Mardl2001

ANTHROPOS
The Department of Anthropology
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

The State System of Higher Education
Volume 25, Issue 5

Careers in Anthropology
In a recent issue of the
Northeast Anthropological
· Association's newsletter, Dr.
John Omohundro offered
some optimistic information
about careers in anthropology. Omohundro is author of
Careers in Anthropology
(Mayfield, 2000); an article
by him on this subject also
appears in the Spradley &
McCurdy introductory
reader in cultural anthropology.
Omohundro noted that
there has been a 300% increase in B.A's in anthropology in this country since
1980. However, the increase
in Master's degrees has been
50% , and there has been no
increase in Ph.D.'s. He be-

lieves this means that students are finding anthropology to be satisfactory career choice even if they are
not becoming professional
anthropologists.

a

There are 1000 archaeologists employed by the U.S.
government alone. However,
there are only 15 full-time
positions for forensic anthropologists nation-wide.
71% of Ph.D's in anthropology are entering academic
employment, but only half
are joining anthropology pro- ·
grams. The others are in
interdisciplinary programs,
medical schools, administration, and other units of the
university.

By 2010 about a third of
the current professors in anthropology will retire. While
not all these positions will be
filled, he estimates a need
for 2000 new anthropology
professors.
Key managers in two of
the largest mutual funds,
Dreyfuss and Hanseatic,
have MA's in anthropology.
In a survey conducted in
1998, business and organza-

Inside this issue:
Remote Tribe Links to
the Web

2

Ground Patterns May Be
Prehistoric Fish traps

2

Traditional Birth Attendants

3

Moche Tombs Revealed ·

4

Clovis Site Reevaluated

4

Russian Health Declines

5

Nanjing Man Gets Older

5

Special points of interest:
• Anthropology Web Site-p. 3

Career Planning Tips
tional executives reported
more positive attitudes about
a liberal education than students, parents, or even liberal
arts professors. The executives hired and promoted the
liberally educated employees.
Omolnmdro ends the article by saying, "Therefore, I

stress this advice to wdergraduate ... students: if you
want to do good work in the
world, develop a plan. Here
are the items I recommend be
included in your plan:
•
Be interdisciplinary
•
Seek internships
•
Practice teamwork

• BU Anthropology News-p. 4

•

Develop commwication
skills
•
Get some management/
administrative experience
•
Learn to apply for grants
•
Expand your methods
toolkit.
You can also get similar advice from the dept brochure.

• Anthropology Courses for

Fall 2001-p. 6
• How to Contact Us-p. 6

A Remote Tribe Links to the Web
In February 2001, several news st.ories circulated about an effort in Borneo
to link a remote tribal culture, the Kelabit, to the Internet. There are around
2000 Kelabit living in a rural area without telephones, reliable electricity or
paved roads. However, with the aid of
researchers at the Malaysian University of Sarawak, they now have e-mail.
Armed with grants from the Malaysian government and the International
Development Research Council of Canada, the Kelebit now have computers
powered either by solar energy or diesel
fueled generators. Satellite links pro-

vide the Internet connections. Researchers originally thought the computers could be a tool to help the Kenabit manage their economy. Village
leaders were shown how they could plot
crop production by computer and how
rice sales could be boosted through the
Internet. It was also thought that the
Kenebit could promote their area for
tourism.
These development ideas were met
with limited enthusiasm on the part of
the Kenabit, but when they found that
they could e-mail relatives who had left
the community for opportunities else-

where, then everyone wanted to have a
try at the new machines. Now even 80
year old grandmothers want to have
access to a keyboard.
The grant to support the system is
only for a year, but the Kenabit hope
they will earn enough from increased
sales to maintain the system. Two
other problems now confront them.
Diesel fuel is expensive and must be
shipped in from towns many miles
away. And most Kenabit don't speak
English, which limits their ability to
surf the Net. However, schoolteachers
are now teaching language skills.

Ground Patterns in the Amazon May be Prehistoric Fish Traps
University of Pennsylvania archaeologist, Dr. Clark Erickson, has recently
proposed that odd crisscrossing patterns
he had seen from the air while flying
over the rain forests of northeastern Bolivia may well be an intricate prehistoric
system of fish traps. Some-BU students
may be familiar with Dr. Erickson's
work with raised bed agriculture (or sukakollus) in Andean Peru and Bolivian.
In that case, Erickson used aerial photography to identify prehistoric patterns of
fields. The techniques involved in those
raised fields turned out to produce more

crops than the techniques that were in
current use.
In the new research, Erickson proposes that the patterns he could see from
the air were fish weirs used for trapping
fish during the annual flooding of rain
forest waterways. Each year, northeastern Bolivia is covered by an inch or more
of water for months. Erickson believes
the native people dug channels that directed fish into V-shaped intersections in
which basket-like traps could be placed.
Though dating these channels is problematic, he believes they were in use un-

''Myst,erious lines zigzag across
miles of otherwise bare
grassland."

til around 1700, when Europeans first
came into the area. Aerial photography
is becoming an important tool.

