CHARLES FRANCIS HOCKETT died in Ithaca, New York, on Nov 3, 2000, after
a short illness. He was 84.
Hockett was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan 17, 1916. He graduated from
the Ohio State U in June 1936. Thereafter he attended Yale for three years
and studied under Edward Sapir, George P Murdock, Leslie Spier, Morris
Swadesh, George L Trager and Benjamin Whorf, majoring in anthropology and
linguistics.
His PhD, granted in June 1939, was based on fieldwork with the Potawatomi
Indians of Wisconsin. After some additional months of fieldwork in Oklahoma
and Michoacán, Mexico, and two years of postdoctoral study at the
Universities of Chicago and Michigan, Hockett was drafted into the US Army
in Feb 1942. On furlough in Apr of that year, he married Shirley Orlinoff
of Queens, New York. After basic training he was transferred to Army Service
Forces, and in late 1942 he accompanied General Stillwell’s officers to
their headquarters in Bengal, India, supervising their learning of Chinese
while en route. Afterward Hockett was stationed for several years in New
York City, preparing language-training materials. He was dispatched to
Tokyo after the surrender of Japan to help train American troops in Japanese.
In Feb 1946 he was separated from the army, but he was called back for
the summer of 1950 to teach at the Praesidio of Monterey, California.
In 1945 Hockett came to Cornell U as an assistant professor of linguistics
in charge of elementary Chinese, joining the newly founded Division of
Modern Languages. In due time Hockett was promoted to full professor and
finally to a Goldwin Smith Professorship, his rank at the time of retirement
in 1982.
While at Cornell, Hockett designed the pattern for a series of textbooks
on English as a second language. In 1955 he published A Course in Modern
Linguistics, which became the standard text in the field for about 20 years.
He published many technical papers, mostly in linguistics, and he supervised
the work of about 90 graduate students who are now teaching at universities
all over the world.
Hockett was president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1972,
president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States
in 1982 and Distinguished Lecturer of the AAA in 1986. Beginning in 1986,
he was first visiting professor, then adjunct professor of linguistics
at Rice U in Houston, Texas, an appointment still in effect at the time
of his death.
Hockett was a well-trained musician, playing flute and piccolo in high
school and college and later switching to bass clarinet, which he played
for many years in the Ithaca Concert Band. He also composed piano music,
songs, marches, an opera (twice performed at Ithaca College) and chamber
music. In Apr 2000 a concert of his music was performed at Ithaca College
by his daughter, pianist Alpha Hockett Walker, and her husband David Weiss,
principal oboist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hockett is survived by a loving family: his wife Shirley Hockett; daughters
Alpha Hockett Walker, Amy Robin Rose, Rachel Hockett Youngman and Carey
Beth Hockett; and son Asher Orlinoff Hockett. A celebration of Hockett’s
life is planned for the spring of 2001. Anyone wishing to make a contribution
in his memory should direct it to the School of Music of Ithaca College,
which he enthusiastically supported.
MIYATA NOBORU, 64, died unexpectedly and prematurely on Feb 10, 2000,
of complications from surgery. Born in 1936, he taught at the Tokyo U of
Education (now the U of Tsukuba), where he received his PhD in 1966, before
he moved to the U of Kanagawa. He almost single-handedly “refashioned”
the Japanese school of ethnography (minzokugaku), founded by Yanagita Kunio
(1875-1962), whose focus was studies of socially marginal people with a
major emphasis on the rural communities. Following Yanagita, who introduced
fieldwork, he tirelessly traveled all over Japan, not only horizontally
but also vertically, climbing most mountains because various religions
related to mountain worship were a major concern of his. His work later
extended to studies of Koreans and Chinese.
Alway in touch with academic developments in Japan and abroad, Miyata
sensed that the “rural” was increasingly in the imagination of the people
and set out to expand the field to cover urban folk as well. He was also
a pioneer in the field of historical anthropology. In fact, his career
began as a specialist in the folk culture of Edo (Early Modern) period.
As a most prolific scholar, he published some 30 single-authored books,
some 20 coauthored books and innumerable articles (for an extensive coverage
of his scholarly work, see E. Ohnuki-Tierney, “Other Anthropological Traditions:
Japan,” AA vol 99 no 4:833-35).
