ROBERT J FRANKLIN, 45, dedicated linguist, anthropologist, teacher
and chair of the Anthropology Department, California State U-Dominguez
Hills, died August 17, 1997, from cancer. Born January 26, 1952, in Chattanooga,
TN, Franklin received his PhD from Indiana U (1984) with his dissertation
"The Role of Structure, Agency and Communication in the Federal Policy
toward the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe." The following year he began
teaching at CSU-Dominguez Hills. He was an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher
who demanded quality work from his students. He was appointed full professor
in 1992 and became chair of the department in 1995, keeping up with his
duties until a week before his untimely death.
A respected scholar and researcher, Franklin and wife Pam Bunte published
From the Sands to the Mountain: Change and Persistence in a Southern Paiute
Community (1987), summarizing the political and cultural development of
the San Juan Southern Paiute people in recent decades, and The Paiute (1990).
They also edited and annotated the 209 Southern Paiute song texts that
Sapir collected in 1910 from his Southern Paiute consultant, Tony Tillohash
(1994, Volume 4, The Collected Works of Edward Sapir), as well as a number
of joint papers on Southern Paiute anthropology and linguistics. At the
time of his death, Franklin had been a member of the Numic Comparative
Lexicon team for three years and was preparing a Southern Paiute dictionary
and volume of texts. His field notes on Southern Paiute will constitute
a major resource for Numic studies for years to come.
Franklin worked with great love and tireless devotion on behalf of
tribal rights of Native American Peoples. He and Bunte were responsible
for much of the documentary effort that allowed the San Juan Southern Paiute
tribe to gain Federal recognition. Recently, Franklin had been working
for the Little Shell Chippewa of Montana, who are under active consideration
for federal recognition. He was also working with the local Gabrielino
tribe to do preliminary work on their recognition petition. Franklin was
able to complete the part of that project before his death. They also worked
with the Cambodian community in Los Angeles.
Franklin's family and friends will always remember his enthusiasm for
life, his wonderful cooking, and his love for Celtic music and the French
language and culture. Diagnosed with lymphoma in March 1997, he met his
illness with the same courage, resilience and humor that marked his life.
He gave his family wonderful memories of birthday cakes and family feasts
(with exquisite wines chosen by him), cross-country treks and camping,
whistling and singing (his own lyrics) every day, playing music on anything
shaped like a tube, digging gardens, taking his girls to France and to
live on Paiute Indian reservations and setting aside work to play with
his girls. He is survived by his wife and partner in work, Pamela Bunte;
daughters Rachel, Abigail and Rebecca; and two granddaughters. Contributions
may be made in his honor to the Native American Rights Fund, 1506 Broadway,
Boulder, CO 80302-6296. (Jennifer Franklin, Pamela Bunte, Victor Golla
and John McLaughlin)
JON MORTER, 41, was tragically killed in a car accident in Virginia
on May 19, 1997. An assistant professor in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at the College of Charleston, SC, Morter's main research
interests were in European and central Mediterranean prehistory, although
he also conducted fieldwork at a number of sites in the US, Great Britain,
Cyprus, Iran, Turkey and most recently the chora of Chersonesos in the
Crimea, Ukraine. Morter was born in England and received a BA in ancient
history and archaeology from the U of Birmingham (1977). He worked for
two years at the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, Turkey, before
coming to the US to do contract archaeology in Louisiana, Montana, New
Mexico, Texas and Wyoming. Morter eventually obtained his MA (1986) and
PhD (1992) in anthropology at the U of Texas, Austin, and had just completed
his first year at the College of Charleston, where he attracted quite a
following of students. In his brief career, he had already published some
17 papers and reports, including several relating to the excavations at
Metaponto and Crotone in southern Italy, headed by Joseph C Carter. His
dissertation, "Capo Alfiere and the Middle Neolithic Period in Eastern
Calabria, Southern Italy," is an important contribution on early agricultural
settlements and increasing social complexity in the central Mediterranean,
with portions published in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology (1994,
vol 7:115-123), in The Chora of Croton, 1983-1989 (1990, J C Carter, ed)
and in a coedited volume completed just before his death, Social Dynamics
of the Prehistoric Central Mediterranean (R H Tykot, J Morter, and J E
Robb, eds, Accordia Research Centre, U of London, 1998).
Morter's family, friends, colleagues and students will sorely miss
his great sense of humor. He is survived by his wife Hilary and their daughters
Kate and Clare. (Robert H Tykot)
MAREA C TESKI, 53, professor of anthropology at the Richard Stockton
College of New Jersey since 1976, died August 16, 1997, in Philadelphia.
Born June 20, 1944, in Hammond, IN, Teski received her BA in the history
of art from the U of Chicago (1965), her MA in cultural anthropology, archaeology
and Chinese studies from Columbia (1966) and her PhD in social and cultural
anthropology from Indiana U, Bloomington (1976). Teski also studied social
anthropology with Maurice Freedman and Raymond Firth at the London School
Of Economics.
Teski was known for her capacity to break down traditional disciplinary
barriers; she refused to view issues in isolation and required people to
see the broader context. Teski felt that a strong value orientation was
essential to her advocacy and research. Her ability to work passionately
on a variety of issues stemmed from her belief that what she was working
on came from a value base and contributed to a broader value-based context.
Dedicated to the study and advancement of the life and experience of the
aged, Teski received grants from the Federal Administration on Aging (the
elderly and economic revitalization in Atlantic City), from Stockton (a
manual on caregivers of dementia patients) and from the State (a workshop
on Planning for Later Life, with Dave Burdick).
Teski's better-known early publications include "The Evolution of Aging,
Ecology and the Elderly in the Modern World," in Growing Old In Different
Cultures: Cross Cultural Perspectives in Aging (1983, J Sokolovsky, ed);
"Culture, Aging, and Stress Among Elderly Kalmuks," in Aging and Cultural
Diversity (1985, Heather Strange, ed); and "Star Reach," Anthropology and
Humanism Quarterly, (12, 1, Feb, 1987).
During the last decade, Teski focused attention on the uses of memory
practices among various cultural groups. She laid out the theoretical and
conceptual basis for developing an ethnography of memory and became principal
editor (with Jacob Climo) of The Labyrinth Of Memory: Ethnographic Journeys
(1995).
Teski served on the Atlantic City advisory council for Foster Grandparents,
facilitated workshops on self-concepts of the elderly for the White House
Conference on Aging (1981), was secretary and newsletter editor for the
Society for Humanistic Anthropology (1981-84), keynote speaker for the
New Jersey Association of Non-Profit Homes for the Aged and Special Publications
editor for AAGE (1985-88).
To honor her memory, Richard Stockton College has established the Marea
Teski Gerontology Fund. Contributions may be made to "RSCNJ FND"-Gerontology
Fund, K144 Foundation Office, Richard Stockton, Pomona, NJ, 08240. Teski
is survived by her husband Kryzysztof Teski, of Shamong, NJ, and son Anthony.
(Jacob J Climo)
MARTIN DISKIN, 62, Professor of Anthropology in the Anthropology Program
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died on August 2, 1997, after
a long battle with leukemia.
