,,,, BLOOMSBURG STATE COLLEGE Bloomsburg Pennsylvania ANTHROPOLOGY NEWSLETTER March 1980 Vol. 4 No. 5 Department of Philosophy & Anthropology SUMMER SCHOOL 1980. The following courses are being offered by the anthropology faculty this summer: 46.100 46.100 46.100 46.200 46.440 General Anthropology - Session I (5/27-7/3) - Mr. Reeder General Anthropology Session V (6/16-7/3) - Mr. Reeder General Anthropology - Session VII (7/28-8/15) - 11r. Solenberger Cultural Anthropology - Session III (7/7-8/15) - Dr. Minderhout Language & Culture - Session III (7/7-8/15) - Dr. Minderhout Fifteen students must register for an undergraduate summer course before it may be taught, so if you are interested in taking one of these courses, you might try persuading your friends to take it too. Preregistration began February 15 and will continue all through the spring semester. Scheduling is done in the Office of Extended Programs in the Waller Administration Building (Dean Wolfe's office). Germany: 80,000 B.C. by Bob Reeder. It is winter here in the forested belt immediately south of the frozen tundra wastes. All significant plant life has shut down for the season. Dense snow thickets cover the valleys promising death to all but the vigorous, now braced for the long, dreary frigid months ahead. Partridge, bundled in thick fluffs of feathers, hide in bushes. White hares dance lightly among the trees, pausing to nibble bark. At the slightest hint of danger, they freeze, becoming invisible against the background of snow. Disaster is never far away. Hawks glide overhead on silent wings, foxes creep through the underbrush competing for meat with bigger and stronger lynxes. Larger animals are here too, mammoths and rhinos, escaping the winter tundra for the shelter of the sparse conifers. Here, too, are bison, shaggy horses, and herds of reindeer seeking another day's food supply. Mostly it is silent save for the whistling of drifting snow and the occasional shudder of a pine dropping its heavy burden to the ground with a soft thump. There is one place in this frozen world which all wintering animals avoid. A small stream, crusted now with ice, leads up a craggy hill to a thick brown screen of animal skins hanging against a cave, its entrance facing south. Inside the cave are two-legged creatures as terrifying as any wolf pack. This is the winter home of a Neanderthal band. Inside the cave the Neanderthals are hard to see hidden behind the stretched hides which cut off the morning sun. Only a single fire is burning inside close to the mouth of the cave. The air is damp, tainted by excrement and unwashed bodies. 2 Breakfast is about to begin. One of the women kneels down by the fire and brushes coals aside to expose a hearth of flat stones underneath. These stones are now extremely hot. They snap and hiss loudly when she tosses several hunks of meat on the stones from a nearby pile. A hunter soon grips one end of the briefly warmed meat between his teeth and the fingers of one hand and cuts it in two with a sharp stone flake. His large jaw, worked by bulging neck muscles, masticates the still bloody meat quickly. Another day has begun. The hunters create no stir as they leave the warmth of their cave. in the valley below become restless. The animals Book Review by Jeff Bohlin: Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology by Maurice Godelier. (Cambridge University Press, 1977) This book is a collection of essays about economic anthropology, as analyzed from a Marxist viewpoint. Central to this viewpoint is the thesis that the modes of production determine the form or structure of any society; that this economic aspect is inseparable from all the facets of culture, and, in fact, dictates the very nature of any society. From this thesis Godelier analyzes functionalist and structuralist explanations of culture to show their weaknesses; then he presents a Marxist analysis of these problems. Topics covered are the origin of class differences, the origin of the state, the theoretical concept of the tribe, critical review of Marx's ideas, and pre-capitalist (primitive) economic systems. This is a controversial book which questions many accepted anthropological tenets, but it is not a narrow-minded Marxist analysis. For anyone interested in Marxist anthropology, this is an excellent presentation by one of its foremost proponents. SPRING ARCHAEOLOGY CONVENTIONS (possible M.A.N. Club trips). The tenth annual Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference will be held at the Dover Holiday Inn, 348 North Dupont Highway (U.S. f/13) in Dover, Delaware, March 21, 22, and 23, 1980. Advance registration of $5 must be sent by March 15 to Dr. Daniel R. Griffith, Bureau of Archaeology & Historic Preservation, Hall of Records, Dover, Delaware 19901. Reservations must also be made by that date for convention rates at the Holiday Inn (phone free to local Holiday Inn, Danville 275-4640). Unless enough students wish to go earlier, Professor Robert R. Solenberger plans to leave in a State car from the BSC campus about 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, March 21, to spend the night with friends in Philadelphia, and drive on to Dover early in the morning Saturday, March 22, to attend sessions all day and remain in the Dover Holiday Inn that night. He also plans to attend the convention on Sunday, March 23, leaving Dover in the afternoon to drive directly to Bloomsburg. Students would ride free in this state car, up to capacity. So contact Mr. Solenberger about plans, via office mailbox, second floor Bakelsss, or phone 389-2500/784-0267. The emphasis at the Dover meetings will be on prehistoric periods, including reports on recent excavations in southern Maryland. Also, the 45th Annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology will take place on Wednesday, April 30, Thursday, May 1, Friday, May 2, and Saturday, Hay 3, 1980, at the Philadelphia Sheraton Hotel, 17th Street, & J. F. Kennedy Boulevard. For details contact the Program Chairperson, Ernestene Green, Recreation & Land Division, U. S. Forest Service, Federal Building, Missoula, Montana 59801. .r , .,. 