BLOOMSBURG UNIVERSITY
Bloomsburg
Pennsylvania
Anthropology Newsletter
Vol. 13, No. 4
February 1989
Department of Philosophy/Anthropol6gy
Anthropology Club News: The Anthropology Club has planned
two activities for the month of February.
On February li,
club members will travel to Philadelphia in order to visit
the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Arrangements have
been made to have Dr. Clark Erickson, a faculty member in
anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, show club
members around the museum.
Drivers are needed for this
excursion; please contact either Pat Andrews or Tom Aleta if
you can drive.
On February 25 the club will sponsor a cross-cultural
feast.
Club members, the faculty and others will
participate by bringing food items from different ~ultures.
For more details, please contact either Pat Andrews or Fa1th
Warner.
Civil Rights for Australian Aborigines: Recently a royal
commission in Australia released an interim report on a
topic that has received nationwide concern: the high
incidence of deaths among Australian aborigines being held
in custody in Australian jails.
Since 1980, 103 aborigihes
have died in custody; an aborigine is 20 times more likely
to die in jail than a white detainee.
Most of the victims
are reported as suicides, and most of the deaths occurred
within 2 or 3 hours of arrest.
Police brutality has been
implicated in a number of the deaths, but in most cases, the
commission asserted, the deaths were brought about by a
feeling of helplessness and powerlessness.
To quote
psychologist Joseph Reser of James Cook University in
Queensland: "Suicide is probably an individual expression of
the only kind over which they have cbntrol, a cry of
desperation."
The report has helped to focus Australia's attention on
the plight of its native inhabitants.
Estimated at a
population of 300,000 at the time of the first European
settlement in 1788, aborigine numbers dropped to 93,000 by
1900. At the same time as their numbers dwindled, aborigine
lands were seized by whites, and their political rights were
denied; aborigines were forced by their poverty to live in
slum areas around Australian cities, Today, 11% of aborigine
children have never been to school, and 30% are unemployed.
Aborigine life expectancy is 18 years less than for a white
Australian. They gained the right to vote only 21 years
ago.

2.

Las t year, Australia's bicentennial, the governmerit
began to make moves to rectify the situation.
The
government has offered to sign a treaty that would
acknowledge "the errors and wrongs of the past." The
government is also trying to reorganize a system of
aborigine councils to encourage greater unity and
self-determination. Most significantly, the government has
begun to give the aborigines' land back to them.
For
instance, Uluru National Park in northern Australia has been
turned over to aborigine ownership,
The park contains
within its' boundaries the great monolith knowmn as Ayers
Rock, a national landmark sacred to the aborigines.
None of these moves has been wi~nout controversy. A
great many white Australians feel strongly that aborigine
lands are theirs by right of conquest. As in many other
parts of the world, conditions of poverty, including
unemployment and a high rate of alcoholism, have been merged
in the minds of some Australians with aborigines' dark skin
color to produce stereotypes about the "natural" indolence
of "black fellows." But for the first time, it appears that
aborigines may be on their way to reclaiming their place in
Australian affairs.
Early Evidence of ' the Use of Fire: A letter to the December
1, 1988 issue of Nature by C.K. Brain and A. Sillen raises
the 'possibi lity that humans were using fire much earlier
than was previously thought to be the case,
Until recently,
the earliest evidence of the use of fire came from
Zhoukoutien Cave near Beijing in China,
The use of fire in
this site was dated at 500,000 years BP and is associated
with Homo erectus.
The new evidence comes from Swartkrans cave in South
Africa from stratigraphic units dating between 1 and 1.5
million years.
The evidence is in the form of fossilized
animal bone which appeared to the excavators to have been
burned.
The researchers examined the histology and
chemistry or fnespec1mens and found - that they nad -:oeen
heated to a range of temperatures consistent with that
occurring in campfires. A total of 270 pieces of burned
bone were recovered from the site; most were from antelopes
of diffe rent species.
Of that total, 46 had been lightly
heated to below 300 C; 52 to 300-400 C; 45 to 400-500 C; and
127 to temperatures above 500 C,
If fires were being used, who used them? This is a
more difficu lt question to answer.
Both Homo habilis and
Australopithecus robustus remains have been discovered in
the same stratigraphic unit as the burned bone, but neither
have been found in direct connection with fire.
If this evidence stands up to further scrutiny, it
significantly changes our perspectives on the capabilities

