Racism in archaeology covers the phenomenon of interpreting archaeological remains in terms of speculations about the putative racial profiles of the peoples who created the structures which excavations have brought to light. Archaeologist Chris Gosden wrote "Racism occurs when judgements about people always proceed from their physical features of their body; when biology is given social force." [1]
Such racial readings of archaeological remains have a history which may be traced back at least to Josiah Priest and his 1833 book American Antiquities.[ citation needed ]
A prominent case study of racism in archaeology is the found in the history of analysis of Great Zimbabwe, a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. [2] [3] Today, it is thought to have been the capital of a little-known great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age and the edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. [4] [5] Numerous foreign scholars previously attributed the city's advanced architecture to non-indigenous people due to racial prejudice.
In the mid-16th century, Portuguese historian João de Barros remarked with awe on the "marvellous grandeur" of these ruins, which far outstripped Portuguese attempts to build castles in Sofala. He did not believe any indigenous culture could have produced them, commenting:
To say how and by whom these buildings could have been made is an impossible thing, for the people of that land have no tradition of that sort of thing and no knowledge of letters: therefore they take it for the work of the devil, for when they compare it with other buildings they cannot believe man could have made it. [6]
The first excavation to be carried out at the site was by J. Theodore Bent, who undertook a season at Zimbabwe with Cecil Rhodes's patronage and funding from the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This and other excavations undertaken for Rhodes resulted in a book. Bent had no formal archaeological training, but had travelled very widely in Arabia, Greece and Asia Minor. He was aided by the expert cartographer and surveyor Robert M. W. Swan (1858–1904), who also visited and surveyed a host of related stone ruins nearby. Bent stated in the first edition of his book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) that the ruins revealed either the Phoenicians or the Arabs as builders, and he favoured the possibility of great antiquity for the fortress. By the third edition of his book, published in 1902, he was more specific, with his primary theory being "a Semitic race and of Arabian origin" of "strongly commercial" traders living within a client African city. [7]
The first scientific archaeological excavations at the site were undertaken by David Randall-MacIver for the British Association in 1905–1906. In Medieval Rhodesia, he rejected the claims made by Adam Render, Carl Peters and Karl Mauch, and instead wrote of the existence in the site of objects which were of Bantu origin. Randall-MacIver concluded that all available evidence led him to believe the Zimbabwe structures were constructed by the ancestors of the Shona people. [8] [9] [10]
Other reports arguing for an African origin followed but were controversial, as the white government of Rhodesia pressured archaeologists to deny its construction by black Africans. [11]
The Mound Builders were members of various indigenous North American cultures who constructed earthwork mounds from roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake) [12] to the 16th century CE. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributary waters. [13]
American settlers had visited and painted mounds since the 16th century, but it was Thomas Jefferson who in the 1780s undertook the first excavation of one. Near Monticello, Jefferson excavated a mound, digging a three foot deep strata trench in an effort to determine its purpose, something not attempted in America before. Having identified several layers of human remains and recalling memories of seeing a group of native Americans participating in a somewhat sorrowful ceremony at the site of a mount, Jefferson concluded that the mounds were relatively contemporary burial sites. Today, archaeologists have identified thirteen mounds in the Piedmont, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Shenandoah Valley region of central Virginia, including the mound described by Jefferson, all of which are burial mounds dating to the late prehistoric and early contact era (ca. 900-1700 CE). [14] [15] While his methods were precursors to modern archeological techniques, his conclusions were colored by his biases and his enforcement of forced assimilation of indigenous people into American society. [16]
French and English travel writers and colonists during the 17th and 18th century, including William Bartram, wrote about and illustrated the mounds, accepting that they were likely built by Native Americans. In his book History of the American Indians, Irish historian James Adair acknowledged that they built the mounds, while arguing that they were descended from a "lost tribe of Israelites. [17]
In the late 18th century, a myth emerged that a separate, now extinct race of Mound Builders unrelated to contemporary indigenous groups had created the mounds. Historian Nicholas Timmerman argues that, in tandem with the spirit of nationalism developing in the United States, "The Mound Builder theories posited an explanation for the mounds that allowed them to account for the often-elaborate constructions they encountered as the products of a “civilized” race that had been overrun by a “savage” one." [17]
In 1820, American archaeologist Caleb Atwater published his investigation into mounds along the Ohio River. His report followed archaeological principles of field work such as dendrochronology and stratigraphy. Influenced by the work of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque and a merchant named John D. Clifford, Atwater argued the mounds were created by “a people far more civilized than our Indians, but far less so than Europeans” which he considered to be a lost race of Hindus. [18]