His magnum opus Research on the Belief in Maitreya—Messianic Visions
in Japanese Tradition (1970), in which he describes millenarian movements
toward the end of the Edo period. Because of his interest in folk beliefs
and rituals, he was led to write extensively on women, especially the religious
power accrued to women, both in life and in imagination: street entertainers,
famous murdered women, nuns, female shamans, ghosts, prostitutes and demons.
As a historical anthropologist, his interests naturally turned to the concepts
of time and calendar. He argued that the Japanese emperor was the controller
of ritual and, thus, time. Far from being an ideological one-liner, his
arguments are complex, buttressed with an enormous range of information,
as exemplified in his multivocality of the color “white,” of which he elucidated
not only myriad meanings but also links to social discrimination.
He was known to be a most generous scholar, who tirelessly took care
of his colleagues, old and young, and Japanese and non-Japanese. Those
who were helped by him, in scholarship and job searches, are not only all
over Japan but in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and
elsewhere. In social and academic gatherings, he was a genius in interpreting
the atmosphere, often breaking a tense situation with his characteristic
humor and, at times, his “hidden talent,” such as reading the palm.
As the news of his untimely death traveled all over the world, there
was an unusual sense of disbelief, or in fact the denial of the news, and
deep sadness on the part of his colleagues and friends. He was indeed a
much respected and loved scholar/colleague for so many of us. (Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney)
WILLIAM C ROSEBERRY, 50, well-known specialist in Latin American ethnography
and advocate of historical anthropology, died in New York City on August
12, 2000. He was born in Little Rock, AK on April 25, 1950 and received
his BA from Southern Methodist U. After spending two years in Venezuela
doing fieldwork, Bill was awarded his doctorate from the U of Connecticut
at the age of twenty-seven. He spent over twenty-years in the Department
of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. In 1999 he moved
to New York U, where he was appointed Professor of History and Latin American
Studies. His illness came very soon thereafter. His death is a sudden and
terrible blow to his family, friends and colleagues.
Bill Roseberry made significant contributions to social history and
anthropology. He wrote and edited five books and over 35 articles, among
them his ethnography, Coffee and Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes (1983),
and a book of essays, Anthropologies and Histories (1989). He wrote in
the tradition of “political economy” yet throughout his career rejected
the broader frameworks many associate with that approach. He insisted that
an historical perspective should inform anthropological theory. For Bill,
anthropology’s strength lay in the way detailed ethnography resisted sweeping
historical generalizations. He turned increasingly to the work of Raymond
Williams and the British Marxist historians. It was his careful, subtle
and critical reading of their works that informed his teaching and allowed
him to bring his own special perspective to the kind of anthropology done
by Eric Wolf, for whom he had profound admiration and a long friendship.
For Bill anthropology was political; he sought throughout his career
to interrogate intellectual honesty with political relevance. He disdained
academic fashions and at times despaired at the opportunistic direction
that anthropology sometimes took. He addressed these issues in his latest
publication, a political economy of US anthropology.
From the mid 1990s until his death Bill worked on historical materials
in Morelos and became deeply involved in teaching and giving papers and
seminars in Michoacan. His many friends there wrote, “He was exceptionally
tolerant as we struggled to understand his incredibly clear understandings.
He never seemed angry or impatient, only sometimes, very quiet. In this
brief time Bill established a central place amongst us. We deeply mourn
his loss and we will celebrate his memory for many generations to come.”
Besides his body of published work, Bill’s legacy includes the large
number of students he trained. His colleagues, young and old, will miss
his inspiration and above all the example of his integrity. He is survived
by his compañera, also an anthropologist and a co-author with Bill,
Nicole Polier, their daughter Alison and his son Ben. (Gavin Smith))
ALEXANDER SONEK, 60, an accomplished physical anthropologist and expert
in forensics, passed away on April 13, 2000. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1939,
he developed a fascination early in life for geographical expeditions and
far off lands, a curiosity that helped lead him to anthropology. He completed
his undergraduate education at CUNY and earned his PhD at the U of Oregon
in 1969. After a brief stint at the U of Nebraska he joined the Department
of Anthropology at San Diego State in 1968.
In his 30 years of teaching, Alex’s interests and classes spanned the
gamut of physical anthropology, from primate anatomy and behavior to palaeopathology.