,,.,

3.
of early hominids.
It certainly adds to the growing
realization that human evolution has been an extremely
complex process.
The Origins of the Archaeologist: by Art Sweeney. As you
are walking through your living room late one evening, you
notice that your intellectual roommate has left the DISCOVER
channel on instead of MTV.
Before you have a chance to keep
your mind from being infiltrated with some purposeful
information, a show comes on dealing with archaeology.
You
ogle the scenes of dirty men and women, digging holes and
screening the dirt, wondering what drives people to perform
such tasks. Where does the desire to be an archaeologist
come from?
This question has bothered me ever since I first told
people that is what I am studying and doing with my life,
When you tell them that you are an archaeologist, you
invariably get the following reactionary statements: "Why de
you want to be an archaeologist? ... I always wanted to try
that, but I never had the time. . . . What's the most exciting
thing you ever found? ... (and my personal favorite) That's
a mighty dirty business to get into ... ha ... ha ... ha. 11 As a
result of this ongoing verbal jousting, one night I tried to
come up with a few good reasons why people want to be
archaeologists, examining the background and cultural
influence that come into play along with the sociobiological
factors as a starting point.
This is the profound idea I came up with: the need fo
be an archaeologist has its basis in Easter egg hunts.
Yes,
this indeed does sound strange, but give it a ehan~e. When
you are little and going to an Easter egg hunt, you looked
all over for the eggs - behind trees, under bushes, behind
and under rocks, in other kids' pockets, etc. You had to
think to yourself, "Where would be the best place to put an
Easter egg?" You use logical deduction, spatial references,
relational reasoning, a good eye, and a bit of luck - and
you have found some eggs.
·
Are these not the same ideas and properties used in
archaeology? Logical inferences and the use of reasoning
ability are the keys to good archaeology and deducing the
right things about past cultures from merely the material
remains. Couple this with spatial references to figure out
regional characteristics and a good eye for that down and
dirty field work; add a bit of luck, and voila, the makings
of a good archaeologist!
This may all sound rather ludicrous, but the inherent
features are there, The desire to know things and find
things that have a direct link to our past seems to be a
part of being human,
If this feature is generated by Easter
egg hunting, then so be it!

What t hen 1 .s I I I e 11w I a 1 to this s l- or y ':'
It is this : the
next time you are going to ask someone why they do what they
do (whether or not they are archaeologists), think twice and
consider the Easter egg hunt.
Then maybe you won't end up
with egg on your face.
Showing Off Aqain:
As if you haven't had enou gh of the
Anthropology Club's work, here we go again.
Once again the
material from the 1988 Archaeological Field School will be
dn displ ay, only this time it is in the Harvey A. Andruss
Library.
It shows the work of the field school done at the
Fort McClure site during the Summer 1988 field session and
includes projectile points, maps, stratigrap hic profiles,
and eve n tools used by the intrepid archaeolog ists this past
summer.

The new display is set up on the main floor of the
library near the entrance and will remain there until the
end of February.
Our spe6ial thanks to Teri Bahner and Chrissy Bafile
for their help in giving their time and effort in setting up
the display.

The Anthropologist's Cookbook:
This recipe from northern
Thailand is called Kaeng Masaman or Mussulman Curry.

1/2 cup shallots or onions
2 sticks cinnamon
5 cloves garlic
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 whole cardamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 cup whole roasted
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
peanuts
1/3 tsp dried red peppers (crushed) 2 cups coconut cream
2 & 1/2 lb round steak
2 tbsp oil
6 whole cloves
2 tsp --Cumi n seeds
2 tbsp coriander
Slice the meat into cubes.
Cook the meat covered in water
until soft (about 45 minutes)
Mince the shallots and garlic very fine.
Melt the oil in a
pot, add the minced shallots and garlic, and fry gently.
Drain the cooked meat, reserving the broth.
Add the coconut
c~eam to the meat and stir.
Add all the spices, fried
shallo ts and garlic and the rest of the ingredients except
the broth.
Simmer for 1 hour or until the meat is tender,
and then add the meat broth little by little.

5.

Just before serving, add 4 tbsps of very thinly sliced,
crisply fried shallots,
Serve with rice,
Off to Millersville:
On March 4. 1989, two Bloomsburg
University anthropology students will be attending the
Millersville Undergraduate Anthropology Student Conference.
This year's topic for the conference is summer field schools
in archaeology and undergraduate research concerning the
field schools.
Darrell Gundrum and Art Sweeney will be
presenting papers pertaining to the past summer's field
experience at the Fort McClure Site along the Susquehanna
River,
Mr. Gundrum's presentation will provide insight into
the geological problems encountered at the site in relation
to stratigraphy.
He hopes to solve the problem presented by
having a site so close to a major water source, i.e., how do
you find occupation levels for the site when it is
constantly being flooded by the river, disturbing all of the
material remains? Darrell hopes to use the surficial
geology and the in situ diagnostics to help solve this
problem,
The actual field methods used and the results from the
research is the topic of Mr. Sweeney's paper,
He will
discuss the field and lab techniques used to excavate the
site and will attempt to interpret some behavioral patterns
of those who inhabited the site, both historically and
prehistorically.
Ten other papers will be presented at the conference
from two other SSHE schools, Millersville and IUP.
More
information about attending the conference will be presented
at the Anthropology Club meetings.

