 1962, and his successful courtship of Catherine (Kay) Sweeney, a fellow student on the Glen Canyon Project, Fowler has immersed himself in the history, ethnography, archaeology, and linguistics of the American Southwest. The Fowlers have contributed immeasurably to our understanding of this unique and complex region and are known to amateur and professional scholars in many disciplines, including archivists and museum curators, and members of the environmental and preservation communities. This is a fitting tribute to the devotion both have to the American Southwest.This comprehensive account of the history of anthropological research in the American Southwest covers, in the main, the period 1846 to 1930, and draws together an array of diverse materials to demonstrate compellingly the endeavors of dozens who worked in this region, making it the most studied culture area in the world. There are two main themes, first that the concept of the "American Southwest" was an idea invented by Euro- or Anglo-Americans, and second that it was intertwined with the development of ethnology, as a field of study that began in the 1840s, and after 1880 became part of the scholarly discipline of anthropology. Related topics are that the Southwest is a central place for this metamorphosis, a "laboratory for anthropology," and that Anglos adopted European assumptions about the origins, nature, and culture history of Native Americans. Following a preface, prologue, and introduction, there are 30 chapters packed with detailed information and biographical vignettes. These cover 80 years of the history of research and scholarship up to the advent of the New Deal, which dramatically restructured professional archaeology and anthropology in the United States.
The book's prologue characterizes the terrain and ecology, native peoples, and indigenous languages of the Southwest, and documents the region's Hispanic population (1600 to 1842), Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries and early explorers. Fowler's introductory essay, "Origins of American Anthropology," considers the origin and meanings of the term "Indian", from historical, religious, and philosophical perspectives, and he also reviews Thomas Jefferson's research agenda, the significance of the American Philosophical Society, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and important contributions made by Albert Gallatin, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and Lewis Cass, among others.
In the first chapter, "Documenting the Southwest," he traces Spanish (1521 to 1821) and Anglo descriptions (1806 to 1846), as well as British, German, and American travelerÆs accounts. Especially valuable is his consideration of the pioneering work of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers during the period 1846 to 1859, particularly the explorations and mapping surveys led by Emory, Kern, Whipple, Beale, and Ives. The importance of the Mexican boundary survey and explorations of the lower Colorado River and Colorado Plateau are likewise recounted.
The chapter "Legends and Ruins," covering the period 1846 to 1859, includes some of the far-fetched legends about Welsh and Mormons as Precolumbian immigrants, and reviews the initial explorations of the ruins at Salinas, Casas Grandes (Paquim‰), Gila River, Chaco Canyon, and in the Four Corners region. A full chapter is devoted to Army ethnographic observations from 1846 to 1860 that include assessments of the Zunis, Hopis, Navajos, and Yuma. The subsequent "great surveys" period, from the Civil War to 1879, documents those led by Clarence King, Ferdinand Hayden, William Henry Holmes, George Wheeler, and John Wesley Powell. The explorations and publications by Powell established him as an expert on western Native Americans, and encouraged him to plan a federal ethnological bureau. Likewise the development of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1875 enhanced the reputation of the Smithsonian Institution and Powell's anthropological agenda.
The chapter on the organization of anthropological research in America and the creation of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) illustrates the interrelationships between the contending political and scientific communities, notably in Congress, the Geological Survey, the Bureau of Ethnology, and the National Academy of Sciences. PowellÆs assessment of the personalities and interrelated research agendas of Lewis Henry Morgan, Adolph Bandelier, and Powell in the Southwest are compelling. Fowler also reviews the activities of James and Matilda Coxe Stevenson at Zia, Taos, and Oraibi pueblos, and Matilda's relationship with a Zuni berdache, We'wha, who was her key informant and friend. The exploits of Frank Hamilton Cushing (the first professional field anthropologist), Washington Matthews, John Gregory Bourke, Thomas Keam, and Alexander Stephen, and their compatriots are also considered. Fieldwork by the Mindeleff brothers, Victor and Cosmos, is presented along with a discussion of Cosmos's work in fabricating models of pueblos for display in the National Museum.