His wit and stunning sense of humor made many of his classes very popular
with students, but along with the entertainment came the demanding and
challenging workload characteristic of his courses. He was an enthusiastic
advocate of independent learning and sponsored many students in independent
studies. Alex began working as a forensic consultant for the Medical Examiner’s
Office of San Diego County and later became a consultant for the Office
of the Coroner for San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties. He was known
in the field for his work with footprints, footprint impressions and footwear
patterns, as well as for the analysis of human remains. He served as an
expert in both civil and criminal court. One of the inspiring qualities
Alex had was his curiosity and enthusiasm for his work. Even after 13 years
as a forensic anthropologist, at the outset of every new case, he felt
the challenge and excitement of having the opportunity to learn something
new.
Outside of the academic arena Alex was a bit of a thrill-seeker. He
enjoyed rock and mountain climbing, spelunking and hot air ballooning.
In the 1980s he enjoyed an amateur career as a bullfighter, leading him
to be known throughout Tijuana as El Niño de la Muleta (The Child
of the Cape). His less energetic pastimes included spending time on his
beloved Coronado beach, reading Ian Fleming novels, theater and photography.
Those who knew Alex found him a very private man. We each knew a side of
him, but never the whole. He had a razor sharp wit and an unparalleled
sense of humor. Time spent in his company either in a lecture, at a conference
or over lunch was never dull.
A memorial service was held in San Diego on April 23 of this year.
For his friends, colleagues and students the memory of his genuine and
original personality can never be forgotten and his kindness and generosity
will always be remembered. (Elizabeth Waldman)
EDWARD BRIDGE DANSON, 84, an expert in presenting anthropology to the
public through museums and park management, died peacefully at his home
in Sedona, AZ on November 30, 2000. Born in Glendale, OH on March 22, 1916,
Ned was the youngest of the three children. His father, Edward Bridge,
died when Ned was almost eleven, so that Ned was raised by his mother,
Ann Allen Danson. He attended the Asheville School in North Carolina and
Hughes High School in Cincinnati.
Young Ned was a serious car buff. Late in his life he could recall
the make, year and features of every car that he, his parents, relatives
and friends had ever owned. In the fall of 1933 he skidded while drag racing
a friend to high school, missed a turn and forced three oncoming vehicles
off the road. Within days his mother, who had been in the third car, arranged
for her 17-year-old son to ship out on the maiden voyage around the world
of the schooner Yankee (1933-35). That trip was a defining experience for
Ned. He observed the diversity of world cultures and acquired social skills
that served him well throughout his life.
He entered Cornell U in 1935 but fell in love with Arizona while helping
his uncle to start a guest ranch there. He transferred to the U of Arizona
(BA, 1940) and began graduate study in anthropology in 1941 under Emil
Haury, who became a life-long friend. In 1942 Ned joined the Navy and served
as a communication officer in the Pacific. He married Jessica MacMaster
in 1942; they had two children, Jan (Haury) in 1944, Ted in 1947. Ned returned
to graduate work at the U of Arizona in 1946 but soon transferred to Harvard
U where he received his MA (1948) and PhD (1952) degrees. He taught anthropology
at the U of Colorado (1948-50) and the U of Arizona (1950-56), where he
was also Assistant Director of the Archaeological Field School at Point
of Pines.
In 1956 Ned became Assistant Director of the Museum of Northern Arizona.
In 1958 he was appointed Director, a position he held until 1975 when he
became President of the Board of Trustees. Ned had a highly effective style
of leadership that guided the Museum from a family-funded organization
to a more institutionalized one. Ned broadened its funding base, modernized
its governance, expanded research, enhanced public programs, created opportunities
for students and prepared the Museum for the changes of the late 20th century.
During his tenure the permanent staff increased sevenfold and the budget
grew from $65,000 to more than 1.6 million.
A passionate supporter of the national parks, Ned served on the Secretary
of the Interior’s Advisory Board on National Parks (1958-64) and received
the Department of the Interior Conservation Award in 1986. He was also
on the board of the Southwest Parks and Monuments Association (1958-86)
which established in 1986 the annual Edward B Danson Distinguished Associate
award for contributions to greater public understanding of the importance
of the national parks. (Raymond H Thompson)
PETER R GOETHALS, 73, Southeast Asian anthropologist, died of prostate
cancer on May 8, 2000, at his home in Holualoa, Hawaii. He was the grandson
of General George W Goethals, chief engineer in the construction of the
Panama Canal and first governor of the Canal Zone. Peter served in the
US Navy in the Pacific from 1944-46. He received his AB cum laude in anthropology
from Harvard in 1950 and his PhD in anthropology from Yale in 1961. His
doctoral research was on kinship and marriage in western Sumbawa, Indonesia.
