ANTHROPOLOGY 5334
HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Fall 1995

Dr. David J. Meltzer
Department of Anthropology
Southern Methodist University
Dallas TX

ANTH 5334 is a team­taught survey course (the other instructors are Drs. Kemper, Pulte and Wetherington), covering the history of the major subfields of anthropology: archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnology and linguistics. The focus of the course is the history of ideas and theory. The course arrangement by temporal period is mostly a convenience not always strictly followed. Such an arrangement is not intended to imply that the course goal is simply a chronicle.

The course format is primarily lecture. Grading will be by two equally weighted (30% each), non­cumulative in­class exams, and a cumulative take­home final exam (40%). Each examination will draw on material covered in the lectures and in the required readings, and in the case of the final you will be expected to make extensive use (and citation) of the readings. Take good notes.

The pages that follow list the required and recommended readings. The reading lists for some days straddle two pages, so be sure to check that you don't inadvertently miss any readings. All of the required readings are on Reserve at the ISEM Library, 129 Heroy Hall. There are four texts:

Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer (1988) High Points in Anthropology. A.A. Knopf, New York.

Stocking, G. (1974) A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883­1911. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Willey, G. and J. Sabloff (1993) A History of American Archaeology, 3rd edition. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco.

August 31 WRITING THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ANTHROPOLOGY (Meltzer)

Required reading:

a) Meltzer, D. (1989) A question of relevance. In A. Christenson, ed. Tracing Archaeology's Past: The Historiography of Archaeology, pp. 5­20.

b) Stocking, G. (1968) On the limits of presentism and historicism in the historiography of the behavioral sciences. In G. Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, pp. 1­12.

c) Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Chapter 1 (The relevance of archaeological history).

Recommended reading:

d) Boas, F. (1974) A Franz Boas Reader, ed. G. Stocking, Selection 1 (The history of anthropology).

e) Mayr, E. (1982) How to write a history of biology. In E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp. 1­20.

September 7 ESTABLISHING A PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Chapter 2 (Classical archaeology and antiquarianism).

Recommended Reading:

b) Heizer, R. (1969) Man's Discovery of his Past, pp. 13­23 (Goguet) pp. 73­77 (Mercatus)

RACE AND HUMAN PHYSICAL VARIATION (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) Greene, J. (1959) From Monad to Man. Chapter 5 in The Death of Adam, pp. 129­173.

b) McKee, D. (1944) Isaac de la Peyrere. Publications of the Modern Language Association 59:456­485.

Recommended Reading:

c) Slotkin, J. (1965) Readings in Early Anthropology, pp. 2­6 (Paul of Tarsus through William of Conches); pp. 38­44 (Leonardo da Vinci through Bodin) pp. 81­84 (La Peyrere through Hale); pp. 176­191 (Linneaus through Blumenbach).

September 14 CUSTOMS, CULTURES AND EXPLORATION (Kemper)

Required Reading:

a) Malefijt, A. (1974) Images of Man, Chapters 1 (In the beginning), 2 (Medieval views of man), 3 (Widening horizons), 4 (The rise of science), 5 (The proper study...), and 6 (The fate of reason)

Recommended Reading:

b) Darnell, R. (1974) Readings in the History of Anthropology, pp. 24­31 (Herodotus), and pp. 61­76 (Rowe)

INQUIRIES ABOUT LANGUAGE (Pulte)

Required Reading:

a) Robins, R. (1967) A Short History of Linguistics, Chapters 2 (Greece), 3 (Rome), 4 (The Middle Ages), 5 (The Renaissance), and 6 (The eve of modern times)

Recommended Reading:

b) Darnell, R. (1974) Readings in the History of Anthropology, pp. 152­156 (Burnet)

September 21 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF HUMAN ANTIQUITY, 1800­1860 (Meltzer)

Required reading:

a) Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Chapter 3 (The beginnings of scientific archaeology).

Recommended Reading:

b) Heizer, R. (1969) Man's Discovery of his Past, pp. 7­12 (Steno); pp. 24­29 (Thomsen) and pp. 96­106 (Boucher de Perthes).

SPECIES AND EVOLUTION, 1800­1860 (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) Gould, S. (1981) American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin. Chapter 2 in Mismeasure of man, pp. 30­72.

b) Ruse, M. (1982) On the Origin of Species. Chapter 2 in Darwinism defended, pp. 30­60.

Recommended Reading:

c) Darwin, C. (1859) The Origin of Species, Chapter 14 (Recapitulation and conclusion).

d) Prichard, J. (1813) Researches into the Physical History of Man, Chapter 5 (On the causes which have produced the diversities of the human species).

e) Nott, J. and G. Gliddon (1854) Types of Mankind, Chapter 1 (Geographical distribution of animals, and the races of men), Chapter 2 (General remarks on types of mankind).

September 28 19TH CENTURY ETHNOLOGY (Kemper)

Required Reading:

a) Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer, (1973) High Points in Anthropology, pp. 32­60 (Morgan); pp. 63­78 (Tylor)

Recommended Reading:

b) Carneiro, R. (1981) Herbert Spencer as an anthropologist. The Journal of Libertarian Studies 5(2):153­210.

19TH CENTURY LINGUISTICS (Pulte)

Required Reading:

a) Robins, R. (1967) A Short History of Linguistics, Chapter 7 (Comparative and historical linguistics in the nineteenth century).

Recommended Reading:

b) Haas, M. (1952) Grammar or Lexicon? The American Indian Side of the Question from Duponceau to Powell, IJAL 35:239­255.

c) Boas, F. (1917) Introduction to IJAL, in Boas, (1940) Race, Language and Culture, pp. 199­210.

d) Boas, F. (1920) The classification of American languages, in Boas, (1940) Race, Language and Culture, pp. 211­225.

