Department of Anthropology

The Anthropology Newsletter
Vol. 21, No. 2

October 1996

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Spring 1997: The Department of Anthropology will offer the following courses for
Spring 1997:
46.101 Introduction to Anthropology
46.102 Anthropology & World Problems
46.200 Principles of Cultural Anthropology
46.21 O Prehistoric Archaeology
46.220 Human Origins
46.312 South American Archaeology
46.350 Medical Anthropology
46.360 Pseudoscience
46.385 Anthropology Research & Writing
46.475 Field Methods in Cultural Anthropology
Note: 46.102 meets the Values, Ethics & Responsible Decision-making Requirement
of General Education. 46.102, 46.200, and 46.350 meet the Diversity Requirement of
General Education. 46.312 and 46.385 are new courses being offered for the first time
in the spring semester.

South American Archaeology: 46.312 is a new course being offered by Dr. Aleto
for the first time during the Spring 1997 semester. 46.132 is designed to complement
46.450, Peoples & Cultures of South America, with 46.312 focusing on prehistory and
46.450 on contemporary cultures. 46.312 will look at the major prehistoric traditions of
South America, beginning with the on-going debate over when humans first settled the
continent to the Inca culture at the time of the Spanish Conquest. In between, there
are many fascinating archaeological cultures, some of which are enigmatic and not
well understood. For instance, there is the Chavin culture of the 9th century B.C. with
its jaguar images and possible links to Mesoamerican cultures. There is the city of
Tiahuanaco set high in the mountains of Bolivia with its staff-god images and colossal
stone architecture. There are the famous pre-lncan artistic cultures of Mochica, known
for its fantastic ceramic portrait vessels, and the Nasca culture, with its amazing textiles
and the mysterious lines etched across the Peruvian landscape. There is the Chimu
culture with its great city of Chan-Chan. And of course, there were the Incas, coming
out of their great stone city of Cuzco to conquer western South America and to create
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an empire that stretched some 2000 miles along the western coast. Dr. Aleto has
conducted archaeological excavations in Ecuador and has traveled widely in other
parts of South America. He will draw upon his personal experience and extensive
slide collection to make 46.312 an interesting course.

·Medical Anthropology: Medical Anthropology, the study of the beliefs and practices
regarding health and illness cross-culturally, is one of the fastest growing
subdisciplines of anthropology. BU's Medical Anthropology course, 46.350, is offered
on Tuesday nights, 6:30-9:30, this coming spring semester by Dr. Minderhout. A great
many topics are covered in this course. Among them are religious healing in
traditional cultures, AIDS in Africa, beliefs and practices surrounding pregnancy and
childbirth in different cultures, and the problems of health care delivery to minorities in
the United States. Also discussed is the training of a medical practitioner, which
contrasts shamanistic curing as it is found in many cultures, with medical school in
industrialized societies. Holistic and allopathic medicine are contrasted, and the folk
beliefs of many cultures are described. There is also a section in the course that
compares the diets of traditional societies with the American diet. As can be seen, the
topics included in Medical Anthropology are diverse - and, hopefully, interesting. For
more information, please see Dr. Minderhout.
Pseudoscience: This popular course has been put together by Dr. Wymer to
examine pseudoscientific phenomena, that is, beliefs and behaviors such as ESP,
crystal power, creationism, and astrology, which often present themselves as science.
In this course, Dr. Wymer reveals the underlying procedures and assumptions of
pseudoscience as she debunks their claims. In order to do this, she first examines the
nature of science and scientific proofs; she holds the claims made by psychics,
astrologers, and others to rigorous standards. In addition to the topics already noted,
she will also look at claims surrounding UFO's, the belief that ancient astronauts
created human civilization, the idea that Celts or Phoenicians explored the New World
long before Columbus, faith healing and psychic surgery, and other ideas popularly
held by many Americans. She hopes that this course will not only inform BU students
about the bogus claims made around them, but also will enhance criticar thinking
among students. To quote Dr. Wymer:
"I am creating this course because as an anthropologist, I straddle (purposefully)
the fence between science and the humanities. Thus, I have been forced to come to
grips with understanding nature and the philosophy of the scientific method along with
appreciating the nature of human belief systems. Anthropologists, and particularly
archaeologists, are also well aware of pseudoscientific claims since many of them are
based on incorrect ideas about archaeology. Thus, I wish to share with students
insights I have gained as an active'debunker' of many of the modern myths about our
past - as well as skeptically evaluating those who propose to foresee our future."
This is the first time that this course has been offered as a regular part of the
anthropology curriculum, rather than as a Selected Topics course.

