bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Anasazi Land Use and Forest Reduction: A Case Study from Southwest Colorado
Authors: Kohler Timothy A. , Matthews Meredith H.
Published: April 2006

Species of wood used for fuel changed significantly through time at a large Anasazi village in southwestern Colorado occupied from about A.D. 750 to 900. Changes also occurred in other records of plant use from this site, in the fauna utilized, and in the proportional representation of hafted tools. These and corroborating data from nearby sites suggest that the Anasazi occupation of the Dolores River valley and vicinity resulted in significant local deforestation. Anasazi settlement and mobility practices were affected by climate, human impact on the environment, and regional population densities.
A Mammoth Fraud in Science
Authors: Griffin James B. , Meltzer David J. , Smith Bruce D. , Sturtevant William C.
Published: April 2006

The Holly Oak pendant is a shaped piece of marine whelk (Busycon sinistrum) shell with two holes drilled in one end that bears an incised depiction of an extinct proboscidean (woolly mammoth or mastodon). It allegedly was recovered in 1864 from an archaeological site in Delaware. There was speculation in the 1970s as to its age and significance, and it was illustrated and cited as a Paleoindian artifact of Pleistocene age. Subsequent analyses indicated the artifact was fraudulent: The engraving probably was done in the 1880s on a shell recovered from an archaeological site. This has been confirmed by a recently obtained AMS radiocarbon date. The Holly Oak pendant is a modern forgery.
The Nature of Lithic Reduction and Lithic Analysis: Stage Typologies Revisited
Authors: Rozen Kenneth C. , Sullivan Alan P.
Published: April 2006

Ensor and Roemer (1989) claim that our debitage categories inherently are linked to our interpretations (i.e., are not interpretation free), that we have dismissed unfairly the work of lithic analysts who use stage typologies, and that our view of lithic reduction as a continuum is questionable. In responding, we review the descriptive and interpretive limitations of stage approaches, and explore terminological issues that arise from Ensor and Roemer's zealous adherence to stage approaches. Finally, we reiterate our position that approaches like ours, which seek to describe and interpret distinctive assemblages of lithic artifacts, are more likely to yield productive results than those, such as stage approaches, which focus on identifying distinctive artifacts.
Circumscription by Anthropogenic Environmental Destruction: An Expansion of Carneiro's (1970) Theory of the Origin of the State
Authors: Dickson D. Bruce
Published: April 2006

Carneiro (1970) asserts that social and environmental "circumscription" were primary stimuli for the emergence of the archaic state. He presents the environment as an essentially fixed set of natural conditions which impose constraints upon society. However, paleoenvironmental research and contemporary experience indicate that desertification, deforestation, salinization, and other salient environmental conditions confronting early states were neither fixed nor natural, but apparently dynamic products of direct human ecological intervention. This paper reviews evidence from southern Mesopotamia and suggests that Carneiro's thesis be amended to include changing patterns of "artificial" circumscription brought about by anthropogenic environmental destruction.
Mississippian Period Status Differentiation through Textile Analysis: A Caddoan Example
Authors: Kuttruff Jenna Tedrick
Published: April 2006

Specific attributes were recorded for 119 textiles recovered from burial contexts from Craig Mound at the Spiro site and eight southern Ozark bluff shelters. Textile attributes that varied according to status designations of the burial contexts were identified using the following three avenues of investigation. The textiles were rated using an ordinal index of production complexity, and more complex textiles were found to be associated with burial contexts of presumed higher status. Use of a series of contingency tables identified edge finishes, color, patterning, design motif, fiber, and scale as attributes that are individually associated with status differences. When selected attributes were considered together using a classification and pattern-recognition program, color description, scale, fiber, and number of yarn components were identified as the best predictors of status association.
The Spatial Dynamics of Ontario Iroquoian Longhouses
Authors: Kapches Mima
Published: April 2006

In both diachronic and synchronic studies of archaeological examples of Ontario Iroquoian longhouses, the standard method of analysis is spatially static. In this paper, the spatially dynamic method is used to analyze longhouses representative of diachronic and synchronic episodes encompassing over 800 years of Ontario Iroquoian prehistory. The results of the analysis using this approach provide significant quantifiable data on the development of Iroquoian matrilocal residence systems and functional and tribal variation in longhouse settlement patterns.
The Stem of the Matter: Reply to Ramsden and Fitzgerald
Authors: Latta Martha A.
Published: April 2006

Ramsden and Fitzgerald (1990) offer no basis for altering the conclusions of the original article (Latta 1987), where I proposed that stemmed ceramic vessels in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ontario Iroquoian sites appear to represent diffusion from European sources, probably through imitation of the Catholic chalice.
Method in Archaeology: Middle-Range Theory as Hermeneutics
Authors: Kosso Peter
Published: April 2006

