The Kansas Anthropologist Reminlscence Project for Senior Plains Anthropologists
Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations, ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders, and they will tell thee. Deuteronomy 32: 7. For the past six years, 'The Kansas Anthropologist' has published an ongoing series of remini...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Ubiquity Press
1998-11-01
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| Series: | Bulletin of the History of Archaeology |
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| Online Access: | http://www.archaeologybulletin.org/article/view/293 |
| Summary: | Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations,
ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders, and they will tell thee. Deuteronomy 32: 7.
For the past six years, 'The Kansas
Anthropologist' has published an ongoing series of reminiscences or
retrospective articles by senior Great Plains archaeologists. The aim of the project is
to collect reminiscences from senior anthropologists regarding their experiences in
pre-and post-World War II Plains archaeology, biological anthropology, and ethnology.
The historian John Lukacs (1966:x) once offered an elegant and concise comment on the
value of history, one that I offer here: "I believe that history, as a form of thought,
is one of the most precious and perhaps unique rational posssessions of Western
civilizations. The character of a person may appear best from the reconstruction of the
history of his life; the same is true of the character of nations. The very history of a
problem may reveal its essential diagnosis. There is no human endeavor that may not be
approached and studied profitably through its history." Fortunately, there hardly needs
to be a justification anymore for such a project, as is attested by the recent
proliferation of research into the history of archaeology and anthropology on virtually
a global scale.The intention of these retrospective articles is
not to explore or diagnose any particular problem but rather to create a mosaic of first
person narrratives informed by personal experience and illustrated with photos and
anecdotes to illuminate the development of Plains anthropology in the 20th
Century. |
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| ISSN: | 1062-4740 2047-6930 |