Born on August 22, 1934, Diskin grew up in Brooklyn and attended UCLA,
where he earned a BA, MA and PhD (1967). In 1976 he coauthored, with Scott
Cook, Markets in Oaxaca. He edited Trouble in Our Backyard: Central America
and the United States in the Eighties (1984), and also edited and contributed
to El Salvador: Background to the Crisis (1982, Central America Information
office). He was working on a book on land reform in El Salvador when he
died.
Last year Diskin was the first recipient of the Martin Baro Fund for
Mental Health and Human Rights Award. A tireless advocate for human rights,
he often testified in INS court cases for political refugees from Central
America, and testified several times for Congressional subcommittees on
immigration policy. Passionately concerned about US foreign policy, he
addressed officials in the military, State Department and other government
agencies in a variety of fora. Diskin was an adviser to the UN Peace Accords
that ended the 12-year civil war in El Salvador, and served as an official
election observer in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Diskin also worked on projects for Oxfam in Africa and consulted for
several other NGOs. He brought a clear sense of ethics and justice to his
work and teaching. An important goal for Diskin, learned by his many students,
was to connect what you're doing in your research to the real world. Diskin
was a pioneer in what is now called the anthropology of human rights. At
a time when it wasn't really fashionable, he was using ethnography to reveal
death squads, torture, injustice and broken promises concerning land reform--revealing
the effects of US foreign policy at a grass-roots level.
Diskin was a superb example of the "public anthropologist," who wrote
Op-Eds and similar kinds of journalism. He spoke at innumerable church
and community groups. In the sense of Margaret Mead (although their politics
were very different), he sought to bring anthropological insights to the
public, speaking to them in ways they would understand. He worked to make
the impact of US Foreign Policy, especially in Nicaragua and El Salvador,
visible to people in this country. To show them the effects of their money--billions--spent
on political repression, hunger, poverty and an increasing gap between
rich and poor.
In sum, Diskin represented an engaged anthropology at its best. He
had faith that people could come together and determine what action was
in their best interest. Diskin was a model of how to see the world, and
how to work to make it a better place. He is survived by his wife, Vilunya,
a daughter, Leah, and son, Aaron. His many friends and colleagues feel
a sense of great loss. (Jean Jackson, Lynn Stephen, Charles Hale; photo
by Donna Coveney, MIT)
JOHN C EWERS, 87, died May 7, 1997, in Arlington, VA, one year after
celebrating the 50th anniversary of his joining the Department of Anthropology
at the Smithsonian Institution.
Ewers was interested in Indian studies since his early college days.
After graduating from Dartmouth in 1931, he earned a master's at Yale (1934),
supervised by Clark Wissler. His thesis, published as Plains Indian Painting:
A Description of an Aboriginal American Art (1939), remains the definitive
work on the topic. He received honorary doctorates from Dartmouth, Montana
and Montana State.
Throughout his career Ewers successfully combined scholarship with
curation, publishing over 175 articles and a dozen books as well as organizing
numerous exhibitions. His first position was as field curator with the
National Park Service, and he established museums and exhibits in parks
and monuments from Okmulgee to Yosemite. In 1941 he transferred to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, founding the Museum of the Plains Indian on the
Blackfeet Reservation, and simultaneously forming a lasting friendship
with the Blackfeet people. He served in the Navy during World War II prior
to joining the Smithsonian's National Museum (1946). As curator, he produced
a prodigious volume of scholarship and guided major exhibit renovations.
In the 1960s he played a leading role in founding a new Smithsonian museum,
the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum
of American History), shaping the initial staffing and exhibits plans and
serving as director until the museum opened, meanwhile continuing his anthropological
research and publication outside of museum hours. After the museum opened
he returned to a senior research position with the Department of Anthropology
at the National Museum of Natural History. He consulted widely with museums
and, as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of the American Indian,
Heye Foundation during the 1970s was a leader in its reorganization under
mandate of the Attorney General of New York.
Ewers's research was focused on the Indians of the Plains, particularly
as they lived in the 19th century. He cherished his good fortune to have
interviewed the last generation of Indians who had known life on the Plains
before the reservation. Studiously avoiding theoretical or methodological
debate, his work nevertheless established him as a pioneer in the field
of ethnohistory, reflecting his anthropological training and his interests
in history and art. A hallmark of his work is the incorporation of diverse
data sources--documents, interviews, artifacts and drawings by both Indian
and non-Indian artists. Among his most noted works are The Horse in Blackfoot
Indian Culture (1955) and The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains
(1958). He published widely in general interest magazines as well as in
scholarly journals, yet always found time to answer letters of inquiry
or chat with visiting students. He remained active in research up to the
time of his death, constantly encouraging others working with Indian collections
to "bring out the music in them."
Ewers was predeceased in 1988 by his wife and research collaborator
Margaret, and is survived by two daughters and three grandchildren. (Candace
S Greene)
DIANA ELIZABETH FORSYTHE, 49, died on August 14, 1997, while hiking
in Alaska. Crossing a fast-flowing river, she lost her footing and drowned.
Forsythe grew up on the Stanford campus, attended Swarthmore College
and received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology and Social Demography from
Cornell U (1974). She did postdoctoral study in artificial intelligence
at Stanford U (1987-88). She was Associate Adjunct Professor in the Medical
Anthropology Program at UCSF from 1995 until her death. Prior to moving
to UCSF, Forsythe had been a Systems Development Foundation Fellow at Stanford,
Visiting Scholar in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford,
and Research Associate Professor in the Departments of Computer Science
and Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Earlier in her career
she spent several years doing research and teaching at Oxford, the U Bielefeld,
U Aberdeen, Scotland, U Cologne, and Lawrence U.
Forsythe was very active in professional service. She served for three
years (1994-97) as the Program Chair for the Society for the Anthropology
of Work, sat on the Council of the Society for the Social Study of Science,
and was on the editorial boards of several interdisciplinary journals.
She was the author of three books and nearly 3 dozen journal articles,
book chapters, technical reports and other publications.
For the 10 years prior to her death, Forsythe worked at the boundaries
of cultural anthropology, medicine and computer science, contributing to
the interdisciplinary area that has come to be known as medical informatics.
She was among the very first anthropologists or sociologists to collaborate
with computer scientists, and to study in detail the work practices of
computing. Her ethnographic work on software development in medical informatics
revealed that cultural and disciplinary assumptions are routinely (but
often unintentionally) designed into such software, potentially reducing
the system's benefits to clinicians or patients. Her field research in
neurology, internal medicine, emergency medicine and medical genetics illuminated
the meaning of "medical information" and the information needs of providers
and patients in specific real-world practice contexts, and suggested ways
in which software and other technology might better meet those needs. She
was actively engaged in several academic and industrial research and writing
projects at the time of her death.
A lifelong Quaker, Forsythe strongly supported causes related to nonviolence,
women's issues and social action. She is survived by her husband, Bern
Shen. A memorial fund is being developed to support dissertation research
by UCSF or Stanford students in the field of social studies of science
and technology. Tax-deductible donations payable to the UCSF Foundation
may be sent to the UCSF Foundation, c/o Diana Forsythe Memorial Fund for
Social Studies of Science and Technology, Box 0248, San Francisco, CA 94143-0248.