Disagreements about methodology in archaeology are often located in terms of the middle-range-theory approach of Lewis Binford and the hermeneutic, contextual archaeology of Ian Hodder. These positions are usually presented in opposition to each other, but here they are shown to present very much the same methodological picture of archaeology. This specific analysis is more generally informative of the methodological relation between the natural and social sciences.
Estimating Tillage Effects on Artifact Distributions
Authors: Odell George H. , Cowan Frank
Published: April 2006

Although behavioralists who deal with plow zone sites have a need to discriminate between cultural and non-cultural effects on artifact distributions, relatively little is known about the influences of agricultural equipment. A series of experiments was conducted to answer questions concerning the parameters of recovery, lateral artifact displacement, spatial patterning, duration of tillage, and the effects of tillage patterning. Results indicate an average recovery rate of 5-6 percent; support for the "size effect"; relatively constant recovery of small and large pieces; dominant displacement in the direction of plowing; lack of relationship between displacement and artifact size; basically random distribution of objects; and possible spurious clustering, depending upon the analytical methods employed.
Conditional Spatial Patterning: Beyond the Nearest Neighbor
Authors: Voorrips Albertus , O'Shea John M.
Published: April 2006

This paper discusses a method for the analysis of spatial patterning which is based on aspects of the study of spatial autocorrelation. By means of computer simulation it is shown that the join count statistic (Cliff and Ord 1973; Moran 1950) has a wider validity than was presumed originally. Some archaeological applications from the analysis of a late Mesolithic cemetery in Karelia, USSR, are presented.
Architecture as Artifact: Pit Structures and Pueblos in the American Southwest
Authors: Gilman Patricia A.
Published: April 2006

The use of architecture as an artifact gives archaeologists a data set that we have rarely employed to examine cultural evolutionary questions. In this paper I consider the determinants of some architectural forms and propose some causes of architectural change, specifically in the American Southwest. Using ethnographic material from around the world, I demonstrate the relationship between structure seasonality and two of the most common southwestern architectural forms, pit structures and pueblos. The ethnographic record also suggests that the conditions surrounding the southwestern use of pit structures, and to a lesser degree of pueblos, are rather different from what many archaeologists have supposed. The differences in the conditions under which pueblos are used rather than pit structures form the basis for a theoretical framework that begins to explain the transition between the two kinds of structures in the prehistoric Southwest.
The Work of Metallurgical Artificers at Machu Picchu, Peru
Authors: Rutledge John W. , Gordon Robert B.
Published: April 2006

The 168 metal artifacts collected at Machu Picchu in 1912 by Hiram Bingham have been examined for evidence that metallurgical artificers worked at this site in pre-Columbian times. Fifteen artifacts have been identified as metal stock, work in progress, or waste materials from metallurgical processes. Bronze was made by alloying metallic tin and copper and was cast into both finished objects and stock for subsequent forging. Hammering was done with stone tools, but bronze chisels were also in use. Silver-copper alloys were worked, but this material was not held to compositional limits as close as those for bronze. No alloys containing arsenic and relatively little evidence of the use of sheet metal were found.
One-Sample Tests in Regional Archaeological Analysis: New Possibilities through Computer Technology
Authors: Kvamme Kenneth L.
Published: April 2006

Archaeologists commonly employ two-sample statistical tests in regional locational analyses that compare environmental measurements obtained at site locations against measurements taken at random locations from the background environment. One-sample tests that compare a site sample against a background standard are conceptually and statistically superior, but have been difficult to implement for continuous data types. This situation now is changed owing to a relatively new computer technology known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS can provide a complete description of the nature of the background environment of entire regions for categorical and continuous data types, thereby allowing the ready application of one-sample testing strategies. Examples of several GIS-based one-sample tests are given using data from east-central Arizona. Such conventional tests only should be applied, however, when the observations can be shown to be statistically independent through tests for spatial autocorrelation.
No Surprises? The Reliability and Validity of Test Pit Sampling
Authors: Nance Jack D. , Ball Bruce F.
Published: April 2006

In attempts to implement probabilistic survey designs in areas of reduced surface visibility, archaeologists have turned to shovel testing or Test Pit Sampling (TPS). Characteristically TPS involves excavation of small, systematically spaced test pits within larger survey units as a method of searching for archaeological materials that would otherwise go undiscovered. While TPS has been the subject of considerable study most studies have been theoretical in nature. As a result, while the characteristics of TPS are understood generally, it is not known how well the method functions in known archaeological contexts. This article describes the results of research directed at estimating the reliability and validity of the test pit method when carried out on known archaeological sites under varying conditions of artifact density and spatial clustering. Split-half correlations and logistic regressions show that TPS is reliable in the sense that it produces replicable results, but is biased against discovery of small, low-density sites, especially when these sites exhibit high degrees of spatial clustering of artifacts. A model relating TPS to regional survey in general is presented and a means of estimating potential biases of the method is illustrated.
Fertility and the Development of Agriculture in the Prehistoric Midwest
Authors: Buikstra Jane E. , Konigsberg Lyle W. , Bullington Jill
Published: April 2006