3.
Anthropology Research & Writing: 46.385 is another new course being offered
for the first time in the spring semester. This course, offered by Dr. Minderhout, is
designed to do several things. First, students will become familiar with information
sources in anthropology, ranging from library resources to anthropology sites on the
World Wide Web. Second, students will learn how to write a research paper in
anthropology. Much of the semester will be spent in choosing topics, practicing
various writing techniques, and writing and rewriting a term paper. Third, there will be
a discussion of the use of statistics in anthropology, with a look at how statistics are
abused as well as used. And finally, the place of research in anthropology will be
discussed, with a focus on how theory is created and built upon.
46.385 is a newly required course for anthropology majors, beginning with new
majors entering BU in the fall of 1996. 46.385 will replace the current statistics
requirement for these in-coming students. Students who selected the major before the
fall of 1996 may elect to substitute 46.385 for the statistics requirement or to take the
course as an elective. Students taking 46.385 are expected to have taken the three
basic anthropology courses - 46.200, 46.210, and 46.220 - by the time they enroll for
the new course. It is hoped that students will complete 46.385 before they take
46.470, Anthropological Thought & Theory, or 46.475, Field Methods in Cultural
Anthropology. Enrollments for the course will be restricted to 15 students so that
individual attention can be directed at each student's term paper. If you have any
questions, please see Dr. Minderhout.

Field Methods in Cultural Anthropology: In 46.475, students will learn how to
conduct cultural anthropological field research by actually conducting their own piece
of research. Dr. Dauria will instruct the students in the philosophy, techniques, and
ethical considerations involved in doing participant observation, the primary method in
which cultural anthropologists learn about human behavior. Students will learn how to
create a sample research population, conduct interviews, and draw conclusions from
their observations. A major part of the course will be a focus on the ethics of
anthropological field research and the difficulties of obtaining informed consent from
populations that are often illiterate and/or unable to speak English. Students in 46.475
will conduct participant observation under Dr. Dauria's guidance. It is hoped that the
students' projects can be presented at the SSHE Undergraduate Anthropology
Conference in April. If you have any questions about the course, please see Dr.
Dauria.
Anthropology Club News: The Anthropology Club will meet every other Monday.
The first meeting of the new semester was September 12. At that meeting, the club
officers announced some of the trips and events that are planned for the semester.
The following is a list of upcoming events:
1. The Anthropology Club will meet every other Monday at 5: 15 in G31 Old Science
Hall. The meeting dates for this semester are September 30, October 14, 28,

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November 11, 25, and possibly December 9.
2. The Anthropology Club will be sponsoring seminars concerning topics of interest to
students. This idea was initiated by students who wanted discussions about
anthropological topics. The first seminar was Professor Warner's discussion of
ethnic revitalization in a Q'eqchi refugee community in Mexico (September 30).
In the future, the club will announce these discussions via posters and the campus
newspaper - so keep your eyes peeled.
3. Plans are in the works for the Department of Anthropology's annual "CrossCultural feast." The planning meeting for this event will be October 14. This
event was so successful last year that it will be set up in the same fashion for
this year. We will request the Multicultural Center again for this event. Students
are negotiating a date sometime between the Thanksgiving and Christmas
breaks - possibly December 2.

