Rogers Archaeology Lab

Oahe Dam Impacts: Standing Rock Reservation

By Lotte Govaerts

 

This post is an installment in my series on the historical archaeology of the River Basin Surveys and my sub-series on the Oahe Dam. In my previous post, I discussed the impacts of the Oahe Dam on the Cheyenne River Reservation. In this one, I will focus on the impacts of that same dam on Standing Rock Reservation.

 

"Fort Yates Agency N.D." View of Standing Rock Agency buildings ca. 1880–1890. Photo: State Historical Society of North Dakota 00036-096.

 

As I mentioned in my last post, the impacts of the Oahe Dam on the Sioux tribes have been studied extensively by Michael Lawson. He investigated the impacts of the Pick–Sloan dams on the Sioux tribes in his 1978 doctoral dissertation and published a paper dedicated to Standing Rock Reservation (Lawson 1976). His dissertation was converted into a book in 1982, which was updated in 2009 (Lawson 1982, 2009). Like my previous post, this one also is a very brief summary of the events and impacts described in those works; much more detail can be found in the cited research. In addition, to avoid too much repetition, I regularly refer to my previous post; I recommend reading both together so each post can provide additional context for the other.

 

Standing Rock Reservation before the Oahe Dam

As discussed previously, when the Great Sioux Reservation was created in 1868, the US government established several agencies across the reservation. It envisioned these agencies as part of a process of assimilation, in which Native peoples would abandon nomadic lifestyles and collective societies to farm individual plots of land instead. For the Lakota, however, the agency was the place where they picked up the supplies they were entitled to per the treaty.^[1] The Grand River Agency was constructed in the northern part of the reservation, near the confluence of the Grand and Missouri Rivers, to serve mainly Sihasapa (Blackfeet), Hunkpapa, and Yanktonai bands. Many of the Lakota did not recognize the treaty and did not agree to live on the reservation; they continued roaming their unceded lands,^[2] while the Yanktonai continued farming on the opposite side of the Missouri.

 

Map showing the location of Grand River Agency as well as the later Standing Rock Agency alongside the locations of various towns, forts, trade posts, and other locations relevant to 19th century events in the region. Cropped from “Northern Plains, 1804–1876” (Ostler 2004, p 19, Map 1).

 

The land around the Grand River Agency was not well-suited for agriculture, so farming efforts were not particularly successful. In 1873, the US government decided to move the agency to a location it considered more convenient. The agent, Edmond Palmer, selected a site 75 river miles above Grand River, on a high table, where “the river [was] narrow and deep, with a good landing, … accessible to steamboats at all stages of water” and where there was “an abundance of cottonwood timber, suitable for building purposes, both above and below the agency, and a fine tract of land near by, sufficient to accommodate all the Indians for farming purposes” (United States Office of Indian Affairs, 1873, p. 598). This new location was, however, outside the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation proper, in the unceded territory just north of the reservation boundary. An Executive Order in 1875 extended the northern boundary to the Cannonball River in 1875 (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe 2022) so that the new boundaries included the agency, which was renamed Standing Rock not long after the move.

 

"Standing Rock, the sacred stone of the Sioux" 1879 Harper’s Magazine illustration by William Allen Rogers. “The lower illustration shows an interesting ceremony observed by the Sioux about the famous 'Standing Rock,' situated near the Missouri River in Northern Dakota. This rock is of a very peculiar shape, and with it are connected several Indian legends. Among the Sioux the one most generally believed is that the stone was, many years ago, a young and beautiful Indian girl, whose betrothed was slain in battle. She mourned for him with the deepest and most constant sorrow, and although many warrior suitors sought her in marriage, she remained true to her first and only love. When she died, many years afterward, the Great Spirit transformed her body into this stone, so that, instead of mouldering in the dust, it might remain forever as a memorial of her love and fidelity. It is an object of great veneration among the Sioux, who visit it frequently, strew tobacco leaves, medicine bags, food, and trinkets around it, and paint the surface with rude, fantastic designs." Photo: North Dakota State University Libraries, Institute for Regional Studies, Folio 102.InS72.3b.

 

When the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up in 1889, the newly created Standing Rock Reservation included approximately 2.3 million acres. The states of North and South Dakota were created shortly after. The state line cut through Standing Rock Reservation, which continues to complicate jurisdictional issues on the reservation. Just like Cheyenne River Reservation, Standing Rock also lost territory in the years before Lake Oahe was filled, most notably due to allotment. When the Oahe Dam was constructed, Standing Rock Reservation encompassed approximately 1 million acres (Lawson 1976, p. 205).

 

“Ration Day at Standing Rock Agency” drawn by H.F. Farny. Published in Harper’s Weekly V. 22, NO. 1388 (July 28 1883), pp. 472–473. Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Ilus. In AP2.H32 1883 (Case Y).

 

Oahe Dam Negotiations

Negotiations between the government and Cheyenne River as well as Standing Rock Reservation were regulated via legislation enacted in 1950, following government negotiations with the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Lawson 1976, p. 212–213; Lawson 2009, p. 93–95), as discussed in our previous post in this series.

Undated portrait of Josephine Gates Kelly (1888–1976), tribal chair of the Standing Rock Sioux from 1946 until 1951. Photo: State Historical Society of North Dakota1952-5040, reproduced from ndstudies.gov.

 

Negotiations were off to a rough start when the tribe wanted to hire its own lawyer, completely independent from the Interior Department, rather than have the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) pay for their legal services, as was standard procedure. The Indian Commissioner refused to sign off on this proposal. The tribe complained to the Interior Secretary, but their complaints were essentially ignored until a delegation, headed by chairperson Josephine Gates Kelly,^[3] traveled to Washington DC and camped out at the Secretary’s office until they received a hearing. Eventually the Secretary overruled the Commissioner and approved the tribe’s legal representation contract (Lawson 2009, p. 97–98). This rough start set the tone for eight years of difficult negotiations, which included issues like more obstruction by the Commissioner and the untimely death of another Standing Rock chair, Whitney J. Agard, in 1952 (Lawson 2009, p. 107, 108).

One of the stipulations of the negotiation legislation was that the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the BIA prepare appraisals of the lands to be taken for the dam project. Like the USACE, the Standing Rock tribe also hired a private firm to prepare its own appraisal in 1951. It eventually arrived at a proposal for a cash settlement of $26.4 million ($2.8 million for the land, timber, improvements, and severance, $7.6 million for indirect/intangible losses, and $16 million for a rehabilitation program). This amount was intended to compensate the entire tribe, as not only individual landowners would suffer the disruption of the dam project. In addition, the tribe asked for mineral, grazing, and hunting rights, access to the reservoir, and a block of hydroelectric power for their exclusive use, at a low cost (Lawson 1976, 214–215; Lawson 2009, p. 127–128).

The USACE’s appraisal totaled only $1.32 million, and negotiators refused to budge. The BIA, whose appraisal was also lower than the tribe’s ($1.7 million) and the USACE both suggested that the rehabilitation program should be introduced in separate legislation (Lawson 1976, p. 215; Lawson 2009, p.).

As no agreement could be reached after many months of negotiating, the Standing Rock tribe took the matter directly to Congress in 1954. A bill was introduced, but because Congress was preoccupied with the Cheyenne River Reservation’s settlement at the time, the Standing Rock settlement was put on hold. A new bill was introduced after the Cheyenne River settlement was finalized in 1955 (Lawson 1976, p. 216; Lawson 2009, p. 126). Many hearings followed until in June 1956, the House Committee on Interior and Insular affairs recommended a cash settlement of $14,075,000. However, several committee members issued a dissenting opinion, which called the committee’s proposed amount “exorbitant” and suggested the final settlement should be decided in federal court and the rehabilitation program should be handled separately. This stirred up some controversy, which led Congress to stall on the Standing Rock legislation (Lawson 1976, p. 216–217; Lawson 2009, p. 128–129).