NEW VIEW OF AMAZONIAN PREHISTORY
There are presently no more than a fey hundred thousand Indians
living in the vastness of the tropical forests of the Amazon
Basins.
Most of these people live is small villages located ayay
from the main rivers, are nomadic to semi-nomadic, and subsist on
an economy of mixed horticulture and hunting and gathering.
Many
of these Amazonian groups have been studied intensively by
anthropologists in the years since World War II and their Yay of
life has greatly influenced the Yay archaeologists have
interpreted the prehistory of Amazonia.
Specifically, it has
been Yidely accepted that the modern populations can be used as a
model for interpreting the past and that the prehistoric cultures
of the Amazon region Yere similar in most respects to those
studied by anthropologists.

6.

This point of view largely ignores the historical documents left
by the first European explorers of the interior of the South
American continent.
Their diaries report the existence of large
and dense populations organized into powerful, warlike
chiefdoms.
One of these explorers, Gaspar de Carvajal, traveled
along the main course of the Amazon River from the Andean
highland to its mouth in 1541 and 1542.
Along the way he
recorded repeated interaction with people from large villages,
which sometimes numbered in the tens of thousands.
Carvajal
marveled at the efficiency of their agricultural systems, the
richness of their pottery, the opulence of their ornamentation
and their ferocity of their warriors.
These people and their
cultures were far different from the cultures that remain in the
Amazon today.
In the intervening centuries, these once great
cultures and their people were decimated by disease and genocide,
and their descendants have moved away from the rivers to avoid a
similar fate.
Recent excavations undertaken near the mouth of the Amazon River
by Anna Roosevelt of the American Museum of Natural History have
forced anthropologists to come to grips with the existence of
these long forgotten chiefdoms.
Roosevelt reports her findings
in the February issue of Natural History.
Her research on Maraj6
Island, the 15,000 square mile land mass at the mouth of the
Amazon River, has demonstrated that a culture attaining a level
of sociopolitical complexity similar to that reported by Gaspar
de Carvajal had occupied Maraj6 between 400 BC and AD 1300.
That a densely populated, hierarchically ranked chiefdom emerged
on Maraj6 is remarkable considering the island's environment.
The extremely low land form is inundated with flood water during
much of the year when the Amazon River is on the rise and is
parched during the remainder of the year when the rainy season
has passed.
Evidence of the Maraj6 culture occurs primarily in
those parts of the island that were under water much of the year.
The Maraj6 people dealt with these conditions by building
immense earthen mounds that typically stood six to 20 feet above
the original ground surface and covered an area of 6 to 7 acres.
The largest was 65 feet tall and covered an area of 50 acres.
These mounds apparently served as platforms for villages, as
indicated by the remains of houses and dense concentrations of
domestic artifacts that cover them.
Some of the mounds were also
used as the locations for cemeteries.
Based on the number of
habitation sites and the size of the residential units, Roosevelt
estimates, that at its peek, the population of Maraj6 society
exceeded 100,000 souls.

I.

In addition to the monumental earth works, a hallmark of Maraj6
culture is the elaborately decorated and finely crafted pottery
found throughout the island.
The decoration deals mainly with
supernatural themes--mythic ancestors and preternatural animals-executed in a distinctive curvilinear style.
The importance and
influence of the Maraj6 style was such that remnants of it can
still be seen among the ceramics of modern peoples throughout the
Amazon Basin, more than 600 years after the Maraj6 disappeared.
The potters, and the rest of Maraj6 society, were supported by a
complex system of maize agriculture dependent on a network of
irrigation canals to control the flow of water.
Evidence from
the cemeteries indicates that the sociopolitical system was based
on ranked statuses--with members of different social groups
receiving different mortuary treatment.
Membership in a
particular social group apparently was deterimined by the clan or
lineage into which a person was born.
The work on Maraj6 Island is still in its initial stages, so the
complete picture of Maraj6 culture and society has yet to be
pieced together.
However, it is clear from the information
presently available that the portrait of Amazonian prehistory
derived from the ethnographic study of modern peoples must be
replaced with the one that is emerging from research like the
Maraj6 study and that is indicated by the historical records of
explores like Gaspar de Carvajal.
Far from being a cultural
backwater, Amazonia appears to have been a region in which very
sophisticated and complex cultures developed and remained vital
throughout much of prehistory.
NB.
Material from Maraj6 Island and other parts of the Amazon
Basin can be viewed in the new Hall of South American Peoples at
the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The hall,
which had been closed for several years during renovation, open
to the public on January 20, 1989.