Bridging Gender

In 1999 I reviewed a book manuscript for Cambridge University Press. Titled Studying Human Origins, it was eventually published two years later by Amsterdam University Press . Studying Human Origins juxtaposes the views of paleoanthropologists interested in the question of our origins with those of professional philosophers and historians of science interested in epistemological questions. Although common in the life and physical sciences, such books are relatively rare in human origins research (e.g., Trinkaus & Shipman 1993. This essay asks why. It consists of a reaction to the papers by a paleoarchaeologist interested in epistemology, and in the logic of inference underlying knowledge claims in archaeology and human paleontology.

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 1997

and Daniel Miller have in common? What are the relationships between McGuire's A MarxistArchaeology (1992) and Zen and the Art of Mo to rcycle Ma intenance (persig 1974)1 If you like the conjunction of paradigms from philosophy and psychology, reflections upon science and the humanities, refreshing reconsiderations of the processual and post-processual debates, and mental gymnastics, you will undoubtedly enjoy a majority of the essays found in this unique book. The goal of this volume is to reflect upon recent theoretical issues in archaeology. The commentators are, in the main, practicing archaeologists educated in the British tradition with substantial backgrounds in social anthropology, social theory, and philosophy. Therefore, some North American-trained anthropological anthropologists may find the scope of this interesting and introspective volume uncustomary and controver sial, perhaps even disjointed and diffused. The work goes beyond the "Old" and "New" Archaeology para digms, modernism. and post-modernism, objectivist and processual versus contextualist and post process ualist approaches, as well as other theoretical (and methodological) dichotomies. A majority of the authors are concerned about the major debates on archaeological theory that have taken place during the past two decades-for example, science and interpretation, and processualism and post-process ualism. Likewise, the papers concern the interr elationships of archaeology and contemporary social theory and draw from philosophy, the structure of science, gender studies, and ethics, among other humanities and social and physical sciences. In sum, the book engages an important question: Has contemporary theory in archaeology moved from constructive, "progressive" dialogues to a series of defensive, intractable positions or "pos tures?" Mackenzie also states that the idea that archaeologists " ... can disengage their personal, social, and political context from their work must also be construed as posturing" (p. 26). There are many fresh voices and divergent opinions presenting some invigorating ideas and challenging theoreticians of archaeological discourse.

BAR International Series, 2013

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 1997

Archaeological Dialogues, 2019

5 We would like to begin by thanking the journal and the commentators AQ2 below for their time and 6 attention. 7 For us, the comments to our paper illustrate a certain diversity pertaining to how the scientific 8 field positions itself regarding environmental determinism and connected issues. A discussion of 9 this diversity will lead us to revisit some of the key themes of our paper in the context of the 10 comments.

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2012

World Archaeology, 2016

The papers that make up this debate section acknowledge the fact that ethnoarchaeology has increasingly been marginalized by archaeology, but deserves a central role in the evaluation and development of archaeological theory. The interactions of ethnoarchaeologists with functioning societies and real people make it hard for them to ignore the complex and multi-faceted interrelationships between humans and material culture that frequently make archaeological interpretations challenging. Lyons and Casey rightly point out that ethnoarchaeology should be thought of as a methodologyone engaged in studying the complex relationships between material culture and living peoples. Following Hicks (2003), they (and similarly Cunningham and MacEachern) argue that the role of ethnoarchaeology is to broaden the experiential understanding of other cultures that we use to interpret archaeological situations. For instance, the expansion of concepts like 'landscape' and 'environment' to encompass such ideas as 'viewscapes', 'soundscapes', 'sense-scapes' and 'affordances' reflects a growing awareness in archaeology that humans live in a multi-sensory world. Working with people and focusing on their 'lived experience' in dealing with material culture, ethnoarchaeology is well positioned to contribute to archaeological understandings of the diverse perceptions, filtered by culture and biology, through which people interact with their physical and social environment. As Sillar and Ramón Joffré and other contributors point out, analogies have always been a foundation of archaeological theory. Ultimately, all archaeological interpretation is based on analogy, and archaeologists who have attempted to deny this are fooling themselves. We were not there, we did not see the people act, we cannot ask them to explain the underlying intangible rules that structured what they did and made. We can understand the past only by reference to something we do know, even if it is as removed as an ethnographic report on a culture we have never visited or a common-sense understanding of how people somewhat similar to ourselves might be likely to act. Obviously, we should avoid the assumption that our ways are the only ways or the imposition on the past of a familiar analogy without consideration of alternatives. Perhaps the most important function of ethnoarchaeology is the study and evaluation of archaeological theory. Ethnoarchaeology has the potential to challenge even our most fundamental ideas, as Brady and Kearney demonstrate in their discussion of the living nature of rock art. Archaeologists who believe that they are interpreting the past in the absence of reference to the present are deluding themselves. This is true, as Lyons and Casey point out, for theory as well as