(Linda S Mitteness)
JAMES N HILL, 62, a prominent Southwestern archaeologist, lost a gallant
fight with cancer on August 2, 1997, in Los Angeles, CA.
A southern Californian, Hill was born in 1934 and graduated from Pomona
College (1957). He then served as an officer in the US Navy for three years,
which included several months' duty monitoring nuclear blasts at close
range off Enewetak Atoll. In 1965, after obtaining his PhD at the U of
Chicago, he joined UCLA's Department of Anthropology, where he remained
the rest of his life. He was an able administrator as well as dedicated
teacher who gave his time generously to undergraduates and who treated
his graduate students like research colleagues.
Hill belonged to the exciting generation of processual archaeologists
that emerged in the 1960s. His work at the Broken K pueblo in Arizona remains
a classic example of how social organization may be reflected in the architectural
segregation of pottery styles. He often returned to the question of style,
with particular insight into its expression among individual artisans.
But his abiding interest lay in the fundamental question of how archaeologists
should go about explaining variability and change in prehistoric cultural
systems, particularly in the realm of social organization. As a processualist,
his approach was strongly colored by cultural ecology. Thus his field projects,
as at Chevelon in central Arizona in the early 1970s and on the Pajarito
Plateau of New Mexico some years later, searched for the interplay of subsistence
pursuits and demography in the archaeological record. Methodological questions
also occupied his mind, and evoked much original work on issues of research
design and strategy. Hill believed that archaeology is anthropology; but
he also believed that it should be pursued as an empirical science that
plays by the same rules as other empirical sciences.
Apart from his classic monograph, Broken K Pueblo (1970), Hill published
widely in journals and in volumes of collected papers edited by colleagues.
He produced two of the latter himself in 1977, The Explanation of Prehistoric
Change and The Individual in Prehistory (coedited with Joel Gunn). His
work should enjoy a long shelf-life. Few have written with so much light
and so little heat on the ideas that inform processual archaeology. And
few can match the straightforward clarity of his exposition.
Hill was lean and athletic. He was good-natured, open and entirely
free of affectation. He treasured his family and enjoyed the fabric of
everyday life, playing tennis with enthusiasm and making a splendid luncheon
companion. And he retained his warmth, intellectual enthusiasm, and sense
of humor to the end. He was married to the anthropologist Julie Calvert,
with whom he had a daughter, Sarah. He is also survived by three children
from an earlier marriage, Kraig, Laura and Karlyn.
A fellowship for undergraduate research in anthropology has been established
in Hill's honor. Checks should be made out to the UCLA Foundation, noting
they are destined for the J N Hill Fellowship, and mailed to the Department
of Anthropology, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 90095-1553. (James Sackett)
JESSE D JENNINGS, 88, one of American archaeology's giants, died at
his home in Siletz, OR, August 13, 1997. Jennings' professional career,
spanning more than 60 years, was one of extraordinary and sustained accomplishment.
Born in Oklahoma City on July 7, 1909, he pursued archaeology in the midwest
and southeast soon after his 1929 arrival as a graduate student at the
U of Chicago. In 1938 he and his wife Jane dug with A V Kidder at Kaminaljuyu,
Guatemala, that work leading to his Chicago PhD dissertation (1943), which
he completed during World War II service as a naval officer in the North
Atlantic. An early career with the National Park Service took Jennings
to the Southwest and the Plains. In 1948 he left the NPS for the U of Utah,
where he served until his retirement as Distinguished Professor (1986).
During this period he was engaged with research projects and training students
in the Great Basin, Glen Canyon, Utah and American Samoa. From 1980-94
Jennings conducted special graduate seminars as adjunct professor at the
U of Oregon.
Jennings's earliest professional publication was "The Importance of
Scientific Method in Excavation" (Bulletin of the Archaeological Society
of North Carolina 1(1), 1934); and his summating autobiography Accidental
Archaeologist (1994). Jennings's classical work was his monograph on Danger
Cave (SAA Memoir 14, 1957). This pathbreaking study set a new standard
for its serious attention to depositional and biotic, as well as artifactual
data. Relating the archaeological evidence from Danger Cave to an ethnographic
model, Jennings framed a compelling view of a long-lived Great Basin Desert
Culture that will forever underpin research into desert west prehistory.
His Glen Canyon: A Summary (U Utah Anthropological Papers 81, 1966), pulled
together years of rescue archaeology under his direction to give a first
account of Anasazi agricultural life along its northern frontier.
In addition to technical studies, Jennings early entered into writing
and editing broadly synthetic works. In Prehistoric Man in the New World
(1964), edited with Edward Norbeck, and his Prehistory of North America
(1968), Jennings gave students and teachers the first textbook syntheses
of the continent's archaeology. Each of these books continued, growing
and changing shape through three editions, informing and influencing both
younger and older students of American archaeology across three decades.
Jennings's long and valuable service to the profession is reflected
in an exceptional list of major honors. He was editor of American Antiquity
(1950-54), elected to the AAA Executive Board (1953-56), Viking Medalist
in Archaeology (1958), President of the SAA (1959-60), and Vice-President
and Section H Chairman of the AAAS (1961, 1971). His university named him
Distinguished Professor (1974) and honored him with a Doctor of Science
degree (1980). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1977).
In 1982 he received a Distinguished Service Award from the SAA and another
from the Society for Conservation Archaeology. He was a featured plenary
session speaker at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the SAA (1985).
In 1990 the Great Basin Anthropological Conference (which he founded in
1958) established the Jesse D Jennings Prize for Excellence and in 1995
he was awarded the AAA's A V Kidder Medal for Achievement in American Archaeology.
(C Melvin Aikens)
ALSO NOTED: Thomas Ian Galloway Hamnett, 67, retired Reader in Anthropology,
U Bristol, died in April 1997. After beginning a career in law, Hamnett
turned to social anthropology to research Sotho customary law. Following
completion of a PhD at the U of Edinburgh, he obtained a lectureship at
the University's Centre for African Studies. A part-time appointment as
Visiting Consultant Sociologists to the UNDP/FAO Usutu Basin Project in
Swaziland led him to applied anthropology and publications on land shortage,
local planning and the use of water resources. In 1967, Hamnett became
a lecturer in sociology at the U of Bristol and was Reader in Anthropology
from 1977 until his retirement in 1995. During his career, he served as
editor of the Association of Social Anthropologists' monograph on Social
Anthropology and the Law, Hon Treasurer of the ASA and Deputy Chairman
of the Social Science Research Council's Social Anthropology Committee.
At the time of his retirement he was carrying out research on confession
in the Catholic church. Notable publications include: Chieftainship and
Legitimacy (1975); "Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Error," Religion
(1973, 3); and editorship of Religious Pluralism and Unbelief (1990).
LOUIS RICHARD CAYWOOD, 91, one of the early practitioners of historical
archaeology, died of pneumonia in Globe, AZ, April 30, 1997. Born in Bisbee,
AZ, Caywood received an MA in anthropology under Dean Byron Cummings from
the U of Arizona (1932), before beginning a 34-year career with the National
Park Service as a temporary summer ranger at Mesa Verde. His work as a
practicing archaeologist begun in 1933 as a pioneer in the implementation
of Federal Emergency Relief fieldwork at Tuzigoor, the 13th-century AD
pueblo in the Verde Valley, with Edward Spicer. With publication of the
project in July 1935, this effort stands as a speed record for excavation
and publication by any unit of Federal Relief archaeology in the 1930s
and 1940s.
