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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.

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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.

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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

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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?"