In 1848, the fledgling Smithsonian Museum released its first publication, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, a major survey of sites according to apparent function, such as burial grounds, effigies, fortifications, and building foundations. It put forward what had become the common view of the time, that the Mound Builders were a more sophisticated race than 19th century Native American cultures. Suggested connections were to the Aztecs, Incans, Mayans or Egyptians. [17]
In 1856, the Smithsonian published archaeologist Samuel Foster Haven's Archaeology of the United States, which accepted that the mounds were built by "the aborigines of the country. [19] [17]
The Bureau of American Ethnology published a study by Cyrus Thomas as its Annual Report of 1894. In it, Thomas, who had once thought that a vanished race had built the mounds, powerfully argued that ancestors of contemporary Native Americans were capable of building and had built the mounds. His work effectively ended the archaeological debate. [20] [17]
Today, the prevailing consensus among archaeologists is that the various cultures which built mounds are descendants of the original settlers of the Americas and ancestors of contemporary Native Americans. However, the idea a group not directly related to Native Americans living today may have built the mounds persists, with popular proponents including investigative journalist Graham Hancock [21] On a January 2023 episode of Tucker Carlson's Fox Nation show "Tucker Carlson Today," geologist Randall Carlson promoted the theory, stating that "They didn't build 'em. Someone before them built 'em" and that there was "skeletal evidence of people who bear no genetic resemblance to the current Indians." [22]
Josiah Priest's 400-page publication American Antiquities centered around his study of the Bible and antiquarian journals, supplemented by information from his travels. After visiting earthworks in Ohio and New York, Priest concluded that these mounds could be traced back to a lost race that had inhabited America even before the Native Americans. This idea is now referred to as the "mound builder myth". The book grew in popularity because of Priest's views on Native Americans. "It tapped into the widely accepted view of those times that Native Americans were merely bloodthirsty savages, bent on the destruction of all but their own race. It was inconceivable to Priest and like-minded men that a race so lazy and inept could conceive and build such huge, elaborate structures." [23] Priest speculated that the original dwellers could be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. [24]
The reasoning Priest gives for his conclusion that there was an even earlier settler than the Native Americans relies upon his own interpretation of the Biblical flood story. According to Priest, after the great flood disappeared, Noah and his ark landed on America. While surveying the land, Noah also discovered mounds that had been constructed before the waters rose up. Upon seeing this, Noah questioned where these agricultural phenomena came from. "Surveying the various themes of mound builder origins, he could not decide whether the mounds were the work of Polynesians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Israelites, Scandinavians, Welsh, Scotts, or Chinese, although he felt certain the Indians had not built them." [25] Priest's racism has also been discussed in detail by author Robert Silverberg, [26] archaeologist Stephen Williams, [27] and author Jason Colavito. [28]
Flinders Petrie worked closely with the scientific racists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson and over the years of his excavation career sent bones, skulls, and horses to their Anthropometric Laboratory at the University College London, forming personal relationships with both. Petrie's ideas on society were informed by their analyses of the biometric data. [29] Historian Debbie Challis writes, "Petrie was a prestigious advocate of Galton's anthropometric data gathering and racial science in understanding ancient Egypt and archaeological evidence, as well as a backer of Galton’s eugenic vision in contemporary society." [30] Petrie argued, based on skeletal remains and material culture changes, that the culture of ancient Egypt was derived from an invading Caucasoid "Dynastic Race," which had entered Egypt from Mesopotamia in late predynastic times, conquered the "inferior, exhausted mulatto" natives, and slowly introduced the higher Dynastic civilisation as it interbred with them. [31] [32] Dynastic race theory is no longer widely accepted, and Egyptian state formation is understood as a mainly indigenous process. [33]
Gustav Kossinna, a German archaeologist, used archaeology to promote the ideology that a prehistoric 'Fatherland', and a superior 'Aryan race', once existed in ancient Europe that extended beyond Germany into Poland and other areas, and that this territory should be reunified to restore the German state. Later his ideas were adopted by the Nazis, and Kossina's theories became official doctrine. Archaeology was heavily expanded in Nazi Germany, but those who disagreed with Kossinna's archaeology were removed from teaching positions. Kossinna's approach, and its association with the Nazis, had a long-lasting effect on European archaeologists, making them reluctant to investigate questions of race or ethnicity in archaeological contexts. [34]
Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of the modern country of Zimbabwe, near Lake Mutirikwe and the town of Masvingo. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe from the 13th century, having been settled in the 4th century AD. Construction on the city began in the 11th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices were erected by ancestors of the Shona people, currently located in Zimbabwe and nearby countries. The stone city spans an area of 7.22 square kilometres (2.79 sq mi) and could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak, giving it a population density of approximately 2,500 inhabitants per square kilometre (6,500/sq mi). It is recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Urlin. Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele, an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred. Undoubtedly at least as important is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.
