Anthropology Without Informants: Collected Works in Paleoanthropology

397 Pages·2009·4.04 MB·English

by  L. G. Freeman

Anthropology without informAnts

without informAnts
Collected works in paleoanthropology
by l. g. freeman
university
press of
ColorAdo
© 2009 by the University Press of Colorado
Published by the University Press of Colorado
5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C
Boulder, Colorado 80303
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of
the Association of American University Presses.
The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by
Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metro-
politan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and
Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na-
tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freeman, Leslie G.
Anthropology without informants : collected works in paleoanthropology / by L. G. Freeman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87081-947-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Paleolithic period—Spain. 2. Anthropology,
Prehistoric—Spain. 3. Paleoanthropology—Spain. 4. Antiquities, Prehistoric—Spain. 5. Freeman,
Leslie G.—Literary collections. I. Title.
GN772.22.S7F74 2009
936.6—dc22
2009004090
Design by Daniel Pratt
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memoriam
F. Clark Howell (1927–2007), who knew everything about the
past and its most important investigators almost without excep-
tion. He tried his best to teach me to be a professional prehisto-
rian, and I owe whatever I have accomplished to him, though I
never came close to being a professional of his caliber.
Sit tibi terra levis.

Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xv
 i. towArd A working theory 1
1. Anthropology without Informants (1977) 5
2. A Theoretical Framework for Interpreting Archeological
Materials (1968) 19
3. The Fat of the Land (Partial) (1981) 29
 ii. An overview of the pAleolithiC 41
4. By Their Works You Shall Know Them: Cultural Developments in the
Paleolithic (1975) 45
5. Paleolithic Polygons: Voronoi Tesserae and Settlement Hierarchies in
Cantabrian Spain (1994) 73
vii
viii Contents
 iii. the lower pAleolithiC 87
6. Torralba and Ambrona: A Review of Discoveries (1994) 89
7. Were There Scavengers at Torralba? (2001) 141
 iv. the middle pAleolithiC 159
8. Kaleidoscope or Tarnished Mirror? Thirty Years of Mousterian
Investigations in Cantabria (1994) 161
9. The Mousterian, Present and Future of a Concept (A Personal
View) (2006) 197
10. Research on the Middle Paleolithic in the Cantabrian Region (2005) 213
 v. pAleolithiC Art 237
11. Meanders on the Byways of Paleolithic Art (1987) 241
12. The Many Faces of Altamira (1994) 277
13. Techniques of Figure Enhancement in Paleolithic Cave Art (1987) 295
14. The Cave as Paleolithic Sanctuary (2005) 315
15. Caves and Art: Rites of Initiation and Transcendence (2005) 329
 vi. the Benefits of CooperAtion 343
16. The Participation of North Americans and Spaniards in Joint
Prehistoric Research in Cantabria (2006) 345
Afterword 359
Permissions 363
Index 367
Foreword
This volume encapsulates some of the most significant published work of Leslie G.
Freeman, an important—and, I believe, underappreciated—figure in the history of
American participation in the study of Paleolithic Europe.
Leslie Freeman entered this field in the 1960s, a time of intellectual turmoil
and important developments in the history of archeology. First came the rise of the
movement in American anthropological archeology that came to be known as the
“New Archeology.” Led by the charismatic Lewis Binford, a network of relatively
junior archeologists challenged prevailing orthodoxy in advancing new claims. They
argued that archeology properly was—or should be—a science, and one that prom-
ised reliable knowledge of the prehistoric past through careful application of scien-
tific method. Furthermore, since the various aspects of culture were part of an inter-
related, systemic whole, information was potentially retrievable about all aspects of
past sociocultural systems, including social organization and ideology, that had been
conventionally regarded as more or less inaccessible to investigation. Suddenly, the
scope of archeological investigation was seen as greatly broadened.
The second notable development was that of the concept—especially associ-
ated with Freeman’s mentor, F. Clark Howell—of paleoanthropology. Howell con-
ceptualized the study of human evolution not as an exotic subfield of paleontology
ix