 

"Lumber for Oahe Dam Construction, Pierre, Hughes County." Photo: South Dakota State Historical Society, Archives Department 2020-11-18-341.

 

Yet another proposal was introduced in 1957, followed by more deliberation. Time was running out for the Standing Rock tribe, as the USACE had acquired almost all the land it needed to close the dam and fill the reservoir. In the spring of 1958, the USACE filed condemnation proceedings to obtain a tract of land it needed to relocate a section of highway and railroad. Six acres of the tract belonged to the Standing Rock Reservation. Despite treaty requirements, it had condemned lands belonging to Crow Creek, Lower Brule, and Yankton reservations for similar purposes not long before. The Standing Rock tribe sued to stop the USACE from continuing work on the Oahe project until a settlement was reached and to dismiss the condemnation suit based on their treaty rights.^[4] The judge sided with the tribe and blocked the condemnation, but the dam project was allowed to continue (Lawson 1976, p. 217–218; Lawson 2009, p. 151–152).

A new bill made it through the House approximately two weeks before the public closing ceremony at the Oahe Dam in August 1958, and then through the Senate two weeks after the ceremony. Shortly after that, it was signed into law by President Eisenhower as Public Law 915. The total settlement amount in the bill, as signed into law, was $12,346,553: $1,952,040 for the land, $3,299,513 for direct and indirect severance damages, $6,960,000 for relocation and a rehabilitation program, and $135,000 for legal representation. The total amount was less than half of the tribe’s appraisal of its losses, but it was nonetheless the highest per-acre amount any of the tribes affected by Pick-Sloan received. The Standing Rock tribe also managed to secure all of the nonmonetary compensation it had asked for, aside from their request for hydroelectric power, which the US government decided would violate the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (Lawson 1976, p. 217–219; Lawson 2009, p. 154–156).

 

Impacts of Oahe Dam

Oahe Dam inundated 55,994 acres of Standing Rock Reservation, mainly its most fertile and forested lands. Approximately 190 families (1/3 of the population) were forced to move from the most desirable homesites (Lawson 1976, p. 208; Lawson 2009, p. 48).

 

Map of Standing Rock Reservation showing lands allotted between 1889 and 1930. Map: State Historical Society of North Dakota 978.488 O324 1954. Reproduced from ndstudies.gov.

 

Ranching was the primary industry on Standing Rock Reservation and the dam destroyed 30,000 acres of the most valuable ranch land. Some 60% of the most successful ranches had to be relocated or liquidated. The reservation also lost most of its farmland. In addition, approximately 11,000 acres of woodland were flooded, representing 90% of the reservation’s timbered area. This was the reservation’s main source of lumber and the only source of fuel for more than half the population. The loss of these woods also reduced the natural food supply of the residents (Lawson 1976, p. 208–209).

Unlike at Fort Berthold and Cheyenne River Reservations, the Standing Rock Reservation’s headquarters at Fort Yates (ND) was not flooded; however, the town below the agency was, and most of the people living nearby had to be relocated. In addition, the agency site became separated from the mainland on an island (Lawson 1976, p. 209).

 

"Standing Rock Agency Office Building", undated, ca. 1900–1930. Photo by Frank Bennett Fiske, Office of Indian Affairs, Standing Rock Agency. Via State Historical Society of North Dakota, Frank B. Fiske Collection 1952, 1952-0148.

 

These losses naturally disrupted every single aspect of life on the reservation.

Because it took so long for the Standing Rock tribe to get its settlement finalized, the tribe faced a host of additional problems. Public Law 915 gave the USACE the responsibility of distributing the relocation funds. The USACE promised the tribe its funds soon after the settlement was finalized, but it took until January 1960 for the tribe to actually receive the money. The long wait caused an economic decline at the already depressed reservation. When the USACE provided the tribe with its settlement money, it also immediately evicted them, before any new housing could be prepared (Lawson 1976, p. 219­–220; Lawson 2009, p. 181–182).

In addition, the tribe had won the right to salvage their timber, but the USACE stopped them from doing so, as they claimed these activities interfered with their own work. The court eventually sided with the tribe, but it took so long for the case to be decided that not enough time was left to salvage anything. The tribe thus lost out on this valuable lumber, and because the USACE did not salvage it either, it ended up creating a navigation hazard for many years (Lawson 1976, p. 220–221; Lawson 2009, p. 190).

Another drawn-out disagreement occurred over the issue of hiring workers to clear the reservation area. The USACE did not hire tribal members for this work; it claimed it was required to enter into contracts with the lowest bidder and could not dictate whom private contractors hired. The tribe again appealed to Congress. A bill was eventually introduced, in 1961, that would require the USACE to hire tribal members but was not considered before time had run out (Lawson 1976, p 221–222; Lawson 2009, p 184).

 

Negotiations for Additional Compensation

In the 1980s, renewed efforts to obtain additional compensation resulted in some success. The Garrison Diversion Unit Commission (GDUC) was established in 1984 to review the Garrison Diversion Unit, the irrigation and water supply project for the Garrison Dam. During a public hearing of the GDUC, tribal representatives of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold asked for the water development needs of the North Dakota tribes to be investigated, referring to the “institutional equity” clause that was included in the commission’s charter. The GDUC investigated the matter and found that Congress had failed to adequately compensate the tribes for their losses (Lawson 2009, p. 256–257).

Therefore, the Joint Tribal Advisory Committee (JTAC) was created in 1986 to carry out the GDUC directives (Lawson 2009, p. 258). The Interior Department was opposed to providing the tribes with additional compensation, arguing that the earlier settlements stipulated that they were final. The JTAC, on the other hand, believed that the government had a legal obligation to make the tribes “whole” for their losses (Lawson 2009, p. 258–259).

 

Screenshot of a page from the final report of the Garrison Unit Joint Tribal Advisory Committee, section submitted by the final report of the Garrison Unit Joint Tribal Advisory Committee, section submitted by the Standing Rock Landowners Association (US Congress, Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs 1988, p. 131).

 

 

Witnesses testified about the impacts of the dams for two weeks. Economic consultants also provided estimates based on various analysis techniques. A “capitalization” technique was used to estimate the losses of the Three Tribes and concluded the amount was between 170 and 180 million in 1986 dollars (Lawson 2009, p. 259) while “consumer surplus” analysis arrived at an estimate of $342,897,374 for Standing Rock (Lawson 2009, p. 260).

JTAC thus concluded that Congress had not adequately compensated the tribes for the economic losses they sustained when the Garrison and Oahe Dams were constructed. It submitted its final report on May 23, 1986, recommending additional compensation in the range of $178.4 to 411.8 million for Fort Berthold and $181.2 to 349.9 million for Standing Rock, in addition to the implementation of various initiatives relating to development, water rights, and other issues (Lawson 2009, p. 260).

 

Screenshot of the JTAC interview with Reginald Bird Horse, who was forced to move from his home on the southern bank of the Grand River near Mobridge (US Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 1988, p. 138).

 

The Department of the Interior ignored these recommendations until the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs invited JTAC to present directly to that and several other committees. The federal government was coping with budgetary constraints at the time. No progress was made after multiple hearings until two things that coincidentally happened around the same time finally moved the matter along (Lawson 2009, p. 260–262). President Reagan, on a highly publicized visit to the Soviet Union made an off-the-cuff derogatory remark about the Indigenous population in the US. Both the remark and the angry responses from Native Americans were widely reported on internationally. To smooth things over, the President invited a group of tribal leaders to the White House, providing Ed Lone Fight of the Three Affiliated Tribes an opportunity to comment on the lack of progress. At the same time, a “double accounting” solution was proposed by a lobbyist to obtain funds for additional compensation: Congress was to build up a trust fund using surplus power revenues generated by Garrison Dam (Lawson 2009, p. 262–264).

