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Of Straightening Combs, Sodium Hydroxide, and Potassium Hydroxide in Archaeological and Cultural-Anthropological Analyses of Ethnogenesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Brackette F. Williams*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and African American Studies Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721

Abstract

In the contemporary world of nation-states, cultural anthropologists are increasingly drawn to the concept of ethnicity as a marker of the complex symbolic processes that mediate relations between the economic and political strata that form the "cultures" and "subcultures" of these units. They attempt to examine the overlapping and interlocking processes of historical consciousness from which members of ethnic groups derive an understanding of their "unity" and its shifting "reality," past, present, and future. This essay raises the question of whether cultural-anthropological conceptions of these processes can be fruitfully utilized by archaeologists who remain dependent on material culture as primary evidence, or by those who accept bounded groups as units that move through time, simultaneously constructing varied historical perspectives.

Resumen

Resumen

En el mundo contemporáneo de estados-nación, los antropólogos culturales se sienten más y más atraídos hacia el concepto de etnicidad como un marcador deprocesos simbólicos complejos que median entre los estratos económicos y políticos, los cuales conforman las "culturas" y "subculturas" de estas unidades. Ellos intentan examinar los procesos enlazados y entrelapados de la conciencia historica, de los que miembros de groupos étnicos derivan una comprensión de su unidad y su "realidad" cambiante, en el pasado, presente, yfuturo. Este ensayo explora la posibilidad de que concepciones antropológicas culturales de estos procesos sean utilizadas productivamente por arqueólogos, quienes aun dependen de la cultura material como evidenciaprimaria, o quienes conciben groupos circunscritos como unidades que se mueven a través del tiempo, construyendo simultáneamente varias perspectivas historicas.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1992

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References

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