WORKING TOGETHER ON RACE AND RACIALISM IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY RACE IS...ONLY AS RACE DOES ESSENTIALISM AND ETHNICITY IN (BIO)ARCHAEOLOGY AND SKELETAL BIOLOGY Ann M. Kakaliouras Ann Kakaliouras is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Whittier College in Whittier, California. n recent scholarly and public skirmishes over race, racial - As a bioarchaeologist with research interests in repatriation Iism, and the human past, perhaps no other anthropolog - and Indigenous archaeology, I have noted elsewhere how ical subfield has been as implicated— or called out, as it intertwined issues of racialism, repatriation, and skeletal were— as skeletal biology. 1 Few will soon forget the Ken - biology have become since the passage of NAGPRA newick Man/Ancient One “Caucasoid” kerfuffle, and in the (Kakaliouras 2008). To briefly provide a little historical con - last decade or so a unique literature has sprung up around text, during the first half of the twentieth century, race was how, or whether or not, skeletal biologists and bioarchaeolo - the organizing principle for— and race determination was de gists continue to “do race,” despite the American Association rigueur methodology in— physical anthropology, losing favor of Physical Anthropology’s insistence that “pure races do not as a research approach (but not as a pedagogical tool) during exist” and “discrete races made up chiefly of typical repre - the New Physical Anthropology of the 1950s and 60s. Since sentatives” are “untenable” (AAPA 1996). the 1970s, both skeletal biologists and bioarchaeologists have focused their energies primarily on population and culture- The fulcra of this activity have been on the problems and pos - based research, discerning and interpreting patterns of sibilities of two sometimes distinct pursuits: forensic and health/disease, trauma, growth, stress, activity patterns, as skeletal biological classification, and biodistance research. well as microevolutionary shifts in intra- and inter- Forensic anthropologists and skeletal biologists (craniometri - population profiles due to gene flow and drift (e.g., Buikstra cians, principally) often employ reference collections of cra - and Beck 2006; Larsen 1997). nial data, placing ancient individuals metrically in relation to both past and present populations. The method of biodistance Forensic anthropologists and some skeletal biologists have works on the principle that heritable differences in morphol - been and are the central proponents for skeletal race or, late - ogy between and within populations (or skeletal samples that ly, “social race” 2 determination (e.g., Gill 1998; Sauer 1992). must represent populations) are demonstrable through mul - The notion that an individual’s morphology is material evi - tivariate analyses of skeletal features. Interpretations of these dence for their cultural identity, and by extension their cul - patterns, therefore, may inform the reconstruction of past tural affiliation for NAGPRA, proceeded to collide with Ken - population profiles, movements, and interactions. In a few newick Man/The Ancient One (Owsley and Jantz 2002), and instances, some bioarchaeologists and anthropologists have has continued to trouble repatriation processes, tribal gov - critiqued these methods and inquiries as racialist and “ racial- ernments, archaeology, and physical anthropology ever biological distance” respectively (Armelagos and Van Gerven since. In the wake of struggles over cultural affiliation, then, 2003:61; and e.g., Goodman 1997; Smay and Armelagos 2000; individual classification, population affinity, and biodistance Williams et al. 2005). On the other hand, other skeletal biolo - research have become the most politically incendiary lines of gists and forensic anthropologists claim that skeletal individ - investigation in all of bioarchaeology and skeletal biology. uals can be assigned population affinities, races, or even eth - nicities based on morphological traits when compared to Are charges of racialism against skeletal biologists and bioar - other skeletal samples (e.g., Ousley et al. 2009; Sparks and chaeologists who specialize in biodistance, however, actually Jantz 2003). Likewise, biodistance researchers have respond - deserved? Echo- Hawk and Zimmerman define racialism as ed that their work is neither racialist nor typological, but use - “the cultural idea that humankind is composed of racial ful for both evolutionary and cultural approaches to past groups that are biologically distinct. These groups are based human populations (Stojanowski and Buikstra 2004). on what seem to be long- term, received wisdom from 16 The SAA Archaeological Record • May 2010 WORKING TOGETHER ON RACE AND RACIALISM IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY