{"id":111,"date":"2004-02-08T04:07:00","date_gmt":"2004-02-08T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2012-05-22T16:30:06","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T22:30:06","slug":"111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Kennewick Man Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

The saga of Kennewick Man, the 9,200-year-old Caucasoid (which is not the same as “Caucasian”!) skeleton found in Washington state in 1996, continues. An federal appeals court panel has ruled in favor<\/a> of reseachers who want to continue to study his remains, now stored at the University of Washington, and against the tribes that wanted to rebury him. Go here<\/a> and here<\/a> for more background on the controversy.<\/p>\n

He was a tall, strongly built, middle-aged warrior who probably died a violent death. The question “at whose hands?” produces all sorts of fascinating speculation. Those speculations tie into theories of “diffusionism,” once discredited as ridiculed as “racist,” but now enjoying a bit of a quiet comeback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Norse-tradition Pagans, led by Stephen McNallen claimed him as a European forebear, part of their argument that Heathenism was the natural spiritual path of today’s Euro-Americans. Some anthropologists suggested that he (and other, anomalous, non-Mongoloid skeletons found over the years) suggested that long-ago Polynesians also came to this continent, but were, perhaps, exterminated by the ancestors of those people now designated as Natives.<\/p>\n

The Covill, Umatilla, Yakam, and Nez Perce tribes claimed the rights to rebury the skeleton as one of theirs, generally speaking, because he was found where they lived in historical times, from the 18th century onwards, at least. Their attorneys are not happy with the judges’ strict reading of the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as described here in Native Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The tribes’ argument does not convince me either. We cannot assume that the population 9,000 years ago was the same as now\/. It’s possible, but we know that tribes did change homelands–the Kiowa moving from Wyoming into the Southern Plains, to give just one example. NAGPRA was passed to repatriate the remains–thousands of them–of more recent skeletal remains, whose removal from their graves by scientific researchers had embittered many American Indians over the past century. But to claim a 9,200-year-old skeleton as “ours” is just too much of a stretch.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kirk Mitchell’s mystery novel, Ancient Ones<\/em>, was inspired by the battle over Kennewick Man’s remains. For more on the whole genre of “American Indian mystery novels,” go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The saga of Kennewick Man, the 9,200-year-old Caucasoid (which is not the same as “Caucasian”!) skeleton found in Washington state in 1996, continues. An federal appeals court panel has ruled in favor of reseachers who want to continue to study his remains, now stored at the University of Washington, and against the tribes that wanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-111","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7986","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":0},"title":"Not Ainu or Polynesian, Scientists Say of Kennewick Man","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Kennewick Man, the roughly 9,000-year-old skeleton found twenty years in Washington state was the subject of a long court battle between physical anthropologists and archaeologists who wanted to study him and contemporary tribes who wanted to claim him under NAGPRA rules. Suspiciously, the Corps of Engineers dumped rock and gravel\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"One reconstruction gave him a thick beard (Int. Business Times).","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kennewick-man1-300x220.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":260,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=260","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":1},"title":"\"Pagan\" predecessors The BBC picks\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Pagan\" predecessors The BBC picks up on the growing evidence for multiple ancient migrations into the Americas with this story. Meanwhile, Inappropriate Response remains a good place to keep up with the \"Caucasoid\" Kennewick Man squabble. For some American Indian political leaders, this issue has a line-in-the-sand quality. They apparently\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4651","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":2},"title":"Kennewick Man Was Buff","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"How buff? Five foot-seven,\u00a0 170 pounds, and all muscle, according to recent skeletal analysis. He also had eaten a lot of seal meat. (Hat tip to Peculiar.)","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":485,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=485","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":3},"title":"Church, state, and sacred sitesNo\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Church, state, and sacred sitesNo insightful comment here, just a link to a Christian Science Monitor piece on the difficulties of applying law to sacred sites. Kennewick Man gets a mention too. (Remember, boys and girls, \"Caucasian\" is not the same as \"Caucasoid.\" Even the CSM fumbles that term.)","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":97,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=97","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":4},"title":"An interested bystander . .\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 13, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"An interested bystander . . . is all that I am in the Kennewick Man case, but I enjoyed this post from Moira Breen's Inappropriate Reponse blog. You might like this post as well on the whole sacred-lands issue. British Pagans, for instance, continue to pester English Heritage, etc., about\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":73,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=73","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":5},"title":"Dem Bones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 2, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"American archaeologists have had more a decade's experience with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It has also been misapplied, I believe, as in the case of Kennewick Man. Although that skeleton may have been proto-Polynesian rather than European, Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly filed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4284,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/4284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}