4. Designs for the annual Anthropology Club T-shirts are being submitted. A vote on
the submitted designs will be taken in November. See Jen Wenzel, club president,
for more details.
5. A group of anthropology students are planning to go to the Burnet Park Zoo in
Syracuse, NY on October 12. A special tour of the primates is being arranged for
this group. Anyone interested should contact Jen Wenzel at 389-1134.
6. A trip to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Phialdelphia is in the works.
Students who are interested should contact Jen Wenzel for information about
this trip which is anticipated for the weekend of November 3.
7. The club will advertise the future Quest presentations of nature trips. These will
be announced at future meetings.
Money: Given the omnipresent significance of money in our lives, it may seem hard
to believe that until recently most people on earth did not have money or currency with
which to conduct economic exchanges. Traditional cultures such as foragers,
· pastoralists, horticulturalists, and peasants were subsistence-based cultures. That is,
they produced food and other goods primarily for their own consumption; each family,
band, or village was at least potentially self-sufficient, able to provide for their own
needs when times were good. Most traditional cultures engaged in some trade within
their communities or with others; archaeological evidence from North America, for
example, suggests considerable trade of desirable goods such as copper from
northern Michigan or abalone shell from the Pacific coast over great distances. But the
trade carried out was largely in kind, that is, goods for goods. Similarly, peasants were
generally part of a larger state system which required thaUhese subsistence farmers
pay taxes, but those taxes were collected in shares of their crops.

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Some traditional cultures possessed exchange media which look at first glance like
money; examples included cowry shells and gold rods in parts of West Africa. But
these exchange media were not exactly like dollars, francs, or pesos. Modern
currency is what an economist calls general purpose money. General purpose serves
three primary functions. First, it serves as a medium of exchange; you can buy things
with it. Second, general purpose money allows for the discharge of debts; you can
fulfill obligations, such as taxes or fines, with it. Thirdly, general purpose money
serves as a standard of value. This last function is probably underappreciated. A
common saying in American culture is that you can't compare apples and oranges,
but, of course, you can - if apples are 89 cents a pound and oranges are $1.29!
General purpose money becomes a common measure of worth across a culture.
General purpose money - and its worth - are recognized throughout a culture and, with
a few exceptions, accepted everywhere. This allows someone from Florida to travel to
Oregon and still know the worth of an exchange by its price. And, with a little more
difficulty, it is possible for the same Floridian to travel to Mexico, Canada, or anywhere
else where general purpose money is in use and to be able to translate worth from
,culture to culture.
Those traditional cultures which used something like cowry shells for exchanges
were using limited purpose money. That is, their currency did not provide them with a
culturally universal means of exchange. Often, traditional currencies could only serve
to purchase one kind of commodity or, more commonly, to discharge one kind of debt.
The anthropologist Paul Bohannan has described how gold rods operated among the
West African Tiv to create marriage alliances; gold rods were given by the family of a
prospective groom to the family of a prospective bride in partial compensation for their
loss. But gold rods could not be used to buy food, clothing, or shelter; their use and
value were severely restricted. Similarly, most traditional cultures lacked a uniform
medium of exchange whereby the value of various transactions could be measured.
This last point considerably hampered exchange within and between traditional
cultures. With no agreed upon standard of exchange, it was very difficult to determine
the worth of goods to be exchanged. Within cultures, this was usually determined by
traditional standards maintained over generations. In this way, a bolt of cloth was
worth two bushels of wheat year after year, often without regard to market conditions of
scarcity or abundance, because that was the agreed upon worth of cloth. Somehow
this equation had become fixed somewhere back in time and was maintained "forever"
because everyone just "knew" that was what a bolt of cloth was worth. Transactions
between cultures were more difficult. Without general purpose money, who was to say
what the worth of cloth, or stingray spines, or ceramic pots were to a neighboring
village? And who could guarantee that those strangers wouldn't cheat you by
manipulating your mutual ignorance of worth?
To deal with these problems, many traditional communities resorted to the
institution of trade partners to create intercultural exchanges. Trade partners were
people who knew and always traded with each other; these relationships were often

