Notes on Pacific Warfare

There have been many questions about what causes warfare to develop, esp in pre-state societies, and to what extend it differs from raiding; how lethal it is; and how important the symbolic bravery on display is for the standing within the community.

I recently ran into the following work on Pacific warfare, 

Raid, Retreat, Defend (Repeat): The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Warfare on the North Pacific Rim--by Herbert D.G. Maschner & Katherine L. Reedy-Maschner.

The work points out that warfare for strict resource control was less common, and that its impact on development of the North Pacific Rim in the end can only be considered formative.

David Reich and the effect of DNA research on Archeology

In his 2018 book, David Reich makes an important point when talking about the origins of the Indo-European language:

By tracing possible migration paths and ruling out others, ancient DNA has ended a decades old stalemate in the controversy regarding the origins of Indo-European languages.  

This is then the contribution that the DNA gene tracing can make. First, it can identify possible scenarios because of the markers. At the same time it also shows some paths to be impossible. 

In the particular case of the Indo-European languages, DNA analysis of ancient skeletons turned out to be lucky; the paths that Reich et al were able to rule out (prune in the search space view of the problem) axed all paths for a specific theory.

Notice that this does not say what happened. Reich and colleagues can say that the most likely remaining hypothesis points to south of the Caucasus, either Iran or Armenia, because the population DNAs there are the most similar to what they ended up being in the European heartlands:

... ancient DNA from people who lived there [i.e. south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present day Iran or Armenia, RCK] matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians.

But as Reich had argued with respect to Colin Renfrew's agricultural hypothesis of language spread, that the populations who brought the agricultural revolution had brought Indo-European with them as well, 

... theory is always trumped by data ...

by which he means that new data will rule out previous paths. Data is the way to prune the search space.

And this pruning works both way, because it is a recognition function. It recognizes what it can accept (the prediction view) and it therefore knows what to filter. Sometimes these functions are couched positively and sometimes they will be couched negatively and that can muddle up the issue too. 

 

The Hermanns Monument as Reflection of German Sentiments toward France

Not for nothing was "Hermann" on his lofty monument facing west, brandishing his enormous sword, 7m long, in the direction of France, while the bronze inscription on the base was cast from melted-down French cannon captured at the battle of Sedan in 1870.

In Colin .M. Wells, Alesia and Kalkriese compared and contrasted: local chauvinism, nationalistic fervor, and sober archeology, pp.674-608, (here p.678), citing Cl. Nicolet (p.342) in the volume that Wells was reviewing in the article: Michel Redde, Sigmar von Schnurbein (ed), Alesia et La Bataille du Teutoburg. Un parallele Critique des Sources, Beihefte der Francia 66, Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, 345pps, 73 figs.

Bronze Age Britain and the "Brexit"

In an article from the New Yorker, describing the latest discoveries at Must Farm quarry near Peterborough in England, Charlotte Higgins reflects on the openness of the evidence toward the larger cultural narratives.

At a moment when Britain is anxiously debating its relationship to the Continent, the kind of story one chooses to tell about the nation’s past matters a great deal. According to recent polling, the area around Peterborough is the second most skeptical of E.U. membership in Britain. One archeologist at Must Farm told me that he and his colleagues sometimes joke about the contradictory narratives that could plausibly describe the former life there. “You could probably write either a Euroskeptic or a Europhile account of this site,” he said. One researcher might see an indigenous community that was closely tied to the landscape of East Anglia; another might see an outward-looking people linked to the Continent by its waterways. Archeology is always an encounter between a fixed past and a shifting present; we bring to it our fantasies, prejudices, and predilections—this year different from last year, next year different again.

Carson and the Pseudo-Archeologists

Presidential candidate Ben Carson made use of his Seventh-Day Adventist convictions to interpret the Pyramids as grain silos, provoking reactions from many archeologists, such as Kristina Killgrove, who pointed out not only various issues with the claim but also to general recent efforts in combating pseudo-archeology in the first place. The most interesting of these are the initiative to review pseudo-archeological work in archeological reviews and the link to a Fall 2015 university course on that problem.

My take-home quote for right now is

In the second review, The Ancient Alien Question, archaeologist Jeb Card points out, as does Feder, that the origins of this idea lay in Victorian mysticism and Theosophy, a movement that “blended hermetic magic, spiritualism, Western curiosity ab[o]ut Eastern religion, colonial racism, and misconceptions of evolution into a worldview of root races, lost continents, and ascended masters who originated on Venus or other worlds.