In this article we develop and apply a method for estimating fertility in paleodemographic study. The proportion D30+/D5+, generated from standard life table calculations, is used to estimate relative fertility rates for eight Woodland and Mississippian populations represented by skeletal series from west-central Illinois. The inferred pattern of fertility increase through time is then considered in the context of key variables that define diet, technology, and sedentism. We conclude that changes in diet or food preparation techniques are implicated in this demographic change. The absence of a significant increment in juvenile mortality in association with the elevated fertility rates suggests that these changes in fertility explain the regional population increase previously inferred from mortuary and habitation site densities.
A Postulated Tsunami and Its Effects on Cultural Development in the Peruvian Early Horizon
Authors: Bird Robert McK.
Published: April 2006

While investigating the archaeological background of early maize on the coast of Peru, I realized that several factors affect interpretation. The estimated date for the start of common use of maize there is close to the apparent dates of a large tsunami, the abandonment of many coastal sites, and the start of occupation at Chavin de Huantar in the highlands. While investigating the possible relations between the principal pre-tsunami coastal culture and Chavin, I discovered that depictions of a monstrous head link the two cultures. Dating of first millennium B.C. materials is complicated by changes in the atmospheric14C level, so iconographic, stylistic, and material linkages are even more important in thinking about cultural development in this period. Inconsistencies between older inferences and newer observations can be resolved by a new model.
Palynology in Historical Rural-Landscape Studies: Great Meadows, Pennsylvania
Authors: Kelso Gerald K.
Published: April 2006

Pollen deposited on the ground surface is carried down into the soil by percolating groundwater. Such postdepositional pollen transport preserves the record of historical vegetation and land use in slowly or nonaggrading sediment profiles by separating the pollen spectra of successive ground covers. This is demonstrated at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania, where pollen spectra in hillside cores indicating a preagricultural-era forest are succeeded during the clearance and agricultural period by weed and cereal pollen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are, in turn, replaced by grass during the park period of the last 65 years. The preagricultural pollen spectra indicate that differences in historical ground cover across relatively short horizontal distances and elevations can be reconstructed with pollen analysis.
Sourcing Busycon Artifacts of the Eastern United States
Authors: Claassen Cheryl , Sigmann Samuella
Published: April 2006

A review of the history of marine-shell chemical-sourcing efforts preceeds the introduction of this project. Atomic-absorption spectroscopy (AAS) was used to assay levels of Ca, Mg, Fe, and Sr, in 44 prehistoric Busycon carica and Busycon perversum specimens from the eastern United States. Control shells (35) were collected from food refuse in coastal archaeological sites from Long Island to the Mexico—United States border. Subject shells came from nine Archaic and Mississippian sites. Elemental ratios were clustered to derive a probable water-body origin for the nine artifacts. The influence of diagenesis, body part, and species was negligible, but geography heavily influenced the results. The three shells from Monks Mound indicated origin in tropical, eastern Gulf, and Atlantic water. The shells from the Indian Knoll, Mulberry, and Tatham sites appear to have originated in eastern Gulf waters. The shell from the Archaic-period Ward site seems to have come from tropical water.
Mass Production and Procurement at Valle del Azufre: A Unique Archaeological Obsidian Source in Baja California Sur
Authors: Shackley M. Steven , Hyland Justin R. , Gutierrez M. Maria de la Luz
Published: April 2006

Valle del Azufre is a newly discovered source of high-quality obsidian in central Baja California, which exhibits the most intensive exploitation of any known source in the greater United States Southwest and Northwest Mexico. Over 15 subsurface trenches and at least one adit occur at the source. Evidence for the prehistoric distribution of Valle del Azufre obsidian is presented based on energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry characterization of the source material and artifacts from the Baja California peninsula. Despite the intensity of exploitation at the source, the distribution of Valle del Azufre glass appears to be largely restricted to the central part of the peninsula.
Heartlands and Hinterlands: Alternative Trajectories of Early Urbanization in Mesopotamia and the Southern Levant
Authors: Falconer Steven E. , Savage Stephen H.
Published: April 2006