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handed down through time, as sons traded with the sons of men who had been trade
partners with each other. Because trade partners knew and trusted each other, often
having forged a bond through time that was similar to the bonds of family, they could
exchange with each other without worrying about being cheated. In some cases, as
for example with some Australian aborigines, trade partners became "blood brothers"
by sharing blood from cuts to make the family-like bond even stronger. All in all,
however, exchange across community boundaries was limited compared to the
modern world.
European colonialism changed all that. As the European expansion into the rest of
the world began in the fifteenth century, Europeans did more than conquer or take
physical possession of much of the globe. European colonialism also began a
process whereby European institutions became the model or baseline for the world,
and no European idea was as pervasive as the idea that exchanges of goods or
services involve money. Colonialism was an extractive process; Europeans drew raw
materials from the'ir colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas for European
consumption. To facilitate the process of extraction, Europeans needed to have
people operating with cash. It was all right for an Indian peasant to pay taxes to a local
Indian state in shares of the crop or bolts of cloth, but those exchanges mattered little
to a colonial empire centered on an European capital such as London or Brussels.
Europeans needed their colonial subjects to operate with commodities that could be
bought and sold for cash. Thus, for example, Europeans wanted non-European
peasants in their colonies to grow something other than subsistence crops with which
to feed their families; non-Europeans needed to raise cash crops such as sugar or
coffee. Europeans could buy these cash crops from their colonial subjects (though
often at market-controlled deflated prices) and sell them to industrial processors at a
profit.
How, though, do you get people to use money when they have never had it before?
Money in its basic form seems pretty useless to people unfamiliar with it. What can a
person do with a rectangle of paper or a round metal coin? It can't be eaten or woven
into clothing. People who have never had money do not volunteer to use it just
because a conqueror says they should. Faced with traditional cultures'
incomprehension of money, Europeans did two things to artificially create a need for it.
First, they taxed people, demanding that all taxes be paid in European currency.
Taxes were placed on land, labor, animals, essential pieces of equipment such as
plows, and people (head taxes). Those non-Europeans who failed to pay their taxes
or who tried to pay them in goods or barter were jailed for tax debt; often their
possessions were confiscated as well. At the same time, Europeans offered things to
buy - new, desirable goods such as metal cooking pots, kerosene lamps, and alcohol that people wanted and could only obtain with money. European traders would first
give away a few items to create a taste for them, and then require people to use money
after that. The combination of taxes and things to buy were a carrot and stick approach
to getting people to use money; taxes drove people to money, while the things you
could buy with it made you want to have it.

7.
During the European colonial period, people's access to money was fairly limited.
An African, Asian, or Native American could either work for wages - for Europeans - or
grow a cash crop, such as sugar, to sell - to Europeans. This system was, of course,
fairly lucrative - for Europeans. European traders and merchants would often prey
upon native people's ignorance of money and its real worth to cheat people. An
European merchant, for example, would buy a kilo of spices, such as cinnamon or
pepper, in the East Indies for a gram of silver and then sell that product in Europe for
up to 20 grams of silver. Or a trader would demand 100 beaver pelts for the cash to
buy one fifth of whiskey. But then Europeans were not in the business of maintaining
colonies as philanthropic enterprises. As a soldier with Cortes during the Spanish
Conquest of Mexico wrote in his diary in 1520: "We came here to serve God and the
king, and also to get rich."
Non-Europeans often remained ambivalent about money. Once money was in use
in a colony, its use spread to exchanges other than those that Europeans intended.
For example, many of the world's cultures practiced a kind of marriage exchange
called bridewealth or brideprice in which the family of a groom transferred wealth to
the family of a bride. Bridewealth was traditionally paid in goods - cows, cloth, tools,
etc. - and was intended to compensate the family of the bride for what they were giving
up. After all, the family of the bride had raised and fed this young woman until she was
of marriageable age, but now they were giving up their investment, along with her
labor and child-bearing abilities, to another family. The amount of wealth to be
exchanged was conventionally known, though there was room for negotiation. With
the advent of money, people began accumulating it and using it as part of bridewealth
exchanges. But this conversion bothered people in many cultures. David Mccurdy
has recorded an example from India where a culture eventually abandoned
bridewealth once cash was substituted for goods. As one informant put it, "You
shouldn't buy a wife like you buy a shirt." Bridewealth exchanges had once been
special; with the coming of cash, the transaction seemed cheapened. In Nigeria, there
was so much conflict over the use of money for bridewealth payments, that plantiffs
appealed to the Nigerian Supreme Court in the 1970's to sort out what the proper
bridewealth payment in currency should be. You see, they knew what the traditional
payment was in goods, but people could not agree what the worth of a bride was in
pounds and shillings. (The court took the case, by the way, and levied nationwide
standards for bridewealth in cash; in a modern fashion, they tied the worth of a bride to
how much schooling she had had.)
Other cultures noticed that they were working harder now for this new commodity.
In a traditional subsistence economy, once people had produced enough food,
clothing, and shelter for themselves, there was no point in doing more. Why have
more food than you could store or eat? But when money came around - as well as
things to buy - people found that their aspirations had grown to the point where they
needed to constantly work harder to earn more money to buy more things - the same
consumers' dilemma that most Americans feel. This kind of ambivalence towards
money was expressed by a Solomon Islands poet named Gelo Kulagoe in his book of