Andersson on Alternative archaeology

Alternative archaeology: many pasts in our present by Pia Andersson distinguishes the two approaches that archeologists have taken to the alternative interpretations of the past provided or demanded. She contrasts the derogatory vocabulary [bogus, pseudo, ...] from the vocabulary that focuses on the different stances [cult, fantasy, popular], and gives the following themes to distinguishing the academic from the non-academic world (p.127).

William Stiebing has been influential in his attempts to single out three defining criteria: 1) an absence of scientific methodology and proof, 2) a tendency to seek simple answers to complex problems, and 3) an ambivalent and often hostile attitude toward the scientific establishment (Stiebing 1984). (p.127)

Andersson categorizes the approaches using the following image (p.128):

Andersson then points out (p.131) the classical topics of alternative archeology, ranging from Giza and Stonehenge to Chichen Itza and Carnac in France. Equally there is range of artefacts, so called "OOPAs", i.e. "out-of-place artefacts" (p.133) that hold the attention of alternative archeology, such as the Antikythera Mechanism.

Much of alternative archaeology is based on presuppositions not shared by conventional archaeologists. (p.134) 

Bibliographic Record

Andersson, P. (2012). Alternative archaeology: many pasts in our present. Numen, 59(2-3), 125-137. doi:10.1163/156852712X630743 (UB Wien link)

Cusack on LDS Archeology

Carole M. Cusack (University of Sydney) points out that there are odd dynamics at play within the archeological community.

It is also important to note two further complicating factors: first, new religions may embrace a postmodern openness to interpretation when archaeological confirmation of their position fails to emerge, effectively mirroring the “multivocal” position of Post-Processualist archaeology; and second, scientific archaeology decries alternative archaeology with comparable ferocity to that observed in the repudiation of new religions by established religious traditions, thus creating a “feedback loop” in the interactions between archaeology and new religions.

Cusack reminds us of the early relationship between archeology and religious studies as something to give historical understanding of the many religions discovered.

As the comparative study of religion developed, archaeology became important due to its role in verifying the pasts of many religions: Alexander Cunningham published the facsimile Inscriptions of Asoka (1879) which confirmed the Indian origins of Buddhism; Leopoldo Batres excavated Teotihuacan in 1905, enhancing knowledge of pre-Columbian religion; and in 1921-2 Sir John Marshall excavated Harappa in the Indus Valley, a city that might be evidence of the “forts” destroyed by Indra, the god of the invading Aryans, referred to in the Rig Veda (Breton 1908, pp.34-37; Insoll 2004, passim).

During the twentieth century, there was both a de-coupling of archeology from the religions as well as a flourishing of religious formations and traditions. As a result, religious studies had to abandon its old approach of focusing on the few influential faiths and attend to the vast plurality of religious movements.

Further, the“world religions” approach has been exposed as an Enlightenment construct, implying a false comparativism (Jackson 1995, 276-278).

This is the situation in which present-day archeology finds itself.

Before considering specific case studies, it is necessary to investigate scientific archaeology’s relationship with “pseudoarchaeology” or “cult archaeology”(Fagan 2006; Stiebing 1995). 

Though the delineation is not trivial, there are themes that separate academic archeology from its pseudo or cult forms.

Schadla-Hall argues that, although there is no hard line that can be drawn between “mainstream” and “alternative” archaeology, the core themes of the latter area focus on origins, hyper-diffusionism, ancient knowledge and power, astro-archaeology, and the truth of religion and mythology (Schadla-Hall 2004, pp. 257-258)  

Further, the claims regarding each of these themes are always dramatic and propose revolutionary new understandings, rather than the gradual accretion of information that slowly advances knowledge.

Cusack sees this taking place in the general context of the "buffet of identities" offered by modernity.

[I]n the contemporary West personal identity has undergone significant modification, with the consumption of products and the “trying-on” of roles displacing religion, family and community as the prime factors in how people determine who they are. This plastic sense of self is flexible and experimental, and identity is “amenable to infinite reshaping according to mood, whim, desire and imagination” (Lyon 2002, p. 92). 

This has two effects with regard to the status of information; the individual can choose the explanation that suits him or herself, without concern for whether it is “objectively true,” and is free to discard it when it no longer satisfies. When this realisation is combined with the dense and non-user friendly nature of scientific publications and the degree of specialisation required to understand them, Pascale Boyer’s argument that humans have an evolutionary biological tendency to accept and trust narratives that operate through inference and attribute personal agency as the cause of events ... rather than explanations that posit impersonal forces or complex interrelated factors, receives additional support (Boyer 2001, passim).

Thus, the conventions of science are often perceived by non-scientists to be arcane and restrictive, and the attitudes of its practitioners are experienced as patronising and elitist. Other explanations of scientific phenomena are readily available and the modern individual is empowered to choose them. 

