Revisionist Anthropology: Aboriginal North America [and Comments and Reply]

Anthropological discussions of North American Indians and archaeological interpretation of North American prehistory tend to be distorted by biases, some the "cant of conquest," others derived from the structuring principles of the European tradition. Tripartite schemata such as the Three-Age model and premises of oppositional dualism such as the contrast between primitive and civilized should be assumed to come from these structuring principles and subjected to critical examination. A revisionist view of North American Indian societies and prehistory suggests that by the 1st millennium A. D. nearly all these peoples had evolved sophisticated and effective techniqes of food production. The exception was in the high latitudes, where environmental conditions did not permit food production and adaptations focussed on perfecting harvesting techniques for natural populations. Throughout the continental core and the Pacific Drainage, but not in the high latitudes, societies were stratified and "urbanized" in that the fucntions of Adam Smith's tertiary sector were explicitly differentiated among offices and formally performed at least annually within a centered population of thousands, though the populations of these polities might not reside year-round in contiguity. North American Indians practiced modes of food production and social organization varying from those of Europeans but in no sense to be labeled primitive.