Peter taught at the U of Virginia, the U of North Carolina and Duke U.
He was Senior Fellow at the Culture Learning Institute, East-West Center,
Honolulu, (1971-73) and was director of the Social Science Research Training
Station at Hassanuddin U in Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi (1976-77). He also
did field work in Malaysia on the social organization of landlordtenant
relationships among padi farmers and problems of agricultural reform. In
Sabah he made a study of the administration of native law and custom. Peter
also worked as an applied anthropologist for the USAID on development in
Indonesia and the training of community health workers in the Third World.
Peter was deeply influenced by anthropological linguistics when at
Yale and much of his subsequent work reflected that interest. He has left
a manuscript of a Sumbawan-English dictionary as well as other documents
on the language and folktales of Sumbawa.
Peter was my close friend and colleague since undergraduate days in
1946. He was a lovely man, with empathy for others, a positive outlook
on life and a wry sense of humor. He is remembered not only for his kindness
but his intelligence, grace and well-honed sense of right and wrong. He
scoffed at cant in anthropology and slippery scholarship by those scrambling
for status. He always took the side of those without voice in development
planning and politics. He was one of the first to be concerned about the
ethics of anthropological research and contributed to the report of the
AAA Beals’ Committee on ethics in anthropology.
He will be sorely missed by friends and colleagues. For his 50th reunion
book at Harvard (2000), he wrote that his research and projects in Indonesia
and Malaysia had “demonstrated not only the universally vital linkage between
sound research and effective social science teaching, but also the value
potential of “hands on” development assistance . . . (such as, for example,
teaching in the language of the host country) . . . reminders of highly-intractable,
long-range problems abound: authoritarian government, unchecked population
growth and rampant ecological destruction . . . there is so much worldwide
disarray, rootlessness, conflict and resource discrepancy between groups
that tough and tumultuous times lie in the near future.”
He leaves his wife and childhood sweetheart, the author Sandol Stoddard,
a daughter, Stephanie Goethals Grobel, by his first wife, and two grandchildren.
(G N Appell)
WILLIAM G HAAG, 90, died in New Roads, Louisiana, on October 19, 2000.
Haag was one of the last survivors of some twenty significant American
archaeologists who came of age during the Great Depression. These scholars
carried out the WPA or “Federal Relief Archaeology” projects, hiring unemployed
farmers to open up literally hundreds of excavations in the southeastern
states. This research led to new perceptions of the culture sequences that
were uncovered and changed forever the archaeology of the eastern US.
Haag was born in Henderson, KY in 1910. He got his BS (1932) and his
MS in Geology (1933) at the U of Kentucky in Lexington. Right out of the
university he began to do archaeology in his home state and in Tennessee.
Projects for the Tennessee Valley Authority were his first jobs. He supervised
many large excavations covering a wide range of time periods. Haag would
continue to be active in archaeological fieldwork for almost 50 years.
Although known for his field activities in the Southeastern US, Haag also
carried out projects in the Caribbean and even Middle America. Some of
his best known publications were on the Bering Strait and the osteology
of Indian dogs.
Haag’s teaching was just as broad and active. He taught first at the
U of Kentucky and then took his PhD in Ethnozoology (1948) at the U of
Michigan, where Leslie White influenced him. After Army service in World
War II, he taught briefly in Kentucky and then at Ol’ Miss at Oxford for
several years. Finally Haag migrated to LSU at Baton Rouge, where he taught
for 26 years till his retirement in 1978.
Haag’s publications were numerous. However, one could say that his
largest impact was on people. His students and colleagues gathered together
twice to honor him, first with a Festschrift in 1981 and then, in 1994,
with a special volume of Louisiana Archaeology. Haag had a wide range of
intellectual interests and was also a Civil War buff. He was a wise and
thoughtful parent of four sons. Hope, his wife of 40 years, died in 1977.
Later, he remarried “Toppy” Olinde Smith and they had nearly two decades
of great happiness.
