Department of Anthropology

THE ANTHROPOLOGY NEWSLETTER
Vol. 23, No. 3

Nov-Dec 1998

In this issue:
Anthropology & Race - p. 1
Kennewick Man Will Be Studied - p. 4
Artifacts Along the Susquehanna - p. 6
Veterans Pow Wow in Washington, D.C. - two reports
- Louise Tokarsky - p. 7
- Jennifer Wilson - p. 8
* Alcohol & Drug Use in Traditional Cultures - p. 9
* BU Anthropology News - p. 13
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Anthropology & Race: All living human beings belong to a single species, Homo
sapiens. This means that in all their major biological characteristics, they have more
features in common than they have distinguishing characteristics. In this sense we
recognize the biological commonality of the human race.
At the same time, most indivuals appear physically different from others in a number
of discernible ways. This, of course, is true to some degree even within every family. If
such differences were evenly distributed around the globe, they might be noted merely
as representing individual variation among human beings, and that would be that.
However, the fact is that certain distinctive traits tend to cluster in populations that have
lived predominately in one part of the world or another. Because of that, it has been
easy for human beings to think of the world as divided into distinct physical races. In
the Western scientific world, Linnaeus in 1735 was among the first to classify the
human species into races, noting four - Africans, American Indians, Asians, and
Europeans.
As anthropology began to form into a distinct discipline at the end of the 19th
century, it was already apparent that Linnaeus' categories were inadequate.
American Indians were already being recognized as a kind of Asian, and Africans had
come to be seen as made up of many physical types, ranging from Central African
pygmies to tall, slender East African herders. Anthropology, the study of humans, was
among the first to begin to study human physical variation in depth. Using the
techniques of anthropometry, a standardized set of procedures for measuring human
physical .variation, anthropologists were able to show both the considerable variation
that existed in the human species and how these variations overlapped from one
supposed race to another. By the first decades of the 20th century, two things were
apparent to most anthropologists about race: 1) there was no reliable way to
distinguish one race from another on the basis of physical traits; and 2) what were
popularly described as racial features were usually learned behavioral differences
between cultures. At a time when many scientists were still assuming that race had
merit as an idea and that races had different mental and behavioral capacities, Franz
Boas, the founder of American anthropology, was publishing a book in 1911, The Mind
of Primitive Man, in which he asserted that all human populations had the same
capacities for thought, culture, and intelligence.
Recently the American Anthropology Association (AAA) has produced a working
paper on race that summarizes a century of anthropology research into the topic.
Adopted by the executive committee of the AAA in May 1998, the AAA Statement on
"Race" was published in the September 1998 Anthropology Newsletter (the official
AAA publication, that is - not ANTHROPOS). It will not doubt be a source of discussion
at the Association's national convention which will be held in Philadelphia from
December 2-6. Because of the importance of race as a topic in American life, the
entire staff of ANTHROPOS decided that it would be appropriate to reproduce the
AAA's statement in its entirety.
"In the US both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing

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human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on
visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this
century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous,
clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of
genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that there is a greater variation within racial groups than
between them. This means that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within socalled racial groups. Conventional geographic 'racial' groupings differ from one
another only in about 6% of their genes. In neighboring populations there is much
overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history,
whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued
sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly
over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of
one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the existence of others.
For example, skin color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to
dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not related to nose shape or hair
texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or
straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical
regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological
populations both arbitrary and subjective.
Historical research has shown th~t the id~a of race has always carried more
meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human
species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today
scholars in many fields argue that race as it was understood in the USA was a social
mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought
together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered
Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.
From its inception, this modern concept of race was modeled after an ancient
theorem of the Great Chain of Being which posited natural categories on a hierarchy
established by God or nature. Thus race was a mode of classification linked
specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of
inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered
and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century
used race to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences
among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially
exclusive categories, underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences,
and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The
different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols
of their status differences.
As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans
fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each race, linking

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superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians.
Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were
institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.
Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public
consciousness about human differences. Differences among the racial categories
were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans,
Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and
closer taxonomically to apes.
Utimately race as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread
to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking and controlling
colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the
colonial situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans
to rank one another and to justify social, economic, and political inequalities among
their peoples. During World War 11, the Nazis under Adolph Hitler enjoined the
expanded ideology of race and racial differences and took them to a logical end: the
extermination of 11 million people of 'inferior races' (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans,
homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the Holocaust.
Race thus evolved as a world view, a body of prejudgements that distorts our ideas
about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about
the diversity in the hum~n species. and about the abilities and behavior of people
homogenized into racial categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features
together in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological variations
and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically determined. Racial myths
bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today
find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research had led to
countless errors.
At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is
learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification.
No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions,
and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of
meanings and values that we call 'culture.' Studies of infant and early childhood
learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are.
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have
the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants
from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired
some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this
fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural
behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of
immigrants around the world.