....

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poems, Where Leaves Had Fallen. This particular poem is called "Dis Man;" we will
present it first in the language in which it was written, a creole language called
Melanesia Pidgin English, and then in its English translation:
Dis fala man
emi strong tumas ia.
Hemi strong winim gavman.
Hemi strong winim Praem Minista
fo wanem hem hao emi pusum
olketa bik man ia oloketa.
Hemi openem maos blong oloketa
an oloketa toktok strong.
Hem i sukam tang blong oloketa
an oloketa toktok su iti.
Hem i Open em ae blong oloketa
an oloketa lukim pulade roti
long progres.
Dis fala man
emi fren blong mi ia.
Emi save bulas tumas --emi save werem enikaeni
Bat emi strong moa winim mi ia.
Hemi mekem mi ron olobaot long pulade pies
lulukaotim waka holeholem waka
gogo mi bon nating nao.
Mania
emi Masta Dola ia.

"This man
is very strong.
He is more powerful than the government.
He is more powerful than the Prime Minister
because he is the one who pushes
these big men around and carries
them about.
He opens their mouths
and they speak with authority.
He sweetens their tongues
and they give sweet speeches.
He opens their eyes
and they see many ways to progress.
This man

,

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is a friend of mine.
He is extremely decorative --he puts on all kinds of ornaments.
But he is stronger than me.
He makes me run around places
looking for work at work so much so
that I'm now nothing but bones.
This man
is Mr. Dollar."

· Archaeology on Mars: The 1996 Asimov S_
eminar: by Dr. Wymer. If Anth ropos
readers will recalf, last year I wrote about my wonderfully zany and instructive
introduction to the famous Asimov Seminar ("Murder on Monnbase"). Each summer a
group of delightfully wacky and intense people come together to honor the memory of
Isaac Asimov by continuing an important science-fiction tradition started by the famous
writer and scientist. The Seminar was started by Asimov in the early 1970's, through
the auspices of the Rensselaerville Institute, to create various scenarios and situations
that would challenge interested individuals to think creatively and scientifically. Each
summer's program is different, drawing upon the expertise and guidance of science
fiction writers, editors, scientists, and various other researchers.
An Asimov Seminar tradition is to "elect" a scenario or program idea from a pool of
proposals generated by that year's group of participants. Last year I suggested a
Seminar based upon the idea that in the year 2055, researchers from Marsbase would
uncover traces of an alien site. The 1996 participants would thus represent "famous
researchers" sent from Earth to excavate and evaluate the archaeological traces. This
proposal was selected by the Asimov Seminar members, and I found myself caught up
in the frantic whirlwind of helping to construct and orchestrate an entire new world and
a new archaeology. It was an incredible amount of work - and I enjoyed every second
of it.
By early spring this year the advisors had been selected, and the scenario was
being created. Dr. Stan Schmidt, editor of the well-known science fiction magazine,
Analog. came on board to offer his expertise in astronomy and linguistics. Jack
McDavitt, a science fiction writer noted for his use of archaeological themes, became
our main creative force in the formulation of the scenario. Lastly, Dr. Bradley Lepper,
an archaeologist specializing in the Ohio moundbuilders, lent his expertise to the
group (Brad is a research compatriot of mine). All three joined me in constructing an
incredibly detailed Martian culture, including an alien language (thanks to Dr.
Schmidt), alien artifacts, and assorted other "zingers" to throw at the participants.
The 1996 seminar took place at the White Eagle Conference in lower New York
during the last week of July. I traveled to the Conference Center a day before the
participants were to arrive to construct the "site." A nine by nine foot square excavation
unit had been dug to a depth of nearly a foot by the Center's work crew - but I