Caywood supervised excavations at Fort Vancouver, Fort Spokane and
Fort Okanagan, WA, for the western region of the NPS. In 1954-55 he was
assigned to Colonial National Historical Park to work at the site of the
17th-century English settlement at Jamestown, VA. Other special assignments
took Caywood to Alaska to make survey reports on Sitka and the Kenai Peninsula,
and to Hawaii to survey the islands of Oahu, Molakai, Maui and Hawaii.
On loan to the Branch of Historic Sites of Canada, he excavated the site
of Meductic in New Brunswick. He was also involved in NPS projects at Harpers
Ferry, WV, Virginius Island, and excavation and stabilization work at Montezuma
Castle, Tumacaccori, Tonto National Monuments in Arizona and Bandelier
National Monument in New Mexico. After a stint at superintendent of Ocmulgee
National Monument, Georgia (1956-61), Caywood ended his career in 1969
at the NPS Southwest Archeological Center, then at Globe, AZ. He leaves
a legacy of meticulous fieldwork and valuable reports never made widely
available. (Excerpted from the obituary by John Cotter, in the Society
for American Archaeology Bulletin, September 1997, p 22.)
MICHAEL DORRIS, 52, novelist, essayist, critic and educator, took his
own life in Concord, NH on April 11, 1997. He was born on January 30, 1945
in Louisville, KY. In 1967 he graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown
U, majoring in English and Classics and in that same year entered Yale
U. At Yale he began his graduate studies in the History of the Theater
Department, but in 1968 switched to Anthropology. Being part American Indian
(Modoc) himself, Dorris chose to do his ethnographic research in an Athapaskan
(Dene) village of Tyonek, AK. Some of the data from that research was later
incorporated into his nonfiction (and partly autobiographical) book, The
Broken Cord: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Loss of the Future, which received
the National Book Award in 1989. In 1970 he received an MPhil degree from
Yale. After teaching at Franconia College for one year, Dorris came to
Dartmouth (1972), where he began as an instructor in Anthropology and Native
American studies and rose to the rank of Professor of Anthropology and
Native American Studies (1985). In 1978 he received a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship. Besides being a popular and charismatic undergraduate teacher
and mentor, Dorris' major contribution to Dartmouth's curriculum and student
life was his tireless effort to build a nationally-recognized Native American
Studies Program, which he chaired from 1972 until the late 1980s, when
he left academia to become a full-time writer. (Having retained a title
of Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies, he returned
to the Dartmouth campus on a number of occasions to read his work or deliver
a distinguished lecture). Besides The Broken Cord, Dorris' nonfiction works
include Native Americans Five Hundred Years After (with photographer Joseph
Farber, 1975), A Guide to Research on North American Indians (with Mary
Byler and Arlene Hirschfelder, 1988), Rooms in the House of Stone (1993),
and Paper Trail (a collection of essays, 1994). His adult fiction includes
a critically-acclaimed A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (1987), The Crown of
Columbus (with Louise Erdrich, 1991), Working Men (1993), and Cloud Chamber
(1997). Dorris also wrote several books of fiction for young adults. While
he dealt with a variety of topics in his fiction and nonfiction, the American
Indian experience was one of his favorite themes. Predeceased by his father,
who died while being stationed in Europe during World War II, and adopted
son, Abel (1991), Michael Dorris is survived by his mother, Mary B Dorris,
his ex-wife, novelist Louise Erdrich, his adopted children, Sava and Madeline,
and three biological daughters, Persia, Palas and Aza. (Sergei Kan)
HAROLD W FEHDERAU, 65, African linguist and anthropologist who worked
as scripture translation director for the Canadian Bible Society, died
in London, Ontario, Canada, April 8, 1997. Born and raised in Kitchener,
Ontario, Fehderau received an honors degree in modern languages from the
U of Western Ontario (1954), an MA in German from the U of Colorado (1956)
and a PhD in linguistics and anthropology at Cornell (1966). His interest
in linguistics and anthropology was fostered by assignments to Zaire as
a Mennonite missionary-translator for the Kituba language project, followed
by 8 years as Zaire translations consultant for the United Bible Societies
and 4 years in Nairobi as UBS translations coordinator for Africa. In 1980
Fehderau returned to Canada to be UBS Regional Translations Coordinator
for the Americas, working with Bible translation teams for such languages
as Bolivian Quechua, Aymara, Mam, Mocovi, Toba, Guarani, Tzeltal, Jamaican
Patois, Haitian Creole and Gullah. From 1989 he was the scripture translation
director of the Canadian Bible Society, responsible for a strong and prolonged
emphasis on native-language Bible translations in Canada, where he and
his support team were instrumental in the production of translations in
Inuktitut, Ojibwe and Cree. He also gave invaluable support to translators
working on Micmac, Algonquin, Dogrib, Naskapi, Yupik, Slavey, Montagnais
and Mohawk.
Harold Fehderau died less than a month before his planned retirement,
leaving his wife Nancy and their three children. (Excerpted from an obituary
by Hartmut Schroeder, SSILA Newsletter 16:1, April 1997)
ESTHER SCHIFF GOLDFRANK (Wittfogel), whose long career was associated
with Columbia University, died April 23, 1997, 12 days short of her 101st
birthday, in Mamaroneck, NY. She was the last survivor of the women anthropologists
around Franz Boas. Goldfrank's initial contact with anthropology and Boas
was his general course at Barnard College, taken in 1918, her senior year.
After a year on Wall Street applying her economics AB as a secretary, she
became Boas's assistant and department secretary at Columbia, positions
underwritten by Elsie Clews Parsons, who continued with anonymous support
by her Southwest Society to finance Goldfrank's fieldwork in 1920 (Laguna),
1921 and 1922 (Cochiti) and 1924 (Isleta). Always prompt in publication,
Goldfrank had "the Social and Ceremonial Organization of Cochiti" as a
Memoir (No 33) of the American Anthropological Association in 1927, following
three articles on these Rio Grande Pueblos. Although she selected graduate
courses to attend at Columbia (1921-22, 1937), Goldfrank did not study
for a graduate degree in anthropology but rather prepared herself as she
felt the need. These plans were interrupted in 1922, when she married Walter
S Goldfrank, a widower with three sons; her own daughter was born in 1922.
In 1924 she returned to fieldwork at Isleta.
When Walter Goldfrank died suddenly in 1935, Esther came back to New
York City from suburban Westchester and again participated in the Columbia
department. She took part in a study of adolescent adjustment sponsored
by the Rockefeller Foundation. Despite disagreement with Ruth Benedict's
view of the Pueblos as an Apollonian society, Goldfrank was included in
Benedict's 1939 summer field project to study the Blackfeet. This work
resulted in two articles and again a division of opinion with Benedict
on interpretation.