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How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or
culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The racial world view
was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were
permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the US has been that
the policies and practices stemming from this world view succeeded all too well in
constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans and peoples
of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to
achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities
between so-called racial groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance
but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational and political
circumstances."
This perspective on race and racial categories will be reflected in Dr. Aleto's Race &
Racism (46.290) course in the Spring 1999 semester. -Dr. Aleto will present the
biological and social data from which this statement is derived.

Kennewick Man Will Be Studied: After more than two years, the U.S. Department
of the Interior has decided that scientists will be allowed to study the 9000 year old
skeleton from Kennewick, Washington, known as Kennewick Man. Discovered in July
1996, this skeleton has been a source of controversy from the beginning. The
skeleton came to light when two college students watching a hydroplane race on the
Columbia River stumbled over a human skull in the river's shallows. Thinking the skull
was ~rom a recent murder victim, the students alerted the local county coroner. The
coroner, named Floyd Johnson; immediately recognized that the skull was too old to
be a recent murder victim, so he turned the skull over to James Chatters, a forensic
anthropologist often used as a consultant to the police in the Northwest in murder
cases. Chatters and Johnson went ·out to the place where the students had
discovered the skull and recovered most of the skeleton as well. Only the sternum, a
few rib fragments, and some small hand and foot bones were missing.
When Chatters laid the specimen out on a lab table, he was able to determine that
the skeleton represented a middle-aged male about five feet nine inches tall. In his
initial analysis, he concluded that the skeleton was that of a European, possibly an
early trapper or hunter, based on its long narrow brain case, narrow face, and slightly
projecting upper jaw. But then he took a closer look at a gray object embedded in the
pelvis. A CAT scan revealed the object to be part of a stone projectile point of a
distinctive willow leaf shape, an artifact typical of the Archaic period, a Native
American archaeological culture that existed from nine thousand to about forty-five
hundred years ago. Could the skeleton be that old? Chatters showed the skeleton to
another forensic anthropologist, Catherine J. Mac Millan, who also concluded that the
bones were those of an European male. He then sent a small piece of bone to a
laboratory in Riverside, CA for radiocarbon dating. Their findings?: the bone was
between 9300 and 9600 years old.
At this point, before any further study could be done, the Army Corps of Engineers

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interceded. The site at which the skeleton was discovered was on land managed by
the Corps; technically, the skeleton belonged to them. -The Corps informed Chatters
that they were confiscating the skeleton with the intention of handing it over to the
Umatilla Indians for reburial. Under the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act of 1990, federal agencies are required to determine if bones found on
federal land belonged to Native Americans and, if so, to return them to the appropriate
tribe. The only limitation on repatriation is in determining whether a clear link exists
between skeletal material and a modern Native American population. The Umatilla
Indian Reservation is near the site where the skeleton was found, and the Umatillas
claim that the site is in an area they once controlled. Claiming the skeleton as one of
their own, the Indians claimed that removing the skeleton in the first place was an
outrageous act of sacrilege. They wanted all scientific study of the skeleton to cease
immediately so that the remains could be buried with the appropriate rituals.
Chatters and the rest of the scientific community were appalled. Skeletal remains
from 9000 years ago in this hemisphere are rare, and the Kennewick remains were
remarkably complete. Furthermore, Chatters argued there was no evidence linking
the skeleton to the Umatilla Indians, a requirement for repatriation. Cultural
anthropologists believe that the Umatilla are of only recent origin in the area around
Kennewick, thus invalidating their claim of ancestry. Until careful analysis of the
skeleton could be completed, there could be no way of telling whether any linkage
occurred - and, besides, important scientific data was being lost. The response of the
Army Corps of Engineers to this controversy was to confiscate the remains and toJock
them in a vault, permitting neither side to see, touch, or study them. In the meanwhile,
both the Indians and the scientific community sued the Corps for control of the bones.
For the last two years, the matter has been tied up in the courts, without resolution.
In April, the Corps transferred the jurisdiction of the controversial remains to the
Department of the Interior, which in turn turned them over to the National Park Service.
The National Park Service then announced that to fulfill the law, they would allow
some limited scientific access to the remains for the purpose of determining whether or
not they were of Native American origin. The remains would be transferred to the
Burke Museum in Seattle where they would be catalogued and measured, and then, if
necessary, tested again for reliable radiocarbon dating (Chatters' original test was
sent to one lab; ordinarily at least three separate labs are consulted to see if the results
are reliable.) If it was determined that the remains were Native American, then they
would be turned over to the Umatilla for immediate reburial; if not, then they would be
made available for further scientific study.
In July, eight scientists sued the Park Service's plan, arguing that the Burke
Museum lacked the necessary facilities for the proposed study and that radiocarbon
dating should be done regardless of any other findings. They also wanted DNA
testing done which could be conclusive evidence of any genetic link between
Kennewick Man and the Umatilla. But in September, a federal judge ruled against the
eight, thus validating the Park Service's proposal. Tests are supposed to start in