Archaeology Museum at Penn Receives $16 Million Donation
The University of Pennsylvania recently announced the receipt of a $16
million donation from Dr. Charles Williams 2nd, an archaeologist who graduated from Penn in the 1960's. The donation will be used to refurbish the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,

Page 2

the hist.oric, but antiquated facility that
many BU students have visited. The
Museum houses over a million artifacts.
Williams himself specialized in the ancient cultures of Greece, especially in
the area of Corinth. The Museum has
exhibits on both historic and prehistoric

cultures, and it funds research in 18
different countries. The museum was
founded in 1887 by a group of wealthy
Philadelphians.
Of course, this raises the question,
"How does an archaeologist get $16 million?'

ANTHROPOS

Traditional Birth Attendants
In most of the world's cultw-es,
women giving birth are attended by
women. This is true not only in traditional cultw-es, but in most other industrialized cultw-es as well, where women in
labor are taken to birthing clinics, rather
than hospitals, to be attended by female
doctors and other health care providers.
In traditional cultw-es, where medical
doctors and biomedicine were not found,
the women who delivered babies were
midwives, usually older women with a
great deal of experience in attending and
helping with births. Most modem titeratw-e prefers to refer to these women as
traditional birth attendants or TBA's.

Men ordinarily avoided childbirth in traditional cultw-es for a variety of cultw-al
reasons.
Medical anthropologists working in
the Third World often find that TBA's
offer women in labor pretty good care.
Even in modem situations, where a Third
World nation may provide limited biomedical opportunities to poor women,
the TBA's often compare very well to
those opportunities.
The advantages a TBA can provide
are many. TBA's usually deliver babies
in the mother's home, where she may be
more relaxed than in a government clinic.
Because the TBA is a woman-and usu-

ally of the same social class as the
mother-there are fewer social barriers
between them than there would be with a
male doctor belonging to a higher social
class. TBA's provide continuity of service, offering advice and comfort to pro-

TBA's Offer Advantages in Labor
spective mothers from the second month
of pregnancy thr-ough the actual delivery
to the post-partum period. In the absence
of other social support, a TBA may move
in with a new mother, cooking and cleaning for her in order to give her some rest
and recovery time. Finally, TBA's are
usually cheaper than medical doctors,
and their fees are negotiable. A TBA
may accept a chicken or work help for
example, in place of a monetary payment.
Now a new body of research by a
medical anthropologist at the Case West-

em Reserve Medical School adds to this
body of research. Dr. John Kennell studied TBA's in six different countries, including Greece, South Africa, and Guatemala. He found that mothers who had
TBA's were 50% less likely to need a
Caesarean section, 40% less likely to
have a forceps delivery, and 30%, less
likely to need pain relief. The length of
labor was also, on average, 25% shorter.
He believes that women attended by
TBA's are more relaxed than when attended by medical doctors.
He also found that mothers with

"Mothers who are comforted by a
trained female helper when they
give birth are likely fo find labor
easier and to develop closer bonds
with their babies.

TBA's found it easier to breastfeed and
were less likely to suffer from pastpartum depression.

Anthropology Web Sites (Continued)
Last moth, ANTHROPOS initiated a
new feature, a review of information
sources about anthropology on the World
Wide Web. This month, we wish to call
anthropology students' attention to a
great source for bibliographic information on the Web. This is a service provided by The Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University
of Kent in Great Britain. The site ad-

Volume 25, Issue 5

dress is http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/
uncgi/search_ bib2/Makh.zan. Calling up
this site allows anyone to search for bibliographic references in the CSAC Anthropology Bibliography.
Students may search this site by topic,
author or editor, title, book, journal or
date. One or more headings can be used;
the service automatically combines the
headings into an integrated search.

A query on "diet + health" pulled up a
variety of sources, for example, including
an article in Current Anthropology on
accultw-ation, diet and health in Papua
New Guinea, an article on food ideology
and eating behavior in Malaysia, and a
1994 book on the health of Native
Americans. These are bibliographic listings only, though abstracts of the references may be included.

Page 3

Moche Tombs Revealed
In the March issue of the National
Geographic, archaeologist Christopher
Donnan of UCLA describes his discoveries of three tombs in coastal Peru
from the Moche culture. The site is
called Dos Cabezas (or Two Heads). It
is a 105-foot-high pyramid that had
been previously excavated by the colonial-era Spanish and subsequently by
tomb-robbers hoping to find gold and
silver objects buried with dead Moche
dignitaries. In this case, however, the
tomb-robbers missed the three sites excavated by Donnan and his team over
the last three years. The tombs date
from 450 to 550 AD.