Cusack then gives a reasonable summary of early Mormonism and shows how it was a contribution to Indian origin discussions. [[RCK: She does not emphasis the antiquarian aspects of early Mormonism enough, for my taste.]]

Joseph Smith actively promoted the Book of Mormon as the missing link in the history of America, and revelations and diary entries from Smith’s followers indicate that by the 1830s he was claiming North America as the territory of the Lamanites and identifying archaeological finds at specific sites (Givens 2002, pp. 94-95). 

Citing (Givens 2002, p.112), Cusack points out that 1928 Elder Levi Edgar Young hoped that the successful validation of the Biblical texts in Palestine through archeology might be replicated in the Americas for the Book of Mormon.

During the 1950s, Wells Jakeman interpreted Izapa Stele 5 as a representation of the Tree of Life from the vision in 1 Nephi 8. In the 1960s, a latex cast was taken to BYU and became the origin of a little following of replicas. The interest in archeology waned in the 1970s as the first translations of the Egyptian papyri showed that these were fragments of the Book of the Dead, not a new Book of Abraham. Thereafter, as Armand Mauss had observed (Mauss 1994), the LDS church withdrew "from an increasingly liberal mainstream American society" which reduced interest in science.

At the same time, under Gordon B. Hinckley, the disdain for historical "shrines" turned into an appreciation for historic sites as "sacred ground" (Masden 2006, 58, 62),

This has implications for identity formation among Mormons: authentic experience of their faith may be attained by visiting historic sites, in a form of religious tourism which combines consumerism and the past being manifested through a specific place (Holtorf 2005b, p. 127).

This has clear consequences within the framework of modernity, as the validation function has turned ego-centric.

That the Nauvoo Temple was destroyed in 1850 is unimportant; Gordon B. Hinckley’s $30 million reconstruction is experienced as “genuine”. This parallels a broader social shift, affecting all Western manifestations of religion, where the experience of the self has greater authority and reality than institutional pronouncements, and where affective rather than intellectual proofs are persuasive (Lyon 2002). 

[[RCK: Cusack does not realize how modern Joseph Smith Jr was in the regard to emotive validation.]]

For Mormons, there is no conflict between true religion and true science, and “when it comes to learning gospel truths, Mormons think with their hearts. The scripture conveys the idea that the final word on truth comes via feelings. This is now a fundamental tenet of Mormonism” (Southerton 2004, p. 44). 

Bibliographic Records

Cusack, Carole. 2011. “New Religions and the Science of Archaeology: Mormons, the Goddess, and Atlantis.” In James R. Lewis and Olav Hammer (eds.), Religion and the Authority of Science, Leiden: Brill, 765-796 (Academia.edu pre-print; eBrill link).

• Boyer, Pascale. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
• Holtorf, Cornelius. Archaeology is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press Inc, 2007.
• Levitt, Norman. “The colonization of the past and the pedagogy of the future.” pp.259-284 in: Archaeological Fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public, edited by G. G. Fagan. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Lyon, David. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Oxford: Polity, 2002.
• Mauss, Armand. The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation.Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
• Nuckolls, Charles W. 2008. “Archaeology, Mormonism, and the Claims of History.” Marburg Journal of Religion 13,1.
• Southerton, Simon G. Losing a Lost Tribe: Native American DNA and the Mormon Church. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004.

Alternative Archaeology and Religious Legitimation

[[RCK: Excavating tradition: alternative archaeologies mentions LDS in its abstract at least and points out how people come to archeology, and often with alternative strategies to professional academic archeology, with their religious legitimation needs.]]

Lewis (p.203) points out how Mircea Eliade's in illud tempore has been replaced as the target of the rear projections by a historical time in the twenty-first century.

However, rather than an explicitly mythological past (Eliades illud tempus), modern human beings tend to project their idealizations onto a “real,” historical past. Archaeology enters into this pattern by providing the scientific “facts” that are supposed to legitimate these idealized reconstructions. (p.203)

Lewis in 2011 commented on this fact in his chapter contributed to Religion and the Authority of Science [[RCK: does he mean this 2010 Brill handbook?]]  which captures the need of religions to find their claims substantiated by an independent authority, science, given the market place of conflicting religious ideas (p.204).

Part of Lewis' description is based on his 2003 monograph Legitimating New Religions, where he discusses Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft scheme of charismatic, traditional, legal and rational (which are sometimes lumped together, as Lewis notes, already by Weber, cf. (p.204)) legitimation. [[RCK: Lewis also has written on the invention of sacred traditions in a 2007 monograph coauthored with Olav Hammer (p.207), conceptualized as an extension of Hobsbawm and Ranger's classic 1983 The Invention of Tradition] (kindle edition)]]

Lewis sees this rethinking necessary (p.205) because in practice legitimations mix and match; charismatic leaders appeal to traditions when founding new religion, even though it is at least a reinterpreted and sometimes even a recreated tradition in many cases. Thus, the founders of new religious movements will appeal (p.206) to charismatic, rational and traditional arguments for supporting their claims (p.206f), and Lewis gives a few examples not meant to be exhaustive.