 

Screenshot of the JTAC interview with Vernon Iron Cloud, who was forced to move when Lake Oahe submerged his home (US Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 1988, p. 144).

 

More negotiations and recalculations followed without much progress, but eventually, a bill (H.R. 492) was attached to the Reclamation Projects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992 and passed both houses. The Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Equitable Compensation Act was signed into law (Lawson 2009, p. 264–266). It authorized a recovery trust fund capitalized at $149.2 million for the Fort Berthold tribes and $90.6 million for Standing Rock and authorized irrigation projects for the reservations. It also, as I mentioned in my previous post, took USACE lands that were not used for the dam projects and transferred them to the Department of the Interior. This legislation acknowledged for the first time that the government did not adequately compensate the tribes for their losses and set a precedent for other tribes (Lawson 2009, p. 266–267).

 

To Be Continued

As we established in the previous post, the story of Oahe Dam’s impacts is an ongoing one. Much has changed since dam construction on the Upper Missouri started. Research on the environmental and social impacts of dams as well as their cost as compared to their benefits made them less popular in the decades after the Missouri River dams were built. In addition, the US government’s attitude toward tribal sovereignty moved away from ideas of termination in the 1960s and tribal governments became more powerful. Even so, echoes of the Oahe Dam story are obvious in the more recent Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) story. For example, the USACE rerouted the pipeline from its originally planned route near Bismarck to one closer to Standing Rock Reservation, for “environmental and economic reasons” (Estes 2017, p. 115). Changes in the federal government had a direct effect on the situation, as one administration ordered the easement for the pipeline on hold until a full environmental impact statement could be reviewed, while the next administration immediately reversed course (Estes 2017, p. 120). All of these events can be understood within the context of a long history of Indigenous resistance against settler colonialism (Estes 2017, 2019).

 

Water Protector encampment on the northern edge of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Photo Cassi Alexandra for NPR, from the article “In Their Own Words: The ‘Water Protectors’ of Standing Rock” (Zambelich and Alexandra 2016).

 

Challenges remain in terms of sovereignty and water rights, but the taking of land for the construction of large dams like Oahe Dam is less likely to be a problem in the future. The river restoration movement is growing across the country and around the world; dam removal is on the rise in the face of (aging) dam safety concerns and climate change. The largest-ever river restoration project is ongoing on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, where four dams are being removed. This project is the result of the efforts of Karuk, Yurok, Klamath, and other tribes (American Rivers 2023).

As for other hydropower projects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently announced a new policy, granting Native American tribes the power to quickly veto hydropower projects that impact tribal lands. The policy forces developers to consult with tribes before they can be granted a license to start construction (Phillis 2024).

 

Copco No. 2 dam before and after removal; the dam was removed as part of the Klamath River restoration project. Photo: Shane Anderson of Swiftwater Films, reproduced from a Press Release from the Klamath River Corporation (Klamath River Renewal Corporation 2023).

 

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This concludes my sub-series on the construction and impacts of the Oahe Dam. These last four posts provide context for my next posts, which will discuss the historical archaeology of the Oahe Reservoir area. This archaeological fieldwork took place in the midst of dam construction, negotiation, and relocation. The first of the Oahe Reservoir sites l will discuss here is Fort Manuel. Stay tuned!

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[1] The Lakota referred to the agencies as “owakpamni oyake”, or distribution place (Ostler, 2004, p. 54)

[2] According to Andersson and Posthumus (2022, p. 131), the Fort Laramie Treaty divided the Lakota into Wágluȟe (Agency Indians) and Watȟógla (Free/Hunting Lakota), a division that deepened over time.

[3] Josephine Gates Kelly (1888­–1976) was active in Indian politics for many years before she was elected tribal chair of Standing Rock Reservation in 1946 and became one of the first women to hold that position in the US (Lawson 2009, p. 96) In addition to her trip to Washington, DC to force a hearing, she again traveled there after the BIA, in the fall of 1951, announced its plans to consolidate the facilities for the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Reservations. After much protest and lobbying, that plan was eventually abandoned (Lawson 2009, p. 99).

[4] According to the treaty, land could not be taken from the tribe without the approval of ¾ of its adult membership. However, the Supreme Court had previously ruled that Congress could abrogate treaties to exercise its sovereign right of eminent domain, as long as just compensation was provided. However, it had also ruled that only Congress had this power, and it could not be extended to federal agencies without congressional authorization (Lawson 1976, p. 217–218; Lawson 2009, p. 151–152).

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References

American Rivers. 2023. “65 Dams Removed in 2022, Reconnecting 430 Upstream River Miles.” American Rivers (website). February 14, 2023. https://www.americanrivers.org/media-item/65-dams-removed-in-2022-reconnecting-430-upstream-river-miles/. Accessed March 4, 2024.

Andersson, Rani-Henrik, and David C. Posthumus. 2022. Lakhota: An Indigenous History. University of Oklahoma Press.

Estes, Nick. 2017. “Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context.” Wicazo Sa Review 32 (2): 115–22.

———. 2019. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Verso Books.

Klamath River Renewal Corporation. 2023. “Press Release | Removal of Diversion Dam Restores Flows to Klamath River Canyon for the First Time in Nearly a Century.” International Rivers (website). November 2, 2023. https://www.internationalrivers.org/news/press-release-removal-of-diversion-dam-restores-flows-to-klamath-river-canyon-for-the-first-time-in-nearly-a-century/.

Lawson, Michael L. 1976. “The Oahe Dam and the Standing Rock Sioux.” South Dakota History 6 (2): 203–29.

———. 1982. Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 1944-1980. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

———. 2009. Dammed Indians Revisited: The Continuing History of the Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Ostler, Jeffrey. 2004. The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Phillis, Michael. 2024. “Native American Tribes Gain New Authority to Stop Unwanted Hydropower Projects.” AP News (website). February 23, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/native-american-hydropower-climate-change-navajo-b5e86f47d52ca06bceecd782044264c1. Accessed March 4, 2024.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. 2022. “The Founding of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (website). Updated 2022. https://www.standingrock.org/about/ Accessed March 04, 2024.

United States Congress Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs. 1988. Final Report of the Garrison Unit Joint Tribal Advisory Committee: Hearing Before the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate. November 19, 1987. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office.

Zambelich, Ariel, and Cassi Alexandra. 2016 “In Their Own Words: The ‘Water Protectors’ of Standing Rock.” NPR (website). December 11, 2016. https://www.npr.org/2016/12/11/505147166/in-their-own-words-the-water-protectors-of-standing-rock. Accessed March 4, 2024.

United States Office of Indian Affairs. 1873. Report of the Commissioner of Indians Affairs. Washington, D.C.

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Previous posts in this series

What is Historical Archaeology?

How the River Basin Surveys Shaped Historical Archaeology

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Fur Trade 

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Military Frontier

The Upper Missouri River Basin in the Nineteenth Century: Indian Agencies

Garrison Dam

Lake Sakakawea and the Woman it was Named After

Garrison Dam Archaeology: Village Sites

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32MN1 - Fort Floyd

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML2 – Like-A-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold

Garrison Dam Archaeology: 32ML1 – Fort Stevenson

Oahe Dam

Oahe Dam Background: The Great Sioux Reservation

Oahe Dam Impacts: Cheyenne River Reservation

What Everyone Asked Our Curators on #AskACurator Day

By: Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist and Research Scientist Contractor

We participated in #AskACurator Day on Twitter on September 17, 2014. Did you miss the conversation? I created a Storify of each Curator's hour on Twitter, which you can read by clicking on the links at the end of this post. Enjoy! 