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November, and the Park Service has promised to make all of its findings public
periodically. To date, the Park Service has yet to announce who will conduct the first
studies of the remains.
Is Kennewick man a European? Those few scientists who have seen the skeleton
to date agree that the remains have little in common with Native Americans and look
much more like someone of European descent. Chatters goes so far as to say this:
"I've been looking around for someone who matches this Kennewick gentleman,
looking for weeks and weeks at people on the street, thinking 'This one's got a little bit
here, that one a little bit there.' And then, one evening, I turned on the TV, and there
was Patrick Stewart - Captain Picard of Star Trek - and I said, 'My God, there he is!
Kennewick Man!" But Native Americans believe that Chatters is biased by his desire
to study the skeleton further and that no one but American Indians were in this
hemisphere 9000 years ago.
Complicating the problem is the issue raised in the first article of this newsletter that scientifically no one can say with absolute certainty what physical traits are
unquestionably associated with what race. Forensic anthropologists have a series of
guidelines they follow that can establish with legal standing the probability of a
particular skeleton being Asian, Native American, or whatever, but there cannot be
absolute certainty of the racial classification of any ancient skeleton. Also, it's possible
that the concept of race as it is popularly understood may not have had any relevance
for humans 10,000 years ago. Recent studies suggest that all Eurasians from before
10,000 years ago look pretty much like Europeans, that what are seen as Asian
characteristics may only have asserted themselves after 10,000 years BP. In fact, Dr.
Douglas Owsley, who is Division Head for Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian,
has said that all of the other skeletal material in this hemisphere from 9000 years ago
looks more like Europeans than like modern Native Americans. But then, that's an
observation based on a grand total of seven skeletons~ including Kennewick Man. A
great deal is at stake here, then, ranging from issues involving Native American
sovereignty, the legal interpretation of the Repatriation Act, and our understanding of
early humans in the Western hemisphere. As more information becomes available ·
ANTHOPOS will publish the findings.

Artifacts Along the Susquehanna: An archaeological excavation in Perry County
near Liverpool, PA has yielded Paleoindian artifacts dating back as far as 10,000
years. The site was identified when the State of Pennsylvania was surveying to widen
Routes 11 & 15. Kurt Carr, chief of the Division of Archaeology and Protection for the
Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission was quoted in a recent Associated
Press release as saying "Almost everything we find is new for Pennsylvania and new
for the Northeast. There just aren't many sites that date to this period.'' The site is only
the second in Pennsylvania to yield five different cultural periods in stratified levels.
The five periods represented at the site are Paleoindian (10,000 to 8000 BC), Early
Archaic (8000 to 6000 BC), Mid/Late Archaic (6000 to 2000 BC), Terminal Archaic
(1800 to 200 BC) and Late Woodland (1000 AD to 1600 AD). Over 1000 projectile

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points have been discovered along with soapstone bowls, pieces of pottery, stone
smoking pipes, grooved ax heads, and fire-cracked rocks.
The archaeological excavations began last May and will continue through the
winter. The site has been tented over with plastic, and propane heaters are employed
to allow the work to go on through the cold weather. The site must be excavated as
quickly as possible because road construction is due to begin next spring. Several BU
anthropology majors have been involved in the excavations. They include Bill Dixon,
Fawn Evelhoch, Steve Gushue, and Amanda Shearer.

