[Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past

[Jerry Ek]

Although I think that the discussion resulting from Mike Smith's comments about race and ethnicity is interesting, I think that most of the responses and rebuttals seem to miss the point of Smith's original post.  

If you read through the original posting, Smith is not arguing that a four field approach to anthropology should be abandoned.  He never states that linguistic data aren't relevant to issues important in archaeology.  And although he says "I don't care very much what language Teotihuacanos spoke," I don't think his overall point is that historical linguistics is not a valid field of research.  

The issue is the tendency, even need, for people to connect ancient societies with modern ethnic groups.  Mike raises an excellent point about how the modern obsession over issues of race and ethnicity is projected back into the past.  Thus, when people visit a place like Teotihuacan, they want to know what group the residents of Teotihuacan are ethnically affiliated with.  People want a simple answer to that question: "Teotihuacanos were Zoques" or "Teotihuacanos were Nahuas."  People today are obsessed with race and ethnicty, and need to apply labels to people to somehow understand them.

The problem is that ethnic identities are contingent and constantly in flux.  Defining ethnic identity in the present is difficult.  Linking a society that collapsed in 600 AD to a modern ethnic group, or even an ethnic group documented at Spanish contact, is highly problematic.  Again using Teo as an example, there is a great deal of evidence for social upheaval and change through the Epiclassic Period and into the Postclassic Period.  One would hardly expect that the cultural identity shared by people at Teotihuacan would remain unchanged through centuries, and that any linkage with modern groups would be meaningful.  If we could determine the language spoken at Teotihuacan with 100% certainty, would it really help us understand that much more about their ethnicity anyways?  Although language is often an important component of ethnic idenity, language does not equal ethnicty.   And, with an empirial capital like Teotihuacan, can we even assume that one single language was dominant?  

Please don't misinterpret my comments as suggesting that ancient ethnicity isn't a useful topic of study.  At Teotihuacan, a great deal of important research has focused on 'ethnic barrios' within the city.  In this context, we are dealing with the ways that material culture is used to mark social identity within the context of a empirial capital.  But these lines of research often degenerate into simplistic and uncritical labelling of ethnic groups based on archaeological data or projection of oral histories back into the ancient past.  Great examples of how the preoccupation with ethnic labels can divert attention from more imporant issues is the constant debates about whether Chichen Itza was "Toltec" or not.  Or the role of "Putun" groups in the Classic Maya collapse.  

Perhaps many of you should reread Smith's original post.  A lot of the responses were straw man arguments that missed the main point.  

Jerry Ek

> From: nhopkins at mailer.fsu.edu
> Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:53:48 -0500
> To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> Subject: [Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past
> 
> Listeros:
> 
> Michael Smith’s comments a few days ago caught my eye and I thought  
> it was worth a response.  I don’t mean to be critical of him, because  
> he at least is aware of the latest developments in relevant  
> linguistics (Mixe-Zoques at Teotihuacan), although he clearly doesn’t  
> see how language identification would shed any light on the questions  
> he is interested in.  However, there are many other “linguistically- 
> challenged archaeologists” who treat archaeology as an autonomous  
> discipline, and are committed to positions like “truth comes only  
> from the point of a trowel” and “potsherds don’t speak languages.”  
> Just to put some perspective on the issue, let me rephrase these  
> comments as if they came from an “archaeologically-challenged linguist”:
> 
> As an archaeologically-challenged linguist, I can reconstruct the  
> prehistory of the speakers of a language family from linguistic data  
> by applying the scientific methodology of historical linguistics,  
> including comparative reconstruction to sequence and even date  
> significant cultural periods, vocabulary studies to get information  
> on geographical and ecological settings, social structures, cultural  
> practices, etc., the identification of loan words, showing the nature  
> and chronology of contacts with other ethnic groups, distributional  
> studies for hypotheses about population movements, and so on.
> 
> Note that all these shed light on questions like “how they  
> farmed...the kinds of rituals or craft activities they participated  
> in...how they traveled to other areas and how they interpreted  
> information from other areas...the ways they constructed and lived  
> with class differences...the type of government they forged...etc.”
> 
> In other words, I can reconstruct prehistory in some detail without  
> any reference to the physical evidence provided by archaeology, so I  
> can ignore archaeology.
> 
> How stupid does that sound?  Why would I want to study prehistory  
> without making use of all available relevant information?  Why would  
> I not wish to test my linguistically-derived hypotheses against other  
> lines of information?  Because I didn’t want them challenged?  That’s  
> hardly good science.  The best models of prehistory result from the  
> integration of data from all fields, including physical anthropology,  
> comparative ethnology, ethnohistory, epigraphy, linguistics, and  
> archaeology – as well as fields outside of anthropology.  These  
> different lines of evidence are not in competition with each other to  
> see which one can establish the truth, they are complementary to each  
> other, and each reflects the same underlying social processes in its  
> own way.  Each reveals aspects of the truth that are difficult to  
> come by from other kinds of data.  Maybe none of us is capable of  
> fully understanding all the contributons of all of these fields, but  
> surely it is incumbent on us to try.
> 
> Nick Hopkins
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