Pseudoarchaeology consists of attempts to study, interpret, or teach about the subject-matter of archaeology while rejecting, ignoring, or misunderstanding the accepted data-gathering and analytical methods of the discipline. These pseudoscientific interpretations involve the use of artifacts, sites or materials to construct scientifically insubstantial theories to strengthen the pseudoarchaeologists' claims. Methods include exaggeration of evidence, dramatic or romanticized conclusions, use of fallacious arguments, and fabrication of evidence.
Cahokia Mounds is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis. The state archaeology park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km2), and contains about 80 manmade mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. At its apex around 1100 CE, the city covered about 6 square miles (16 km2), included about 120 earthworks in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions, and had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people.
Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1905.
Archaeology is the study of human activity in the past, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes.
Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period, Woodland period, and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters.
The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London is part of University College London Museums and Collections. The museum contains 80,000 objects, making it one of the world's largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese material. It is designated under the Arts Council England Designation Scheme as being of "national and international importance".
Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1894.
Moundville Archaeological Site, also known as the Moundville Archaeological Park, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County, near the modern city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Extensive archaeological investigation has shown that the site was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian culture chiefdom polity between the 11th and 16th centuries. The archaeological park portion of the site is administered by the University of Alabama Museums and encompasses 185 acres (75 ha), consisting of 29 platform mounds around a rectangular plaza.
Gertrude Caton Thompson, was an English archaeologist at a time when participation by women in the discipline was uncommon. Much of her archaeological work was conducted in Egypt. However, she also worked on expeditions in Zimbabwe, Malta, and South Arabia. Her notable contributions to the field of archaeology include creating a technique for excavating archaeological sites and information on Paleolithic to Predynastic civilizations in Zimbabwe and Egypt. Caton Thompson held many official positions in organizations such as the Prehistoric Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.
An effigy mound is a raised pile of earth built in the shape of a stylized animal, symbol, religious figure, human, or other figure. The Effigy Moundbuilder culture is primarily associated with the years 550–1200 CE during the Late Woodland Period, although radiocarbon dating has placed the origin of certain mounds as far back as 320 BCE.
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history. Woolley was knighted in 1935 for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology. He was married to the British archaeologist Katharine Woolley.
Nazi archaeology was a field of pseudoarcheology led and encouraged by various Nazi leaders and Ahnenerbe figures, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, which directed archaeologists and other scholars to search Germany's archeological past in order to find material evidence supporting an advanced, Aryan ancestry as alleged and espoused by the ultranationalist Nazi Party.
The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the various mounds found in the Eastern United States.
David Randall-MacIver FBA was a British-born archaeologist, who later became an American citizen. He is most famous for his excavations at Great Zimbabwe which provided the first solid evidence that the site was built by Shona peoples.
William Pidgeon was an American antiquarian and archaeologist most famous for his 1858 work, Traditions of Dee-Coo-Dah and Antiquarian Researches, a putative history about lost tribes of the Upper Mississippi and the mounds they left behind. This book was eventually revealed to be partly a hoax, and partly embellishment of actual research. Combining elaborate sketches and maps of mound groups in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, Pidgeon claimed to have discovered an elaborate network of coded earthen symbols used by an ancient race that predated Native Americans; one of the last survivors of this putative race, "Dee-Coo-Dah", was interviewed by Pidgeon. Eventually his work became popular in the late 19th century, when there were numerous myths about pre-Indian mound builders, and Pidgeon's book went through at least three printings, making him a fortune. The famed archaeologist Theodore H. Lewis later revealed that Pidgeon had fabricated most of his research, and distorted much of the rest of it, mapping mounds where none existed, and changing the arrangement of existing mound groups to suit his needs. Pidgeon appears to have died in obscurity in Calhoun County, Illinois ca. 1880.
Josiah Priest (1788–1861) was an American polemicist of the early 19th century. His books and pamphlets, which presented both standard and speculative history and archaeology sold in the thousands. Although Priest appears to have been poorly educated, he attempted to portray himself as an authority in his books. Priest is often identified as one of the creators of pseudoscientific and pseudohistoric literature. Although his work was widely read and several of his works were published in multiple editions, his books were characterized by theories that were used to justify the violent domination over both the Native American and African-American peoples. Priest's works were among the most overtly racist of his time. Priest's works help set the stage for the Trail of Tears and the defense of slavery that contributed to the conflicts of the American Civil War.
Jason Colavito is an American author and independent scholar specializing in the study of fringe theories particularly around ancient history and extraterrestrials. Colavito has written a number of books, including The Cult of Alien Gods (2005), The Mound Builder Myth (2020), and Legends of the Pyramids (2021).
Hilda Mary Isabel, Lady Petrie, was an Irish-born British Egyptologist and wife of Sir Flinders Petrie, the father of scientific archaeology. Having studied geology, she was hired by Flinders Petrie at age 25 as an artist, which led to their marriage and a working partnership that endured for their lifetimes.