Comparative rank-size analyses reveal highly variable courses of urbanization in ancient Mesopotamia and the southern Levant during the fourth through early second millennia B.C. While traditional rank-size methods do not consider the effects of archaeological sampling, we propose a revised approach based on Monte Carlo simulation, which incorporates site-recovery rates and demonstrates the advantages of “full-coverage” survey. We highlight the rapid development of urban primacy in southern Mesopotamia’s heartland (Adams 1981) and the more static rural integration of the Diyala hinterland (Adams 1965). In contrast, Bronze Age urbanization in the southern Levant describes a mosaic of urban and rural systems following independent trajectories. We call for greater attention to small sites, which often define the shape of rank-size distributions. Our approach illuminates modest cases of urbanization in terms of structure, rather than simply of reduced scale, and avoids a tendency to categorize such cases as derivative.
Migration in Prehistory: The Northern Iroquoian Case
Authors: Snow Dean R.
Published: April 2006

The archaeology of the Northern Iroquoians has been described in terms of an in situ development out of Point Peninsula culture for half a century. Recently recognized anomalies prompt revision of the in situ hypothesis in favor of one allowing for the derivation of Northern Iroquoians by migration from Clemson's Island culture following A.D. 900. Multifamily dwellings and maize horticulture are argued to have been adaptive advantages that facilitated the incursion. Migration is found to be a viable alternative, and gradualist assumptions about the origins of matrilocality and horticulture are challenged. An alternative hypothesis provides a clear source and beginning date for subsequent development and illuminates some demographic mechanisms. The case illuminates both the processes by which societies propagate across time and space and the independent inferential processes of archaeologists.
The Sample Size-Richness Relation: The Relevance of Research Questions, Sampling Strategies, and Behavioral Variation
Authors: Plog Stephen , Hegmon Michelle
Published: April 2006

Recent discussions of the relation between sample size and assemblage richness suggest that researchers should control for that relation before behavioral interpretations of richness levels can proceed. We suggest that such automatic decisions should be avoided because a strong correlation between sample size and richness alone is not sufficient evidence for dismissing behavioral factors as the primary causes of the variation in richness. Instead, we must first explore the causes of the observed variation in sample size and the relation of those causes to our research questions.
Identifying Site Structure in the Archaeological Record: An Illinois Mississippian Example
Authors: Oetelaar Gerald A.
Published: April 2006

Models of site structure, though common in the ethnoarchaeological literature, are rarely used in the interpretation of the archaeological record. In this study, Portnoy's (1981) model of settlement space and function provides an interpretive framework for inferences on the organization and use of space at the Bridges site, a late prehistoric settlement in south-central Illinois. Unlike its predecessors, this model focuses on the daily activities and interactions of the resident community and identifies a communal front region, a family front region, a family back region, and a communal back region. From this model, it is possible to derive the material consequences of the activities performed in each of the activity regions. Given the proper excavation strategy, it is then possible to define the site framework from the arrangement of structures and features and to infer the nature of the activities from the distribution of debris. As identified at the Bridges site, the nature and organization of the activity regions suggest the presence of an integrated settlement with communal work spaces. This interpretation of the site has important implications for our understanding of late prehistoric chronologies and settlement plans.
Clay Acquisition and Vessel Distribution Patterns: Neutron Activation Analysis of Late Windsor and Shantok Tradition Ceramics from Southern New England
Authors: Lizee Jonathan M. , Neff Hector , Glascock Michael D.
Published: April 2006

In southern New England, typological distinctions between Niantic, Hackney Pond, and Shantok ceramics have been used to describe changing settlement patterns for the Late Woodland (500- 350 Years B.P.) and contact (post-A.D. 1600) periods. Based on the initial typologies developed by Rouse (1947) the Shantok ceramic tradition was also considered an ethnic marker of the Mohegan and Pequot tribes based on material recovered from Fort Shantok. Reexamination of stylistic data have suggested that levels of stylistic similarity between late ceramic types actually limit their use as ethnic markers in reconstructing contact period settlement patterns (Lizee 1994; McBride 1990). In this study, neutron activation analysis is employed to determine if compositional profiles correspond with identified stylistic types. The distribution of compositional groups within the region proves to be useful in describing changes in settlement during the Late Woodland and contact periods for southeastern Connecticut. Results of this study suggest that cultural factors underlying the evolution of the historic Pequot and Mohegan tribes, and locations of focal village sites, also had an impact on access to clay resource zones at the time of European contact.
Public and Private, Domestic and Corporate: The Emergence of the Southwest Asian Village
Authors: Byrd Brian F.
Published: April 2006

Despite extensive research on the transition from semimobile hunters and gatherers to sedentary, food-producing villagers in Southwest Asia, associated changes in community organization remain unexplored. Undoubtedly new social and economic mechanisms were necessary to facilitate the success of these larger permanent settlements. The emergence of novel intrasite organizational patterns can be elucidated in the archaeological record through analysis of the built environment. This paper presents an interpretation of temporal transformations in community organization utilizing the results from the detailed analysis of Beidha, one of the most extensively excavated early Neolithic villages in Southwest Asia. It is proposed that the emergence of Neolithic farming villages in Southwest Asia was characterized by two parallel and interrelated organizational trends: a more restricted social network for sharing production and consumption activities, and the development of more formal and institutionalized mechanisms for integrating the community as a whole.
Radiocarbon Dates on the All American Man Pictograph
Authors: Chaffee Scott D. , Hyman Marian , Rowe Marvin W. , Coulam Nancy J. , Schroedl Alan , Hogue Kathleen
Published: April 2006