    Hey everyone! Thanks for participating with us in Ask A Curator Day on Twitter last week! Over 700 museums all around the world participated; wow! We had a great time answering your questions. All five curators who participated with us @ArchaeologyLab were new to Twitter, and enjoyed seeing how it worked. In order to facilitate the conversation without each one having to become an expert at Twitter, I sat with each curator during their hour and helped them craft their answers down to a "twitter-able" size. At the beginning a few expressed doubt that they would be able to get their answers into the right format, but by the end of the hour all of the curators were growing more confident and enjoying sharing their answers with you!

    It was especially fun for me to have an hour to chat with them in person, even if I was busy transcribing the stories they were telling me! For example, while we were waiting for a question, I asked Sabrina Sholts how she had gotten tapped for such an interesting project as CT scanning a wet-specimen gorilla her first week here! It all happened because she came in during one snowy day when almost no one else was in (she moved here from Sweden and is from Minnesota; DC snow does not scare her!) only to find a fellow Scandinavian, Bruno Frohlich, also in the office. After I had written down her story while she talked, I showed her how we can break up stories like this into separate tweets, and tell a longer story live on Twitter. 

    Later in the afternoon with Dennis Stanford, I was laughing with delight as he detailed the complex partnerships that enabled him to pursue his research goals in an amazing experimental archaeology project. It involved butchering an elephant (Ginsberg died of natural causes at the Boston Zoo, and his body was donated to the Smithsonian) with only bone and stone tools, like our ancestors in the paleolithic would have done, to better understand wear patterns on ancient tools. It read like a joke: so an archaeologist, a NASA engineer, and an FBI ballistics analyst walk into a bar... Seriously amazing.

    From Ives Goddard, I learned about his amazing work on the Meskwaki Dictionary (you can listen to him read a translation of a Meskwaki story here). During Igor Krupnik's hour, we all got to hear about his "wow" moment during fieldwork in the Arctic. Bill Billeck shared some interesting stories about the repatriation process and Sitting Bull. I could go on, but I will let you read for yourself; don't forget to click on the storify links for each Curator's hour below!

    By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I had barely left my desk all day, and my fingers were getting clumsy on the keyboard, but it didn't matter. I had such a great time working to share these amazing people and their stories with you on Twitter. It is one of the reasons that I love working here, we have great people with fascinating passions that they love to share. We hope you enjoyed talking with us. Remember, here at the Smithsonian, every day is Ask a Curator Day. You can follow many of the scientists and departments here at NMNH on Twitter. 

 

Read the Storifys of all the questions our Curators answered! 

Dr. Ives Goddard- Senior Emeritus Linguist

Dr. Sabrina Sholts- Physical Anthropologist

Dr. Igor Krupnik- Arctic Ethnologist 

Dr. Dennis Stanford- Paleo-Indian Archaeologist 

Dr. William Billeck- Anthropologist in NMNH's Repatriation Office

Seriously Amazing Women

During the month of March, Women's History Month, the Department of Anthropology will feature several interviews with Smithsonian women in science, museums, and archives, here on Rogers Archaeology Lab's blog. Follow us on Twitter @archaeologylab to keep up, and watch the twitter hashtags #womenshistorymonth, #IWD or #WomensDay or #internationalwomensday (International Women’s Day), #Groundbreaker, #womeninscience or #womeninSTEM,  to see great things on other women in science. For women in archaeology, try following @trowelblazers

    I am continually amazed by all of the talented people we have working at this museum. There are so many interesting stories and discoveries made here, but the stories of the people who uncover them are just as fun to hear about. Since it is Women’s History Month, I thought it would be a great idea to interview the women of the Department of Anthropology, and have them tell you more about themselves and their work. So far, I’ve talked with two amazing scientists, Melinda Zeder, Senior Research Scientist and Curator of Old World Archaeology and Archaeozoology; and Kari Bruwelheide, Museum Specialist in Skeletal Biology. Both women have shown me that they share similar experiences and outlooks, even though their research has taken them into very different (but complementary) specialties within anthropology.

    In their interviews, both Melinda Zeder and Kari Bruwelheide underscored that the Smithsonian has incomparable collections and resources for research that continue to yield discoveries into the present day; both have found the Smithsonian a very supportive workplace for women scientists to grow in; having kids while doing science can be challenging but rewarding; and both want to go to Antarctica someday! This last commonality may seem random, but I think it represents the far-reaching goals of the kinds of people who come to work here. They always want to go to unexplored places, both in the world and of the mind. Both are problem-solvers, who take their work to the edges of the discipline, and push its boundaries farther as they make new discoveries. In short, the women scientists of the Smithsonian are seriously amazing, and I can’t wait to hear more of their stories.

    While we work on typing up the interviews, please submit any questions you have about the work of our female scientists (including linguists, physical anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, and archaeologists), museum collections management professionals, archivists, and others here in the Department of Anthropology. In the meantime, I will continue to talk to a variety of the women who work here, and continue to share their insights with you. Stay tuned!

Until then, can you name this historical Smithsonian anthropologist? Tweet us your answer @archaeologylab, or comment below! Bonus points for naming her major research focus!

 

By: Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist and Research Contractor

Internology: What Do Interns Do at NMNH?

    It’s been a busy year so far here at Rogers Archaeology Lab. We’ve welcomed several new interns since January, including Samantha Linford, whose blog post on Mongolian Pastoralists you may have read. While she was here she also co-wrote an article with Dr. Rogers titled Modeling the Sustainability of Wealth Among Pastoralists, which has been submitted for publication.  Samantha has recently graduated from University of California Santa Cruz, and is currently doing archaeological survey work in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Samantha was a great help to have around the museum and we wish her well in her future endeavors!

Samantha Linford examining pottery sherds from the Island of Nevis that we were preparing for return after being on loan to the museum for research. Photo Credit: Meghan  Mulkerin

    Currently with us for Summer 2013, we have Nicole Coscolluela and Julia Grasso. Nicole recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics and Archaeology. She is moving to Scotland in August to start her program towards a Master’s of Science degree in Human Osteoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Julia is a current graduate student in Anthropology with a Museum Training concentration at The George Washington University.

From left: Julia Grasso, Madeline Shaffer, and Nicole Coscolluela. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin.

    Nicole and Julia have been busy working on the interpretation of the River Basin Survey site, Cattle Oiler (39ST224), that we have been cataloguing for the past several months. Nicole is deciphering the gendered use of quill flatteners at Cattle Oiler, while Julia has been focusing on foodways by collecting data on ceramic types found at the site. In order to do this, she had to learn how to predict the measurements of a pot’s rim diameter from a small piece of its broken rim, which is usually what we find in archaeological sites. By taking these measurements, we can discover all the different sizes of vessels in use at the site—a kind of prehistoric Native American Julia Child’s kitchen, if you will! 

Dan teaching Julia and Maddy how to measure rim sherd diameters. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin.

    Both interns have been assisting Dr. Rogers and I with the interpretation of the context of the objects found at the site using the original site reports made by the excavators; archival resources, such as photographs of the dig in process; and other literature on the River Basin Survey. We have also reached out to our colleagues Eric Hollinger and Bill Billeck, who have expertise in Plains archaeology, to find out more about the uses of certain objects, such as the Catlinite tablet found at Cattle Oiler (39ST224) and the bone ice gliders from H.P. Thomas (39ST12). We look forward to sharing more about this research with you soon.

    Our former Federal Work Study student, Madeline Shaffer has also recently joined our team to assist with background research on the NSF Mason-Smithsonian Joint Project on Climate and Societal Modeling. She has been researching relationships between social systems and climate change, focusing on global-scale social trends. These trends include population growth, human migration responses, mortality rates, risk of conflict, and economic response in relation to current and future climate change. Madeline has also been studying the cultural geography of Sub-Saharan Africa, in order to develop a summary of multiple aspects of social systems within the region that may be applied to currently developing CDI models.