The three tombs are rich in precious
objects of gold, silver, and copper, including finely worked headdresses,
death masks, and bodily adornments.
Each of the tombs was areompanied by
a miniature tomb in which a copper figure was placed. Also found were the
bodies of female attendants and in one
case, the body of a llama.
Obviously the three main occupants
of the richly adorned tombs were people
of high status in their lifetimes, though
their exact status is unknown. What is
remarkable is their height: each was 6
ft. tall in a culture where the average

male was between 4 ft. 9 in. and 5 ft. 6
in. These were not tall robust figures,
however; their bones were long and
thin, suggesting that they may have
suffered from a disease similar to Marfan syndrome. Though they were
dressed in articles of war, Donnan
thinks it is unlikely that they ever actually engaged in battle; their bones
would not have survived the wear and
tear.
The Moche were a farming culture
that dates between 100 and 800 AD.
Not much is known about them; these
tombs may help considerably.

BU Anthropology News
The Department of Anthropology is
currently conducting its Five Year Review. A self-study of the department
and its programs was completed in December 2000, and currently, the department is hosting two outside reviewers.
The first reviewer is Dr. Esther Skirboll
from the Dept of Sociology/
Anthropology/Social Work at Slippery
Rock University. Dr. Skirboll visited
the campus on March 2. Dr. Skirboll
obtained her Ph.D. from the University
of Pittsburgh, and she has conducted

both archaeological and applied anthropological research. The second reviewer is Dr. Paul Pacheco from the
Dept of Anthropology at SUNYGeneseo. Dr. Pacheco is an archaeologist with a degree from Ohio State University. Dr. Pacheco will visit BU on
March 23.
Both reviewers meet with the Dean
of Arts & Sciences, the Provost, and the
Dean of the Library, as well as the anthropology students and faculty. Using
the self-study, the interviews on

campus, and their own observations, the
reviewers then provide the department
and the administration with an evaluation
of the department, which will then be
submitted to the Chancellor's Office in
Harrisbw-g.
Please check the Fall 2001 class
schedule on page 6. Some last mmute
changes have occurred that may not be in
the Master Class Schedule. Scheduling
for Fall 2001 begins on March 26.
Scheduling for Summer 2001 begins on
March 19.

Clovis Site Reevaluated
Texas A & M anthropologists Harry
Shafer and Michael Waters have announced the uncovering of "the most
intensively oreupied Clovis site cur-

11,000 to 11.500 years ago. It is
characterized by the Clovis point, a
fluted, leaf-shaped spear point.
Previously Clovis points had been
rently known in North America."
associated with kill sites of mamCalled the Gault site, the site is located moths and bisons. The Gault site
in the Texas Hill Country.
is the first reoorded stratified site
The Clovis culture has historically
to show campsites over a 500 to
been seen as the oldest archaeological
culture in the Americas, dating from

Page4

700 year period. The Gault site was
originally excavated in 1929 for artifacts from later cultures. It wasn't until 1991 that excavations revealed
Clovis artifacts. This site will probably
reveal a great deal about this culture.

ANTHROPOS

Russian Health Declines
In the last ten years, Russia has seen
a dramatic decline in most of its national health statistics. This decline is
most marked among Russian males,
whose average life expectancy has
dropped to 59, a number equivalent to
Pakistan's. (In the U.S., the average
life expectancy for males is 73). The
average life span for'Russian women is
72 (compared to 80 in the U.S.), but
they, too, have their health problems.
The World Health Organization reports
that Russians between the ages of 15
and 29 are twice as likely to die prematurely than their counterparts in
Europe.

There- are many factors involved in
this decline. Sixty-seven percent of
Russians smoke, one of the highest
rates in the world. Heavy drinking, a
long time Russian tradition, is spreading, as the Russian economy declines
and people's life chances diminish.
Out.side observers also say that Russia
is experiencing. an epidemic of sexually
transmitted diseases, such as HIV and
syphilis; the Russian government is reluctant to agree. Communicable diseases---and especially tuberculosis---are
on the rise. There are also increases in
homicides, suicides, and drug use.

