Obviously the state of education in archeology in the southern US if not the whole US is atrocious and richly deserving of been most underpaid. After all, just how much is bunkum worth?
To start with, European standards need to be applied. General language skills need to be addressed. Actually something different needs to be devised. A system of sound recognition skills need to be addressed as this is important. If Itx is a sound unit, it would be useful to understand in what languages it is used. After all this can be a powerful marker for migration and locality.
Recall the unique click language group in South Africa. Had that shown up anywhere else, a connection could never have been easily denied.
My point is that archeologists do not need language fluency although that may well happen particularly where it really matters, but they need a core skill in recognizing sound groupings.
Eliminating the duh-h-h factor from Southeastern archaeology
Radical changes are needed in the mentality and content of
university anthropology programs in the Southeastern United States, if
this occupation is to achieve the truly professional status of its
counterparts in Europe and Latin America. Above all, the specialists of
anthropology, known as archaeologists, must learn how to provide
SERVICES to the public in a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural
environment.
Archaeologists do not “own” the knowledge about indigenous
peoples of the Americas. The descendants of the peoples, who built those
towns and made those artifacts, are very much alive and equally
intelligent as the specialists, who excavate the past.
Editorial Opinion
My first and last attendance at a meeting of the Southeastern
Archaeological Conference (SEAC) occurred a little over a decade ago on
the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The
conference was supposed to be about 16th century Spanish exploration and
colonization of the Carolinas, plus the cultures of their Native
American occupants. Not one speaker was either Hispanic or Native
American.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me and a female Colombian
archaeology professor, sitting beside me. was the Saturday morning
“highlight” of the conference. For an entire morning, we endured a
bitter debate between professors representing the North Carolina and
South Carolina “football teams” as to whether a town with a Creek name, Kofitvchiki
(Cofetachequi) was Cherokee or Catawba. She had already been at the
conference for a day and was livid because only a couple of the speakers
could even pronounce Spanish words properly. I quickly became outraged
because the senior professors from the Universities of North Carolina
and Georgia were calling towns with Creek names, Cherokee towns.
The North Carolina archaeologists had already embarked on their quest
to make their state’s only federally recognized tribe, the master
indigenous race, second only to their European patrons. (Because of
intense opposition from Cherokee bureaucrats within their agency, the
BIA still refuses to give federal recognition to the largest Native
American tribe, east of the Mississippi – the Lumbees.) Like most
Southeastern anthropologists, their perspective of the past was tainted
by an obsession that the tribes that existed in 1836 were the same
ethnic groups that existed prior to European contact.
However, the North Carolina academicians’ provinciality was carrying
this quest to an even lower level. Somehow, on this illogical journey,
they came to see glorification of the Cherokee Tribe as equivalent to
enhanced contemporary status for their state.
The first step was persuading anthropology professors in the
Southeast to label all town sites in the Southern Highlands – ”the
Appalachian Summit Culture.” In the late 1970s, the North Carolina
General Assembly passed a law that officially labeled all Native
American artifacts in their mountains as being made by the Cherokees or
the ancestors of the Cherokees. Therefore, in North Carolina,
Appalachian Summit = Cherokee.
What the North Carolina archaeologists were already trying to do at
this SEAC meeting was to extend the label of “Appalachian Summit” to
include most of the “Mississippian” town sites in Ohio, Kentucky, West
Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia
and northern Alabama. If this malarkey was then replicated in enough
books and web sites, the glorious day would come when the general public
would accept the myth that Cherokees built most of the mounds in the
Southeast as established fact and western North Carolina would be the
center of the world. Of course, the 180 degree opposite of that
statement is the actual fact. The core ancestors of the Cherokees were
most likely in southern Ontario, when those mounds were built.
A few members of the audience at the conference tried to present
logical challenges to the quite illogical mentality of the majority, but
they were pounced upon like a pack of wild dogs on a kitten, caught in
the wrong place and the wrong time. My new Colombian friend and I
observed behavior that one might expect from arrogant, preadolescent
brats – what is now called “teenage bullying” . . . name calling,
belittlement, shunning and demonization . . . the same stuff that we saw
during the “Mayas in Georgia thing” in 2012.
Duh-h-h factors in other states
We don’t want to just pick on North Carolina. However, labeling the
Coweeta Mound (half mile from Georgia) a Cherokee Mississippian town
site with ”a Cherokee name of unknown meaning,” IS about as dumb as it
gets . . . especially since the report by the archaeologists, who
excavated this village site, even admitted that the houses were like
those in proto-Creek towns in Georgia and nothing like historical
Cherokee villages.