He was a respected scholar of great breadth but will best be remembered
for what he was as a human being: a beloved teacher, a great friend and
an indomitable spirit. He died after almost a decade of illness from prostate
cancer. Until his death he remained that wonderful Kentucky gentleman who
approached every crisis with a smile and a great turn of phrase. (Stephen
Williams)
DAVID WAYNE PERI, 62, passed away on Dec 1, 2000, following an illness.
Peri had been a faculty member of the Anthropology Department at Sonoma
State University since 1969, where he had served as Chair, Coordinator
of the American Studies Program and Chair of the Division of American Ethnic
Studies. An insightful and dedicated teacher, Peri delighted in introducing
students to his craft in the way that he himself had been introduced: through
an attentive and highly personal mentorship. Yet Peri’s teaching also drew
from his Native American heritage. Like Old Man Coyote, Peri was a gifted
raconteur who taught through the magic of tales. At Peri’s memorial, which
was held on what would have been his 63rd birthday, many of his former
students and colleagues joined his family and friends, recalling their
own stories of Peri.
Peri virtually embodied the history of American anthropology, starting
with his apprenticeship under Alfred Kroeber. As a Bodega Miwok and member
of the Olamentko tribe himself, Peri devoted his career to documenting
the heritage of California Native American culture and to enhancing educational
opportunities for his community. Peri’s ethnographic fieldwork focused
on California Native American groups, including the Pomo, Yurok, Miwok,
Yokuts, Cahuila, Nisenan, Maidu, Patwin, Tolowa, Wappo and Washo peoples.
He also worked in Nevada with Paiute and Mono communities and as far afield
as the Pacific Northwest and American Great Plains and Southwest. One of
the pioneers in the visual anthropology of California Native Americans,
Peri leaves a legacy of many award-winning ethnographic and educational
films.
In 1981, Peri received an environmental award from the Army Corps of
Engineers for his work on botanical mitigation for the Warm Springs Dam
Project. A novel part of this project involved salvaging and recultivation
of sedges and other plants of cultural significance to local native populations.
His developing interest in ethnobotany became a specialty that would mark
the remainder of his career.
Ever active in California Native American affairs, Peri served as President
and Chairman of the Board for Sonoma County’s Ya-Ka-Ama Indian Education
and Development, Inc. He was a frequent consultant to school boards, government
agencies and nonprofit organizations developing Native American educational
programs and k-12 curricula.
David Peri is survived by his mother, Freda Peri, his sister, Carolyn
McNulty, and his nephews Adam and Blake McNulty. Contributions in Peri’s
memory may be made to Ya-Ka-Ama Indian Education and Development, Inc,
6215 Eastside Rd, Forestville, CA 95436-9450. (Richard J Senghas)
JAMES F DEETZ, 70, world-renowned historical archaeologist, died of
pneumonia on November 25, 2000 in Charlottesville, VA. He was born in Cumberland,
MD and received his undergraduate training in anthropology at Harvard U,
where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1957 and earned his PhD three years
later. Deetz began to teach anthropology at Harvard in 1957 and led excavations
of pilgrims’ houses near the original landing site around Plymouth. He
found a lifelong interest when introduced to efforts to establish Plimoth
Plantation, a reconstruction designed as an outdoor history museum in Plymouth,
Mass. The museum was meant to bring to life the story of the pilgrims in
the year 1627, just before they dispersed throughout what became known
as Plymouth Colony.
In 1960 Deetz accepted an appointment at the U of California, Santa
Barbara; he rose to full professor of anthropology there by 1966. After
that, he taught at Brown, the U of Cape Town and UC Berkeley. When Deetz
was a visiting professor of New World studies at the U of Virginia, in
1994, he was appointed Harrison Professor of historical archeology.
Deetz was one of the country’s foremost specialists in colonial North
America. His studies, spanning several decades, focused on the earliest
English settlements in New England and Virginia. He was counted among the
“new” American archaeologists who sought to build a general theory of anthropological
archaeology. He advocated a definition of culture “as a mental construct,
not directly observable, but understandable through its various objectifications,
be it ritual practice, social structure or the material world.” Influenced
by structuralism, Deetz sought to discern patterns underlying historical
finds that reflected changes in past human behavior, values and thought.
He and his colleague, Ted Dethlefsen, published a series of papers on stylistic
changes in old New England gravestones. He also wrote articles on ceramics,
the “ethnogastronomy” of Thanksgiving and African-American settlers at
Plymouth. During his stay in South Africa he applied the same methods and
approach to the excavation of the “English frontier” on the eastern Cape
during the nineteenth century. His several books, clearly written in an
accessible style, include Invitation to Archaeology, In Small Things Forgotten:
The Archaeology of Early American Life (both still widely read) and, most
recently, The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love and Death in Plymouth Colony.
