Pseudo-Archaeology · The Archaeology Podcast Network

Skull Wars is a Great Book - Ep 181

·36 min·2 clips

He says the 1880s anthropology model treated people as "savagery, barbarism, civilization."

1. Pseudo-Archaeology episode 181 centers on David Hurst Thomas's 2000 book Skull Wars and why Andrew Kinkalla is retiring it from class use. 2. Kinkalla speaks as the host and archaeology instructor, and he says the book matters because it gives students a way to argue through hard cases rather than take a simple side. 3. The episode asks what Skull Wars is for now that Kennewick Man and early-date archaeology have changed since 2000. 4. Thomas's opening move is Vine Deloria Jr.'s introduction, which Kinkalla calls bold because he disagrees with Deloria on the Bering Land Bridge. 5. He says Deloria is important but "pretty extreme" on questions like Native origins and science. 6. Kinkalla frames the real divide as archaeology and Native people versus "big business" or development. 7. He says that divide is the practical cleavage point in his own work over "the better part of 30 years." 8. The episode then returns to Kennewick Man, found in 1996 and described here as about 9,300 years old. 9. Kinkalla says the book was written before later study and repatriation changed that case. 10. He also says Kennewick Man remains a gray area because the find was rare and exceptionally well preserved. 11. Thomas moves backward to Columbus and the early European frame of "good Indians or bad Indians," which Kinkalla calls a cliche. 12. He links that to the "vanishing American" idea in anthropology from the 1880s and early 1900s. 13. Kinkalla says early anthropologists tried to interview living Native people about their grandparents' lives to reconstruct pre-contact history. 14. He then turns to Thomas Jefferson, whom Thomas treats as a scientific excavator but not as a useful label for "first archaeologist." 15. The episode follows with early anthropology's racial ranking of "savagery, barbarism, civilization" and the related idea of social Darwinism. 16. Kinkalla contrasts that with Franz Boas, cultural relativism, and the messy legacy of Boas's own grave robbing. 17. The middle of the episode covers the Sand Creek massacre, the Folsom and Clovis sites, Monte Verde, and the difficulty of dating the peopling of the New World. 18. Kinkalla says Monte Verde and Rimrock Draw show how archaeological dates keep shifting, while the Bering Land Bridge remains well supported by DNA and archaeology. 19. The tone is conversational, argumentative, and classroom-like, with frequent side comments, self-corrections, and break jingles. 20. Anyone interested in archaeology, Native history, or classroom-ready controversies will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a short headline-only summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A careful reassessment that keeps faith with the book while widening the frame.

Pseudo-Archaeology treats Skull Wars as a serious reappraisal rather than a simple verdict. It presents the book as a useful guide to Kennewick Man, but it also widens the frame to North American archaeology and the long, uneasy relationship between archaeologists and Native…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a skeptical tour of Skull Wars, Kennewick Man, and archaeology's self-critique.

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