Biographical Memoirs Volume 57 (1987) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Leslie Spier
Leslie Spier
Pages 430-459
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 431... ...
House types, craclle boards, clothing and footgear, containers, transport, and so through a host of highly factual listings of the elements material, social, and religious that make up the cultural systems of western native American peoples. What were we, as students, expected to clo with such detail?
|
From page 432... ...
IncleecI, this was Spier's forte. He is best remembered for his extensive field work, his descriptive analyses of the precontact cultures, those aboriginal forms of American Indian life in western North America.
|
From page 433... ...
Yet one cannot call Spier a theorist, at least in terms of his developing a special school or following. His contribution represents a perfecting of a technique of history, one usually identified not wholly accurately with the "school" of American anthropology ascribed to Franz Boas (d.
|
From page 434... ...
As an assistant anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, he had ample opportunity to become familiar with the artifacts of cultures spread across the world. Ancl with his bent for technology, Spier never lost interest in the material sicle of human achievements in their respective cultures.
|
From page 435... ...
Often quoted, Spier's Sun Dance monograph provided a mode} not only for historical inquiries of other scholars but also for his own future work. In 1920 Spier accepted his first teaching post at the University of Washington, remaining there until 1929.
|
From page 436... ...
In all these regions are to be found a congeries of native peoples, each group or tribe in its own way distinct, and each, at the time Spier contacted them, retaining elements of an aboriginal way of life. Spier saw his task as eliciting essentially descriptively the components of these various native cultures.
|
From page 437... ...
Like other fielcts, the cliscipline of anthropology has, over the years, had its ups and clowns, problem orientations that may change with each decade, new horizons anct perspectives. But, however much the research goals and purposes of cultural and social anthropology become subject to modification, the fielct remains at base a comparative one, ctepenclent on an awareness of the human potential for cultural difference.
|
From page 438... ...
The most striking example of Spier's ethnographic methoct unquestionably appears in the Sun Dance monograph. But because this ceremonial complex moves so deeply into an area of some esoterica, the theoretical stance perhaps may be more reactily illuminated in more encompassing studies, such as that of the Havasupai or the KIamath Indians of southern Oregon.
|
From page 439... ...
Spier tells us what is there in native Klamath life. Contemporary critics might argue that this is a "shopping list," an account in which all component elements are given essentially equal weight.
|
From page 440... ...
But when a vast area of aboriginal America is shown to possess features in common, there is the implication of a broad historical base. Spier's inductive methodology sheds light on the rise of areas of culture in the native New World anc!
|
From page 441... ...
There are also discernible processes that are operative in the building of culture. Inctiviclually maple inventions clo occur, to be sure, but these given the frequent absence of verifiable circumstances come generally from history.
|
From page 442... ...
In short, the collected data fall into their own niche, offer their own explanation, and never, as Spier employed them, stray from a scientific historicism. There is one remaining side of Spier's many-facetect career.
|
From page 443... ...
Open to nuance but insistent on the highest scholarly stanciards, Spier exerted considerable influence on anthropological publishing for a long time. Eager to further publications, in ~ 935 he founded a short-livect General Series in Anthropology, which was clesigned to issue monographs on various ethnographic topics.
|
From page 444... ...
444 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS of anthropology, and particularly of ethnology/ethnography since those historicist clays. There are some tociay who are still appalled!
|
From page 445... ...
, Columbia University PROFESSIONAL RECORD 1919 1923 1920-1929 1930, 1934 1932-1933 1933-1939 1936,1937, 1939,1941 1939-1955 1960-1961 445 1912-1914 Assistant Anthropologist, New Jersey Archaeological and Geological Survey 1916 -1920 Assistant Anthropologist, American Museum of Nat ural History Cutting Fellowship, Columbia University National Research Council Fellowship Professor, University of Washington Director, Anthropology Field Training Program, Pa cific Northwest, Okanagon and Modoc Research Associate, Yale University Professor, Yale University Research Director, University of New Mexico Chaco Canyon Field Sessions Professor, University of New Mexico Research Associate, University of California, Berkeley Visiting Professor: 1927-1929 University of Oklahoma 1928, 1930 University of Chicago 1939, 1949 Harvard University 1921,1923, Columbia University (summer) 1925,1932 1924,1925, University of California, Berkeley (summer)
|
From page 446... ...
Andean Institute Society for American Folklore National Research Council Sigma Xi
|
From page 447... ...
Indian remains near Plainfield, Union County, and along the Lower Delaware Valley. Geological Survey of New Jersey, Bulletin 13.
|
From page 448... ...
The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians: Its development and diffusion. Anthropol.
|
From page 449... ...
Frank Moore Colby and Herbert Treadwell Wade, pp.
|
From page 450... ...
Review of The Story of the American Indian, by Paul Radin. The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City)
|
From page 451... ...
Review of Auf der Suche nach dem Pithekanthropus: Dem "A~enmenschen vor Java," by Emil Carthaus. In: Books Abroad, vol.
|
From page 452... ...
Plains Indian parfleche designs.
|
From page 453... ...
Yuman Tribes of the Gila River.
|
From page 454... ...
Completion of an extended ethnography of the Modoc Indians of Oregon. In: American Philosophical Society, Year Book for 1940, pp.
|
From page 455... ...
Review of The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, by Kaj BirketSmith and Frederica de Laguna.
|
From page 456... ...
Cooper, Paul Kirchoff, Dorothy Ranier Libby, and William C Massey.
|
From page 457... ...
Sun dance. In: The Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol.21, p.565.
|
From page 458... ...
700-702. London and New York: The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company, Ltd.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.