Lewis now addresses a fundamental gap in Weber and his own work, namely understanding that the charisma is at the core of the appeal. In that sense, Lewis can talk about the charisma of science and technology.

It has even been said by some observers that science is viewed quasi-religiously, as the ultimate authority in matters of “Truth.״ Thus any religion claiming that it is in some way scientific draws on the prestige and perceived legitimacy of natural science. (p.208)

Lewis cited biblical archeology as an endeavor where the a priori assumption of the correctness of the Biblical record is to receive further validation for archeological investigation (p.209). This is contrasted from the a posteriori archeology of modern Pagans, who want to know how to perform rituals and turn to science for answers (p.209, p.204).

Lewis then (p.209) turns to a discussion of Carole Cusack's 2011 paper on the use of archeology in the LDS church, for Atlantis believers, and in support of the Goddess.  Lewis points out that a claim to the validity of the BoM entails an interest in archeological validation (pp.211f). As far as the relationship between religious movements and archeology is concerned, Lewis distinguishes (p.212) between full immersion (as in LDS), shallow (as in the case of Atlantis believers not interested in funding Bahamas excavations), and half-full/half-empty strategies such as the worshippers of the Goddess, who can either engage with the Çatalhôyük archeology or let it be. The product of full immersion and half-full is a distinctly partisan archeology, akin to the old Biblical archeology or "creation science" (p.213) [[RCK: that is, an archeology looking for support, not for problematization]].


Lewis points out how this approach to the past has the structure of a "pick 'n' mix" (p.213), where modern druids would accept white robes and golden sickles if archeology documented them, but not human sacrifices, if archeology could document those (p.213).

[N]ew religions often justify their innovations by attributing them to the authority of tradition, though it is often only through a reinterpretation of the past that they are able to portray themselves as embodiments of tradition. (p.217)

Bibliographic Record

Lewis, J. R. (2012). Excavating tradition: alternative archaeologies as legitimation strategies. Numen, 59(2-3), 202-221. doi:10.1163/156852712X630789 (UB Wien)

1843 claim to another Book of Mormon

The Quincy Whig was probably jesting when they reported, under the heading "Material for another Book of Mormon" in 1843 that in the neighboring village of Kinderhook, in Pike County, a man had found six brass plates fixed together with wiring. The Nauvoo Times & Seasons carried the article, Vol IV, No 12, Wednesday May 1 1843, here p.187.

Since the finder, a Robert Wiley, was known to be a respectable merchant, the editors used the opportunity to show that treasure digging was not a disreputable activity that only Joseph Smith Jr pursued (p.186).

Whether Joseph Smith Jr ever got a chance to try his chops on the hieroglyphs as the editor hoped is unclear.

Updated March 2015: In January 1844, the Nauvoo Neighbor was selling facsimile [their word!] of the plates found at Kinderhook; cf. Nauvoo Neighbor, January 3, 1844, page 3, column 4.

Archaeology trying to become a science

Richard Rorty repeatedly, but most clearly in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, makes the point that it was the Kantian project of submitting the other sciences under the tutelage of philosophy, whose Erkenntnistheorie (pp.135-136) would be responsible for adjudicating whether teach science was wielding the tools correctly and staying in their little box (pp.138-139, esp. Fn 18). Via the Neo-Kantians and the logical positivists and the Wiener Kreis, this stance moved into the USA and became the basis for the Wissenschaftsverständnis, as expounded by Carnap et al. (p.221).

This all may sound harsh and a little difficult to believe, until you pick up a volume like Explanation in Archaeology from 1971, which is expressively trying to be the "good kid" and follow the rules laid down by Hempel and the others.

Consider the Preface:

As the fields of science developed, natural laws were incorporated in formalized frameworks or theories for the understanding or explanation of natural phenomena. The formulation and confirmation of such laws and theories is the primary goal of science, that is, the discovery and description not only of what, when, and where, but also of how and why. By use of scientific laws and theories, explanations can be given and predictions made. This is no less true of the newer social sciences than it is of the natural sciences. (p.vii)

After pointing out that it makes no sense for everyone to define their own sense of "explanation", the authors explicitly turn to the experts for help.