    It hasn’t been all work here, though! We had a lot of fun at the Annual Staff Picnic at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival a couple weeks ago. We enjoyed the wide variety of food choices and music, and made sure to browse through all the great items for sale in the marketplace. Our favorite part of the festival may have been this awesome Puli Dog Sculpture, by Hungarian artist, Gábor Miklós Szőke.  

  Puli Dog Sculpture with (from left) Julia Grasso, Meghan Mulkerin, Nicole Coscolluela, Madeline Shaffer. 

    We also attended the Department of Mineral Sciences Laboratories Open House in late June. The interns and museum staff were invited to come and learn how diamonds are used in their High Pressure Lab; how microbes eat and transform rocks and minerals in their Geomicrobiology lab; and more! We cringed with Elizabeth Cottrell and Brent Grocholski, as they described what it sounds like when a diamond shatters, as sometimes happens during their experiments to understand how minerals behave at deep pressures in the earth. For the curious, it sounds like popping bubble wrap! Using the culets (or points) of diamonds, they crush tiny amounts of a mineral between the two diamonds, capitalizing on the diamond’s amazing strength, and measure the resulting changes in the mineral’s state. They can even look through the flawless top facet of the diamonds to watch what is happening! 

Left: Elizabeth Cottrell shows us the hand crank that is used to add pressure to the contents of the small device pictured, which contains the diamonds, while Brent Grocholski watches. Right: Diagram of how the diamonds come together inside the device.

We especially enjoyed the inter-relatedness of the Geomicrobiology lab’s research to our research on climate and environmental change. Dominique Chaput explained to us how she is working to develop techniques to strip manganese out of ground water that has been polluted through coal mining (one of the many sources of anthropogenic climate change). We also enjoyed their taste in décor…

“We put the fun in Fungi” sign in the Department of Mineral Sciences Geomicrobiology lab. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin

  Algae and fungi growing in the Geomicrobiology lab. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin

    This tour acquainted staff outside of the Mineral Sciences Department with the types of analytical tools that are available to them through cross-departmental collaboration. Some of these tools include an electron probe microanalyzer (pinpoint analysis of materials); an analytical NanoSEM with EDS and CL (high resolution imaging and analysis of just about anything!); a Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (solar wind samples and blood in an ancient mosquito in the same lab!); an X-ray Diffractometer (mineral “fingerprinting”); a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (measure water and carbon dioxide in rocks!); and a Luminoscope (spectacular imaging of minerals like you have never seen before). We learned a lot, and thank our colleagues for their great open house! This is just another example of the kinds of fascinating things interns are exposed to at the National Museum of Natural History. To learn more about internships at Natural History, please visit the Intern and Fellows website of NMNH, or the listing of all internships at the Smithsonian. 

Until next time! 

-Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist Contractor

100+ Inuit Words for Sea Ice: A Guest Post by Igor Krupnik

Today we bring you a special treat: a guest post from our colleague, Igor Krupnik, who is an Anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History. We hope you enjoy reading about his work with the people of Wales, Alaska, to document the many native Inupiaq words for Sea Ice. Yes, there really are over one-hundred Inuit words for sea ice! - Meghan Mulkerin, Rogers' Archaeology Lab. 

Cover Photo of "Kingikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut – Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary"

        In October 2012, the Arctic Studies Center (ASC) released its new heritage publication, Kingikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut – Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary, an illustrated bilingual catalog of traditional Inupiat knowledge about sea ice and change in the North Alaska-Bering Strait region. The 112-page ‘dictionary’ is a product of a four-year partnership of a small team of indigenous Elders, language experts, and scientists, under the leadership of Winton Weyapuk, Jr., a whaling captain from Wales, Alaska, and Smithsonian Anthropologist, Igor Krupnik (see ASC Newsletter 16, 2009). Several other partners, including local Wales Elders Pete Sereadlook and Faye Ongtowasruk, the late Herbert Anungazuk, originally from Wales, were instrumental in the preparation of the ‘Wales Sea Ice dictionary,’ as were also sea ice scientists Hajo Eicken and Matthew Druckenmiller ofthe University of Alaska Fairbanks, linguist Lawrence Kaplan, also of UAF, anthropologist Carole Zane Jolles, and others.

        Wales/Kingigin, Alaska, population 160, is the northwesternmost community in North America, located on the shores of Bering Strait, right across from the northeastern edge of Siberia. One can really ‘view Russia’ on a clear day from almost any window in Wales, as seen from the photo placed on the dictionary’s cover. The idea to collect traditional Inupiaq sea ice terms in the community of Wales was first discussed in 2006, when Igor secured copies of several historical photographs from Wales taken in 1922 by visiting biologist Alfred M. Bailey, a future director of the Denver Natural History Museum (now, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science). When several dozen of Bailey’s photos were shown to hunters and Elders in Wales, they were amazed by how much the sea ice around their native place had changed due to rapid Arctic warming. Since the Inupiaq language in Wales is now being used by a few senior adults and Elders only, it inspired a cooperative effort in local knowledge and language documentation. It was endorsed by Native Village of Wales and supported via grant from the ‘Shared Beringian Heritage Program’ of the National Park Service and the matching funds from NMNH and the Arctic Studies Center.

  Wales hunters on snow-shoes hunt for ringed seals along the edge of the shore ice in the early spring (May 1922). BA-21-772.  From: Kingikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut-Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary, pp. 80. 

        Since Inupiaq is not spoken actively in Wales hunting crews these days, Weyapuk carefully prepared the list of traditional Kifikmiut sea ice terms from his youth memories and then cross-checked it with the Elders. He also took over 100 color photos of local ice scenes and ice formations from the shore-fast ice, the nearby mountain, and from a hunting boat. Upon Igor’s suggestion, he inscribed the Native terms for the ice on the photos, so that the readers may view the ice-scape through the eyes of an experienced Inupiat hunter. The Inupiaq-English ice dictionary lists over 100 terms for ice and ice-associated phenomena in the Kifikmiu/Wales dialect, arranged alphabetically and by major groups/types, and with detailed explanations in Inupiaq for major ice terms. Eicken, Druckenmiller, and Anungazuk contributed expanded comments on the ice and ice knowledge in Wales, and Igor added a short story of Alfred Bailey’s sojourn in Wales in spring 1922, as a preface to two dozen black-and-white historical photos from Bailey’s collection at the Denver museum.

        ‘Wales Sea Ice Dictionary’ was inaugurated at the recent 18th Inuit Studies Conference (24-28 October, 2012) at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Of the thousand book copies printed, four hundred were shipped directly to Wales for local families, school programs, friends and relatives in Alaska and elsewhere. Kingikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut is another outcome of the SIKU (Sea Ice  Knowledge and Use) project that Igordeveloped and implemented during the International Polar Year 2007–2008, with the support from the National Park Service’s “Shared Beringia Heritage Program” and matching funds from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and NMNH (ASC Newsletters 16, 2009; 17, 2010).

 

Video of Dr. Krupnik talking about the Sea Ice and Knowledge Use project (SIKU). Source: International Polar Year 2007-2008 website. 

            In December 2012, the ‘Wales Sea Ice Dictionary’ received an award from the Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI), a professional association of atmospheric science librarians, institutions, and organizations involved in atmospheric research. Each year, ASLI recognizes the best books in all fields of atmospheric sciences out of the pool of several hundred printed annually. The Krupnik-Weyapuk heritage volume was the first ever publication in the social sciences and with a Native Alaskan co-author to be awarded an ‘Honorable Mention,’ as the 2012 ASLI’s ‘Choice in the Reference Category’. The award was given at a special ceremony at the 93^rd Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Austin, TX.

Igor Krupnik recieves ‘Honorable Mention,’ as the 2012 ASLI’s ‘Choice in the Reference Category’. at the 93^rdAnnual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Austin, TX.