3 As this period includes the last few days of classes before final exams, Professor Solenberger will consider making this trip, probably by state car, only if there is definite demand from several students. Informal overnight accommodations, using sleeping bags, may be possible. If interested, please contact Solenberger soon, as indicated above. During the convention there will be opportunity to visit museums and libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, the Maritime Museum, Franklin Court, etc. NOTE. Other conferences coming up which may interest you include an Ethnography in Education Research Forum sponsored by the Center for Urban Ethnography of the University of Pennsylvania to be held March 7-9 in Philadelphia and the Northeast Anthropological Association annual meeting at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to be held March 28-30. Both deal more with cultural and applied anthropology. Dr. Minderhout has the preliminary programs for both conferences if you'd like more details. Ethnographic Facts. Instead of the usual material found in this column, we've chosen to review two articles that have appeared in popular magazines recently, both of which have to do with an anthropological look at American culture. In one, "La Vie en Appleton," the French anthropologist, Herve Varenne, describes his fieldwork in a small Midwestern town a few hours' drive from Chicago. Nothing is particularly extraordinary about Appleton. No one group dominates the town; it is fairly homogeneous ethnically, religiously, and economically. Like many small towns, it's being transformed from a service town for farmers into a residential suburb of an industrialized town 20 minutes away. What impressed Varenne was the lack of cohesiveness in the town, that is, while the town thought of itself as a community, the town was not a community by any definition of the word. Community "business" was carried on informally at a coffee shop instead of at the official meetings of the town's governing apparatus. The doctors, businessmen, ministers, school officials, and so on who met at the coffee shop each day shaped opinion and formed a group consensus long before policy was officially decided. But each of these people acted from their own small allegiances rather then from a sense of community. Interpersonal contacts in the town were based on friendship, but these contacts proved to be less cohesive than their members imagined them to be. Friendships and family ties provided a strong sense of unity and self-definition--while they lasted. However, both kinds of relationship were prone to disintegration as people moved, divorced, or broke up. As a result, Varenne says, "these voluntary and noninstitutionalized associations represent the true character of the American experience." The other article by Conrad P. Kottak focuses on an American institution: McDonald's. The world is blessed each day, he notes, with the opening of a new McDonald's restaurant. The chain's phenomenal success, he suggests, is a result of its familiarity, its safety. The food, the way help greet customers, the interior design, even the placement of the menus, is the same from place to place. Its familiarity is taken for granted; the customer who asks "What's a Big Mac?" is as out of place as a Southern Baptist at a Catholic Mass. The juxtaposition with Varenne's article is revealing; with social ties based on kinship, marriage, and community growing weaker, the uniformity of McDonald's becomes our last culture-wide ritual. As Kottak puts it, "By eating at McDonald's not only do we communicate that we are hungry, enjoy hamburgers, and have inexpensive tastes, but also that we are willing to adhere to a value system and a 4 series of behaviors dictated by an exterior entity. In a land of tremendous ethnic, social, economic, and religious diversity, we proclaim that we share something with millions of other Americans." Upcoming Events. A number of conferences and opportunities are corning up at BSC that are of interest to anthropologists. Starting in March the Multicultural Education Center is going to be sponsoring a series of Ethnic Studies Workshops. The sessions, to be held March 15, March 29, April 26, and May 3, will each feature speakers on topics of ethnicity, workshops in ethnic dance, music, and arts, and a luncheon featuring ethnic foods. There will also be an Israeli Folk Festival on March 16 from 3 to 8 p.rn. This festival will feature folk dancing, an art exhibit, films on Judaism, Jewish foods, and a concert from 5:30 to 8:00 by two professional groups. There is also a Minority Awareness Week corning up; more on that later. Finally, Dr. Minderhout will be giving a talk in the Idea Series on March 12 at 7:30 in Bakeless Faculty Lounge. The topic of his presentation will be "Cultural Relativism: Or Why Do the Mundugurnore Kill Their Babies?"