10.
discovered that Martian soil is quite hard and rocky when the depth needed to be
adjusted (dang waste of a good three hours ... ). I then built a Martian sacrificial altar of
rock slabs and placed alien artifacts I created (well, some of them did look awfully
similar to torn up pieces of an old Apple computer ... thanks, Dr. Minderhout) on top of
and around the altar. In addition, ceramic plaques containing alien symbols and
graphics were carefully laid out in a large circle around the altar, and additional
artifacts, including stone tools, were placed at the site. Powdered milk paint was used
to stain the rocks of the temple area and to color the altar. I then frantically covered the
artifacts and features with the Martian soil as rain began to fall (rain on Mars?I).

The next day and a half, the Asimov seminar participants learned how to use
scientific archaeological techniques to properly excavate the site (unfortunately, our
Subsurface Radar Scanning equipment was coming on a later shuttle, so we had to
use the archaic techniques of the 1990's). The rest of the second day was devoted to
laboratory cleaning and inspection of the artifacts, as well as hypothesis generation to
explain the odd mixture of high technology (computer parts) with stone tools. One of
the highlights of the seminar was the language team's persistence in trying to decipher
the alien language on the plaques (they actually did pretty good), and excitement was
generated when a powerful sentient computer, located deep below the Martian soil,
was activated by all our work. Jack McDavitt, by the way, was hysterically funny
playing the role of the alien computer. The last segment of the seminar played upon
larger ethical issues in our current society after the computer solemnly requested to be
turned off. His people, after arriving from off-world and establishing a colony, had
degenerated into a stone age culture and eventually died out, leaving him alone for
eons. The last segment provoked many personal feelings among the participants, as it
was intended to do.
I believe that this was the first time that something of this nature has been done - the
actual creation of alien artifacts and language and the construction of an alien site to
be excavated. Overall, the 1996 Seminar will be memorable to me for the admixture of
the science of archaeology and astronomy, and the creativity of quick-thinking witty
people. It was a wonderful experience.

Amish Economics: In 1935, there were 6.8 million farms in the United States. By
1995, this number had dropped to 1,925,300, the lowest total since 1850. The same
trend is true for Pennsylvania which had 220,000 farms in the first farm census taken
here in 1910, but only 44,870 in 1992. The farms most likely to be abandoned in the
United States are smaller, family-owned farms, defined by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture as farms of 160 acres or less. Correspondingly, large farms have mostly
held their own. In fact, in Pennsylvania, since 1980, the one category of farms that has
continued to increase in numbers has been farms of one thousand acres or more.
There are many reasons for the decline in small family:1farms, but among them has
been that farmers have been caught between two economic forces. On the one hand,
the prices farmers can get for their produce has been falling, while on the other hand,