            The ‘Wales Sea Ice Dictionary’ was enthusiastically welcomed in Wales when the printed books arrived and were disseminated among local families. Winton Weyapuk reported on the reactions of the people in the Wales community, saying:

“…People commented that a dictionary such as this was long overdue and that it was very important to document our Inupiaq language for future generations.  One old man said that it may help inspire people to speak more Inupiaq, that books like this are needed, and that we need to preserve our language.  Like many Elders he is humble and quiet, but what he said touched my heart. Another young man said he would now study the book to learn the Inupiaq words and how to recognize dangerous sea ice conditions and avoid them.  Other people commented that other similar dictionaries with Inupiaq words used every day should be produced. Many people said they enjoyed the photographs, both the contemporary and the historical photos taken in the 1920s.  Looking at the pictures side-by-side, our people were able to compare sea ice conditions from the 1920s to what they see today. Our community appreciates all the hard work done by everyone and especially the work done by Igor to bring this project to fruition.  We are proud of having such a book produced for the village of Wales, for other researchers, scientists, and extended family and friends everywhere.”

As Weyapuk stated in his Introduction to the Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary:

 “…It is our hope that our Inupiaq words for sea ice and the English translations we collected here can help young hunters supplement what they have learned in English about sea ice in our area and how the changing ice conditions are affected by winds and currents. It is also our hope that they can learn and begin to use some of the Inupiaq words as a way to teach those younger than themselves. Language, any language, is beautiful in its own way.  Inupiaq, because of its construction and its concise description of the natural environment is no less beautiful.  It is, in its way, a heartfelt tribute to our Elders who taught us so much.  Without their dedication and instruction our life would be dramatically different today.  This book can also be seen as praise for our youth who continue our way of life and whom we love deeply.  Enjoy this book for what it is.”

We cannot agree more with his heartfelt words.   

By: Igor Krupnik, Anthropologist, National Museum of Natural History. 

Panarchy: Out with the Old, In with the New

Did Mayan civilization collapse?  Did it just go through a major change? Or did the Maya hit their resilience threshold which caused them to stop building elaborate cities, among other things? Whatever this process is defined as, we can say that the Maya moved away from those cities, broke up large trade routes, and ceased to function as a massive, unified network of trading partners. If you approach this situation like many past scholars, it’s a total collapse of society. The resilient Mayan society failed to maintain the golden standard of a vast and prosperous civilization.  The Romans also suffered a fall from glory after centuries of growth and adaptation. The end of the Roman Empire plunged the entirety of Western Europe into the Dark Ages. If we look at large-scale, hierarchical societies in decline it seems at first that a loss of resilience might equal total failure—as the word collapse suggests—but there is more to it than meets the eye.

   The Course of Empire Destruction (1836), by Thomas Cole. Source: Wikipedia.

 

Resilience is about absorbing small stresses without disrupting the overall stability of a system; however as the Maya, the Romans, and modern day climate change all suggest, the resiliency threshold will be crossed at some point. Nothing in nature can stay in a state of permanent stasis. Many people believe that resilience is the end goal because it is supposed to keep a system intact in the face of change, but crossing the threshold and shifting to a different state is an essential part of the system. Nothing lasts forever, and even when sweeping change involves entire societies or the climate, it may still all be part of a larger, adaptive system, known as panarchy (Gunderson and Holling 2002).

Fig. 1. The adaptive cycle (Holling 1986); temporal changes in a system proceed through phases of growth (r), conservation (k), release (Ω), and reorganization (α). The adaptive cycle is an effective model for systems, the levels in a panarchy, and the dynamics of individual systems. Source: Cambridge University Press. 

In panarchy, a shift from the stable state to an additional state is the first step in a continual process of rejuvenation, creation, and growth. The system is a perpetual cycle that draws from adaptive resilience and places it into a larger context. While the cycle is perpetual, adaptation and resilience depend on a variety of circumstances. The theories of resilience and panarchy are applicable to many disciplines and some have argued that they also apply to change in human societies.  The panarchy idea was developed in ecology, first as an adaptive cycle, so I will explain panarchy in that context. A good example is the growth of forests over time. Start in the “r” or growth phase of panarchy, where a variety of species grow in a forest over time. This growth eventually reaches a fairly stable, resilient state, where the levels of trees and other plants even out at a sustainable point.

This would be the conservation or “K” phase of the cycle, where trees and plants die at a natural rate, and are replaced by others like them at a steady interval. Even with a stable ecosystem, there are stressors. Too many new animals in the ecosystem, altering seed levels, or dead flora that can’t decompose fast enough to provide nutrients to the new plants trying to grow. Under such stress, the system may appear stable, but will become brittle and move closer to the threshold where a shift occurs. That shift could be brought on by any number of scenarios such as virulent disease, logging, fire, etc. All of these would be viewed as terribly destructive processes by humans, who might believe there is no good that can come from these situations; but in reality only logging would be quite so damaging to the forest ecosystem, depending on the circumstances.

  Wildfire in New York State. http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/pics/firewx1.jpg

 

Natural “disasters” like disease or fire are actually part of the cycle and fall into the release or “Ω” phase of the system. This means that all of the potential that has been accumulating in the conservation phase is suddenly available for use. A fire is a type of threshold trigger, and by burning up many of the species in the forest, it is clearing dead fauna, releasing nutrients back into the soil, and helping to disperse seeds quickly. With all of these formerly trapped resources now available, the forest will enter the “α” or reorganization phase, and new plants— ones particularly suited to survive the fire conditions— will begin to grow, which starts the cycle all over again. This new growth is the same building-up process as the first time the system ran its course, but the fire caused a change in the type of plants that are growing. The forest may still reach a stable state through new plant growth; it’s just not exactly the same as the one before.

Image of an area reaching a new stable state ten years after a forest fire. Source: Oregon State University.

The U.S. Forest Service has an entire division that deals with managing the resilience of forest ecosystems in relation to serious stressors, like fire. The system they employ is one that actually pulls inspiration from the natural cycle just described, and it allows humans to help maintain a healthy forest. This theory of management within a natural adaptive cycle can be applied to many areas outside of ecology, and the NSF grant (Cyber-Enabled Understanding of Complexity in Socio-Ecological Systems Using Computational Thinking) we are working on is one such area. Many important leaders in the discussion involving climate change are trying to find ways to keep societies and the climate in their current state. If efforts made today follow this path, then societies the world over will only become more brittle and increasingly subject to environmental disasters, rather than capable of finding the resilient adaptations we seek.

The same adaptive cycles that produce panarchy over time as applied to ecological and social systems can also apply to ideas. Panarchy can be used to develop adaptive management strategies for socio-environmental problems in the near future. Source. 

Societies, like a forest, can’t just stay in one state forever because the resources available won’t match the needs of the inhabitants. This is already the reality facing many societies all over the world, and by examining how these theories work, our current NSF-funded project hopes to better understand how people deal with climate change, and how they might continue to do so in the future. Climate change and continued population growth are going to have strong impacts on resource availability on a local, national, and global scale, so now is the time to develop adaptive management strategies for use in the near future. By looking to how past societies adjusted to changes of all kinds in their worlds, and how a particular ecosystem regulates itself, there is a chance to find solutions to the brittleness of many modern day societies in the face of climate change.

~Maggie Mariani, Research Contractor. Editor: Meghan Mulkerin 

Works cited

Cascio, Jamais. “Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future Will Be Flexible.” Fast Company, 1 April 2009. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. < http://www.fastcompany.com/1257825/resilience-face-crisis-why-future-will-be-flexible.>

Gunderson, Lance H., and C. S. Holling (editors). 2002. Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC.