straightforward [physical] observations of humanity” that there are, in theory, better ways to see interactions (2006:471). This explanation, though, is a rather blunt instru - between human morphologies, cultural processes, and eth - ment for use in discourses about skeletal, or even genetic, nic identities. Such critique, though, only serves to margin - classification and past identities, since one does not have to alize some of the most compelling work on practice and believe in the existence of race per se to graft phenotype (or identity in bioarchaeology, recent investigations by regional genotype) onto past and present cultural or ethnic identities specialists who keep their interpretations fully grounded in (and vice versa). To borrow and corrupt a rather technical relevant archaeological contexts (e.g., Knudson and Sto - philosophical term, perhaps ”morphological essentialism” 3 janowski 2009; Rakita et al. 2005). Further, it distracts us can be recast to describe the equation of biology and identity from beginning to work together on even better ways to in the absence of other evidence. In other words, “morpho - detect and interpret the formation and trajectories of ethnic - logical essentialism” in skeletal biology is the notion that the ities in the archaeological record. interpretation of metric or nonmetric skeletal trait patterns can be solely informative of a past individual’s or group’s cul - Rather than either continue to review or confront these dis - tural identity, independent of archaeological context (also see courses, then, I prefer to imagine a few more steps bioar - Zack 2000:453–457). In even more direct terms, populations chaeologists and skeletal biologists might take to actively are not cultures unless proven otherwise. If race, therefore, resist racialism and “morphological essentialism” in our is to become ethnicity in archaeology, does it not stand to rea - field. 6 So, if for the most part bioarchaeologists and skeletal son that biological data should inform biological interpreta - biologists are not actively “doing race,” what is it that we are tions, and cultural data, cultural ones? doing, or not doing, about race and racialism? 7 Perhaps we are simply lacking the same kind of practice as the discipline Yet, besides all the other cultural and behavioral processes of archaeology. Whatever our research specialties, we are not bioarchaeologists interpret from bones, gene flow (when dif - having rigorous public discussions about racialism or essen - ferent groups reproduce with each other) is as profoundly tialism, and therefore we may continue to allow the slippage cultural a process as it is a microevolutionary one; docu - of biology, morphology, and population into potentially menting gene flow can be the pursuit of the material evi - essentialist interpretations about culture and ethnicity (per dence of human cultural and political choices (e.g., Edgar the claims made about the SAA in this issue). Perhaps there 2009). Also, genetic drift may represent not only patterns of are common avenues for archaeologists and bioarchaeolo - genetic ancestry, but also the effects of cultural and historical gists to travel toward challenging each other to finally replace change. That these patterns alone— however based in cultur - race with ethnicity or with other concepts that acknowledge al choice or historical events they might be— do not serve as the cultural construction and maintenance of people’s iden - direct indices or evidence for cultural or ethnic identities tities. 8 Additionally, in this pursuit there should be ways to should be obvious. In order for the biological to inform the invite further collaborations with descendant communities, cultural, we need sociocultural context, which is only avail - thereby embracing the kind of multivocality about the past able for the past through archaeology and oral and docu - that has recently emerged in archaeological research and mentary history. 4 scholarship in general (Zimmerman 2007). None of this means, however, that genetic and morphologi - One place to continue this trend might be in the re- cal studies are inherently racialist or essentialist. Already it evaluation or re- conceptualization of the ways we use the takes just one perusal of the literature in bioarchaeology and concept of ancestry. Anthropologists and descendant com - skeletal biology to notice that race is rarely on topic. In fact, munities all share deep interests in ancestry as an organiz - in our current cultural moment, it is wrangling over race that ing principle for tracking descent, as an emic concept or way seems to dominate academic discourse, not the productive of understanding the past, and even as a force for the con - use of a race concept to help us understand diverse pasts.