Powell's death in 1902 marked a major turning point for the BAE when W.H. Holmes was appointed "Chief" rather than Director. Especially interesting is Fowler's documentation of Frank Cushing's Hemenway Expedition to the Salt River Valley, and how Harvard's Peabody Museum ultimately acquired the excavated artifacts. Finally the central place of Jesse Walter Fewkes, an ichthyologist who became a major Southwestern ethnologist, is revealed clearly.
Another chapter profiles the careers and contributions of Adolph Bandelier, Herbert Howe Bancroft, and the lesser-known Herbert Eugene Bolton. Bolton, who taught at the University of California for 25 years, invented "Borderland" studies, and oversaw an amazing 104 doctoral dissertations and 350 Master's theses. Obligatory to any assessment of Southwest archaeology is the reporting and assessment of the explorations and excavations undertaken by the Wetherill family, whose members located and mapped more than 180 ruins. Gustaf Nordenski÷ld who worked with the Wetherills, published Cliff Dwellers (1893), perhaps the first scientific monograph in Southwestern archaeology setting the standard for reporting for more than two decades. Also reviewed are the research of Frederic Ward Putnam and his Harvard students including Alfred M. Tozzer and William C. Farabee.
A subsequent chapter documents the transition of ethnology to modern anthropology (1870 to 1910), and the significance of World's Fairs held in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago (Columbian), Omaha (Trans-Mississippi), Buffalo (Pan-American), and St. Louis (Louisiana Purchase). The Chicago Columbian included major participation by the Smithsonian Institution and emphasized Southwestern Indian groups, a Cliff Dweller's exhibit, model Indian School, plus a World's Congress Auxiliary which held major scholarly, technical, and social meetings (close to 6,000 presentations by 3,817 individuals during a six-month period in 1893). He also discusses the relationships between philanthropy, power politics, museums, universities, and the creation of modern anthropology. Among the new museums that acquired Southwestern objects were the American Museum in New York (beginning in 1869), the Peabody at Harvard, the Field Columbian in Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and the Brooklyn Museum. Stuart Culin's career and influence at the latter two museums is noted.
"Building a New American Anthropology" assesses the creation of the Museum of the American Indian in New York, the philanthropy of Archer Huntington and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, and the scholarly contributions of Franz Boas, Frederic Ward Putnam, Ales Hrdlicka, and Nels Nelson. Also detailed are the role of Charles Lummis in field research and the founding of the Southwest Museum; Byron Cummings's contributions to Arizona archaeology, pedagogy, and Southwest museums; and Edgar Lee Hewett's direction of the Museum of New Mexico, the School of American Research, and the San Diego Exposition.
A compelling and well-documented chapter devoted to the creation of a "New Archaeology" in the Southwest (1917 onward) considers the role of the American Museum in the Southwest (1905 to 1929), Clark Wissler, and especially the contributions of A.V. Kidder, Nels Nelson, Leslie Spier, Alfred Kroeber, and Earl Morris. The latter group expanded the New Archaeology through chronological methods using stratigraphy and seriation and the analysis of pottery (the so-called "ceramic bacillus"). Kidder's fieldwork at Pecos, Kroeber's at Zuni, Morris's at Aztec Ruin, and McClurg and Nusbaum's at Mesa Verde, are detailed, as are the politics of the "Battle for Chaco Canyon" involving Neil Judd, and finally, the beginning of dendrochronological studies by A.E. Douglass.
A.V. Kidder's landmark synthesis, An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (1924), the Pecos Classification (a relative chronology) and the two initial Conferences (1927 and 1929) are elaborated and the history of ethnography in the Southwest is reviewed for the period 1879 to 1930. Significant contributions by a number of anthropologists (many of them Boasian ethnographers) are documented: Frank Russell, Barbara Freire-Marreco, Edward S. Curtis, Elsie Clews Parsons, Esther Schiff Goldfrank, Ruth Bunzell, Gladys Reichard, Ruth Benedict, Leslie White, and even Boas himself.