Controversy has surrounded the All American Man pictograph in southeast Utah since its discovery in the 1950s. Its coloration, similar to the flag of the United States of America, has led to questions regarding its authenticity. We have obtained two radiocarbon values on a single sample comprised of pigmented sandstone fragments from one small area of this pictograph. They suggest the pictograph dates to the fourteenth century and indicate that it is an authentic, prehistoric pictograph, probably Anasazi in origin.
The Explanation of Artifact Variability
Authors: Schiffer Michael Brian , Skibo James M.
Published: April 2006

We furnish a theoretical framework for explaining that portion of formal variability in artifacts attributable to the behavior of the artisan. Major causal factors are the artisan's knowledge and experience, extent of feedback on performance in activities along the artifact's behavioral chain, situational factors in behavioral chain activities, technological constraints, and social processes of conflict and negotiation. In identifying the causal factors at work in a specific case, the investigator must focus analytically on activities-that is, on people-people, people-artifact, and artifact-artifact interactions-and on the performance characteristics relevant to each. Application of this behavioral framework allows abandonment of many cherished but unhelpful concepts, including style and function. Ceramic artifacts, the low-fired, clay cooking pot in particular, are employed for illustrative purposes.
Risk, Climatic Variability, and the Study of Southwestern Prehistory: An Evolutionary Perspective
Authors: Larson Daniel O. , Neff Hector , Graybill Donald A. , Michaelsen Joel , Ambos Elizabeth
Published: April 2006

Two recent developments in southwestern archaeology are brought together in this paper. First, theoreticians have begun to argue that the archaeological record should be viewed as the product of selection-driven evolution. Second, tree-ring research has produced a highly detailed history of climate for a large area of the northern Southwest. We view the record of climatic oscillations and extreme events as a record of the strength of selection favoring stabilization of specialized agricultural strategies in the arid northern Southwest. Published data from Black Mesa provide a cultural record of sufficient precision to permit comparison with the climatic record, while new data from Vermillion Cliffs, southern Utah, document one local end-product of an evolutionary sequence shaped to an important degree by the long-term variability of climate. Anasazi occupation of many regions failed to persist through the “Great Drought” of the 1270s. From a local perspective, this extreme climatic event caused adaptations shaped by selection prior to the 1270s to fail; from a broader temporal-spatial perspective, however, the drought must be seen as part of the selective regime that shaped subsequent human adaptation to the northern Southwest.
Early Cultigens from Fresnal Shelter, Southeastern New Mexico
Authors: Tagg Martyn D.
Published: April 2006

Fresnal Shelter is one of few known preceramic sites in southern New Mexico with evidence of early agriculture. Recent tandem accelerating mass spectrometer (TAMS) radiocarbon determinations on corn and bean samples indicate that cultigens were used at this site as early as 2945 ± 55 B.P. In addition to providing more evidence of Late Archaic agriculture in the desert regions of the American Southwest, these new data and other previously unpublished radiocarbon dates from the site also illustrate the problem of relying on wood charcoal dates in association with cultigens to determine the age of early agriculture.
Thule Winter Site Demography in the High Arctic
Authors: Park Robert W.
Published: April 2006

The people of the Thule culture, who entered the Canadian Arctic approximately 1,000 years ago and eventually became the Inuit who today inhabit that region, spent the long winters living in impressive semisubterranean houses constructed of boulders, skins, pieces of cut turf, and the bones of bowhead whales. Most sites contain fewer than 10 houses, but some contain many more, leading to disagreement among archaeologists concerning Thule settlement patterns. This paper reviews the criteria archaeologists have used to identify contemporaneous houses at large Thule sites and identifies a new criterion tested at a site in the High Arctic. The 14 houses at the Porden Point site appear to have accumulated gradually through the abandonment of some houses and the construction of others. Therefore, the impressive appearance today of many Thule sites may not reflect their actual social/demographic nature.
The Human Remains from Carter Ranch Pueblo, Arizona: Health in Isolation
Authors: Danforth Marie Elaine , Cook Della Collins , Knick Stanley G.
Published: April 2006

