Walter W. Taylor and Dissension in American Archaeology / Edited by Allan L

PROPHET, PARIAH, AND PIONEER In case of dissension, never dare to judge until you’ve heard the other side. EURIPIDES HERACLEIDAE, CA. 428 BC Walter W. Taylor and Dissension in American Pioneer Pioneer Archaeology AND AND EDITED BY Allan L. Maca, Jonathan E. Reyman, and William J. Folan FOREWORD BY Prophet, Pariah, Linda S. Cordell Prophet, Pariah, U NIVERSITY PRESS OF C OLORADO © 2010 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Ad- ams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prophet, pariah, and pioneer : Walter W. Taylor and dissension in American archaeology / edited by Allan L. Maca, Jonathan E. Reyman, and William J. Folan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87081-952-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Taylor, Walter W. (Walter Willard) 2. Archaeologists—United States—Biography. 3. Archaeology—United States—History. I. Maca, Allan L. II. Reyman, Jonathan E. III. Folan, William J. CC115.T39P76 2010 930.1092—dc22 [B] 2010009127 Design by Daniel Pratt 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Â Â 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For the mavericks, synthesizers, and dissenters CONTENTS List of Contributors xi List of Figures and Tables xiii Foreword xv Linda S. Cordell Preface, Acknowledgments, and Chapter Summaries xxi Allan L. Maca, Jonathan E. Reyman, and William J. Folan PART I: INTRODUCTION, BACKGROUND, AND OVERVIEW 1: Then and Now: W. W. Taylor and American Archaeology 3 Allan L. Maca 2: Walter Willard Taylor Jr.: A Biographical Sketch and Bibliography 57 Jonathan E. Reyman 3: No Man Is an Island: The Scholarship of Walter W. Taylor 73 Brenda V. Kennedy vii PART II: SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY: Colleagues’ PersPECTIVES 4: Walter Taylor: POW, Professor, and Colleague 103 Philip J.C. Dark 5: Professor Walter W. Taylor as Chairman 119 J. Charles Kelley 6: Reflections on Walter Taylor 123 Carroll L. Riley PART III: SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY: Students’ PersPECTIVES 7: Walter Taylor in the 1960s 129 R. Berle Clay 8: Yanaconas 141 James Schoenwetter 9: Walter W. Taylor: Prophet, Pariah, and Pioneer 149 William J. Folan 10: Walter Taylor: A Stimulating and Problematic Professor 169 Phil C. Weigand 11: Professor Walter W. Taylor 177 Jonathan E. Reyman PART IV: ANALYSES OF Taylor’s Work and INFLUENCE 12: Remembering Walter Taylor 197 William A. Longacre 13: Walter W. Taylor’s A Study of Arch(a)eology: Its Impact, or Lack Thereof, 1943–Present 201 Patty Jo Watson 14: Cornelius Osgood, Preceptor 217 Alice Beck Kehoe 15: Walter W. Taylor and the Study of Maya Iconography 227 Rosemary A. Joyce 16: Walter Taylor’s Conjunctive Approach in Maya Archaeology 243 Allan L. Maca 17: Walter W. Taylor in the Southwest 299 Don D. Fowler viii CONTENTS 18: Walter Taylor and the Production of Anger in American Archaeology 315 Mark P. Leone PART V: DISCUSSION 19: “Conjunctivitis”: Notes on Historical Ethnography, Paradigms, and Social Networks in Academia 333 Quetzil E. Castañeda Epilogue 357 References 363 Index 407 Contents ix CONTRIBUTORS Quetzil E. Castañeda R. Berle Clay Linda S. Cordell Philip J.C. Dark William J. Folan Don D. Fowler xi Rosemary A. Joyce Alice Beck Kehoe J. Charles Kelley Brenda V. Kennedy Mark P. Leone William A. Longacre Allan L. Maca Jonathan E. Reyman Carroll L. Riley James Schoenwetter Patty Jo Watson Phil C. Weigand xii CONTRIBUTORS FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURES 1.1. American Antiquity citations: a comparison of four publications (modified from Sterud 1978) 38 2.1. Cover of Hunting and Fishing Magazine, October 1927, which included Taylor’s first article 58 9.1. Trends in global temperatures from the last 3,000 years, estimated from sea levels 165 9.2. Tool kits extracted from within-room associations of lithics, Calakmul, Mexico 166 13.1. Swedish Odhner mechanical calculator, circa 1940 212 17.1. The Kayenta region, Utah-Arizona, the scene of Taylor’s Pueblo Ecology Study 301 TABLES 1.1. The Conjunctive Approach, from Taylor 1948, Chapter 6 33 11.1. Course handout, Proseminar A505: Archaeology—Dr. Walter W. Taylor 182 11.2. Some Mesoamerican-Southwest Puebloan parallels in astronomy 192 xiii FOREWORD Linda Cordell The contributors to Prophet, Pariah, and Pioneer: Walter W. Taylor and Dissension in American Archaeology explore Taylor’s life and work in archaeology. This is not a festschrift volume. Festschrifts are often thematically disparate statements by former students and colleagues. This book focuses on Taylor as a teacher and colleague and reviews his substantive research in the archaeology of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. Most important, the chapters herein explore Taylor’s detailed