George W. Gill

Last updated
George W. Gill
NationalityAmerican
Occupation Anthropologist
Organization University of Wyoming

George W. Gill is an American anthropologist, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Wyoming who specializes in skeletal biology. [1] [2]

Contents

Career

In the late 1980s, partly in response to demands from American forensic anthropology organizations to scrutinize methods of racial identification in order to ensure accuracy in legal cases, Gill tested, supported, and developed craniofacial anthropometric and other means of estimating the racial origins of skeletal remains. He found that the employment of multiple criteria can yield very high rates of accuracy, and even that individual methods can be accurate more than 80 percent of the time. [3]

Gill cites these findings in arguing against the scientific consensus [4] to treat human races as social constructs. Gill suggests that "race denial" can stem from overstatements of the importance of clinal variation among human phenotypes, and from "politically motivated censorship" in the mistaken but "politically correct" belief that "race promotes racism". Gill argues that "we can often function within systems that we do not believe in": Categories can have practical utility, even if they also seem conceptually problematic. [3]

Gill served on a NOVA-sponsored panel in which he and five others debated the reality of race. Among Gill's opponents was American anthropologist C. Loring Brace [3] a fellow plaintiff in the Kennewick Man case [5] who maintains that the term "race" is not warranted by "a biological entity". [6]

Easter Island

Gill has researched human osteology on the Polynesian island and Chilean territory of Easter Island, [2] and in 1981 led the National Geographic Society's Easter Island Anthropological Expedition. [7] Materials that he has gathered form part of the osteological collection of Chile's national museum. [1] He is collaborating with former students on a book about the island, which will aim to "explain the origins of the people and the decline of their ancient advanced culture". [2]

Kennewick Man

Gill has studied Kennewick Man, the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found near Kennewick in the U.S. state of Washington. Gill was among the scientists who successfully sued the United States in order to gain access to the remains, which had been claimed by the Umatilla and other American Indian tribes under a contested interpretation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. [5]

Related Research Articles

Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.

Kennewick Man and Ancient One are the names given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. It is one of the most complete ancient skeletons ever found. Radiocarbon tests on bone have shown it to date from 8,900 to 9,000 calibrated years before present, but it was not until 2013 that ancient DNA analysis techniques had improved enough to shed light on the remains.

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a common nation of origin, or common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is often used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act</span> 1990 US law protecting Native American remains and artifacts

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luzia Woman</span> Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a Paleo-Indian woman

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References

  1. 1 2 University of Wyoming (2009). "George Gill". Archived from the original on 2009-06-16. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  2. 1 2 3 University of Wyoming (October 2007). "UW professor, former students work on Easter Island book". Archived from the original on 2010-06-08. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  3. 1 2 3 Gill GW (November 2000). "Does race exist? A proponent's perspective". NOVA Online. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  4. American Anthropological Association (May 17, 1998). "Statement on Race" . Retrieved 2021-07-06.
  5. 1 2 United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2004). "Bonnichsen v. United States" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  6. Brace CL (November 2000). "Does race exist? An antagonist's perspective". NOVA Online. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  7. University of Wyoming (October 2001). "Gill profiled in Who's Who". Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved 2009-02-03.