Pow Wow in Washington, D.C. by Louise Tokarsky: On November 7, 1998,
members of the Anthropology Club joined members of the BU Native American
Cultural Society in attending a Veteran's Pow Wow in Washington, D.C. Misty Nace,
president of the Native American Cultural Society, had extended the invitation to the
Club; attendance was by invitation only. In addition to Misty and myself, Sue Ann
Williams. Jennifer Wilson, Pete Risso, Heather Harbaugh, Lynette Boudman, and
Carol Rudy attended the Pow Wow along with faculty members, Professor Faith
Warner and Dr. Jesus Salas Elorza. Many people from many different indigenous
cultures attended this event. Prayers were said, and honor and recognition was given
to the veterans, who marched either in uniform or in indigenous clothing and carried
banners and flags.
To some people, the image of Native Americans carrying guns and wearing
camouflage may have been striking, especially when combined with the symbol of the
American flag. Perhaps people might wonder why, after the many injustices
committed by the U.S. government (broken treaties, boarding schools, etc.), would the
people pay honor to the U.S. flag, the very symbol of the government that took their
land and cultures from them? Why would they feel respect for this government? As I
watched the ceremonies at the pow wow, it became increasingly apparent that the
people there were not seeing the flag as the symbol of the U.S. government. Instead,
they were seeing the flag as a symbol of their land, that regardless of what this land is
called, it is still THEIR land. Therefore, they are obligated to fight for it and defend it
against other countries - so that THEY will not lose their land. Call it what you want,
but in the eyes of the indigenous people, the United States is still in their eyes given to
them from the very beginning, by their creator, to take care of and to guard.
One of the most delightful things I saw at this celebration was the continual dancing
of people from all over the states. There were men and women, children and the
elderly, all dancing together. Sometimes, the elderly danced longer and more
enthusiastically than the young people, which was lovely to see. A wide variety of
dance styles could be seen, from the fast paced dances of the plains to the more
gentle dances of the Iroquois. I noticed that one older gentleman danced all day long,
while another older man occasionally went into trance while dancing.
It is hard to describe all that passed during this celebration because everything was

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elaborate and overwhelming to the senses. There were so many colors, motions, and
sounds that to simply sit and watch was more than sufficient for me! What I didn't
realize was that this pow wow would leave a lasting impression on me.
It's been over a week now, and I'm still carrying this image of dancers in my mind dancers who danced NOT for their own enjoyment, but for relatives and ancestors.
When I think about them, I am reminded that the indigenous people have found
strength in unity. At one point, an Onondaga man stood up and asked that the Maya
people be recognized as North Americans and that they be allowed to join in future
pow wow events. Pows wows bring together a large group of people from all over,
abd even though there are many cultures present, the pow wow unifies people for a
specific cause. And at this particular pow wow, the cause was to pay tribute to the
Native veterans who fought to protect their land and their culture.

The Veterans Pow Wow: Another View: by Jennifer Wilson. The Pow Wow was
a huge gathering of Native Americans from all over the United States. Many different
tribes were represented there. In fact, the Cherokee from North Carolina where I spent
my summers were there along with a band of Lumbee Indians, also from North
Carolina. They all gathered and danced in honor of their veterans who had fought in
the wars of the U.S. military. The dancing was extraordinary to say the least. It was
held in a huge tobacco barn inside city limits. It was a huge wooden place that echoed
all day with the sounds of beating drums and singers. There were nine drums in the
middle of the barn - huge drums around up to fifteen people sat banging out a beat
that made your heart soar. It was magical watching the dancers in their native
costumes, all keeping perfect rhythm to the drum.
Some of the men were dressed in very elaborate costumes of vibrant reds, greens,
blues, and yellows. They were decorated with wreaths of feathers on their backs;
many had streamers hanging from them. These were the fancy dancers. The point of
fancy dancing is to do as many intricate twists and turns as possible while keeping
rhythm with the singers and the drums. The dance ends on the last beat of the drum.
One man dressed in yellow and red streamers flowing from the feathers on his back
caught everyone's eyes. He was so fluid and perfect in his dance that it made you
think of a campfire dancing and flickering in front of you. It was breathtaking.
A man from the C~erokee Nation did a hoop dance. This is a new dance, and one
that I would like to learn. He danced without missing a beat with about 20 different
hoops, placing each in a way that formed animals or other creatures during the four to
five minute dance. I was awed, to say the least, of the artistic talent it took to pull that
off.
One old man interested me the most. He was probably in his late 60's or early 70's.
The Pow Wow started at the beginning of the day and lasted long into the night. By the
end, everyone seemed tired and had sat out at least one or two dances. This man,
however, danced with all his might and actually seemed to grow stronger as the day