11 .
the costs of farming have been growing up. The result is a low profit margin per acre
which often only the large farms can survive. Prices for many farm products has fallen
in large part due to new agrieultural hybrids which produce a great deal more food on
the same acreage. For example, between 1955 and 1989, the number of dairy farms
in the U.S. dropped from 2.8 million to 205,000, and the number of dairy cows dropped
from 21 million to 1O million. Yet, total milk production in the U.S. rose 20% during the
same time period because each cow these days gives 144% more milk than in 1955.
New hybrids have increased the supply of milk to the point where supply exceeds
demand, and many dairy farmers in 1996 say that they might as well pour their milk
down the drain as take what they can get for it in the marketplace. The same trend is
generally true for crops such as wheat and corn.
At the same time, the costs of farming have been going up. For several decades
now farm families have been facing a social problem: their children are not interested
in farming. Farmers find that they can no longer turn to their families for labor, while at
the same time, they cannot afford to pay the necessary wages to bring labor in. The
result has been increased investments in farm equipment. With tractors, combines,
and other farm machinery, a farmer hopes to maintain the same-sized family farm his
grandfather worked with the help of a team of horses - and a large, willing family. A
walk down the farm equipment rows of the Bloomsburg Fair last month should have
revealed one striking fact: farm machinery is very expensive. In 1996, a new tractor
can cost as much or more than a new Lexxus, and, of course, the tractor is not very
useful without the plows, harrows, and other equipment it is meant to pull.
To deal with this economic dilemma, farmers turn to banks and other lending
institutions to loan them the money they need to get the equipment necessary to run
their farms, often putting up their farms or their next crop as collateral. To produce the
money to repay their loans and provide for their families, farmers work very hard - often
as much as 60 hours a week - and they frequently take on jobs off the farm to earn
more money. The result is exhausting and back-breaking for what is often a blue
collar income. Small wonder, then, that many farm children find the prospect of farm
work unattractive and many farmers choose to do something else.
But not all small family farms have these problems. The Amish are one farming
population that remains fairly prosperous. As noted in the April-May Anthropos, the
Amish are a religious group that has chosen to separate itself from the rest of
American society. The core of the Amish economy is agriculture; most Amish are
either farmers or directly involved in farming in some way, such as animal breeding or
harness making. The Amish have two major advantages compared to most family
farms: 1) they have been able to retain their labor force, and 2) they use a minimum of
mechanical farm equipment.
One of the most significant victories the Amish have obtained in their many legal
battles with federal and state governments has been the right to educate their children
in their own schools. The Amish have always been concerned that if their children

12.
were made to go to the same schools as the rest of America that they would be lost to
Amish culture. In Pennsylvania, therefore, each Amish community maintains its own
school. The Amish school is outfitted in accordance with Amish social requirements:
no electricity, outhouses for toilets, pot bellied stoves fueled with wood, etc. In their
schools, children are taught skills directly related to farm life along with enough literacy
(in German) to read the Bible and to understand religious services. The teacher is
usually an Amish woman, a graduate of an Amish school. School hours are flexibly
arranged around farm work, and there is no schooling after the eighth grade. As a
result, Amish children are trained for farm life, while at the same time a Amish school
does not provide the skills necessary to make it in the larger society. At the same time,
the Amish do not use birth control, and women are judged in large part by how many
children they have. Thus, an Amish farm has an appropriate labor force at hand.

Similarly, the Amish avoid the widespread use of mechanical equipment. This is
consistent with their ideology of respecting nature and of avoiding the wider world. In
the 1990's, some Amish communities have allowed farmers to use some gasolinepowered equipment in a limited fashion: running a conveyor belt off a tractor engine,
for example. But Amish farmers still depend largely on horse and human power to get
the work on the farm done. And there's another aspect to Amish farm labor that other
American farmers often cannot count on - community help. In a pinch, an Amish
farmer knows he can turn to his neighbors for help - and that they will for no more ,
compensation than a meal and the promise that the help will be returned some day in
the future.
In this way, the Amish keep their costs low. The author Gene Logsdon who
maintains a family farm in central Ohio has written a book, At Nature's Pace, which
outlines Amish economics. In it, he records many conversations with Amish people in
which they do an accounting of their costs for a month, a year, or whatever. In one
case, one Amish farmer computed his costs for producing a corn crop of 150 bushels
per acre, which Logsdon then compared with an Ohio State Extension Service
estimate of the costs for a farmer with mechanized equipment doing the same thing.
The Ohio State estimate was a cost of $393 per acre; the Amish cost was $44.07 per
acre. The differences are telling. Ohio State estimated that buying chemical fertilizers
added $63 per acre to a farmer's crop, but Amish farmers use mostly manure for a per
acre cost of $9.10. Pesticides and herbicides cost a farmer $28, but the Amish, who
cultivate their crops by hand or with horse-drawn cultivators to keep weeds down,
estimated $2.50 for the same cost. Ohio State estimated a total of $85 per acre for
equipment and the gasoline, oil, etc. to maintain it; the Amish farmer's cost is $8. And
Ohio State figured in a cost for interest on operating capital of $12, but the Amishman
had no such costs at all.
Now here's the economically interesting point: Ohio State also estimated that the
farmer's market return for his corn crop was going to be $~60 per acre, figuring on a
per bushel price of $2.40 (the figure is lower in 1996). That means the ordinary farmer
was actually going to run a deficit: $393 of cost vs. $360 of return. Estimates like these