After her marriage to the Sinologist Karl Wittfogel in 1940, Goldfrank
participated in Columbia's Chinese History Project, becoming staff anthropologist
in 1945. During Wittfogel's academic quarters at the U of Washington she
was again taking courses. When Parson's Isleta artist informant died in
1953, Goldfrank proceeded to prepare for publication his paintings of Isleta
ceremonial life, collected and annotated by Parsons, but not to be revealed
until his death. They appeared as BAE Bulletin 181 in 1962, followed in
1967 by Goldfrank's "The Artist of 'Isleta Paintings' in Pueblo Society"
(Smithsonian Contribs to Anth 5).
Goldfrank's organizational ability and editorial skills led to her
selection as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Ethnological Society (1946-48),
President (1948), and Editor of the AES Monographs (1952-56). Her career
is fully and delightfully recounted in Notes on an Undirected Life: As
One Anthropologist Tells It (Queens College Publs in Anthro No 3, 1977).
This autobiography, like its author, is spirited, clear, frank and always
to the point. It is a rich source for the history of anthropology, certainly
for women's studies, and for problems and procedures of fieldwork. Although
I can recall comments-which in some cases may have derived from her lack
of graduate degree--dismissing Goldfrank's considered and candidly expressed
opinions, she was fully accepted as an astute and accomplished professional
colleague.
Charles Lange provides a summary and appraisal of Esther Goldfrank's
professional life in his chapter in Hidden Scholars: Women Anthropologists
and the Native American Southwest (Nancy Parezo, ed, 1993). We can produce
no better epitaph than from his closing paragraph: ". . . Goldfrank has
left a significant legacy with her steadfast independence of thought in
approaching problems in the field and in the library, with her enviable
record of publication, and with her pervasive interest in, and encouragement
of, younger colleagues. Anthropology is most certainly in her debt." (Nathalie
F S Woodbury)
JAMES BENNETT GRIFFIN, 92, professor emeritus of anthropology at the
U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, died at his home in Bethesda, MD on May 31, 1997.
There have been few individuals in American archaeology with the broad
scope of interest and range of expertise as James Griffin. He traveled
widely in the US, Mexico and even Europe, as well as regularly attending
numerous scientific meetings for more than 60 years. With this strong background,
he affected the way all archaeologists of the Eastern US organized their
own research data by writing a series of significant syntheses in 1946,
1952 and 1967, as well as many detailed reports and papers (over 260).
He also turned out dozens of PhDs who have spread across the country in
the field of North American archaeology, and who often owed their first
posts to Griffin's "networking."
Besides having a great first-hand knowledge of sites and artifacts,
Griffin was very open to new ideas and data. He helped pioneer in C-14
dating and was involved with other techniques such as obsidian sourcing.
Although often thought of as an armchair scholar, he actually had had more
experience in field research (Illinois, Pennsylvania, Lower Valley) than
most realized. He was also very generous in sharing his knowledge with
others; he taught for 32 years in the Anthropology Department at the U
of Michigan, but also at 4 other institutions as a Visiting Professor.
Griffin was born in Atchinson, KS on January 12, 1905. He lived in
the west until 1914, when his family moved to Oak Park, IL. His high school
classmates included Fred Eggan and Wendell Bennett. He went to the U of
Chicago for his college training (1923-27) and three years of graduate
work in anthropology, before transferring to the U of Michigan with a graduate
fellowship (PhD 1936).
Between 1936 and 1945, Griffin was mainly involved in museum research
and curation in the Ceramic Repository at Ann Arbor, as well as doing some
war-time teaching. In 1945 he finally became an Associate Professor in
the Department and began his long and successful career of teaching (1946-75).
Indeed the Department then became one of the major training grounds in
this country for North American archaeologists.
Griffin's major contributions include editing and contributing three
segments of the festschrift for his Chicago professor Fay-Cooper Cole (1952).
Known colloquially as the "Green Bible," it served to set the framework
for post-war progress in the field. Although often characterized as "only"
a ceramic specialist, Griffin in fact covered a broad range of topics from
Paleoindian times to the historic, and from climatology to dating techniques.
As his active academic career came to a close with his retirement in
1975, Griffin was accorded many honors: membership in the National Academy
of Science, honorary Doctor of Science from Indiana U, Distinguished Service
Award from the U of Michigan, and the Society for American Archaeology's
Fryxell Award. He had earlier received the Viking Fund Medal for Archaeology
(1957).
Griffin's wife of 43 years, Ruby Fletcher, died in 1979. He moved to
the Washington area in 1984, where he was a Smithsonian Institution Regent's
Fellow until 1990. He remained active in these Washington years, attending
meetings, enjoying interaction with members of the profession and writing
retrospective papers and valuable summary articles. Griffin's survivors
include his second wife, Mary Marsh Dewitt; his three sons John, David
and James; and 4 grandchildren. (Stephen Williams. Photo by Chase Studios,
Inc)
RALPH (KEP) KEPLER LEWIS, 85, professor emeritus of anthropology at
George Washington U, died May 17, 1997, in Alexandria, VA, after a stroke.
He had suffered for several years from Parkinson's disease.
Born in Waynesboro, MO, Lewis graduated from Southwest Missouri State
College and received a master's degree in anthropology at the U of Southern
California. In 1967, he received his PhD degree from Columbia U. During
World War II, he served in the Army in North Africa and France. After the
war, he did 4 years of ethnographic field study among the Turkana of Kenya
and later in a Christian village in northern Lebanon, which he used as
the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Lewis then joined the State Department,
where he served in Lebanon, as consul general in Saudi Arabia and as director
of the State Department's Arabic language school. He settled in Alexandria
in 1961.
Lewis joined GW's anthropology department. He had an outstanding career
as one of GW's most popular teachers. During the 9 years he taught full-time,
he averaged 545 students per year, the most in the department. His Cultures
of the Near East course was a particular draw. He also directed about a
dozen master's theses.
Lewis served as department chair (1968-71, 1974, 1981-82). He was the
second director of GW's Museum Studies Program (1977-78) and taught in
the Anthropology for Teachers Program (1978-79). He also was for several
years a member of the board of managers of the Anthropological Society
of Washington.
Lewis became professor emeritus in 1976 and retired from the University
in 1982, although he continued to teach part-time until 1989, when he was
forced to stop due to ill health.
Lewis's kindness, wisdom, depth of knowledge and quiet humor were greatly
valued by his colleagues and students. He is survived by his wife Ferebee,
sons Stephen and Bayan, 4 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.
CLEMENT MEIGHAN, 72, a professor for 39 years in the Department of Anthropology,
U of California, Los Angeles and former director of UCLA's Archaeological
Survey, died April 30, 1997, in Bend, OR.
Meighan's importance to UCLA and to the Institute of Archaeology is
quite clear: he was a major figure in the development of UCLA's Department
of Anthropology, founded the Rock Art Archive and was the first director
of the Archaeological Survey, which remains part of the Institute today,
as the South Central Coastal Information Center. His archaeological work
was important both in Mesoamerica and in North America, specifically California.
Born January 21, 1925, in San Francisco, CA, Meighan was part of a
generation that built archaeology in this country. Today, archaeology is
a well-formed discipline with a set of ideas, methods and approaches for
the interpretation of the ancient world. This was not the case in the 1940s
and 1950s when he received his degree from U of California, Berkeley (PhD
1953). At that time, many parts of the world had not been explored archaeologically.