Resilience Alliance and Santa Fe Institute. 2004. Thresholds and alternate states in ecological and social-ecological systems. Resilience Alliance. (Online.) 6 Nov. 2012.URL: <http://www.resalliance.org/index.php?id=183.

 

Resilience: Adaptation on the Rebound

The Maya didn’t just collapse, and neither did the other societies mentioned in my previous post about Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. The idea of collapse was a long-standing belief held by many scholars, but it just doesn’t make sense. Entire societies don’t just fall to pieces and vanish overnight, particularly ones that reach such high levels of sophistication. In fact, there are still Mayan people living in the same jungle regions, speaking the same languages, and carrying on similar traditions as their ancestors. The Maya didn’t disappear, leaving behind only ghostly pyramids covered in vines to show where they had been. In reality, they never even really left. Instead, they adapted to changes that were causing difficulties for their society and found a new way to live in the region.  No one knows exactly what caused the shift away from cities full of monumental architecture, but many suggestions have been put forward.  

 
Frederick Catherwood painting of the Pyramid of Kulkulcán in the Maya city of Chichén Itzá. (From the online archive of lithographs at the Frederick Catherwood House, Plate 22).

One of the most popular suggestions involves a drastic change in the climate of the region, specifically, a drought. There are, of course, many other theories involving everything from political mismanagement, and a souring of trade relations, to widespread war over resources and social turmoil. The mystery of what caused the Maya to move away from their cities may never be solved; but there are many other interesting aspects of the change in their society to consider. Among these, what mechanism allowed them to carry their language and culture to the present day, in the face of whatever changes forced the abandonment of their cities?

 
Modern day murals in Honduras depict traditional cultural elements of Mayan Ancestors.

The answer to that question is resilience in the face of change and quick adaptations. The Maya left their cities, instead choosing to live in smaller units, like towns or villages, which are still the social structure of the Maya people today. This move to a different organization technique allowed their society to absorb the stress of change and still maintain central elements of the culture, despite a structural shift. The ability to absorb the changes and reorganize into a new structure while still maintaining the original identity of the culture or system is called resilience and it plays a critical role in how social systems function over time.

Figure 1: General view of a resilient system and how the initial, current, and additional states are altered through resilience.

A resilient society will be made up of various interacting parts, which encourage “persistence, adaptiveness, variability, and unpredictability” within the overall structure of the organizational system (Gunderson & Holling, 2002: 27-28). This is referred to as “ecosystem resilience” and is best applied when dealing with a great deal of uncertainty. It also emphasizes understanding how much change can be absorbed into a system before the overall structure is altered. A resilient system can incorporate stresses into its structure without losing its stable or current state.

 
Figure 2: The black circle represents the society, and the arrows are stresses acting on it within its current, stable state (resting in the trough). The stresses try to push the ball up either side of the trough, but don’t succeed. As long as the society stays within the trough, it is absorbing stress and not losing its overall structural position. It is resilient. Even if one stress is significantly stronger than the other one, it would take a great deal to shift the society out of its stable position and tip it into an additional state (as indicated at the “threshold” peak on either side of the trough). Source: http://www.arctic-council.org/arr/resources/what-is-resilience/

In terms of a society, like the Maya, the organizational structure generally starts out as being one with fairly equal parts spread out over an area. As time passes, those parts (like villages or towns) unite into a more formalized group, with a central organizational point in one place. Eventually, this point or town grows in size (becoming a city) and holds more centralized power over the other, smaller towns that make up the system. Once power is centralized, certain stresses on the system as a whole are harder to handle because the resources are no longer spread around and immediately accessible by all the parts of the system.

Figure 3: When the society consolidates its resources and power too much, it can become brittle or weak. This would result in the society still maintaining its overall current organization (still within range of its trough), but shifting to a less stable state. In a brittle society, stress can be absorbed and allow the society to return to a more stable location (if the ball rolled back to the left) or it can be too strong and push society into a new position by crossing the threshold (the ball rolling over the peak and into a new position or trough). Source: http://www.arctic-council.org/arr/resources/what-is-resilience/

If a unified society is resilient, they can react accordingly to a change in their society or environment, using their centralized power structure as an advantage. The Mayan civilization was unified for more than one thousand years, suggesting that they were fairly resilient for quite some time. Much like the eventual weakening and final separation of the Mayan civilization, a system won’t always be strong enough to absorb changes like war, social unrest, or drought. Eventually, even a resilient system will lose its level of resilience and reach its threshold. This threshold is a tipping point, where the stress on the system can no longer be absorbed into the system without leading to change.

 
Figure 4: While a society is effectively consolidating power, its resilience is higher, a deeper trough formed by the dotted resilience line (benefiting from consolidation and organized structure). When the centralized power begins to cause difficulties, the resilience is lowered and thus more susceptible to disturbance from both external and internal stressors, as shown by a shallower solid line trough. With less resilience, the threshold is easier to reach and cross, leading to an additional state. Source: http://www.arctic-council.org/ arr/resources/what-is-resilience/

The Maya reached their threshold during the final century of the Classic Period (AD 250 -900). Their resilience was no longer high enough to over-power stresses, and Mayan society was pushed over the threshold. An “additional state” (a new equilibrium – see Figure 1), became the new normal, and the Post-Classic Period began. Up to this point, Mayan society had been resilient enough to shape their cities from a wild jungle and establish vast trade networks across the region. Their resilience had allowed them to build up complex government and a recognizable social system, but nothing stays the same and change happens. Modern people look at the end of the Classic period in Mayan history as a fall from power, a collapse, but is this really the case? Is the move over a threshold into a different state always a bad thing, or is that shift really an integral part of all systems, even social ones? Our own society has plunged into what has been termed the “Great Recession,” and it affects every part of our culture. Does that mean we, like the Mayans and the Romans, are collapsing, or is it just a symptom of changes in our stable state?

~Margaret Mariani, Research Contractor.

Works Cited:

Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005.

Gunderson, Lance H. and C.S. Holling, Eds. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington: Island Press, 2002.

Resilience Alliance and Santa Fe Institute. 2004. Thresholds and alternate states in ecological and social-ecological systems. Resilience Alliance. (Online.) URL: <http://www.resalliance.org/index.php?id=183.>

 

 

 

Collapse: Things Don't Just Fall Apart

As 2012 draws to a close, many people are asking if there will be a year 2013, or even a December 22nd, 2012. Thanks to the proliferation of modern media, most of America, if not the world, has been made aware of the Mayan calendar coming to an end on December 21st of this year. There are numerous projections for what might happen when the calendar reaches its end, from a world-wide collapse of societies, to an apocalypse brought on by epic natural disasters. The idea of societal collapse and end of days is a fairly popular topic beyond just the Maya. Post-apocalyptic movies like 2012 and a variety of TV shows with similar themes, like Revolution or Doomsday Preppers, are now dominating our screens.

Screenshot from the movie, 2012. All Rights Reserved by Sony Pictures. Source: Sony Pictures, 2012 Official Movie Site. 

Is all of this concern stemming from the end of an ancient calendar, or is there something more motivating this fear and preparation for a post-apocalyptic world? If you look carefully at the issues often brought up in TV and movies, they are tied to real world problems. Though the idea of the whole planet being swept away in one massive flood is a bit over-dramatic, to say the least, Hollywood is tapping into real-world concerns dealing with rising sea level and climate change. These issues have been around for quite awhile, but public awareness and concern appears to have gained momentum in the past decade, with increased research into climate change and a great deal of media coverage in general.

Figure 1. The final section of Tortuguero Monument 6. See Figure 4 for a general overview of the text's original form. (Drawing by D. Stuart). Source: Maya Decipherment.