The persuasive and masterful chapter 27, "Inventing the Southwest," 1890 to 1930, integrates diverse elements including the Santa Fe Railway, the Fred Harvey Company, the development of the city of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Indian School, Pueblo pottery making, and Indian fairs, to document the creation of the "Southwest." Well known intellectuals, painters, and cinematographers (such as Willa Cather, Oliver La Farge, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Laura Gilpin), and lesser-known scholars (such as Leo Crane and Laura Adams Armer), developed popular and pictorial ethnography as early as 1898. Beginning in the 1920s, the creation of the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, Gila Pueblo in Globe, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix heralded local modern museums that documented the region. Hence, the influence exerted by Eastern museums waned, and, as Fowler notes, this became an era of new institutions and new direction by scholars working in American museums.
An "Epilogue" explains why the years 1930 and 1931 were "transitional" for Southwestern archaeology. By this time the Boasian period was over, historical particularism had peaked with Wissler and Kroeber, and ethnographers had turned to cultural patterning, culture and personality assessments, and acculturation studies. Archaeology remained rooted in the culture history approach and retained coherence in spite of divisive theoretical issues such as early site nomenclature and cultural traditions (Paleo-Indian, Clovis, Folsom, etc.), the origins of maize, and the replacement of romanticism by scientific archaeology.
The chronological and geographic scope might lead the reader to believe that this is an edited work but it is not. This splendid book is the labor of love of an extraordinary scholar who knows and understands source materials in the public and private sector. Using biography and social and intellectual history, Fowler carefully documents the interrelationships of museums, universities, and schools of research, including factors such as the function of philanthropy, world's fairs, and changing research agendas as science replaced romanticism. The bibliography contains an astonishing 1,551 references and 1,604 endnotes, while six tables, nine maps, and 112 monochrome illustrations supplement the narrative. The author's thematic hypotheses are carefully documented and he convincingly demonstrates how the Southwest became a "laboratory for anthropology." This magnum opus shows how the practice of archaeology and ethnology in the Southwest form the modern discipline of anthropology. Fowler's multidisciplinary and multifaceted documentation and assessment of the development of archaeological and ethnographic research is essential reading. However, nothing is said about the roles of physical anthropology and anthropological linguistics in this region and the contributions that incipient studies in the Southwest made to the maturation of these disciplines. Nonetheless, Fowler has integrated a diverse wealth of published and archival sources from the anthropological and archaeological literature, museum studies, the history of philanthropy, and the history of exploration, as well as biography and historiography. Fowler's discussion of pottery seriation and the "ceramic bacillus" might have been carried further.
Students as well as advanced scholars will learn much from this treatise, particularly how world fairs and institutional agendas helped to shape contemporary anthropology and archaeology, especially in the Southwest. There are no other general or regional work that undertake a similar approach; by comparison, see for example Christenson (1989); Malina and Vasicek (1990); Stiebing (1994); Meltzer, Fowler, and Sabloff (1986); and Willey and Sabloff (1993). Hinsley's Savages and Scientists (1981), covering the period from 1846 to 1910, takes a global approach but touches briefly on some of the issues Fowler elaborates. Kidder's (1931, 1936) landmark publication of pottery from Pecos also includes the pioneering technological studies of the ceramic wares by geologist-archaeologist Anna O. Shepard that provided the foundation for modern ceramic technology and ceramic ecology (Bishop and Lange 1991).
References:
Bishop, Ronald L. and Frederick W. Lange 1991 The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.
Christenson, Andrew L. 1989 Tracing Archaeology's Past: The Historiography of Archaeology. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Fowler, Don D. and Donald L. Hardesty (eds.) 1994 Others Knowing Others: Perspectives on Ethnographic Careers. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hinsley, Curtis M., Jr. 1981 Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Kidder, Alfred V. et al. 1931, 1936 The Pottery of Pecos, 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press for Phillips Academy.
Malina, Jaroslav and Zdenek Vasicek 1990 Archaeology Yesterday and Today: The Development of Archaeology in the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Meltzer, David J., Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.) 1986 American Archaeology, Past and Future. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press for the Society for American Archaeology.
Stiebing, William H. 1994 Uncovering the Past: A History of Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Willey, Gordon R. and Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds) 1993 A History of American Archaeology. 3rd ed. New York: W.H. Freeman.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Kolb, Charles C.
2002 Review of A Laboratory for Anthropology: Science and Romanticisim in the American Southwest, 1846-1930. Anthropology Review Database. February 11. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1671, accessed February 9, 2010.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)