This last book was co-authored with his second wife, Patricia Scott Deetz,
a cultural historian.
James F Deetz is survived by six sons (James C, of Berkeley, CA; Joseph,
of Mendon, MA; Eric, of Williamsburg, VA; Geoffrey, of Oakland, CA; Joshua,
of Taipei, Taiwan; and Hartman, of Mashpee, MA), four daughters (Antonia
D Rock of Williamsburg, VA; Kristen and Cynthia Deetz of Albany, CA; and
Kelley Deetz-Mallios of Williamsburg, VA), one sister (Barbara Deetz of
Charlottesville, VA) and 16 grandchildren. His earlier marriage to Eleanore
Kelley Deetz, a resident of Albany, CA, ended in divorce. A memorial fund
has been established in Jim’s honor to support the Plimoth Plantation Museum.
Donations may be sent to: James F Deetz Fund, Plimoth Plantation, PO Box
1620, Plymouth, MA 02362. (Excerpted in part from an obituary in the New
York Times, Nov 28, 2000, and from the tribute posted at http://minerva.acc.virginia.edu/~anthro/
faculty.html)
GERMAINE DIETERLEN, 95, world-renowned authority on the religion of
the Dogon of Mali, died on November 13, 1999 in Paris. Born in 1903, Dieterlen
was the doyenne of French ethnology. A pupil of Marcel Griaule, she carried
out the longest program of fieldwork in one society (continuing intermittently
from 1936 to 1998) ever attempted. She developed, with passionate energy,
Griaule’s initial studies, documenting the richness of symbolic thought
in this African society. Dieterlen recorded Dogon cosmology, myths, rites
and technology, contending that no fieldwork can ever be completely finished.
Nevertheless, she extended her inquiry to include the Bambara, neighbors
of the Dogon, and discovered what she described as “variants of the same
system of thought.” She also studied the religious life of the Peul pastoralists
and Soninke texts from ancient Ghana. She was the first scholar to occupy
a chair dedicated to the study of African religions at the Ecole Pratique
des Hautes Etudes and kept this position until 1973. In that year she joined
other scholars at the CNRS to pursue a vast comparative study of religious
phenomena in western and equatorial Africa. She also became honorary director
of research at the National Center for Scientific Research/Centre national
de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).
Dieterlen’s first major work—co-authored with Marcel Griaule, who was
recognized posthumously—was Le renard pâle (1965). It presents the
cosmology of the Dogon as an extremely elaborate and coherent intellectual
construction. Responding to critics who thought that Dogon cosmological
thought could not be so extensive or systematic, Dieterlen argued that
this esoteric knowledge was held by only a limited number of curious minds,
the intellectuals of a non-literate society.
In 1982 she published Le titre d’honneur des Arou, an ethnography of
the enthronement ceremonies of a Dogon religious master, the hogon. The
book is mainly an analysis of the long text in the Dogon language that
constitutes the “honorary title” of the hogon.
Germaine Dieterlen did a great deal to bring about a rapprochement
between French ethnology and British social anthropology. She maintained
the most cordial relations with Daryll Forde and Meyer Fortes. Finally,
she collaborated closely with the filmmaker Jean Rouch and was elected
President of the French Committee on Ethnographic film.
Little inclined to sociological analysis and fundamentally hostile
to all forms of theorizing, she always gave first and absolute priority
to fieldwork. She proudly proclaimed that she was an ethnographer and not
an ethnologist. Indeed, Germaine Dieterlen was a great ethnographer. She
died surrounded by the affection of the Dogon and by that of her very many
European friends. (Based on an obituary by Luc de Heusch; translation by
William C Young. See also Anthropology Today 16, no 2:25-6.) (Photo: R
M A Bedaux)
HERBERT C KRAFT, 73, a specialist in the archaeology of New Jersey’s
earliest inhabitants, the Lenape, died of cancer on October 31, 2000 in
his hometown of Elizabeth, NJ. Kraft began searching for Indian artifacts
near his birth place while he was still a boy. He studied as an undergraduate
at Seton Hall U, from which he graduated in 1950, and received a master’s
degree in history from Seton Hall (1961) and in anthropology from Hunter
College (1969). He joined the anthropology faculty at Seton Hall in 1950.
