Clovis Comet Debate - The Archaeological Conservancy

larry zimmerman
dale croeS
and funerary artifacts require more sensitivity, but nothing is
automatically off limits. “We’d want to talk with the archaeologist
about how that material should be studied— should
it be photographed or illustrated, or should it be displayed?”
he said. “But we can come to compromises on that.”
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, the curator of anthropology
at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, noted
that singling out issues of control in indigenous archaeology
missed a larger point. “The issue of control is a real one, but
it’s an issue for all of archaeology,” he said. Private landowners
have de facto control over information about sites on
their property, and he noted that many archaeologists don’t
widely disseminate detailed information about site locations
to deter looters—all issues of data control dealt with by
archaeologists every day. “These are important issues, but
they’re issues we struggle over outside the indigenous communities
as well,” he said
mcgh e e’s b ro a d e r c h a rg e Is t h at , even If
these issues of intellectual control can be negotiated, allowing
cultural concerns to become part of the archaeological
process will debase the science—akin to geologists accepting
a creationist interpretation of the strata in the Grand
Canyon as evidence of the biblical flood. “It’s very similar
to the creationist problem,” McGhee said, “and dealing with
According to a Makah tribal elder, this 2,800-year-old quartz
crystal microblade could have been used in minor surgery.
It was found in northwest Washington State.
Native American students participate in a University of Iowa field
school that was designed to address Native American concerns.
Christian fundamentalists is somewhat along the same lines
as dealing with aboriginal fundamentalists who believe they
have the truth that is not available and is not reachable by
scientific or Western techniques.” He wrote that, “Every community
has a right to deal with its own history and heritage.
It is the discipline of archaeology that I would restrict to
those who wish to play by the accepted rules of the game.”
“To begin with, I would ask him, what are the accepted
rules?” said Colwell-Chanthaphonh. (He was one of seven
authors who penned a response to McGhee that was published
in the April 2010 issue of American Antiquities. The
issue also contains McGhee’s response to them.) “If you look
at the history of archaeology…. you see that it has always
been evolving, and it’s always shifting what it considers to
be good practice. It involves people tackling questions of
history and material science in many different ways, and to
me, one of the amazing things about archaeology is its grand
intellectual diversity. It’s important to get as many different
perspectives as possible, and diversity becomes a virtue
of science rather than something that impedes science’s
progress.”
“Part of the problem that McGhee has, and he’s a very
respected archaeologist, is that he and many others have a
particular view of archaeology that is very traditional,” said
Nicholas, who was also one of the seven respondents. “It’s
based on the standard definition of the study of past behavior
through material culture. There’s a whole other generation
that certainly accepts that, but says it’s not as simple
as that, that there are added dimensions—that science can
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