13.
caused one of Logsdon's non-Amish neighbors to quip, "It's a good thing I don't have
a larger farm - then I'd really be broke!" But the Amish farmer's costs gave him a profit
of about $315 per acre!
Logsdon and others have discovered another point about Amish farm life, as well Amish farmers do not work as many hours as equipment-intensive farmers, despite the
fact that more of the Amish farmer's labor is done by hand. Logsdon discovered this
pretty much by chance, when he tried to organize a softball game in his community
between the more conventional farmers and the Amish. This turned out to be very
difficult, because the conventional farmers were always working., if not on the farm,
then at a wage-labor job to help pay for the farm.
"Eventually, or perhaps inevitably, I took my softball team to Holmes County for a
cow-pasture doubleheader with neighborhood Amish players ... It was a grand day.
We were perhaps a run better than the Amish, but they were twice as adept at dodging
piles of manure. Our collected 'womenfolk' cheered from the shade. The Amish
bishop watched from his buggy behind home plate, sorely tempted, I was told, to join
the game, but afraid it might seem a bit demeaning to some of his congregation. The
games themselves taught me two lessons in economy. First, our uniforms of blue and
gold cost me more money than I care to talk about. The Amish players, with their
traditional denims, broadcloth shirts and straw hats, are always in uniform. Second,
some of our player/farmers could not take time off from their high-tech machines to
play in the game. The Amish, with their slow, centuries-old-methods, had plenty of
time."
Logsdon looked at an Amish barn raising to take another look at costs in money
and labor. The same summer as the softball game, a tornado knocked down four
Amish barns. In each case, the entire Amish community pitched in. Trees knocked
down in the storm were cut down and sawn into lumber and hauled to the barn sites.
Each barn took about a day to build. And neighbors donated animals and hay to
replace what had been lost in the storm. Logsdon says ''I watched the raising of the
last barn in open-mouthed awe. Some 400 Amish men and boys, acting and reacting
like a hive of bees in absolute harmony of cooperation, started at sunrise with only a
foundation and floor and by noon, by noon, had the huge edifice far enough along that
you could put hay in it ... Nor were the barns the usual modern, one-story metal boxes
hung on poles. They were huge buildings, three and four stories high, post-and-beam
framed, and held together with hand-hewn mortises and tenons."
Logsdon invited a contractor to give an estimate on how much it would cost to build
such a structure. The estimate was $100,000; and furthermore it was going to take the
contractor three months to do the job. The Amish built all four barns, including cutting
the lumber, in three weeks, at an estimated cost of $30,000 per structure. And the
Amish looked at the barn raisings as a kind of holiday! "We look forward to raisings.
There are so many helping, no one has to work too hard. We get in a good visit."

14.
BU Anthropology News: Dr. Wymer and senior anthropology major, Tim Snyder,
traveled to Harrisburg on September 24 to attend the 1996 Pennsylvania State
Museum Curation Symposium. The symposium focused on the latest conservation
techniques and the new Pennsylvania state law on archaeology, as well the curation
requirements of the Museum for placing a collection with them.
Dr. Minderhout presented a class on rain forest cultures for a combined 2nd and 3rd
grade class at Danville Elementary School on October 24. Dr. Minderhout also
presented a talk on cross-cultural perspectives on alcohol use for Alcohol Awareness
Week at BU.