We turn to the logical positivist philosophers of science for a carefully considered definition of the word "explanation". To these analytic philosophers, explanation is by no means a vague concept. It means demonstrating that the particular case one wants to explain is an example of general relationships described by an established general law. Such laws are called covering laws, and this type of explanation is called a covering law explanation. (p.viii)

The advantage of their tack is not only that they can move logically within their explanations, but that the setup itself has consequences that are rationally sound.

Once this definition is accepted, as we feel it should and will be, a number of very important consequences logically follow. (p.viii)

Among these consequences is that the investigation has to start with the laws.

The most obvious and fundamental of these is that to explain anything one must have a body of general laws about the relevant phenomena. (p.viii)

The acceptance of this rather harsh prescription has not proved popular. Many archeologists have simply preferred to be unconcerned, and those that have shown concern seem to have protested the matter.

The suggestion that archeologists accept this definition and its consequences has produced a significant amount of controversy over theory among some archeologists, but has left many others unconcerned. (p.viii)

The reasons are not, as Rorty would have argued, that this form of philosophical Arbeitsplatzsicherung is too transparent to fool anyone, but according to the authors have to be looked for in the nature of archeology itself.

To understand why this [rejection of logico-positivistic explanation, RCK] is the case, we must digress briefly to consider the multiple nature of the broad area of study labeled archeology. (p.viii)

The authors know that the discussion of these scientific explanations are a cottage industry in their own right, but feel that the promise of scientific testability of hypotheses is an advantage that makes for a pragmatic argument to switch.

There is an immense literature describing and extolling the virtues of using scientific methods, but the basic reason for adopting them is pragmatic. In practice they provide practical, testable explanations and predictions. It is for this reason that their acceptance within the general framework of scientific archeology is urged. (p.viii)

Of course, the outer framework is just that, and it needs science-specific filling.

Philosophers of science tell us, in clear, logical terms, that scientific methods are; and scientists of other disciplines provide various models demonstrating how these methods may be applied. (p.xi) 

But before scientific archeology can progress in an orderly and systematic fashion, archeologists must achieve preliminary general agreement concerning initial assumptions, proper procedures, and what constitute successful and acceptable general laws and explanations in archeology. (p.xi)

They cite Harvey's 1969 book Explanation in Geography, London (Eaton Arnold), as a successful exemplar.

PS: For a brief moment, the authors appear to be more pedagogical than some of their comrades in post-modernism, when the authors---after sketching the structure of their book---note

 It must also be made clear what we are not doing in this book. We are not interested in showing where and how archeologists have not been scientific. (p.xiii)

That's great, except the next sentence continues

Because few archeologists have claimed that their work is rigorously scientific, this would be a meaningless endeavor. (p.xiii)

Ooohh ... the disappointment.

Bibliographic Record

Patty Jo WATSON, Steven A. LeBLANC, Charles L. REDMAN, Explanation in Archeology: An Explicitly Scientific Approach, New York -- London (Columbia University Press), 1971.

Atwater on Ohio's Antiquities

Caleb Atwater's 1819 memoire in the Archaeologia Americana (Vol I, 1820), entitled Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio and other Western States (Uncle Dale Broadhurst has excerpts of Atwater's memoire, too, of course), works with a tri-partition of the antiquities, based on who produced them (p.111).

• Indians of the Present Days
• Europeans
• the Mound Builders 

Atwater is familiar (p.113) with the theory that the Indians came via the Bering Strait and does not reject it at least. 

Atwater knows that the French were operating a colony in Indian country from a book by a French Jesuit, published in Paris in 1655 (p.115). It is this almost 300 years of intercourse with the Europeans that explains the intermingling of European artifacts in the finds at Indian antiquities (p.115), specifically medals which the French explorers placed (p.117), several inches across and made out of metal, when the French claimed a fort, tumulus or river mouth for the French crown. Atwater is of course aware that not all medals need to have been placed where they were retrieved, and cites some Spanish examples (p.119).

Finds of European antiquities were not limited to medals.

Swords, gun barrels, knives, pickaxes, and implements of war, are often found along the banks of the Ohio, which had been left there by the French, when they had forts at Pittsburgh, Ligonier, St. Vincents, &c. (p.119)

From a condemnation of the various forms in which such finds are placed---e.g. Roman coins---(pp.119f),  Atwater then points out that anything with alphabetical writing on it found so far was European in origin.

 In one word, I will venture to assert, that there never has been found a medal, coin, or monument, in all North America, which had on it one or more letters, belonging to any alphabet, now or ever in use among men of any age or country, that did not belong to Europeans or their descendants, and had been brought or made here since the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. (p.120)

In terms of civilization, Atwater considers the Mound Builders to be between the present-day Indians and the Europeans (p.120)

a people far more civilized than our Indians, but far less so than Europeans (p.120)

As a result, their material culture is of general interest,

to the Antiquarian, the Philosopher, and the Divine (p.120)

Atwater considers the

total absence of all historical records, or even traditionary accounts respecting them (p.121)

an interesting feature, before noting that they are found all over the habited world.