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went on. He did not miss a dance that he could dance. I was so enthralled with this
man's endurance and determination that when everything was over, I made a special
point of finding him and shaking his hand.
There is so much to tell. There were women dancers, too. Women needed a shawl
to dance on the floor to cover their shoulders. Their costumes were lovely, and their
dance styles were different from the men's. One such dance was done by Misty Nace
of the BU Native American Society. She is from Canada, and she performed a dance
called the Jingle Dance. In this dance, women wear dresses with shining cones made
from tobacco cans hanging from them. They jingle as they dance, hence the name.
Another dance done was the two step, which involves both males and females.
Women ask men to dance; they are not allowed to refuse. This dance is somewhere
between a square dance and a native dance. It was fun to watch.
There were also times when a feather would fall off a dancer's costume. The
feather is a sacred part of Native Americans' lives. It is believed that when a feather
falls to the ground, a warrior has fallen. This is very special, and each feather that fell
was collected and a ceremony was held over it. They were then put aside as sacred
objects that were not be touched.
There were also vendors from all over the country there. They brought Native
American crafts for sale. Anything from jewelry to blankets to native clothing could be
found there. We all had so much fun that even though it was very cold, we all dealt
with it with few complaints.
Overall, the trip was a great success. It was a wonderful experience in which we
met new people and got to know each other better. Special thanks is due to Misty
Nace for her help and invitation to the Pow Wow. Hopefully, the Anthropology Club
will get another opportunity to attend another one in the future. It is an experience all
us will not soon forget.

Alcohol & Drug Use in Traditional Cultures: On October 21, Dr. Minderhout
gave a talk in KUB on alcohol use in traditional cultures as part of Alcohol Awareness
Week. His presentation could also apply to drug use in many traditional cultures as
well. He noted that the origins of both drug and alcohol use are probably prehistoric.
In fact, one of the oldest Sumerian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5000 years, is a
recipe for beer. Some archaeologists believe that one of the driving forces behind the
invention of agriculture was to produce grains for making beer or other alcoholic
beverages.
For most of the time humans have been on this planet, they lived as nomadic
foragers, hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants. Studies of the diets of
surviving foragers in Africa have found that they consume little or no alcohol. Part of
this is undoubtedly due to the circumstances of the hunting and gathering lifestyle.

1 o.
Foragers must move periodically to take advantages of the constantly shifting local
availability of wild plant and animal foods. This provides little opportunity to support
the apparatus and time for brewing or distilling alcoholic beverages. But foragers
certainly made use of hallucinogenic drugs, which are fairly common in the wild,
depending on the location. A wide variety of fungi, seeds, leaves, flowers, fruits, bark,
or roots from dozens of different plant families contain alkaloids that can alter human
consciousness. South American rain forests appear to be the richest and most diverse
sources of hallucinogens in the natural plant world, but even the Inuit (Eskimo) people
who live above the Arctic Circle collected hallucinogenic mushrooms during the brief
Arctic summer and dried them for later use.
About 10-12,000 years ago, people invented agriculture in several different areas of
the world. With the invention of agriculture, human beings became sedentary - living
in permanent dwellings in villages and towns. A sedentary lifestyle gave humans the
time and opportunity to create breweries and stills as well as domestic grains, fruits,
and tubers to make into alcoholic beverages. (Not all of the world's areas became
producers of alcohol, however. When Europeans began exploring the world in the
15th and 16th centuries, they found native peoples who had never been exposed to
alcohol before, the most prominent example being Native Americans north of the Rio
Grande River.) A sedentary existence may have reduced the opportunity to collect
hallucinogenic plants from the wild, but around the world, this was more than
compensated for by the cultivation of plants with mind altering properties; obvious
examples include opium poppies, tobacco, and the coca plant.
However, the availability of alcohol and drugs does not mean that traditional
cultures abused these substances. Rather, the anthropological literature suggests that
most cultures carefully controlled access to these substances and allowed their use
only in carefully prescribed circumstances. Hallucinogenic drugs illustrate this point
best. In many traditional cultures, mind altering drugs were used in religious
ceremonies as a way of contacting the supernatural. In drug-induced trances, people
in many traditional cultures believed that they could communicate directly with the
supernatural world. Shamans, whose primary function in traditional cultures was
healing the sick, might take drugs, for example, to determine from a god or a spirit
helper the cause and specific body location of an illness believed to have a
supernatural origin; then a cure could be attempted. But these religious functions did
not become drug-crazed revelries. People taking drugs for the first time were carefully
instructed on what to expect and what they would see in trance. They were attended
during the trances to make sure that they were not at risk. Drugs used in religious
ceremonies were regarded as sacred substances. Taking those drugs outside of the
context of religious rituals would have been sacrilegious, and abusive use or addiction
were highly unlikely.
Not all drugs were taken for religious reasons in traditional cultures, however. In
the island cultures of Oceania, betel and kava were consumed primarily as relaxants.
Betel is a concoction of three substances, the nut of the Areca catechu palm, the