He amassed thousands of artifacts for the Seton Hall museum, where he was
a curator and director, and scoured archives for Dutch manuscripts about
the Lenape in order to reconstruct their history. He also consulted with
Lenape in Oklahoma and Canada to fill in the gaps left by written records.
In the mid-1960s Kraft conducted archaeological excavations in the
upper Delaware Valley and elsewhere in New Jersey for the National Park
Service. During the 1970s he also carried out extensive excavations and
testing at the proposed site of the Tocks Island Dam, which would have
flooded a large portion of the middle Delaware Valley. Finally, he also
contributed to cultural resource management by helping to plan and build
the Indian village reconstruction at historic Waterloo Village in Stanhope,
New Jersey.
Herbert Kraft wrote twelve books about the colonial period in New Jersey
before his retirement in 1998. He was the author of The Lenape or Delaware
Indians: The Original People of New Jersey, Southeastern New York State,
Eastern Pennsylvania, which was issued in paperback and is widely read.
His latest book, The Lenape Indian Heritage: 10,000 BC to 2000 AD is scheduled
for publication this year. Kraft also authored over 200 scholarly articles.
His numerous pamphlets, written for elementary school children, helped
dispel popular misconceptions about the original inhabitants of New Jersey.
He is survived by his wife of 50 years, three daughters (Linda Richardi
of Randolph, NY; Elizabeth Anna Howanitz of Union, NJ; and Joanne Palumbo
of Kenilworth, NJ), four sons (John, Daniel, Gerard and Louis, all residents
of New Jersey), two brothers and 18 grandchildren.
KENNETH LEE PIKE, 88, internationally recognized linguist, educator
and Christian thinker, died December 31, 2000 in Dallas, TX after a brief
illness. Pike’s contributions to linguistics, combined with his dedication
to the non-literate societies of the world, brought him nominations for
the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Templeton
Prize.
Kenneth Pike was born in East Woodstock, CT, on June 9, 1912. His father,
Ernest, was a country doctor who had briefly served as a medical missionary
to the Tsimshian Indians in Alaska. His father’s religious convictions
and memories of the Tsimshian greatly influenced Pike, who vowed to become
a missionary. He was admitted to Gordon College of Theology and Missions
(then in Boston) in 1929 and graduated in 1933. Pike joined the Wycliffe
Bible Translators in 1935 and went with them to Mexico, hoping to produce
a translation of the Bible into Mixtec. He needed further training, however,
and his superiors sent him to the U of Michigan to study with Edward Sapir.
He received his PhD in Linguistics under Charles Fries for his work in
phonetics in 1941. In 1948 Pike joined the U of Michigan faculty; he taught
there for 30 years. He also served as President of the Linguistic Society
of America and the Linguistic Association of Canada and the US and was
a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Pike became President of
the Summer Institute of Linguistics (U of Oklahoma) in 1942 and continued
in that role until 1979, dividing his time between the U of Michigan and
the SIL.
Pike’s Phonetics (1943) was widely reviewed and is still in print.
Another major work was Phonemics (1947), which added to his growing reputation
as a scholar. In 1948 Pike decided to examine grammar and started hunting
for a grammatical unit that would be analogous to the phoneme in phonology.
He realized, however, that grammar was not limited to speech, since it
was manifest in writing as well. This led him to try to construct a more
general theory of patterning that could cover all culturally-patterned
behavior in addition to speech. His approach, presented in Language in
Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (1967),
was called tagmemics. It owed much to structural linguistics and was intended
as an applied method for solving problems in translating English texts
into non-written languages. Pike intuited that the solutions lay both beyond
the sentence in discourse and beyond discourse itself in the socio-cultural
frameworks in which the languages were used.
One aspect of Pike’s approach became a major contribution to the social
sciences in general. This was his distinction between etics and emics.
He coined the terms in 1954, attracting the attention of Marvin Harris,
who used the distinction in his 1964 book, The Nature of Cultural Things.
In addition to his contributions to the field of linguistics, Pike
was a prolific poet and Christian philosopher. In his book, With Heart
and Mind, Pike defended scholarly and intellectual approaches to Christianity,
maintaining that Christian faith and academic scholarship can be intimately
integrated.