They [i.e. these Antiquities, RCK] were once forts, cemeteries, temples, altars, camps, towns, villages, race grounds, and other places of amusement, habitations of chieftains, videttes, watch towers, monuments, etc. These ancient works, especially the mounds, both of earth and stone, are found in every quarter of the habitable world. (p.121)

Atwater believes that the mound builders came from Asia and clashed with the ancestors of the modern-day Indians somewhere on the eastern side of the Alleghanies (p.122). Moving westwards,

a few small works are occasionally found, especially in Genesee county [this is the 1820 Genesee county!]; but they are few and small, until we arrive at the mouth of the Catarangus creek (p.122)

Atwater then notes that these works increase in density and size from the Lake Erie down to the "Mexican Gulph" as one proceed southwards. (p.122) Atwater was clear about the fact that the depth of burial allowed the distinction between present-day Indians (shallow) or Mound Builders (several feet deep) for material artefacts and skeletons (p.125).

Atwater discredits the idea that a polished piece of marble [a clear sign of a civilization like the Roman or Greek, RCK] was found in Medina county, Ohio; taking it instead to be

a composition of clay and sulphate of lime or plaster of Paris (p.126)

Atwater then turns to individual notable sites, beginning with the Ancient Works near Newark, Ohio (p.126).

Indian Monument Discussions

In an off-cuff remark, J.B. Turner, Mormonism in All Ages (1842), p.190, jokes that the missing tribes must have been hiding in a Symmes' Hole, referring thereby to one of the 19th century Hollow-Earth proponents.

Captain Symmes had not been the first to suggest this idea in 1818, but he found especial notice, and some of his followers, such as James McBridge, the pioneer, published a book of his theory, Symmes's theory of concentric spheres : demonstrating that the earth is hollow, habitable within, and widely open about the poles (1826), and pushed for explorations to find such a passage.

Uncle Dale Broadhurst, as always, has the scoop on how these musings turn up in early and later Mormon history. Ezra Booth had claimed (in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 1834, p.127) that Joseph Smith Jr felt the Northern tribes were in the polar regions, separated by ice and mountains from the rest of the world; and the revelation that was printed in the Evening and Morning Star (May 1833) soon thereafter, writes:

And the Lord even the Savior shall stand in the midst of his people, and shall reign over all flesh. And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord, and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves, and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence. [= D&C 133:26]

Which may not be as clear as we would like it to be, but the north and the rocks and the ice are all there, at any rate.

Dale Broadhurst also argues that the fact that the July 1832 edition of the Evening and Morning Star can cite another article that refers to the theory of Capt. Symmes without any explanations indicates that Symmes was considered common knowledge at this point.

That the Symmes theory was well known in all religious circles of the time is best highlighted by the mention that the Rev. McCalla made in his closing arguments on pedobaptism against Alexander Campbell, where McCalla eschewed discussing the issue again "until an opponent would come from the regions discovered by Captain Simmes", as reported in (Richardson 1870, 2:86).

James McBride was involved in questions of Indian Monuments in other ways as well. He had made drawings that found their way into Squier and Davis' landmark 1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, with which the Smithsonian inaugurated their Contributions to Knowledge series. Even though a landmark in its description, that work was still dominated by the assumption that a different race than the then-living Indians had built the monuments.

In addition to relying on other's artwork, Squier and Davis used travel descriptions to identify what to map, for example, Thaddeus Harris' The journal of a tour into the territory northwest of the Alleghany Mountains ; made in the spring of the year 1803 : with a geographical and historical account of the state of Ohio ; illustrated with original maps and views, printed in Boston in 1805. Or the descriptions of H.M. Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana : containing geographical, statistical and historical notices of that vast and important portion of America (1817) printed in Baltimore.

They also relied on Caleb Atwater's 1819 memoire in the Archaeologia Americana (Vol I, 1820), entitled Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio and other Western States (Uncle Dale Broadhurst has excerpts of Atwater's memoire, too, of course). [Interestingly enough, in that very volume of the Archaeologia Americana, pp.325ff and then pp.333ff, there are discussions on the Indians coming from Asia, mostly due to similarities of physical features. Of course, as some of the authors point out, some people were trying to have the Indians come from Plato's Atlantis (p.340), e.g. Mathieu of Nantes RCK] They may have used Secretary Joseph Moulton and John Yates' History of the state of New-York : including its aboriginal and colonial annals, 1824, as well.