11.
leaves or stems of the Piper betle vine, and slaked lime from ground seashells or
coral. These substances are combined into a quid and chewed. While betel is
addictive, its use is equivalent to coffee or tea drinking in the West. In a 1993 article,
anthropologist Mac Marshall writes that "betel is chewed to stimulate social activity,
suppress boredom, enhance work, and increase personal enjoyment ... " Betel is used
by both men and women, children and the elderly, as a daily part of life. Kava, a drink
made from the root of a shrub, Piper methysticum, is a more restricted drug used only
by adult men. Kava has a calming or relaxing effect on the body and was widely used
in conflict-laden situations to reduce tensions and to prevent fighting. One
anthropologist writes that among the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea, possible
antagonists to a conflict were made to drink several bowls of kava quickly to prevent
them from fighting. Medical research has shown that kava is not addictive and has few
side effects.
In western South America, chewing coca leaves served much the same kind of
purpose as kava drinking in the Pacific. Chewing coca induces a state of peaceful
contemplation and euphoria according to the ethnobotanists who have studied its
effects. In addition, coca also serves to deaden pain and increase endurance, both of
which are criticial in Andean South America where people routinely conduct hard
labor in hypoxic conditions at altitudes of 10,000 feet or higher. Coca consumption is
a very different thing from cocaine, a distilled and much more powerful derivative of the
coca plant. There is a heated debate going on in nations such as Bolivia and Peru
these days as governments try to stamp out cocaine production by destroying all coca
plants. Indigenous peoples there regard coca chewing as a integral and harmless
part of their native cultures.
Alcohol consumption in traditional cultures operated in much the same way as
consumption of mind-altering drugs. For one thing, traditional cultures lacked the
ability to produce alcohol in large quantities. They did not have huge breweries or
distilleries, pasturization, bottles and cans, and vast merchandizing capabilities.
Instead, beer, wine or spirits were typically something that each family produced in
small quantities, a jar or two at a time. Alcohol consumption was typically something
reserved for hospitality - something to offer to guests. Alcohol was also used in some
religious ceremonies, either like drugs as a way to alter consciousness in order to see
the gods or as an offering to the gods. In either case, alcohol consumption was
confined to a particular social context. People might drink to excess in an annual
village festival, but during the rest of the year, consumption was minimal and public
drunkenness was abhored.
One of the more famous articles in anthropology is Charles Frake's "How to Ask for
a Drink in Subanum," which describes drinking and communication patterns among
these traditional agriculturalists in the Philippines. Frake notes "To ask appropriately
for a drink among the Subanum it is not enough to know how to construct a
grammatical utterance in Subanum translatable in English as a request for a drink.
Rendering such an utterance might elicit praise for one's fluency in Subanum, but it

