Collaborations and Competition between Professionals and Nonprofessionals in the Production of Archaeological Knowledge in the Americas

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

The archaeological record has always intrigued a wide variety of people with

different interests, aesthetics, and aspirations, only some of whom became

recognized as professionals--and they, too, are a diverse group, as the

succession of "new archaeology" movements attests. How Americanist

archaeological institutions emerged and grew from the interactions of such

"founders," how professional identities were forged--both by excluding and

embracing collectors, antiquarians, amateurs or avocationalists in complex

social networks--and how the creation of new knowledge depended on the

patterns of those interactions, are intriguing and enduring questions in the

history of Americanist archaeology. A Gordon R. Willey symposium focused on

the relationships of avocationalists (who lack professional credentials but

aspire to contribute comparably to professionals) or amateurs, antiquarians,

and collectors (who often had/have their own independent goals) with

professionals opens up a wide field of inquiry aimed at better understanding

the meaning and means of professionalization and its alternative

conceptions, as well as the contingencies of knowledge production.

Other Keywords
History Of Archaeology • History • Archaeology • history of american archaeology • Professional Archaeology • Avocational Archaeology • Language • Cooperation • Archaeological Field Methods • Arizona

Geographic Keywords
North America - Southwest • Mesoamerica • Caribbean • North America - Midwest • North America - Northeast

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Amateur and Professional Archaeologists: Who’s Who? (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Peter J. Pilles, Jr.

    Archaeology in the state of Arizona has been a partnership between professionals and “amateurs,” or avocationalists, for more than a century. From an early focus on collecting “antiquities” for display, both professionals and avocationalists have followed a parallel course in the development of method and theory and the specialization of skills and interests, that today has blurred the distinction between “professionals” and “amateurs.” This paper will discuss the growth of avocational...

  • The Caribbean and the Beginnings of American Archaeology and Anthropology (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan-Jose Ortiz-Aguilu.

    Both American and native Caribbean scholars and amateurs of different capacities and experience contributed to the formation of the discipline of Archaeology in the region, especially in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Before 1920 came around, these islands had seen the likes of John Wesley Powell, William H. Holmes, Jesse Walter Fewkes, John Alden Mason and none other than Franz Boas himself. The interesting thing is that these people not only did what they did, but that the Caribbean, its data and the...

  • Changing Attitudes and Perspectives on Public Participation in Archaeology: The Case of the Southwest Archaeology Team (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry Howard.

    In the early 1980s the Southwest Archaeology Team was formed under what is now the Arizona Museum of Natural History. Reacting to a need for an emergency response team to preserve information from archaeological sites, not protected by state or federal regulations, but being destroyed by development. While initially considered as outsiders and non-professionals, the acceptance of the public working on archaeological excavations quickly changed. This paper focuses on the changing attitudes and...

  • Creating Insiders and Outsiders through Language (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Oswald.

    Anthropologists use discourse analyses to study how language is used within cultures and across cultural boundaries as a way to distinguish between the cultural “insiders” and “outsiders.” This study investigates how language creates insiders and outsiders in archaeology. Textbooks and primary literature are used in the professionalization of students from undergraduate through doctoral programs, helping to drive the transition from novice to professional status in archaeology. Scholars within...

  • Disciplining a discipline: On in-groups and out-groups and archaeological identity politics through time (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Kirakosian.

    Who has claimed and who can claim to hold knowledge about the ancient past has shifted greatly over time in the United States. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, groups like the Archaeological Institute of America and smaller state-level archaeological societies were founded throughout the United States, which largely formed from local and growing interest in the ancient past. In just the past century, associations, societies and other groups like the American Anthropological...

  • Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole and His Father, Rev. Dr. George L. Cole: A Forgotten Chapter of Early Archaeological Explorations in the American Southwest (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven James.

    In the history of American archaeology, Fay-Cooper Cole (1881-1961) at the University of Chicago was instrumental in implementing standardized archaeological field methods and training a generation of archaeologists through his Illinois field schools in the 1930s and 1940s. In recent years, there has been some debate about the origins of the “Chicago Method” of excavation, for it has been stated that “Cole had no previous training in archaeology” (Browman 2002). Yet before he began his...

  • The Matthew Effect in Archaeology: Discovery, the Transmission of Knowledge, and Credit (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Christenson.

    Although the Matthew Effect was originally used by sociologist Robert K. Merton for the disproportionate credit given to eminent scientists in cases of collaboration or independent discoveries within a professional discipline, it also is appropriate to apply it to situations where professionals take away or gain credit for work done by amateurs. Examples of such an effect are provided with an examination of the more general issue of how knowledge of discoveries is transmitted in archaeology and...

  • "The Real and Only True Documents": German Naturalists and the Systematic Observation of Antiquities in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Central Veracruz, Mexico (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Werner.

    This paper examines a small network of amateur naturalists who were among the first to document archaeological remains in central Veracruz, Mexico. Carl Christian Sartorius (1796-1872), Karl Hermann Berendt (1817 - 1878), and Hugo Finck (ca. 1824 - 1895) shared backgrounds as German expatriates living and working as professional farmers and physicians in Veracruz. Their detailed knowledge of the peoples and landscapes of Veracruz, as well as their frequent trips to the field, enabled their...

  • Synergies of Success: Stories of Avocational/Professional Archeology in Arizona (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wilcox.

    The history of archaeology is replete with stories about the synergies that have come from relationships between professional and avocational archaeologists whose cooperation repeatedly has produced significant contributions to knowledge. Recalling some of those stories today is a valuable reminder of how such success is crafted, and perhaps a guide to how it again can be realized. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Erich Schmidt, Byron Cummings, Emil Walter Haury and my own experience provide five such...

  • Thrown to the Fringe: Challenging the Myth of Columbus (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kehoe.

    European imperialism, in league with the Vatican, retained the Church’s political support by accepting its moral imperative to Christianize everyone not in its communion. Thus Columbus was a Crusader, and European international law gave heathen lands to the first Christian nation claiming discovery––the Doctrine of Discovery. Two centuries later, the Earl of Shaftesbury’s employee John Locke wrote treatises justifying his employer’s landlord class enclosing common lands in Britain, extending to...

  • "The Wisconsin Idea" and the Production of Archaeological Knowledge during the Progressive Era, ca. 1900-1930 (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Green. Roland Rodell.

    The social and political ferment of the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) was associated with a golden age in Wisconsin archaeology for avocationals and professionals alike. In 1901, a group of archaeological enthusiasts led by Charles E. Brown founded the Archeological Section of the Wisconsin Natural History Society. The Section soon became the independent Wisconsin Archeological Society (WAS). Its promotion of the “scientific and educational value” of archaeology was meant to engage “scientists,...