Harris' account was reprinted in volume 3 of Reuben G. Thwaites twenty-plus volume collection, Early Western Travels 1748-1846, printed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1906. Reuben G. Thwaites was an American historian and friend of Frederick Jackson Turner, who would travel the Ohio River for "color" in the way that 19th century military historians like Delbrück would walk battle fields.

Good Middle Age Thinking

After browsing through Richard Hodges book Good Bye to the Vikings?, I was led to the likes of

• Joachim Henning
• Südosteuropa (1987)
• Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzanthium (2007)
• Michael McCormick
• Origins of the European Economy (2002)
• Chris Wickham
• Framing the Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (2007)
• The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (2010)

More to follow.

Mormonism and Me

After another weekend of reading various theories about how the Book of Mormon came into existence---Spalding no, Spalding yes; Revelation versus Fraud; etc etc etc---I felt it was time to summarize my position on the matter.

However, on reflection it occurred to me that the disagreement was really higher up stream than that, and mostly driven by an analogy between Martin Luther and Joseph Smith Jr.

Fundamentally, I see the LDS position on the Old Testament as sketched for example by Ellis T. Rasmussen in the LDS Encyclopedia as untenable. I see the Old Testament as the founding document of the religion that Jesus of Nazareth who became the Christ himself practiced, and into which his movement was embedded historically.

Given the plurality of laws, narratives and words of wisdom that the Old Testament espouses, all of which require filtering from conceptual models that are external to the Old Testament, in order to be applicable to the present-day---such as a cosmopolitan, interracial, gender-sensitive stance---there seems to be little profit of going to that document rather than any other.

This holds especially true for the prophecies of the Old Testament, which I cannot interpret as metaphorically encoded announcements of a divine plan, but rather see as political speculations of the respective and often competing elites of the times of authoring in Palestine and Mesopotamia. (This stance is close to Spinoza's position, though updated to reflect present day scholarship in terms of literary criticism and biblical archaeology.)

When Martin Luther approached the reformation of the Catholic Church, he tried to replace the control of the Church hierarchy with the Bible as a document that he considered unassailable. This position can be explained historically, but it cannot be replicated for a present-day Protestantism that has undergone the transformations of Modernity.

Joseph Smith Jr's restoration attempt flounders on similar points, in that it assumes a biblical primitivism for the Old and New Testament, and critically for its prophetic parts, that cannot be sustained any more than the Lutheran sola scriptura. The problem is that for Smith Jr, this stance is intimately tied to the correctness of his revelatory document, the Book of Mormon. Since the Bible is not a document of divine revelation in the sense that Joseph Smith Jr assumed, neither is the Book of Mormon, however its contents was generated.

It is really not clear how to take a different stance, given the discrepancies between divine control and human freedom in the story of early Mormonism itself. Honestly, it boggles the mind that the Book of Mormon is the product of a divine mind that can give an accurate prediction of how the Reformation will play out hundreds of years before it took place yet is foiled in its revelatory attempts of translating the Golden Plates by the wiles of Martin Harris' wife. To support human freedom in the latter case and divine control in the former is truly confusing.

Rejecting the Ur-Matriarchat

Argument

The base problem of the Ur-Matriarchat, based on the shared religion of the Great Goddess, is the paralogism of a petitio principii; rather than showing that all of the various tribes and locales of the Paleolithic to the demise of the Cretan culture ~1250 bc shared a common notion of the Great Goddess, it presupposes that shared notion.

This is also the main, though not the only way, in which the theory of the Ur-Matriarchat exposes its roots in the 18th and 19th century mode of historical, sociological and anthropological research. Other aspects are:

• Its dependence on patriarchical accounts of the main data points, such as Bachofen and Engels for the idea of the matriarchy, or James Mellaart and Sir Arthur Evans for the excavation and interpretation of Çatalhöyük and Knossos.
• Its dependence on simple process models of historical change, such as the conquest account of the matriarchical tribes through patriarchical Indo-Europeans.
• Its focus on the Western part of Eurasia to the exclusion of all other parts of the world for telling a definitive story of civilization.

Core archaeological components of this story are limited to selected subsets of the evidence of

• paleolithic female statuettes and French cave paintings
• the Cretan palace of Knossos
• the neolithic site of Çatalhöyük 
• the paleolithic and neolithic sites excavated by Marija Gimbutas

which ignore the steadily increasing other forms of evidence--settlement sites for the paleolithic, other statuettes from paleolithic, non-Knossian sites from Crete--for the time period under question that do not readily point toward a Matriarchy of the forms described.

