John Terrell

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Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology by Sandra Bamford

American Anthropologist, 2009

Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology is a provocative attempt on th... more Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology is a provocative attempt on the part of Sandra Bamford to further destabilize, in true Schneiderian fashion, the taken-for-granted biologicocentric paradigm underpinning the understanding of personhood, relatedness, attachment, morality, and mortality in the so-called West. The book will be of much interest to scholars working in fields as diverse as kinship studies, science and technology studies (STS), environmental studies, Pacific studies, and social theory broadly configured. The book is well written and engaging and would be suitable for upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students alike. What is perhaps most novel about the book is Bamford's attempt to provide a rather new twist on what is now a classic anthropological move-the putting into question of otherwise unquestioned assumptions about the truths of human existence inherent in "Western" cultural logicby drawing on not one but two contrasting conceptual frameworks. One of these frameworks arises from ongoing struggles within contemporary communities and popular culture in the "West" to make ethical sense of the relevance, applicability, and importance of recent innovations in biotechnology. The second stems from a putatively nonbiological vision of human existence and sociality as articulated in Kamea communities in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in which Bamford conducted almost three years of field research. In challenging "old" understandings of biological relatedness, reproduction, personhood, and life, the "new" biology of biotechnology has significantly put into question what were previously held to be unquestionable truths about the human condition: namely, that sex is necessarily linked to reproduction; that relatedness is understood in terms of shared biological substance; and that individ

The Savage and the Innocent: Sophisticated Techniques and Naive Theory in the Study of Human Population Genetics in Melanesia

Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 1975

Just as paleontologists draw upon the evolutionary theories and contemporary observations of stud... more Just as paleontologists draw upon the evolutionary theories and contemporary observations of students of the modern biota when predicting and interpreting biogeographical patterns within the fossil record, so too archeologists req uire knowledge about the population dynamics of human groups, in order to model and fully comprehend the biogeography and evolution of prehistoric man and his cultures. In return, paleontologists and archeologists are in the best position to give theories and inferences the test of time. Acknowledging this give-and-take, this paper surveys human biological research in Melanesia since 1962 to learn how successful physical anthropologists have been in analyzing and interpreting the heterogeneity of the Melanesian peoples,' which has long provoked speculation about prehistoric migrations, ethnic conquests, and racial intrusions into the southwest Pacific. It is found that little has apparently been achieved in understanding geographic patterns of variation in genetic factors, anthropometric measurements, etc., in spite of recent progress in taking and assaying genetical data. Research problems seem poorly formulated; hypotheses advanced often appear trivial; insufficient attention has been given to non-genetic variables likely to be influencing the growth, maintenance, and stability of biological similarities and differences among local and regional populations. It is suggested that future research incorporating needed information about health, human ecology, population parameters, sociocultural variables, and other circumstances affecting gene frequencies, etc., should better enable physical anthropologists, archeologists and others to ascertain the events and processes that have led to the remarkable biological, ethnological, and linguistic diversity of Melanesians.

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. By Christina Thompson Harper, New York, 2019. ISBN: 9780062060877. Pp. 365, US$29.99

Archaeology in Oceania, 2019

On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Patrick Vinton Kirch. 2000. University of California Press, Berkeley. 446 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-22347-0. - Sigatoka: The Shifting Sands of Fijian Prehistory. Yvonne Marshall, Andrew Crosby...

American Antiquity, 2002

Froiilispint Restored Moai I statue) on Rapa Nui, with replicated obsidian and coral eyes I Photo... more

Terrell 2023 Metaphor and theory in island archaeology

Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2023

Anthropologists after World War II were vocal in saying the apparent remoteness and marginality o... more Anthropologists after World War II were vocal in saying the apparent remoteness and marginality of islands in the Pacific made them laboratories of a sort. In 1997, however, Terry Hunt, Chris Gosden, and I reported that by then another research agenda had replaced this old one in the Pacific. Rather than seeing these islands as distant and undeveloped human colonies scattered across a vast and empty expanse of sea, modern scholarship was discovering the Pacific had long been a sphere of human accomplishments, and the ocean itself had long been an avenue for interchange, not a barrier to human affairs. Today, however, it seems we were being too optimistic. Islands are still often described in ways suggesting they are basically remote, isolated, and bounded miniature worlds. As a scientific category, however, islands vary in their size, shape, environmental characteristics, degree of isolation, and the like, and I would argue that it is not a foregone conclusion that working on islands has a decided edge over doing field work anywhere else on Earth.

Understanding the Human Mind

Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2020

Understanding the human mind is essential for staying healthy, mentally, spiritually, and emotion... more Understanding the human mind is essential for staying healthy, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. This paper, which was also a part of my research for my final thesis (Ph. D. in Christian counseling), describes two approaches that can help us understand the mind. More importantly, it discusses the different facets the human mind has. And, when we use our mind right, we will develop healthy ways to respond to what happens within and around us.

First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies, by Peter Bellwood. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 2005; ISBN 0-631-20565-9

There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which pres... more There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which presents a robustly expressed solution to one of those classic problems which provides a benchmark for theorization and justifies archaeology as a field. But agreement stops there. Few academic books published recently have evoked such highly charged reactions. On the one hand, First Farmers has impressed many critics, reached audiences far afield from traditional archaeological readerships, and garnered major book awards from professional bodies such as the Society for American Archaeology. On the other hand, it has been subjected to a level of concerted criticism rare in the academic world. As the reviews below show, it has clearly hit a nerve; the gloves are off.First Farmers polarizes scholars in complex ways. Much recent work on agricultural origins, particularly in Europe, has had a strongly indigenist and particularistic tone, averse to mass movements of peoples and ‘grand narratives’ in general. But even advocates of grand narrative in general may take exception to Bellwood's ‘language dispersals’ thesis. Similarly, the very attempt to bring together linguistic, genetic and archaeological data in an account of the past is controversial to some, but even those who aspire to this kind of interdisciplinary synthesis rarely agree on how it can be carried out.Neither the book nor its critics here are likely to be the last word on the subject. But whether one agrees with it or not, First Farmers is a welcome addition to the agricultural origins scene, which, at least in Europe, has been evolving over the last two decades towards a sort of eclectic middle-ground consensus in which difference of opinion is accommodated by eschewing bold generalization.