The work of archaeologists in Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia,
Maryland, Arkansas and Missouri seem to come closest to the real world.
However, Louisiana archaeologists bristle, when you ask what Maya blue
stucco was doing on the mounds at Troyville.
The manifestations of the Duh-h-h Factor can be found in the
mentalities of archaeologists in other states too. Most Florida
archaeologists refuse to recognize the intense interrelationships
between the indigenous peoples of their peninsula and peoples to the
south.
Alabama and Mississippi archaeologists often conceptualize their past
in terms of the federally recognized tribes in their respective states.
You would never know that the Chickasaws once occupied the northern
fourth of Alabama or that most of the Creeks didn’t arrive in Alabama
until after the American Revolution.
South Carolina maps label a vast area of their state as “Cherokee”
when most South Carolina Cherokee villages had Creek names and were
located ONLY on the tributaries of the Savannah River in the extreme
northwestern corner of their state. South Carolina archaeologists also
are prone to label all Injun words either Catawba or Muskogean , when
the vast majority are neither.
Descriptions of Tennessee Mississippian town sites continue to say
that they were founded by immigrants from Cahokia, when many of their
Mississippian mounds predate the mounds at Cahokia. Tennessee officials
are under increasing pressure from the Eastern Band of Cherokees to
label the mounds in eastern 2/3 of the state as Cherokee, when these
regions were occupied by Chickasaws until the 1700s.
Most Virginia archaeologists refuse to recognize the existence of
Adena, Hopewell and Mississippian mounds west of the Blue Ridge
Mountains in their state. The Shenandoah Valley was densely occupied
with villages containing platform mounds until the late 1660s, when the
colony sponsored massive Native American slave raids. Their
archaeologists are struggling with their orthodoxies, because a terrace
complex similar to those in Georgia has been found in the northern
Shenandoah Valley, with only slightly younger radiocarbon dates than the
Track Rock Complex in Georgia.
What it means to be a professional
A professional is a person who has special skills and education,
which enables her or him to serve others. The United States is about the
only developed nation that does not require a professional license
issued by a government agency in order for one to be labeled an
archaeologist. Archaeology is a technical specialization of the
discipline of anthropology. Almost all states have laws that prohibit
excavation of ancient burial sites by anyone but a professional
archaeologist. However, virtually no state sets the specific standards
that define what a professional archaeologist should know in order to
carry that title.
For example, in most European countries, an archaeologist must pass a
licensing exam on the cultural traits and appropriate investigative
techniques for a specific cultural period in order to be the supervising
archaeologist at a excavation of a site produced by that specific
culture. A specialist on medieval English communities wouldn’t dream of
presenting himself or herself as an expert on Bronze Age villages in
Skåna Province, Sweden. Well, the Swedish government would not allow it.
We live in a multi-disciplinary world in which most efforts require
teamwork from a wide range of people with specialized skills. If a
mechanical engineer tells me that I did not allow enough space between
floors for the air supply plenum, I don’t call him or her a self-styled
engineer or a pseudo-architect. I change my design to include the
necessary space. Conversely, if I tell the mechanical engineer that the
location of a furnace will create a fire hazard or interfere with
emergency exits, the engineer will modify the plans to eliminate the
problems.
The Kenimer Mound
The situation with the Kenimer Mound in the Nacoochee Valley of
Georgia is a good example of what is not a professional approach to
understanding the Native American history of the Southeast. In 2006, I
stumbled upon a brief mention of two Georgia archaeologists visiting a
mysterious mound in the Nacoochee Valley in 1986. They were not sure, in
fact, if it was a mound.
A couple of years later, an archaeological report for a two day
investigation of the site in 1997 was published online. A small team
from the University of Georgia had walked the site, measured it with
surveying equipment and on the second day, dug some post holes and test
pits, where they obtained artifacts – mostly potsherds from the Late
Woodland – Napier Culture. No archaeological work has been done on the
Kenimer Mound since then.
The 1997 report described the Kennimer Mound as an unexplained
enigma. It said that no other known mound had been sculpted from a hill
and that it was isolated with no other mounds or villages nearby. The
mound was interpreted as a Late Woodland ceremonial site that drew
visitors from a region.