Health patterns in the Pueblo III (A.D. 1100-1225) population from Carter Ranch Pueblo were investigated in skeletal remains from 34 individuals. Childhood health disruptions were assessed using stature, linear enamel hypoplasias, and Harris lines. Periostitis, arthritis, anemia, trauma, and dental pathology were also observed. Although the low juvenile representation is probably an effect of age-biased mortuary practices, results suggest a healthy population compared to larger southwestern sites. Trauma levels at the site are quite high, possibly indicating burial practices differentiated on the ability to work or other health criteria. Additionally, a number of genetic anomalies are present, suggesting an isolated population.
Inzuikizi
Authors: Smith Edwin W.
Published: April 2006

Opening Paragraph

If we are to understand the firm belief in witchcraft we must first investigate the African's conception of ‘medicine’. In many Bantu languages the word for ‘medicine’ is identical with, or similar to, the word for ‘tree’, e.g. Zulu umuthi, Herero omuti, Lamba umuti, mean both ‘tree’ and ‘medicine’ ; in Ila musamo (plural misamo) is ‘medicine’ and isamo is ‘tree’. This points, I imagine, to the fact that most medicines are of vegetal origin.
V. Transvaal, Suto
Authors: Hoffmann C.
Published: April 2006

The Moloi may either be a man or a woman. It is said most Baloi are women. Because the men generally have more than one wife, it happens that those wives who are neglected by their husbands obtain magic medicine in order to kill the husband, so that the more-favoured wives lose him too. Or they procure love-philtres from witch-doctors, so that he prefers them to the other wives. And then it often occurs that they unwittingly give him something that is fatal to him. Children obtain the power of magic from their parents. This magic power is given to them in helpless babyhood by grafting magic medicine in their posterior cavity. Such a person has the power of making himself invisible, especially at night.
Sense and Nonsense in Politics
Authors: Surkin Marvin
Published: April 2006

I take my cue for the title of this paper from Merleau-Ponty, the French phenomenologist, who wrote in 1948 that “the political experience of the past thirty years oblige us to evoke the background of non-sense against which every universal undertaking is silhouetted and by which it is threatened with failure.” Merleau-Ponty refers to the experience of that generation of intellectuals for whom Marxism was a “mistaken hope” because it lost “confidence in its own daring when it was successful in only one country.” But this criticism is equally relevant for a new generation of intellectuals in America for whom the ideals of liberalism have been emptied of reality and have become little more than a super-rational mystique for the Cold War, a counter-revolutionary reflex in the third world, and a narrow perspective of social welfare at home. Merleau-Ponty argues that Marxism “abandoned its own proletarian methods and resumed the classical ones of history: hierarchy, obedience, myth, inequality, diplomacy, and police. Today intellectuals in America are making the same critique with equal fervor about their own lost illusions.

As we search for new ways to comprehend the social realities of American life and new modes of social thought and political action to reconstruct “the American dream,” Merleau-Ponty's notion of sense and nonsense guides us to see the historical relationship between ideologies and practice, between thought and action, between man and the world he creates. It symbolizes that recurrent fact in history whereby reason parades as unreason, where even “the highest form of reason borders on unreason.” We must learn from recent history that “the experience of unreason cannot simply be forgotten;” that the most noble claims to universal truth, the most rational modes of philosophical or social inquiry, the most convincing declarations of political leaders are all contingent, and should be subject to revision and open to criticism and change.
Analysis Using Primary Sources for Term Papers in the Introductory Course
Authors: Morris Jeffre B. , Macchiarola Frank J.
Published: April 2006

Many of the problems facing higher education are not capable of correction within the classroom setting. Yet, a great deal can be accomplished by an individual instructor in order to combat the often-spoken student criticism that classroom experiences are fundamentally deficient and unsatisfactory. This article offers political scientists a reasonably simple method of increasing student interest and participation in the Introductory American Government course. It concerns the design of a term paper which attempts to gain the active involvement of students through the use of primary source material.

The teacher of an introductory American Government course today is probably very encouraged by enormous student interest in the workings of the political system. At the same time, it is not improbable that he is discouraged by the generally low level of substantive knowledge of current events and historical facts. In addition, he is disturbed to find that students do not read books and rarely read newspapers, that they rely upon television and rumor to support their substantive beliefs. The instructor is, additionally, torn between the pull of current issues as a source of classroom learning, and the commitment to the subject matter and methodology of the discipline, as the focus of classroom attention.

In addition, those who assign term papers to their classes must fight the widespread and probably accurate student presumption that most term papers are added drudgery complementing the deadening succession of textbook assignments and blue-book examinations; that they are time-consuming, dull and irrelevant. Furthermore, students complain, again in justice, that their work is not usually read by the professor teaching them, or if read, is considered in a cursory fashion, so that hours of student effort result in simply a grade and possibly a one sentence comment along with, of course, the correction of a few grammatical and spelling errors.
Internships in Politics: The CUNY Experience
Authors: Hirschfield Robert S. , Adler Norman M.
Published: April 2006

In December of 1949, a student of public service internships wrote: “All of the professions have sought reality and human understanding, at least in some degree, through the use of internships.” At that time, however, according to a survey conducted by Thomas and Doris Reed, only one American college offered what we would now regard as a political internship program.