Niuatoputapu: The Prehistory of a Polynesian Chiefdom. Patrick Vinton Kirch. Thomas Burke Memorial Washington State Museum Monograph No. 5. Burke Museum, Seattle, 1988. ix + 287 pp., references, appendices. $25.00 (paper)

American Antiquity, 1991

millennia of art history. By stressing how few facts are separable from preconceptions, Bahn broa... more millennia of art history. By stressing how few facts are separable from preconceptions, Bahn broadens the base of our scientific understanding. His volume is recommended highly. Bahn is more conversant with animal art than the human figure. He follows Pales and de St Pereuse (1976) in ignoring the shortened proportions of the lower body in Gravettian "Venuses" (one-third instead of onehalf), and thus perpetuates the erroneous idea that they do not deviate from normal reality. He also errs by suggesting sources cited in Chapter 6 (footnote 126) contain anatomical studies comparing female statuettes against actual modern women. The masculinity of the Hohlenstein-Stadel piece is also questionable. In spite of the catholic title, the book's limited geographical and chronological scope is a disappointment. Pleistocene artistic activity is treated as a worldwide phenomenon, but the focus is on the decorated caves and portable art of Franc-Cantabria during the Magdalenian of the European Upper Paleolithic. With a doctorate from Cambridge, and specialized publications in the prehistory of the Pyrenees, the author's traditional reliance on the animals of western European parietal art is understandable. However, the necessity of integrating the full richness of central and eastern European Ice Age assemblages into our thinking scarcely is acknowledged, and coverage is limited to female statuettes and atypical items.

Island Biogeography: Implications and Applications for Archaeology

A Dagger to the Heart? Testing Assumptions of Archaeological Network Analysis with New Guinean Ethnographic Collections

The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2018

How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Timothy Earle

Journal of Anthropological Research, Dec 1, 1998

The Archaeology of Micronesia. Paul Rainbird

Journal of Anthropological Research, Jul 1, 2005

Eden in the East (Book Review)

American anthropologist: Journal of the American Anthropological Association, 2000

Archaeology and the Origins of Social Stratification in Southern Bougainville

Société des Océanistes eBooks, Oct 5, 2016

One of the Lessons of modern economic geography, abstract theory of graphs, and contemporary thin... more One of the Lessons of modern economic geography, abstract theory of graphs, and contemporary thinking in theoretical biology appears to be that hierarchical control networks are one solution to the problem of what to do about systems that are so complex, they may be unstable, unworkable, uneconomical, or any of these in combination. The issue explored in this essay is : Had the dynamics of life in southern Bougainville Led to the evolution of a hierarchical (stratified) system of social contr...

Causal pathways and causal processes: Studying the evolutionary prehistory of human diversity in language, customs, and biology

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Jun 1, 1986

An issue of continuing interest to Pacific archaeologiststhe question of Polynesian originsis... more

Language and Culture on the North Coast of New Guinea

American Anthropologist, Sep 1, 1992

Statistical analysis of variability in assemblages of material culture obtained at dzfferent vill... more Statistical analysis of variability in assemblages of material culture obtained at dzfferent villages on the North Coast of New Guinea indicates that similarities and differences among these assemblages are most strongly associated with geographic propinquity, irrespective of linguistic a@ities. When assemblage similarity is adjustedfor the effect of distance, diversity in material culture appears unrelated to the linguistic relationships of these communities. This study shows that similarity in material culture assemblages can mask marked heterogeneity in language. Language, however, isjequently used to index people in Melanesia on the assumption that language is a usejid key to their other human characteristics. This analysis does not lend support to this common practice, and it has implicationsfor how prehistoric cultural complexes in Melanesia are deJined and interpreted. HIS ARTICLE REPORTS SOME RESULTS of our continuing study of ethnographic colT lections at Field Museum of Natural History that were assembled between 1900 and 1913 on the North Coast of New Guinea. In the statistical analysis presented here, we examine the extent to which variability in the inventories (or "assemblages") of material culture obtained at different villages on this coast is associated with (1) differences in the culture histories of these communities, as suggested by their linguistic relationships, and (2) differences in intervillage communication, trade, and cultural diffusion, as suggested by geographic distance. We conclude that the similarities and differences we find among these village assemblages are most strongly correlated with geographic propinquity, irrespective of linguistic affinities. When assemblage similarity is adjusted for the effect of distance, diversity in material culture appears unrelated to the linguistic relationships of these communities. Language is frequently used to index people in Melanesia, on the assumption that language is a useful key to their other human characteristics. This analysis does not lend support to this common practice and it also has implications for how prehistoric cultural complexes in Melanesia are defined and interpreted. These findings are also of interest because they demonstrate that early museum collections can be studied to document cultural diversity in ways that are less obvious, and often less easily documented, using conventional ethnographic and ethnohistorical techniques. Moreover, the present study suggests that insights on cultural diversity can be obtained from the analysis of museum collections even when detailed ethnographic documentation is lacking.

The Impact of Creativity

The Brain As a Pattern Learning Device

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. By Christina Thompson Harper, New York, 2019. ISBN: 9780062060877. Pp. 365, US$29.99

Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, Apr 1, 2020

‘Writing the Past’ by Gavin Lucas

History of Anthropology Newsletter, 2019

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