Much of the work that was done by Meighan and others was to develop initial
chronologies and assessments of the ancient cultural developments throughout
the world. He was one of the first archaeologists to work in and define
areas of western Mexico and the coast of California.
An important part of a generation of archaeologists who opened up the
world for archaeological study and analysis, Clement Meighan will long
be remembered as a remarkable archaeologist and a distinguished member
of the UCLA community. (Richard M Leventhal)
STUART PIGGOTT, 86, emeritus professor of prehistoric archaeology at
the U of Edinburgh, died at his Oxfordshire home on September 23, 1996.
Born at Petersfield in Hampshire on May 28, 1910, the son of a schoolmaster
and a Welshwoman from Breconshire, his schooling finished at the age of
16. Following a brief period as an assistant at Reading Museum, Piggott
moved to Wales and a position in the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments.
Then followed 5 years as assistant to Alexander Keiller, the Scottish marmalade
magnate, excavating a number of key sites for the understanding of the
development of the Neolithic in southern Britain, while his "The Early
Bronze Age in Wessex" (1938, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society) established
his intention to study British archaeology in its wider continental context.
Piggott's military service in India in World War II developed his interest
in the archaeology of South Asia, as marked by several publications including
the pioneering Prehistoric India (1950). After the war Piggott was accepted
at St John's College, Oxford and in 1946 even before gaining a BLitt for
his study of 18th-century English antiquary William Stukeley, Piggott was
invited to succeed Vere Gordon Childe as second Abercromby Professor of
Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh, a post he retained until retirement
in 1977.
Piggott was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1953 and in 1954
received an honorary doctorate from Columbia U, Edinburgh following in
1984. His achievements in the field peaked in the 1950s in a series of
excavations in Wessex with his Edinburgh colleague Richard Atkinson as
his chief collaborator, notably in their work at Stonehenge (1950-64).
Among Piggott's more than 350 publications, his Neolithic Cultures of the
British Isles (1954) remains a key study despite its completion before
the effects of the radiocarbon "revolution" were felt. An abiding interest
with the history of antiquarian thought continued right up to his Ancient
Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination (1989) while consideration of the
evolution of wheeled transport resulted in his last book, Wagon, Chariot
and Carriage (1992).
But it was Piggott's Ancient Europe from the Beginnings of Agriculture
to Classical Antiquity (first issued by Edinburgh U Press, 1965), which
reached a much wider audience. Based like Childe's Danube in Prehistory
on firsthand knowledge of the prehistory of Europe as a whole, Ancient
Europe was dedicated "To my pupils, past and present." It is a sign of
the affection in which many held that intensely private and yet often seemingly
flamboyant owner of small sports cars and elegant bow ties, that Piggott
should have been honored by not one but two collections of essays: Studies
in Ancient Europe (1968) and To Illustrate the Monuments (1976). As well
known in the USSR as in the USA, Piggott was a poet, a consummate draftsman
and a cook. Gold Medallist of the Society of Antiquaries of London and
member of the German Archaeological Institute, he was also a Knight of
Mark Twain. Piggott leaves no close relatives, but his passing will be
mourned by many. (J V S Megaw. Photo ca 1975 by J V S Megaw)
DONALD A RUNDSTROM, 56, died December 6, 1996, victim of a wrong-way
driver on the highway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, NM. Raised in a
working class family in Albany, CA, Rundstrom was a gifted visual anthropologist
and anthropological theorist, much of whose work was done in conjunction
with surviving twin brother Ron Rundstrom. They entered the study of cultures
via a Marine Corps assignment to Okinawa. Starting with martial arts, then
other aspects of Japanese culture, they developed an articulate methodology
for attaining highly contextualized understanding of cultures through sustained
"apprenticeships" with locally recognized masters.
Rundstrom and his brother enrolled at San Francisco State U and received
MA degrees in interdisciplinary social science (1970). Their MA thesis--a
film, The Path, made in conjunction with Clinton Bergum--was a landmark
in visual anthropology as the first ethnographic film based on sustained
visual research involving cultural practitioners in every phase of the
process. They also insisted the film itself be the actual "document" for
the thesis, hoping thus to set a precedent for visual forms as intellectual
statements.
Rundstrom was involved with the Manzanar Committee, a Japanese American
community organization concerned with the concentration camp experiences
of Japanese Americans during World War II, of which he was a founding board
member. Together with his wife Susan Stanicci, brother, and sister-in-law
Pat Rosa, he worked on a project leading to the film Uprooted! A Japanese
American Family's Experience. He continued to work on Japanese American
issues throughout his life, including oral history projects, family album
studies, museum exhibits and the redress movement.
Moving to doctoral studies in anthropology at UCLA (1970), Rundstrom
went to New Guinea to make extensive still photographic and film records
of relationships among children and between children and adults as part
of research into enculturation and personality development. On return,
he continued doctoral studies, but both he and Ron encountered unresolvable
conflicts between their innovative approaches and academic inflexibility,
which left their degrees in limbo.
Rundstrom later worked on a variety of visual and cultural explorations
in New Mexico, both with Ron and independently. These efforts involved
collaborative work with communities in which any particular item, event
or process was presented from a fully contextualized viewpoint. A refined
theoretician, Rundstrom also pioneered totally new combinations of visual,
tactile, sensual and textual formats to transmit cultural knowledge. At
the time of his death, he had been working for many years with the Maria
Martinez family of Pueblo potters on a multilayered exploration of family,
aesthetics and cultural identity via video and other formats.
Donald Rundstrom was widely recognized in visual anthropology and organizationally
active in the Society for Visual Anthropology. He is survived, personally
and professionally, by his wife, brother and sister-in-law.
Donations in Rundstrom's memory can be made to the following nonprofit
organizations: New Mexico Indian Education Association for Piee Quiyo:
Spirit Women of Clay (the Maria Martinez family project); or The Manzanar
Committee. Mail to: PO Box 113, Santa Fe, NM 87504. (Malcolm Collier)
MARY THYGESON SHEPARDSON, 90, an authority on the Navajo culture, died
March 30, 1997, in Palo Alto, CA, after a long illness. Shepardson held
a doctorate from the U of California at Berkeley (1960), taught at Mills
College and retired as professor emeritus from San Francisco State U.
Born May 26, 1906, in St Paul, MN, Shepardson did her undergraduate
work at Stanford and also studied at the Sorbonne and London School of
Economics. Her major books were Navajo Ways in Government (1963) and The
Navajo Mountain Community (1970).
Shepardson was esteemed by many members of the Navajo community and
by those who studied Navajo ways and were fortunate to have known her.
During her academic lifetime, she went out of her way to help women students
of anthropology develop as scholars. In retirement, she published a memoir
centered on her Navajo fieldwork, Fieldwork among the Navajo (1986), and
worked systematically on an ethnographic monograph on the Bonin Islands
and their people (in preparation). Shepardson also wrote 4 unpublished
novels set in locations as diverse as Harlem, England and Boulder Dam,
CO.