AB a result, Russia's population is
dropping. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia's population has
fallen from 148.7 million to 145 million
in 2000. Demographers project a population of 135 million by 2015 and 109
million by 2045, if current trends continue. With the economy in disarray,
many families cannot afford to have
children, and since 1997, the Russian
government says abortions have outnumbered births by 2 to 1. Also, because of the economic decline, the Russian government does not have the resources to mount a major health campaign.

diocarbon dating technique that employs
a thermal ionization mass spectrometer,
which measures the decay in radioactive
uranium, the fossils have been redated to
580,000-620,000 years old. This makes
them among the oldest human remains
known from China
This announcement also gives ammunition to the foes of the Out-of-Africa
hypothesis, which says that modern humans evolved in Africa and then spread
out over the rest of the world around
200,000 years ago, replacing the earlier
H. erectus. Previously discovered H

erectus fossils from China, such as Peking/Beijing Man, were thought to be
only 230,000 years old That made them
''too young" to have fully evolved into
modern H. sapiens. But ifH erectus
populations in China are much older,
then the theory goes that there was plenty
of time for H erectus to have evolved
into H sapiens without migration from
Africa.
Researchers Ken Collerson and Zhao
Jian-Xin say they intend to check the
dates on other Chinese fossils with the
new technology.

termite mmmds. Music, cacophonous to
a foreign ear, is blaring over a loudspeaker. In India, the gods and ancestral
spirits, who are not hard of hearing, but
are sometimes a long way off, not only
like to eat food offerings, they also like
to be entertained. To a foreigner for
whom the gods doo 't exist, in the midst
of a tennis match at six in the morning on
a very hot day, the magnified blare is a

nuisance. After two sets my Indian doubles partner finally takes off his heavy
wool sweater." (Richard Shweder in a
New York Times Book Review, Sept.
1986)

Nanjing Man Gets Older
Australian and Chinese scientists recently annmmced that the hwnan remains
known as Nanjing Man are older than
was previously thought. Discovered in
1993 in a cave near Shanghai, Nanjing
Man (and Woman) is represented by two
skulls, believed to be a male and a female. Technically, these skulls are examples of Homo erectus, a predecessor to
modem humans. The Nanjing skulls
were originally thought to be 400,000
years old, which would have placed them
in line with other H erectus discoveries
in China. But using a relatively new ra-

Notes and Queries
From Cultural Anthropology by Barbara Miller (Allyn & Bacon 1999):
"An ethnography begins with an ethnographic experience: with your eyes
open you have to go somewhere ... The
first thing that strikes an anthropologist
in the field are details that seem alien. It
is April 5, 6 AM, 90 degrees Fahrenheit,
and I'm in a remote region of India on a
tennis court fashioned out of the earth of

Volume 25, Issue 5

iLii &ifil!!:j tan
Page 5

The State System of Higher

Education
Department of Anthropology
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
400 E. 2nd Street
Bloomsburg University

ANTHROPOS, the Anthropology Newsletter, is published six times during the
academic year and is mailed to interested students, faculty, administrators,
and alumni. It is also distributed in
anthropology classes and made available on the department's home page. If
you would like to be on the newsletter
mailing list, please contact Dr. Dave
Minderhout at the address and numbers on the left.

Dr. David Minderhout, Editor
Phone: 570-389-4859
Fax: 570-389-5015
Email: dminderh@bloomu.edu

.- ,We're on the Web! WWW.

,. loomu.edu/depanments/
· ,.;{}iJ ·1ran1hro/
: '. :-·.~/~,~~) t.·J···~';,. ·,~

The Department of Anthropology
offers a 36 credit B.A degree and a 18
credit minor in anthropology. If you
would like details, please see any of the
anthropology faculty.

Mankind is one; civilizations are
many.-Franz Boas c. 1930

Anthropology Courses for Fall 2001
This is the revised schedule for the
Department of Anthropology for Fall
2001:

3-46.220.01 .(Human Origins) Dr. Wymer
MW 4-5:15-46.405.01 (Primates)

MWF:

Dr. Wymer

9--46.210.01 (Prehistoric Archaeology)
Dr.Aleto
10--46.200.06 (Prin. of Cultural

Anthropology) - Dr. Aleto
11-46.385.01 (Anthro Research &
Writing) - Dr. Dauria
12-46.101.01 (Intro. to Anthropology)
-Dr. Dauria
- 46.200.01 - Dr. Minderhout
1-46.200.02-Dr. Warner
2- 46.200.03-Dr. Warner

TUTH:
8-46.200.05--Dr. Dauria
9:30-46.220.02-Dr. Wymer
11-46.200.04-Dr. Dauria
12:30-46.102.01 -(Anthropology &
World Problems) - Dr. Wymer
2-46.310.01 (Aztecs & Mayas) Dr. Aleto
3:30-46.102.02-Dr. Minderhout

EVENINGS:
M- 46. l 02.03-Dr. Warner
Tu-46.480.01 (Religion & Magic)Dr. Minderhout
W-46.260.01 (Men & Women)
Dr. Warner
Th-46.210.02-Dr. Aleto