Then What Happened? After the “Kodak Moment” Of Culture Contact

1. Then What Happened?After the “Kodak Moment”Of Culture Contact Margaret Purser Anthropology Dept. Sonoma State University

2. Presentation Summary and Goals • Contrast old vs. new approaches to culture contact in anthropology, archaeology • Develop “Translation and transformation” as mechanism for spiral review through school year • See strategies for using material culture as a source of information

3. Presentation Summary and Goals • Make connections to the students’ daily life, experiences: immigration, globalization, personal identity • Design lesson plans that link these strategies to standards

4. “Contact” stretched over 100s of years, and didn’t necessarily mean face-to-face encounters: trade, disease, technology “Competition” took place in very diverse terms, since both Native populations AND European ones were dealing with BOTH brand NEW RESOURCES and brand NEW ECONOMIC SYSTEMS “Acculturation” turns out to have been a two-way street: WAY MORE than tomahawks and tomatoes! “Assimilation” as a model doesn’t have room for dealing with the way that NO culture remained the same after contact. Doesn’t let us deal with the extreme degree of European cultural diversity: “Spain” barely existed when the “Spanish” conquered the Aztec. (And the “Spanish” language didn’t!) What do we do with the brand new kinds of people: creoles, mestizos, peoples of multiple cultural identities/affiliations? Old vs. New Approaches “Contact” = “Competition” = “Acculturation” = “Assimilation” Problems:

5. ALL cultures as dynamic, constantly changing (Indians don’t live in teepees any more; but they’re still Indians). Make connections to our own culture, our own time (change is always there) Acknowledges the archaeologically visible power and intent of the ‘encountered’ cultures: they clearly choose what they want to ‘borrow’, and integrate it into their existing cultural, technological, economic etc. system (which is nonetheless changing rapidly) Provides a different angle on the continuing conflict between newcomers and original inhabitants: what does “winning” and “losing” mean, here? How long does this process go on? The “New World” as one actively “CREATED” by all these peoples, events, processes, over time, not one “DISCOVERED” in a “Kodak Moment” Links to contemporary cultural contact and interaction processes: immigration, international trade and political interaction, mass media and information technology ‘exchanges’, etc. Old vs. New Approaches New Dimensions: Cross-cultural interaction as continuing processes of mutual ‘translation’ and ‘transformation’:

6. Material Culture as Medium for “Translation” (then, and now, active, not passive) • Trade, exchange, and “borrowing”: of things, people, and ideas • Physical representations of new ideas, beliefs, understandings • Innovation, creativity, and the material invention of new worlds

7. Examples from Modern Archaeology Some Key Sites • Spanish St. Augustine: mixed cultural households with mixed and experimental material cultures • Fur Trade sites: constant, fluid economic and technological innovations • Fort Ross: cultural pluralism and an emerging global economy

8. Some Key Issues and Challenges for the Archaeologists • Resources, trade, and other exchanges: how did people set up exchanges? How were ideas about values expressed over time? How do we do the same things, now? • Human mobility and cultural diversity: neither contact nor cultural borrowing and blending were ‘new’ to anyone in this picture. What are these processes? How do they continue today? • Scale: how to convey how truly ‘global’ this process was, and how long it went on in time (especially important for California). Again: a global economy is not a ‘new’ thing.

9. Three Case Studies • Trade, exchange, and “currencies” • Symbols, iconography, and images • Foodways, foodstuffs, and “pots and pans” history

10. Language Arts Standards Using the writing strategies of grade five outlined in Writing Standard 1.0, students: 2.1 Write narratives: • Establish a plot, point of view, setting, and conflict. • Show, rather than tell, the events of the story. 2.2 Write responses to literature: • Demonstrate an understanding of a literary work. • Support judgments through references to the text and to prior knowledge. • Develop interpretations that exhibit careful reading and understanding. 2.3 Write research reports about important ideas, issues, or events by using the following guidelines: • Frame questions that direct the investigation. • Establish a controlling idea or topic. • Develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations. 2.4 Write persuasive letters or compositions: • State a clear position in support of a proposal. • Support a position with relevant evidence. • Follow a simple organizational pattern. • Address reader concerns.

11. US History/Geography Standards • 5.1 - Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of the Great Plains, and the woodland peoples east of the Mississippi River. • 5.2 - Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas. • 5.3 - Students describe the cooperation and conflict that existed among the American Indians and between the Indian nations and the new settlers. • 5.4 - Students understand the political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era. • 5.8 - Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the role of economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and transportation systems.