The evidence is especially problematic when looking at the physical anthropology for the interred at Çatalhöyük, which reveals the population to have been on the brink of starvation, severely undernourished and suffering from all forms of nutritional deficiencies--hardly a paradise in any sense of the word.

Ute C. Schmidt has labelled this type of assimilation of the present condition to the past while ignoring the historical evidence as "illusionäre Vergangenheitsaneignung" (illusionary appropriation of the past) [p.142] and warns against it, because it obscures the view for analyzing the actual problems, pinning women down with an immobile conception of a past paradise that is unfortunately lost.

Finally, the lack of reflection of the historiographical setup causes unintended consequences; for example, the Ur-Matriarchat hypothesis is unintentionally racist and anti-semitic: Since the duality is either patriarchy (bad) and matriarchy (good), and there is no argument for matriarchy in the South-East of Çatalhöyük, Israel and the majority of Asia, Africa and the Americas must by necessity be counted on the patriarchical side.

Literature

• Meret Fehlmann, Die Rede vom Matriarchat, 2011.
• Brigitte Röder, Juliane Hummel, Brigitte Kunz: Göttinnendämmerung, 1996 (München : Droemer Knaur), ISBN: 3-426-26887-6.
• Ute C. Schmidt, Vom Rand zur Mitte: Aspekte einer feministischen Perspektive in der Geschichtswissenschaft, Zürich-Dortmund (edition ebersbach), 1994.

Analogy in Archaeology

The book

Röder, Brigitte, Hummel, Juliane, Kunz, Brigitte: Göttinnendämmerung, 1996 (München : Droemer Knaur), ISBN: 3-426-26887-6

suggests on p.168 that p.16 in Ian Hodder's 1982 book

Ian Hodder, The present past: An introduction to anthropology for archaeologists, London 1982. 

is helpful in thinking about archaeological analogy.

Analogien sind ganz allgemein eine Form des Informationstransfers von einem Objekt zum anderen, wobei verbindende Vergleichbarkeiten vorhanden sein müssen (Hodder 1982, 16). [p.168]

Analogies are generally speaking a form of information transfer from one object to another, where comparable features are present (Hodder 1982, 16). [p.168] 

Juliane Hummel, who contributed this chapter, continues

Jede analoge Schlußfolgerung ist an die sozialen und historischen Umstände der interpretierenden Person gebunden und spielt sich grundsätzlich vor dem Hintergrund des jeweiligen persönlichen Wissens und der individuellen Überlegungen über die Welt und die Menschen ab, .... [p.168]

Every analogical conclusion is tied to the social and historical circumstances of the interpreting person and essentially plays out in front of the backdrop of personal knowledge and individual musing about the world and humanity, .... [p.168]  

though she points out that the interpreting persons need not be aware of these limitations and cites Sir Arthur Evans of Krete fame as a good example.

All of this is fundamentally hermeneutic in the iterative deepening circle sense of the word.

Es kann nur das gefunden werden, was dem Interpreten oder der Interpretin bekannt ist. [p.168]

As interpreters, we can only find what we are familiar with. [p.168]

As a minor criticism, I would disagree with that conclusion in the limit case, as its truth would eliminate the possibility of ever learning about any new objects. We are quite capable of realizing that we have never seen anything like it and that a new term is in order.

But I am with Brigitte Röder when she observes that any act of identification is an act of interpretation already.

Schon allein die Feststellung, daß es sich bei ... [einem] ... Bronzeobjekt um ein Schwert handelt, ist eine Analogie auf dem Hintergrund heutigen Wissens. Letztendlich kann nämlich nicht mit endgültiger Sicherheit ge- [p.168] sagt werden, ob ein solcher Gegenstand, nur weil er eine Form aufweist, die uns als "Schwert" vertraut ist, wirklich als Waffe benutzt wurde (Sangmeister 1967, 202). Vielleicht diente er ja als Grabstock oder als Webschwert? [p.168f]

Even the mere identification of some bronze object as a sword is an analogy grounded in present day knowledge. In the limit no one can say definitively [p.168] whether such an object, just because it has a shape that is familiar to us as a "sword", was truly used as a weapon (Sangmeister 1967, 202). Maybe it was used to dig or during weaving? [p.168f]

Thus, analogies never amount to proofs, just as providers of plausibility.

Analogien ... sind der einzige Weg, über einen archäologischen Befund und über Funktion von Gerätschaften Hypothesen zu bilden und den Blick auf Aspekte und Strukturen zu lenken, die die Quellen von sich aus nicht verraten. [p.169]

Analogies ... are the only way to form hypotheses about an archaeological finding and about the function of tools and to put into view aspects and structures that the sources do not reveal by themselves. [p.169]