Today this situation has changed dramatically, and the place of political internships in undergraduate (as well as some graduate) curricula is established in scores of colleges. The pressure for so-called “life experience” courses, the move toward independent study and off-campus programs, and the renewed interest of political and administrative leaders have all contributed to the burgeoning of intern programs. In fact, a recent meeting at Lexington, Kentucky saw internship directors from across the country gathering to confer on such matters as the philosophy of internship, financing, organization, relationships among politicians, academics and students, and related matters.
Introductory American Government Textbooks: An Anatomical Analysis
Authors: Adams William C.
Published: April 2006

The Fall, 1973, PS contained a remarkable exchange. Stephen Stephens charged that Irish and Prothro's Politics of American Democracy panders to youthful radical chic proclivities, while the beseiged authors responded with dark hints that Stephens is a closet conservative. In this enlightened age, such an embarrassing, albeit stimulating and entertaining, foray is a kind of academic streaking. The time has come for this subject of textbooks to begin to be clothed with systematic empirical data.

Introductory textbooks assume a new level of dramatically increased significance because, as shrewd academic entrepreneurs have observed, “teaching political science” is clearly a growth stock. What with more and more association panels devoted to “teaching,” a special APSA committee, and the new journal Teaching Political Science, we have a wonderful ironic new subject to employ as the discipline continues to pursue what continues to count—publishing. Will the forthcoming articles on intro texts meet the rigorous standards we demand in other fields of political science or will they be of the Stephens—Irish and Prothro variety? In hopes that the former rather than the latter will prevail, herein is offered preliminary research which seeks to put the matter in a proper punctilious perspective.
Political Values and Professional Values in Conflict: Irish and Prothro's The Politics of American Democracy
Authors: Stephens Stephen V.
Published: April 2006

It may be an unfortunate commentary on our achievements as “scientists”, but an American government textbook tends to be a rather topical document, and the ones that are good enough to justify the effort must be updated every several years, in order to maintain their competitive position. One of the best, I think, and surely one of the ones most highly recommended to me by other political scientists, was Marian Irish and James Prothro's The Politics of American Democracy (Prentice-Hall: 4th edn., 1968; 5th edn., 1971). I used the 1968 edition in classes several times, with such satisfaction that I ordered the new fifth edition in the summer of 1971, sight unseen. As the following comments indicate, I had reason to regret the decision. Since textbooks are rarely reviewed, and since Prentice-Hall reports that this edition will be current through 1975, I have reluctantly chosen this medium to bring some rather strange attributes of this book to the attention of the political science community.

In common with many of the texts that have appeared in the last one or two years, the authors have gone to considerable effort to make their new edition more relevant to the great political disturbances we have just experienced and — to a lesser extent — are still experiencing: ghetto riots, the Vietnam peace movement, and women's liberation.
Political Values and Professional Values: The Recognition of Conflict in Both as Essential to Education in Political Science
Authors: Irish Marian D. , Prothro James W.
Published: April 2006

Academicians are properly suspicious of efforts to characterize all the intellectual currents of a decade by a single phrase. But perhaps our less cautious friends in journalism are not so far wrong in suggesting that we are returning in the 1970s to the conservatism of the 1950s. The first edition of The Politics of American Democracy (1959) was denounced by a John Birch group in California for its left-wing orientation. The only previous broadside attack on the book to appear in print was directed at the third and fourth editions (1965, 1968); this attack, which appeared in a 1970 issue of the Newsletter of the Caucus for a New Political Science, denounced the book for its right-wing, pro-system biases. Now we have come full circle and find the fifth (1971) edition denounced because “spokesmen of the left seem to have been given more than equal time.” In some respects we are gratified to think Mr. Stevens' critique must prove we have not grown more conservative with each edition, and we shall certainly display his comments to our children, nieces, nephews, junior colleagues, and students.

More seriously, however, we cannot be gratified to have our scholarship and our integrity impugned. We do not wish to overreact, but the charge that we are guilty of “bizarre statements of ‘fact’ and misrepresentations of the academic literature” and the suggestion that we “can no longer claim to be speaking as … political scientists[s]” can hardly be interpreted to mean that we have merely slipped into occasional error.
The Journalists' View
Authors: Blanchard Robert O.
Published: April 2006

I have made relatively frequent use of political science papers and journals in [my] reporting ... I find that there are often very helpful insights in the political science literature and certainly that my own membership in APSA and the reading of the [APSR] Journal is worthwhile.

—David S. Broder

The Washington Post

My membership in APSA was originally part of the reporting awards I won... Since then, I have maintained membership for old times
sake. As a working documentary producer, membership hasn’t done anything for me-the journals, PS, etc., are undigestable-even though Nelson Polsby is a nice person.