critique of Americanist archaeology (research undertaken by archaeologists trained in America, wherever they may work) and his formula- tion of what he called the “conjunctive approach,” which offered direction for improving the field. As the editors indicate in their preface, some of the chapters in this book are critical of Taylor and his work and so depart from the generally celebratory nature of festschrift volumes. This book is not simply an explora- tion of an interesting personality in American archaeology. Many of the chapters are written by scholars who are known for their contributions to archaeological method and theory, and the volume as a whole should stimulate new dialogues in those areas and reflection on the nature of archaeological discourse. Walter Willard Taylor (1913–1997), was educated at Yale, as an undergradu- ate, and Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1943. He was a xv veteran (and POW) of World War II, and professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. In his doctoral dissertation, revised and subsequently published in 1948 as A Study of Archeology, Taylor provided a detailed critique of historical particularist archaeology, preoc- cupied with the systematics of time and space, that was prevalent in American archaeology in the first half of the twentieth century. His conjunctive approach was offered as a strategy for revitalizing the field (Watson 1983; Willey and Sabloff 1993: 96–152). A Study of Archeology became required reading in many graduate seminars in archaeological method and theory taught in universities in the later decades of the twentieth century, and the book is still in print (Taylor 1983). Taylor made enemies and had difficulty implementing his research agenda for reasons the contributors to this volume explore in detail, but the fact is that the shortcomings of early twentieth-century approaches continue to haunt archaeology. Many perspectives that are seen as innovative today (see Hodder 1991; Pauketat 2000; Hegmon 2003) owe an intellectual debt to Taylor. Here I explore briefly two facets of Taylor’s work that are prominent in his legacy: the nature of his critique of Americanist archaeology and the strategy he used to deliver his ideas to his colleagues. As Taylor (1983: 43) pointed out, archaeology “per se is no more than a method and a set of specialized techniques for the gathering of cultural information” or “the production of cultural information” (ibid., 44). Absent contem- porary records, the data, observations, and stuff of archaeology are only “(1) spatial relationships, (2) quantity, and (3) chemico-physical specifications” (Taylor 1983: 145). Archaeology requires theory derived from another discipline (or disciplines) to interpret and make its data comprehensible or useful. The tools of archaeology may be used in the context of classical or biblical studies, architecture, or other disciplines. In the Americas, archaeology is usually offered in departments of anthropology where the intellectual goal is to understand culture at all times and places and the ways in which it develops and changes over time. Most Americanist archaeologists consider themselves anthropologists, whose mission it is to contribute to understanding the workings of culture in general. In outlining his conjunctive approach, Taylor (1983: 153–154) argued that archaeology proceeds through different levels of analysis. Archaeological study may present the temporal sequence of data and contexts, producing local chro- nology, what he called “chronicle.” For example, this might include a sequence of pottery types and house styles in a given area. Interpretation and synthesis of data and data contexts would produce ethnography (of a past society for archaeology) or in Taylor’s terms, historiography. This would be a basic description of the past society comparable to a descriptive ethnography of a living group, such as a tribe or community. Taylor viewed the comparative study and interpretation of archaeological data and contexts as comparable to ethnology, which is the xvi FOREWORD comparative study of living societies. Such comparison might be in chronological or cultural terms. A chronological example might be a study of the develop- ment of Pueblo Indian culture over time. A cultural ethnology might compare societies of hunter-gatherers in different environments. Only when archaeological data, data contexts, and interpretation addressed “culture, its nature and workings” (Taylor 1983: 53) would it be considered anthropology. By the time Taylor wrote, archaeologists using the tools of stratigraphic analysis, and in the American Southwest dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), had gone beyond antiquarian collecting and had begun to write chronicle.

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