After the death of her sister, Shepardson married her brother-in-law,
Dwight Shepardson, and the couple made many trips to Navajo villages in
the Southwest. She is survived by her niece/stepdaughter Barbara Shepardson
and brother Philips Thygeson. (With input from Herbert Landar, Muriel Myers,
Barbara Shepardson and information from an April 4, 1997, obituary in the
San Francisco Chronicle)
WALTER WILLARD TAYLOR, 83, was born in Chicago, IL, on October 17, 1913.
He died of Alzheimer's disease on April 14, 1997 in Rockaway Beach, OR.
Taylor graduated from Yale (1935) and married Lyda Averill Paz in 1937.
His best-known archaeological fieldwork was in Coahuila, and he taught
at Arizona State College, Harvard U (Hemenway Fellow; PhD, 1943), and the
U of Texas. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps (1942, OSS) and served with
distinction (Bronze Star with citation; Purple Heart).
Taylor received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to revise his 1943
doctoral dissertation (published in 1948 as A Study of Archeology. AAA,
Monograph 69). Chapter 3 critiqued American archaeology prior to World
War II, specifically the work of leading American archaeologists. Predictably,
a furor erupted, more over its polemical style than content. Later, Taylor
was recognized as a founder of New Archaeology, but the adverse reaction
to his monograph lingered, in part because the full report of his Coahuila
work was never published. Contributions to Coahuila Archaeology (SIU Center
for Archaeological Investigations, Research Paper No 52, 1988) is a descriptive
monograph, not a demonstration of Taylor's "conjunctive approach."
Taylor received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1950-51) and was elected a
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1954).
He moved his family to Mexico in 1955, where he taught at the Escuela Nacional
de Antropologia. When Lyda contracted cancer, the family returned to the
US (1958) where, at J Charles Kelley's urging, Taylor became Chair of the
new Department of Anthropology at SIU-Carbondale. He worked quickly to
overhaul the curriculum, and by the mid-1960s, SIU had one of the best
new anthropology departments. Lyda died in 1960; Taylor resigned as Chair
in 1963 and accepted a research professorship that he held until his retirement
from SIU (1974). The previous year, he received the Leo Kaplan Research
Award from Sigma Xi.
Though a founder of New Archaeology, Taylor had limited influence on
its development, perhaps because he had few students. Taylor was a brilliant,
stimulating, but demanding professor. He directed PhD dissertations for
only three SIU students: James Schoenwetter, R Berle Clay, and the author.
Taylor produced about 60 other publications including "The Ceremonial
Bar and Associated Features of Maya Ornamental Art" (American Antiquity,
1941), "Southwestern Archeology: Its History and Theory" (American Anthropologist,
1954), "Archaic Cultures Adjacent to the Northeastern Frontiers of Mesoamerica"
(Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol 4, 1964), American Historical
Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Leslie Spier (co-edited with Carroll L
Riley, 1967), Culture and Life: Essays in Memory of Clyde Kluckhohn (co-edited
with John L Fischer and Evon Z Vogt, 1973). A Study of Archeology, was
reprinted in 1964, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1973, and 1983--a testament to its
importance in American archaeology. His biography by Jonathan Reyman is
available in T Murray, ed, The History of Archaeology: An Encyclopedia
(in Press).
Taylor spoke flawless Spanish and was a charming raconteur, accomplished
guitar player and singer, outstanding chef, oenephile, sportsman and architect.
He once owned the finest personal anthropological library in the US. Ann,
Peter, and Gordon, children of his marriage to Lyda Averill Paz, survive
him. (Jonathan E Reyman. Photo by George Gumerman)
VINCENT TUCKER, 51, was tragically killed in a car accident in his native
County Tipperary, Ireland on February 17, 1997.
Tucker is sadly missed by his students, colleagues and friends at University
College Cork, Ireland, where he lectured in the Department of Sociology.
His dynamic personality and strength of character made Tucker a source
of support and inspiration for those around him. For his students he was
a popular and approachable teacher, who understood the skill of transforming
difficult intellectual concepts into fascinating and entertaining messages.
Among his colleagues, he gained respect for his innovativeness and scholarly
vigor. Tucker also represented the department at many levels nationally
and internationally; he greatly enjoyed making new links and contacts throughout
the world.
Tucker was born April 5, 1946, and trained in anthropology at Washington
U, St Louis (PhD, 1984). He traveled widely in Africa and Asia, which was
reflected in his universal outlook on culture and human behavior. His doctoral
thesis was shaped by his passion for community activism and local development.
In the early 1980s, Tucker returned to Ireland to complete research on
the cooperative movement in rural Donegal. He soon got centrally involved
in the Centre for Co-operative Studies at University College Cork, where
he generated innovative resources and activities for both academics and
practitioners. This interaction between scholarly research and activism
shaped his work until the end and gave it a special relevance that emanates
from deep personal commitment.
As a lecturer, Tucker mainly pursued two central areas of interest:
the sociology of development and the sociology of health. In both areas,
he never tired of challenging conventional perspectives and developing
new conceptual and methodological tools. Similarly, he delighted in creating
platforms for debate and discussion, bringing together scholars and students
from a wide range of backgrounds. He was involved in founding the Cork
Development Education Network (1983-91), which united various local development
groups; he was a strong force behind the development of the departmental
seminar series and single-handedly published the Occasional Paper Series
in Irish and World Development (1992), now a valuable reference source.
He was also central in establishing the MA program in Irish and World Development,
which has gained an international reputation.
In recent years, Tucker concentrated mainly on two areas of scholarship.
He was in the process of completing a book on the cultural perspectives
of development entitled The Myth of Development. Second, building on his
long-standing interest in models of health care, he had started to conduct
research on indigenous and alternative medicine in India, where he was
to return in March 1997. Both areas of research recently fruited in his
editing of the European Journal of Development Research (December 1996),
entitled "Cultural Perspectives of Development," now also published as
a book by Frank Cass.
Tucker will be remembered for his warm and compassionate personality,
great sense of humor, energetic charm and challenging perspectives. He
is survived by his wife, Kathleen, and children Aine and Oisin. (Dirka
Griesshaber)
FREDERICK WILLIAM VOGET, 84, died May 8, 1997. American cultural anthropology
and Crow ethnography has lost one of its most able and brilliant scholars
with his death in Portland, OR. Voget was born February 12, 1913 in Salem,
OR, to Friedrich A Voget who emigrated from Germany to Oregon and Fay Isham,
whose grandparents were Oregon pioneers. He attended Reed College and graduated
from the U of Oregon. He attended graduate school at Yale and received
a PhD in anthropology (1947). Voget's fieldwork and dissertation were with
the Crow Indians of Montana. His dissertation, The Shoeshone Crow Sun Dance,
was published in 1984 by the U of Oklahoma Press, and is the first full-length
authoritative treatment of the Crow Sun Dance. An earlier book, A History
of Ethnology, was published in 1975. Recent contributions to anthropological
literature include Old Man Coyote and the "Forward" to Yellowtail, Crow
Indian Medicine Man. His most recent publication was, They Called Me Agnes.