William R. Leonard

Former Executive Producer, National Broadcasting Company

How useful or “relevant” do journalists find political science sources and information, including that furnished through APSA membership?

The most elementary and obvious response is that national print journalism specialists can make more extensive use of political science that can broadcaster generalists. Between these extremes are responses of other national and local reporters telling us what we may already suspect: that current journalistic practice generally excludes political science sources in routine newsmaking.

But the exceptions to this practice are instructive. They suggest ways and means which political scientists might more effectively close the gap between political science information and its accessability to newsmakers, policymakers, and the public.

Concern has been expressed among journalists that the news media have been relying too much on “official” or institutional sources for news.
New Orleans 1973: Scholars as Saints and Sinners
Authors: Edgerton Nancy Boland
Published: April 2006

In the Winter 1973 PS, a few charts and tables, and four paragraphs of dry prose were passed off as a “Report on the 1972 Annual Meeting.” Since no one who attended the meeting in Washington, D.C. would recognize the week in that report, something more descriptive seems in order.

For instance, the emphasis on program panel statistics ignores the fact that almost half of the meetings are not panels organized by the Program Committee. The Association, through its several committees, sponsored twenty-five meetings; these included the Annual Business Meeting, the Presidential Address by Robert E. Ward, reports of the year's activities of some committees, educational films, panels on political science education, and presentations of federal grant opportunities. Several groups not affiliated with APSA sponsored another some sixty-five meetings. Over twenty of these were cocktail parties. But in addition there were editorial board meetings, special-interest gatherings for political scientists specializing in federal studies, German politics, health politics, international studies, and transactionalism, to mention a few. The Caucus for a New Political Science and the Women's Caucus for Political Science continue to sponsor larger programs of panels and business meetings.
Data on Dissertations in Foreign and Comparative Government by World Area: 1965-1972
Authors: Blank Stephen
Published: April 2006

One component of a survey of Western European studies in the United States being conducted by the Council of European Studies in cooperation with the Institute of International Studies of the U.S. Office of Education is a study of dissertations completed in the social sciences in recent years with special emphasis on those in the area of Western European Studies. The full study, to be published early next year, seeks to identify the actual and potential resources in the American academic community with a goal to increasing our understanding of contemporary European society and politics and securing better insights into the ways in which these resources might be more effectively mobilized to support training and research programs.

The data on dissertations completed with special emphasis on those in the fields of foreign and comparative government by world area is presented here because of its general interest and as a complimntary piece to the data presented in this issue by Walfred Peterson.
A Skeptic's View of Corporate Jobs and New Academic Programs
Authors: Licklider Roy E.
Published: April 2006

Like the leading edge of the hurricaine, the first signals of the approaching depression in the academic job market are upon us. The change in expectations from 1968 to 1978 is hard to overstate. Departments that assumed their students would get “appropriate” jobs without help must now organize to get any employment for some of their graduates. It is not uncommon for graduates from second-level institutions to find that there simply are no academic jobs in their specialty anywhere in the country. Increasingly, departments are haunted by the fear of being “tenured up,” so even tenure-track junior positions may not lead anywhere. Already we are seeing the first consequences of this, as people rejected for tenure compete with new Ph.D.s for entry-level positions. All this is merely prelude, however, since the first actual population decline in the 18–22 year age bracket will not occur until the early 1980s, just about the time that people now entering graduate school will come on the job market.
Political Science and the Life Sciences
Authors: Corning Peter , Losco Joseph , Wiegele Thomas C.
Published: April 2006

At the 1980 APSA meeting in Washington, a group of approximately 25 political scientists and others, out of a much larger network of contributors and sympathizers, agreed to form an Association for Politics and the Life Sciences dedicated to the advancement of an integrated biosocial perspective in our discipline. Although this short article is intended primarily to announce that fact and detail plans for the immediate future, we feel that this might also be an appropriate occasion to review briefly the history and rationale behind this intellectual activity and describe some of the objectives of the Association.

The study of the relationship between biology and politics (sometimes called “biobehavioral political science” and sometimes also “biopolitics”) drew its initial impetus in the latter 1960s and early 1970s from emergent developments in a number of other disciplines, particularly (a) ethology (the naturalistic study of animal behavior and adaptation), (b) psychophysiology (specifically, efforts to correlate various physiological characteristics and “indicators” with various mental and behavioral states), (c) psychobiology (including neurological and endocrine influences on social behavior), (d) behavior genetics (involving both human and non-human animal research), (e) psychopharmacology (especially the chemical manipulation of behavioral states), (f) sociobiology (the application of modern Darwinian theory to the explanation of social behaviors), and (g) ecology (the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments, which gained visibility when the so-called “environmental crisis” erupted).