October 5 FIRST EXAMINATION

October 12 ETHNOLOGY FROM THE 1890s to 1920 AND THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY (Kemper)

Required Reading:

a) Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer (1973) High Points in Anthropology, pp. 84­99 (Boas).

b) Boas, F. (1974) A Franz Boas Reader, ed. G. Stocking, Selection 7 (The principles of ethnological classification).

c) Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer (1973) High Points in Anthropology, pp. 233­261 (Durkheim), pp. 264­271 (Mauss).

d) Stocking, G. (1960) Franz Boas and the founding of the American Anthropological Association. American Anthropologist, 62:1­17.

e) Stocking, G. (1976) Ideas and institutions in American anthropology: thoughts toward a history of the Interwar years. In Selected Papers from the American Anthropologist, 1921­1945, ed. G. Stocking, pp. 1­50.

Recommended Reading:

f) Boas, F. (1974) A Franz Boas Reader, ed. G. Stocking, Selection 8 (The aims of ethnology); Selection 35 (The Boas plan for American anthropology); Selection 47 (Scientists as spies).

October 19 EUROPEAN PALEOLITHIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1860­1920, AND 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Chapter 4 (The imperial synthesis).

b) Willey, G. and J. Sabloff (1993) A History of American Archaeology, Chapter 2 & 3 (The speculative period and The classificatory­descriptive period).

Recommended Reading:

c) Kroeber, A. (1916) Zuni potsherds. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 18 (1):7­37.

d) Meltzer, D. (1983) The antiquity of man and the development of American archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 6:1­51.

e) Nelson, N. (1917) Chronology of the Tano Ruins, New Mexico. American Anthropologist, 18:159­80.
f) Sackett, J. (1981) From de Mortillet to Bordes: a century of French Paleolithic research. In Towards a History of Archaeology, ed. G. Daniel, pp. 85­99.

October 26 PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY & HOMINID EVOLUTION, 1860 to 1960 (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) McCown, T. and K. Kennedy (1972) Introduction to Part 3, 1890­1925. In Climbing Man's Family Tree, pp. 189­194.

b) Spencer, F. and F. Smith (1981) The significance of Ales Hrdlicka's "Neanderthal Phase of Man": a historical and current assessment. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 56:435­459.

Recommended reading:

c) Boas, F. (1974) A Franz Boas Reader, ed. G. Stocking, Sel. 29 (Changes in immigrant body form), Sel. 30 (Instability of human types).

d) Heizer, R. (1969) Man's Discovery of his Past, pp. 34­40 (Weiner, Oakley and LeGros Clark); pp. 153­167 (Dubois); pp. 168­176 (Dart).

e) McCown, T. and K. Kennedy (1972) Climbing Man's Family Tree, pp. 257­ 285 (Hrdlicka).

f) Mayr, E. (1950) Taxonomic categories in fossil hominids. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15:109­118.

g) Montagu, A. (1973) The Origin and Evolution of Man, pp. 217­232 (Straus and Cave).

November 2 LINGUISTICS FROM THE 1890s to 1965 (Pulte)

Required Reading:

a) Robins, R. (1967) A Short History of Linguistics, Chapter 8.

Recommended Reading:

b) Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer (1973) High Points in Anthropology, pages 143­173 (Sapir and Whorf).

c) Hymes, D. (1964) Language and Culture in Society, Chapter 3 (Goodenough), Chapter 5 (Pike).

November 9 SECOND EXAMINATION

November 16 AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY to 1962 (Meltzer)

Required Reading:

a) Trigger, B. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Chapter 5 (Culture­historical archaeology).

b) Willey, G. and J. Sabloff (1993) A History of American Archaeology, Chapters 4 & 5 (The classificatory­historical period: concern with chronology; and The classificatory­historical period: the concern with context and function).

Recommended Reading:

c) Binford, L.R. (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity, 28:217­225.

d) Heizer, R. (1969) Man's Discovery of his Past, pp. 64­68 (Libby, Anderson and Arnold).

e) Kidder, A. (1936) Speculations on New World prehistory. In Essays in Anthropology, ed. R. Lowie, pp. 143­151.

f) McKern, W. (1939) The Mid­western taxonomic method as an aid to archaeological study. American Antiquity, 4:301­313.

g) Steward, J. and F. Setzler (1938) Function and configuration in archaeology. American Antiquity, 4(l):4­10.

November 23 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY *** NO CLASS

November 30 PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY & HUMAN BIOLOGY 1940 to 1960 (Wetherington)

Required Reading:

a) Pollitzer, W. (1981) The development of genetics and populations studies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 56:483­489.

Recommended Reading:
b) Brace, C. (1962) A non­racial approach toward the understanding of human diversity. In The Concept of Race, ed. A. Montagu.


December 7 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1920 to 1960 (Kemper)

Required Reading:

a) Murphy, R. (1976) Introduction: A Quarter Century of American Anthropology, In Selected Papers from the American Anthropologist, 1946-1970, pp. 1­22.

b) Stocking, G. (1984) Radcliffe­Brown and British social anthropology. History of Anthropology, 2:131­191.

Recommended Reading:

c) Bohannan, P. and M. Glazer (1973) High Points in Anthropology, pp. 100­126 (Kroeber); pp. 174­183 (Benedict); pp. 272­293 (Malinowski); pp. 294­317 (Radcliffe­Brown); pp. 319­332 (Steward); pp. 333­355 (White); pp. 371­409 (Levi­Strauss); pp. 429­449 (Sahlins).

December 13 FINAL EXAMINATION DUE AT 11:00 AM