When I read the statement in the 1997 report that the five-sided
mound was sculpted from a large hill, I was absolutely astonished. You
see, that is exactly how the Itza Mayas built the earthen platforms for
their temples dedicated to the sun god. One of the many things that
Gringo archaeologists don’t seem to know is that the Itza, Chontal and
Tamaule Mayas only built earthen mounds during the Classic Period (200
AD-900 AD). However, it seemed so implausible that an Itza mound would
be in the Georgia Mountains, I kept my observations to myself.
THEN in 2010 and 2011, I stumbled upon a legion of Itza place names
and Itza type structures when camping my way across the mountains of
Georgia and North Carolina. I had to completely rethink my presumption
that the first evidence of the Creek’s partial Maya heritage would be
somewhere on the Atlantic or Gulf Coastal Plains.
I made an appointment to meet with the lady, who owned the tract
containing the Kenimer Mound in 1997. She was shocked when I showed her
the University of Georgia archaeological report. She said that her
written permission for the archaeological team to survey the mound
absolutely forbade any excavations.
The lady added that officials of the Eastern Band of Cherokees have
expressed interest in purchasing the mound, since it is a “Sacred
Cherokee Site.” They have been introduced to local community leaders by a
man, originally from Florida, who wants to build a Cherokee gambling casino next to the mound.
All of the archaeologists, who were spokesmen for “Maya Myth-busting in
the Mountains,” have or have had business connections to those wishing
to build a Cherokee casino in North Georgia.
Much more research then went into forgotten archaeological reports
from Western North Carolina and North Georgia. Few mounds have been
excavated in western North Carolina. The investigations were either
carried out at the dawn of archaeology or in a framework of “since it is
in North Carolina, it must be Cherokee.”
The situation was different in North Georgia. In 1939, the famous
archaeologist, Robert Wauchope, spent a considerable period of time
excavating villages and mounds in the flood plain of the modern day
hamlet of Sautee, where the Kenimer Mound is located.
The Kenimer Mound was not isolated as described in the 1997 report,
but in the midst of a Native American metropolis with multiple
neighborhoods, perhaps a dozen mounds, hundreds of Itza style stone box
graves and a huge Itza style ball court. In fact, the name of this town
had been Itsate, until it was captured and sacked by the Cherokees in
the mid-1720s. Itsate means “Itza People” in Itza Maya. The landscape
around the Kenimer Mound had been intensely occupied for at least 1500
years, maybe 2,500 years.
The 1997 archaeological report stated that there was no evidence of a
temple structure on the mound or evidence of “Mississippian” artifacts
in the mound. The archaeologist did not do his homework. I learned
from long time residents of the Nacoochee Valley that the ruins of
ancient stone buildings had been on top of the mound until the 1970s. A
Florida transplant used the stones to build the foundations and
chimneys of his new home. He then scooped up the topsoil on the top and
sides of the mound to use as land fill on his tract.
The University of Georgia archaeologists, who visited the Kenimer
Mound in 1986 and 1997, seemed completely unaware that the FOUNDER of
their department, Robert Wauchope, had produced many pages of reports on
his excavations of sites that surrounded the Kenimer Mound on all
sides. The speculation of the massive Kenimer Mound being a isolated
structure was produced in an information vacuum.
Many of the readers will recall what happened when I mentioned in a
2012 POOF report that the Kenimer Mound was yet more evidence that Itza
Maya refugees had settled in the Southeast. Georgia archaeologists had a
hissy fit. None of those who visited the Kenimer Mound in 1986 and 1997
had any educational or professional credentials in Mesoamerican
Architecture. If they didn’t know it already, they could have easily
learned that I studied Mesoamerican architecture in Mexico.
If an archaeologist informed me that I had misinterpreted the details
on a restored building, the first thing I would have done is to ask for
drawings or photographs with which to correct the problem, if there was
one. Instead, what we saw is the same type behavior that I observed at
the SEAC conference over a decade ago.
Archaeology is already the least paid and most unemployed occupation
in the United States that requires an advanced degree. If Southeastern
universities continue to turn out graduates, who are taught to interpret
the past based on what their professors dictated to them, rather than
on deductive reasoning, those with that mentality will soon find
themselves deemed irrelevant. Real professionals from other universities
will take their place.
This editorial kicks off a new series of articles on “The
Peopling of the Southeast.” Much of the content will be theoretical,
because no one has perfected a practical time machine. However, with the
collaboration of the newly discovered colonial era documents, we can
come much closer to the truth.
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