Volume 1, No. 1: May 2009 - Table of Contents 1 Neolithic Cultural Hybridity: Social Entanglements and the Development of Hybrid Culture in the Western Mediterranean William M. Balco 17 Tell Hadidi and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis: Are There Ceramic Geochemical Signatures? Jocelyn Boor 31 Female Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta) Sexual Skin Color Variability J. Danzy and V. Gutierrez 46 The North American Fur Trade World System Richard Wynn Edwards IV 65 Comprehending Amma: The Influence of Linguistic Ideology Upon A Contemporary Godperson Karen Esche-Eiff 77 The Burials at Cheshmeh Ali and Rayy: The Excavations of Erich Schmidt 1934 – 1936 Lucy Gustavel 94 I Am No Man: A Study of Warrior Women in the Archaeological Record Alexis Jordan 112 Integrating Geographic Information into the Analysis of the Genetic Distribution of South African Vervet Monkeys Kerry McAuliffe, Trudy R. Turner, Joseph G. Lorenz and Paul Grobler 128 Interdisciplinary and Intercultural (Mis)understanding: An Ethnography of Communication Amy Samuelson 143 It’s All Greek to Me: Classical Influences on Georgian and Federal Architectural Styles in the American Colonies Elizabeth K. Spott

Anthropology and Humanism, 2000

During the course of this decade, I have been traveling incessantly to Cuba, the place of my birth and earliest childhood. One truth that stays with me is the belief, enunciated frequently by babalawos, leaders of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion, that nothing in this world happens by chance. I believe it is not by chance, but rather by the ineffable wisdom that guides us on our life's journey that I have had the good fortune to be associated with James Fernandez for the past 22 years. I know that after I received my Ph.D. and became an anthropologist in my own right, Jim and I became colleagues, but I will always be his student and always his ahijada, a goddaughter to this quite powerful babalawo of anthropology, who initiated me into the rituals of our profession. It is impossible for me to speak of Jim impersonally, as James Fernandez, or even simply textually, by citing his work, because the things I have learned from him have come to me from knowing the man and knowing the work, and the two are as inseparable as fingernail and flesh, "como una y carne," to use a popular Spanish metaphor. I consider my article a quest to understand the meaning of mentorship-of how it is that we learn from our teachers and are given the tools to become teachers ourselves. I can say without exaggeration that when I entered anthropology in 1977, there was only one professor in this entire country who could envision turning the dreamy-eyed young woman I was, who wanted to write poetry but had lost faith in her voice, into an anthropologist. That professor was Jim Fernandez. When I arrived in Princeton in 1977 to study with Jim, he was well on the way to making the transition from being an anthropologist of Africa to an anthropologist of Spain. He was moving from one fieldwork site to another, moving from staying up all night in Africa observing the Bwiti religious revitalization movement-that sought wholeness and reconciliation between the living and the dead-to having to be up at dawn with the cow-loving and coal-mining asturianos of mountainous northern Spain, a region to which Jim traced his Fernandez paternity and ancestral roots. In a smaller way I wanted to make a similar transition from Africa to Spain. Under the supervision of Johannes Fabian, who had kindly put me in touch with Jim, I wrote an undergraduate senior thesis on Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya and Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, comparing and contrasting their colonized and colonizer memoirs of Africa. Under Jim's guidance, I sought to become an anthropologist of Spain, a place I had first visited on a semester abroad program as a Spanish literature student, seeking traces of Cervantes and Golden Age high culture. It was to the Spain of humble country folk that Jim would open my eyes. And it was to the village of Santa Maria del Monte, a fervently Catholic hamlet in Le6n, to which he would bring the Jewish Cuban girl of Sephardic lineage to find her first home away from home, her first site of fieldwork, her first intimate bond to the country abandoned centuries before by her Sephardic ancestors when they were forced to choose between conversion or expulsion. My arrival in Santa