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probably would not get one a drink." This is because alcohol consumption is reserved
for a special kind of political dispute resolution system among these people. When a
dispute rises to the point where it threatens the harmony of the community, village
elders call for a community discussion in which all adult males take part. In these
discussions, men drink alcohol made from rice or corn as they discuss the conflict at
hand. The goal is to reach consensus without conflict, and alcohol consumption
seems to deflect tensions. Frake says that alcohol is never consumed in any informal
setting in Subanum; it is reserved for important social contexts where its consumption
is controlled.
Controlled drinking and drug consumption among traditional cultures seems a far
cry from the rising rates of alcoholism and drug dependency seen in many Third World
countries today. The fact is that European colonialism undermined traditional patterns
of intoxicant use through the global merchandising of alcohol and some drugs.
Europeans were interested in obtaining wealth and the creation of markets, and
alcohol and drugs were useful commodities to offer in trade or to sell. For cultures,
such as those of North American Indians, who had never been exposed to alcohol
before, the new commodities were both desirable and free of traditional cultural
restrictions. Indeed, European traders used alcohol as a way of defrauding Indians of
their goods or in order to establish debt peonage relationships with them. In other
areas, Europeans brought new drugs or mass-produced alcohol that fell outside of
locally controlled traditions. Thus, a culture that carefully controlled access to
hallucinogenic mushrooms or morning glory seeds might become addicted to opium
or marijuana after its introduction by Europeans. It is a tenet of modern research into
addiction that alcoholism or drug abuse are more common in situations where access
or use of intoxicants is not traditionally controlled.
To the greater availability of new intoxicants in the wake of European colonialism
can also be added the social and economic consequences for many cultures of
colonialism. Colonialism relegated much of the world into the status of unskilled,
illiterate labor providing goods for European consumption with little or no
compensation. Political or military conquest also ate away at the self-esteem of
traditional cultures, adding hopelessness and despair to their poverty. Under these
circumstances it is not surprising that many in the developing world turn to alcohol or
drugs for release. For example, it is a popular myth that Native Americans' high rate of
alcoholism is due to some inborn, genetically inherited intolerance to alcohol, but in
fact, medical research has yet to reveal anything unusual about Native American
physiology and alcohol consumption. It is far more likely that alcoholism is on the rise
among Native Americans due to their poverty and despair.
It is somewhat ironic that many of the European cultures that colonized the world
and aided in the spread of intoxicants were themselves cultures in which alcohol
consumption was socially controlled. In France and Spain, for example, alcohol
consumption was - and is - a routine part of meals, but it is consumed in moderation
and public drunkenness is despised and alcoholism is rare. But when European

13.
colonists turned to the rest of the world, the context for the consumption of alcohol
changed. Now alcohol was a commodity like any other - an item to be traded, bought,
and sold.
BU Anthropology News: The city of Amsterdam, New York, has published a paper
based on Dr. Susan Dauria's dissertation research in that city. The paper is entitled
"The History of Industry and Ethnic Communities in Amsterdam, NY" and is intended to
support the city's redevelopment efforts. Dr. Dauria spent two years in Amsterdam
describing its pattern of deindustrialization and the different ethnic groups in the city for
her dissertation.

Professor Faith Warner has had a chapter published in a recent book, Power, Ethics
& Human Rights edited by Ruth M. Krulfield and Jeffery L. MacDonald for Rowman &
Little Publishers. Professor Warner's chapter is entitled 'The Testimonio Method in
Refugee Research: Practicing Advocacy and Feminism in an Ethnographic Encounter
with Q'eqchi' and K'iche' Women." Professor Warner collected women's stories of the
atrocities and hardships they experienced as they fled Guatemala's civil war in the
1980's to settle in refugee camps in southern Mexico. In the chapter, she reflects on
her role as a fieldworker in listening and responding to these horrific tales, as well as
the effects they have had on the women.
Professor Warner has also just been listed with the Human Rights Directory of the
Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association. In this role,
she will be listed as a contact person on the Committee's international website at
www.ameranthassn.org/chrhome.htm. Other persons interested in refugee issues and
rights may then contact her for advice and information through the web.
The American Anthropological Association is holding its annual meetings in
Philadelphia from December 2 - 6, and BU's Department of Anthropology will be well
represented there. As reported in last month's ANTHROPOS, Ors. Dauria and Aleto
will be represented in a poster session presenting their work with promoting self­
identity among summer migrant laborers in Luzerne County, PA. Professor Faith
Warner and student major Louise Tokarsky will also present a joint paper based on
their work delivering health care to similar migrants in Columbia County, PA.