Pike is survived by his wife, Evelyn, three children (Judith Schram,
Barbara Ibach and Stephen Pike), three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren
and one sister. Memorial gifts may be sent to the Pike Scholarship Fund
at SIL International, 7500 W Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas, TX 75236.
ROLAND VON STEEN RICHERT, 86, an archaeologist who specialized in the
American Southwest, died on June 7, 2000 in Globe, AZ. He was born in Newton,
KS on December 18, 1913 and attended high school there. He began his university
studies at Bethel College in Newton and, after graduating, went on to the
U of Arizona in Tucson, where he received his master’s degree in archaeology.
From 1938 to 1941 Richert worked for the National Park Service and from
1941 to 1946 he served in the US army. He saw combat in the New Guinea
and Philippine campaigns. After demobilization he returned to the Park
Service and worked as a ranger until, in 1951, he was promoted to a specialized
unit in Chaco Canyon National Monument (now called the Chaco Culture National
Historic Park). This was when Richert began his efforts to conserve archaeological
sites in the Southwest. He and his mobile teams of Navajos preserved more
than 100 prehistoric ruins and historic structures in 6 states. He authored
illustrated studies of each site and also published on the excavations
at the East Ruin of Aztec Ruins National Monument. He retired in 1972 and
later was appointed Supervisory Archaeologist at the Southwest Archaeological
Center in Globe. He is survived by his wife, Edna, and his sister, Ethel
Schmidt. Donations in his memory may be sent to Pat Florence at the Arizona
Archaeological Society, 10906 E Michigan, Sun Lakes, AZ 85248.
DAVID MARTIN SMITH, 64, died in Tucson, AZ on December 9, 2000 after
suffering a sudden and massive stroke. An associate director (with Dell
Hymes, Erving Goffman and John Szwed) of the Center for Urban Ethnography
at the U of Pennsylvania, David was a visionary pioneer in the field of
ethnography and education. He published significant papers in both linguistic
and educational anthropology, created the Penn Forum for Ethnography and
Education and served as President of the Council on Anthropology and Education.
Born on January 23, 1935 on a family farm in upstate New York, he attended
Nyack College and graduated in 1956. An ordained minister, he completed
a master’s degree in linguistics in 1965 at the Hartford Seminary Foundation
and worked as both a missionary linguist and a Fulbright-Hayes scholar
in West Africa. He received a doctorate with distinction in anthropological
linguistics from Michigan State U in 1969. Across three decades, he was
a professor of anthropology, linguistics, and education at four major universities:
Georgetown, Temple, the U of Pennsylvania and the U of Alaska, Fairbanks,
where he was founder and two-term president of the Faculty Senate. He was
a visiting scholar at Stanford U, Curtin U’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies
in Australia and the Navajo Nation’s Dine College. For the past year he
was Professor Emeritus in anthropology and linguistics at the U of Alaska,
Fairbanks and Affiliate Senior Researcher at the Bureau of Applied Research
in Anthropology at the U of Arizona.
David was a stellar anthropologist who combined scholarship and practice,
providing, in Hymes’ words, “an example of what an anthropologist for our
time ought to be.” He possessed a deep concern for others and a passionate
commitment to social justice and educational equity. He was involved in
school desegregation efforts in the early seventies, working with teachers
to better understand student dialect and language variation. In the early
eighties he helped transform research on literacy from an exclusively cognitive
and individual perspective to a social and cultural understanding. With
Dell Hymes, he initiated some of the first federally-funded ethnographic
research on cultural aspects of literacy acquisition. Most recently, as
a mentor to indigenous researchers, he was exploring alternative academic
genres for giving voice to knowledge and epistemologies not captured by
the existing grand narratives of academic research. He was a natural leader
whose professional work was driven by a deep commitment to create a better
world rather than a personal need to advance his own career. A soft-spoken
and gentle man, he was also recognized by his colleagues as a fierce advocate
for student and faculty rights. He was a relentless defender and ally of
disenfranchised populations across the globe. His expressive eyes, joyful
smile, warm hugs and generous heart will be cherished and remembered. David
was preceded in death by his stepson, Colin Gilmore. He is survived by
his wife, co-author and colleague Perry Gilmore, three daughters (Jodi
Smith, Cindy Meyer and Elena Houle), three grandchildren (Jesse and Seth
Meyer and Lana Houle) and thirteen brothers and sisters. |
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