The book was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for
the best non-fiction book of 1995. Voget was the author of many articles,
notably "The Osage Indians" (Osage Research Report I, 1974), and "Crow
Sacred Numerology" (Plains Anthropologist, 1996). Some of his other articles
were published in the 1996 edition of the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology
sponsored by Yale. Voget served in the 71st Division of the US Infantry
(1942-47) and was honorably discharged as a Master Sergeant. He taught
at McGill U in Montreal, the U of Arkansas, U of Toronto, and Southern
Illinois U-Edwardsville. While at SIUE he invited students to his house
to meet and interact with many of the "giants of American anthropology,"
which included George Peter Murdock and Ward Goodenough, at the same time
dismissing his own importance to the development of Americanist ethnology.
He was also a visiting professor at Northwestern U and Portland State U.
In 1966 Voget won a Canada Council Research Grant to work with the Six
Nations reserve of Eastern Canada. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Germany
in 1972 and returned there in 1979 as a visiting professor with the U of
Munich. After his retirement as Professor Emeritus from Southern Illinois
U-Edwardsville, Voget returned to Portland, where he continued to write
and lecture. He was adjunct professor at Portland State U and a guest lecturer
at the U of Oregon and Linfield C. Voget devoted his life and research
since 1939 to recording and preserving the culture and way of life of the
Crow as it was and is. His contribution to the study of ethnology was intended
to help improve the lives of Native Americans and to promote understanding
and respect for the diversity of cultures in the world. He was an adopted
member of the Crow Tribe and spent part of every summer with them in Montana.
(Douglas R Givens. Photo courtesy of Kay Voget)
JOE BEN WHEAT, 81, curator emeritus of the U of Colorado Museum and
43-year resident of Boulder, died June 12, 1997, in Denver after a short
illness. Wheat contributed significantly to Mogollon and Anasazi archaeology
of the US Southwest, Paleoindian archaeology, African Paleolithic archaeology
and Southwest Native American weaving.
Born April 21, 1916, in Van Horn, TX, Wheat was interested in archaeology
and Indian artifacts from childhood. He became a local authority and contact
for pioneer archaeologists such as E B Sayles and Frank Setzler. Wheat
studied at Sul Ross Teachers College and Texas Tech U, where he met William
Curry Holden, who suggested that he transfer to the U of California, Berkeley.
Wheat studied under A L Kroeber, receiving his BA from Berkeley (1937).
He earned both his MA (1949) and PhD (1953) at the U of Arizona, where
he studied with Emil Haury and Edward Spicer. Following 4 years in the
US Army Air Force, 1941-45, and graduate school, Wheat became the first
curator of anthropology and assistant professor of natural history at the
U of Colorado Museum, where he worked until his official retirement in
1986 but continued archaeological work in southern Colorado.
Wheat's archaeology included work on the Smithsonian Institution's
River Basin Surveys (1947) and the U of Arizona's Field School at Point
of Pines (1947-48). His doctoral dissertation on ancient Mogollon culture
was published in two parts as a Memoir of the American Anthropological
Association and the Society for American Archaeology and a monograph by
the U of Arizona. His Paleoindian research at the Olsen-Chubbock site (published
as a memoir of the Society for American Archaeology) and the Jurgens site
(Plains Anthropologist memoir) are landmarks of scientific excellence.
In 1954 Wheat began summer field school excavations at Yellow Jacket, in
southwestern Colorado. The work provided an Anasazi parallel to his Mogollon
research and trained generations of archaeology students. In the 1960s,
Wheat excavated sites in the Sudan and Tunisia as part of a U of Colorado
expedition. Since 1972, Wheat devoted research time to textiles from the
American Southwest. This work resulted in exhibitions throughout the US
and accompanying publications.
Wheat served as secretary (1960-64) and was elected president (1966-67)
of the Society for American Archaeology, and was honored with its 50th
Anniversary Award. He received the Colorado State Archaeologist's award
(1979), Robert L Stearns award (1982), Clarence T Hurst award (1990) and
Byron S Cummings award (1991). He is listed in both Who's Who in America
and Who's Who in the West.
Wheat was married to Frances Irene (Pat) Moore from 1947 until her
death in 1987. In 1992, he married Barbara Kile Zernickow, whom he had
first met in the 1940s and with whom he shared many interests. Wheat's
biography and bibliography were compiled by Ann Hedlund and published in
Why Museums Collect, Papers in Honor of Joe Ben Wheat, The Archaeological
Society of New Mexico, 1993. (Linda Cordell and Frank W Eddy)
ALSO NOTED: RICHARD BURGHART, 49, professor of anthropology and head
of the Department of Ethnology, U of Heidelberg, Germany, died January
1, 1994. Born in the US in 1944, Burghart completed degrees in social anthropology
at the School of Oriental and African Studies (MPhil 1969, PhD 1978). After
receiving his PhD, Burghart was employed by the London School of Economics,
followed by appointment to a post in Asian Anthropology at SOAS, where
he remained until moving to the U of Heidelberg in 1988. A specialist in
the anthropology of South Asia, his research covered questions of caste
and asceticism, Vaishnavite tradition, early devotional literature, Maithili
language, Hinduism in Nepal and Britain, royal ritual and the nation-state,
and Napalese history. In 1978 he helped launch the British Medial Anthropology
Society as a founding member and is credited with having given one of the
earliest medical anthropology courses in the UK. Burghart is survived by
his wife Nadia Rheissland and two young children. (Excerpted from the obituary
by Gustaaf Houtman, Anthropology Today, August 1994, p 26)
TRUMAN WASHINGTON DAILEY, 98, the last fluent speaker of the Otoe-Missouria
(Baxoje-Jiwere-Nyut-chi) language, died December 16, 1996. Born on October
19, 1898, near Red Rock in Oklahoma Territory to Missouria, Otoe and Iowa
parents, Dailey was also known by his man's name, Sunge Hka ("White Horse")
and by his Eagle Clan name, Mashi Manyi ("Soaring High"). Born only 18
years after his tribe had left its traditional homelands in Nebraska, Dailey
was well versed in the oral literature and history of his people. He supported
the ceremonial life of the tribe and applied his traditional teachings
in all dealings with the larger world. He was the last elder to be able
to explain the reasons and meanings behind the rituals during tribal gatherings
and ceremonials. Not only was he a gifted teacher among his own people,
by serving as a language consultant for anthropologist Louanna Furbee and
her students at U Missouri-Columbia, Dailey helped preserve his language
for posterity. He was awarded an honorary doctor's degree (1993, U Missouri)
and was himself the subject of a doctoral dissertation (Lori Stanley, "The
Indian Path of Life: A Life History of Truman Washington Dailey of the
Otoe-Missouria Tribe," U Missouri-Columbia, 1993). (Excerpted from Jimm
G GootTracks's obituary, SSILA Newsletter 16:1, April 1997)
JEROME (JERRY) MILLER, 74, executive director of the Society for American
Archeology from 1983-92, died of cancer in November 1996. After terminating
its administrative arrangements with the AAA, Miller was recruited to manage
the SAA. Under his skillful guidance, the SAA achieved a successful reorganization
and professionalization, enabling it to establish financial independence
and growth. The SAA honored Miller's dedication with its 1990 Presidential
Recognition Award for incomparable service. Miller is survived by his wife,
Dee, and their children Anthony, Sharon and Julie. |
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