This media isn’t restricted to TV and movies; a proliferate number of magazine articles and books dealing with climate change and consequences are being written every day. A particularly popular book in this category is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Pulitzer Prize-winning* author, Jared Diamond. He is a physiologist by training, but has since become skilled in several other fields of study, including anthropology, biology, geography, and history among others. The book was published in 2005 and stems from several earlier talks he gave on college campuses around the country.

Diamond’s theory evolved from these early talks where the five main areas of a collapse framework consist of human impact on the environment, climate change, friendly trade partners, interactions with enemies, and a society’s response to environmental changes. This final element is considered the most critical aspect to discovering why a society fails or succeeds and can be broken into twelve key factors: destruction of natural habitats, reduction of wild foods, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, depletion of natural resources, pollution of freshwater, maximizing natural photosynthetic resources, introduction of toxins and alien species, artificially induced climate change, and overpopulation. Diamond supports his thesis by including twelve case studies of past and present societies that he claims decided either to fail or succeed in large part because of environmental stresses and changes.

 Cover Photo. Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005.

 The issues surrounding climate change and what could potentially happen to societies are very popular topics. While not all scholars agree with Diamond’s analysis of the factors that contribute to societal collapse, many do appreciate how he has brought the issue to a wider audience. One such group of individuals was originally brought together to serve as a panel of experts (each specialized in one of the societies that Diamond discusses) at an American Anthropological Association symposium. The panel discussions grew into an edited, thirteen chapter volume, Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. These authors, and many others with specialties in particular cultures, ecology, or history have taken large portions of Diamond’s argument and found substantial evidence countering his theory about environmental determinism and that groups choose to fail or succeed.

I have been reading up on the issue of societal collapse over the past couple of months in order to make use of the information when working with the computational agent-based models that are part of the Mason- Smithsonian NSF Grant. One of the main goals of the grant is to provide a fuller understanding of climate- society dynamics and the best way to build this knowledge is to start with past data about societies that have dealt with complicated socio-climate situations.

Past societies or cultures like the Maya, Easter Islanders, or Greenland Norse are often described in literature, like Diamond’s, as having “collapsed” due to the stress placed on them by climate changes. While Diamond raises some critical issues, many authors dealing with the same material have suggested that instead of calling the myriad of situations he identifies as “collapses,” a different theoretical label needs to be applied. None of these societies just fell apart as the word collapse suggests. They did suffer significant losses in the general population at particular times in their past, often due, in part, to environmental stressors.

Cover Photo. McAnany, Patricia and Norman Yoffee, eds. Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

The scholars that wrote the critique of Diamond’s book “Collapse,” proposed that instead of labeling these situations as societal collapses or chosen failures, they should be considered in terms of resilience. It would be more accurate to describe these past societies as people who faced drastic changes in the environment, and found ways to adapt quickly. This would be referred to as resilience, or the ability of a particular ecosystem to absorb disturbances and continue to function in the same general form as before. Many of the factors that Diamond points out are real issues in terms of changing climate, but the result of these changes isn’t an all-out collapse. Instead, the societies that faced these problems developed extreme adaptations in order to stay resilient, and where that failed, they moved on to better environments that could support the structure they had developed.

~ Maggie Mariani, Research Contractor

Citations:

Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005.

McAnany, Patricia and Norman Yoffee, eds. Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Sony Pictures Digital, Inc.. "Backgrounds Home 1." Photograph. Webshots. 2012 Official Movie Site. Sony Pictures Digital, Inc., 2009. Web. Nov. 2012. 

Stuart, David. 2011. More on Tortuguero’s Monument 6 and the Prophecy That Wasn’t. Wordpress Blog. Maya Decipherment: A Weblog on the Ancient Maya Script. October 4. 

Simulating the Past to Explore the Future

Dr. Rogers is currently a CO-PI on a multi-year NSF Grant that models climate change, which we plan to write more about soon. For brief introduction on Agent-Based Modeling, we thought you might like to read Dan's article previously published in our Department of Anthropology's publication, AnthroNotes. If you have never seen this publication, take some time to browse it on the department's website. It has a great variety of articles from the many curators and researchers who work here, as well as experts from outside the Smithsonian! 

 

SIMULATING THE PAST TO EXPLORE THE FUTURE

Published in AnthroNotes, Volume 30 No. 2 Fall  2009

by J. Daniel Rogers

Throughout Earth’s history there have been long periods in which the climate was relatively stable and other periods in which it was constantly changing, sometimes rapidly.  Climate, as part of the environment, always has a deep impact on how people live.  For a very long time, but especially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have played a significant role in climate change.  As we ponder our options for developing a sustainable future, there is a profound need to understand how people around the world may be able to cope with change.  But there is a problem; our information from the past is fuzzy and incomplete.  The climatologists, for instance, who build projections for understanding future changes, may have quality weather data extending back only  a few decades. Sometimes this information is not enough when we seek to understand trends occurring over the course of centuries.

At the National Museum of Natural History some of the scientists are turning to a new way to use the past to see into the future.  It is called Agent-Based Modeling, a kind of computer simulation that builds virtual societies in which each individual person, or family, in the simulation behaves according to social norms, but also in autonomous ways, much as real people do. Working with social and computer scientists from George Mason University, Smithsonian anthropologists devised a model of the societies that herd sheep, goats, camels, yaks, and horses on the steppe lands of Central and Inner Asia. Like an elaborate computer game, the agents (people) are born, get married, have children, visit their friends, share with family members who are in trouble, remember their ancestors, and participate in social groups. The agents also deal with problems, like droughts, snow storms, and climate change.

Using archaeological, historical, and ethnographic information on herding societies from around the world, each characteristic of the artificial society was painstakingly programmed into the simulation using software called MASON and Java. The first objective was to create an artificial society inspired by the Bronze Age (2000 to 500 B.C.) of Inner Asia.  The people of the Bronze Age were members of clans and had leaders we might call chiefs, but not kings.  Later, vast empires would emerge from the Inner Asian heart land, culminating in the great Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan in the 13^th and 14^th centuries.

 The Bronze Age ancestors of the Mongol Empire are the starting point, a kind of baseline on which to build a history that never happened, but could have. The second objective was to take the replica of the Bronze Age society and actually put time in motion— the clock starts ticking and does not stop for a thousand years.  On a very powerful computer this process takes about 2 actual days. The graph on this page shows the population changes for one of the simulated histories.  One thing to note right away is that a huge amount of variation and change is the norm. The human population is not even  remotely stable, nor does it decline or increase in a gradual way.  Change is abrupt and sometimes catastrophic.  The thing that accounts for most of this change is weather— snow storms and droughts.  In Inner Asia these weather events sometimes kill nearly all of a herder’s animals.  When the animals die, the families cease to exist.  This catastrophe nearly happened around simulated year 330 (120,000 days) when the population dropped by 50% due to back-to back winter snow storms and summer droughts.

 Even when climate is changing relatively quickly, as today, what people must adapt to are the extremes. Herders today, just as in the Bronze Age, must find ways to buffer against catastrophes. They can do this by developing a resilient economy.  Although they cannot stop the snow storms, they can migrate, share resources, and use other strategies. One of the keys for the herders is having flexible social networks that allow change, rather than adhering to rigid behaviors—a good lesson for us all.

Why artifact collections?

One of the reasons we wanted to start this blog was to showcase all of the great collections we work with, that for one reason or another are not on display. In our blog posts over the next few months, one of the things we will be talking about are the collections that come through this lab.  As we begin that excursion through a portion of the anthropological collections of the National Museum of Natural History, I want to say a little about why we have these collections. 

A panoramic view of Pod 4 at the Museum Support Center, with the Collections Support Staff and objects from the Anthropology Department of the National Museum of Natural History. In the foreground at right is one of the Smithsonian's two Easter Island stone figures. Photo by Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution

Everyone knows that museums have many more artifacts than they can display at any one time. What you may not know, is that objects have other important uses, even while in storage. The mission for most museums tends to run: collect, preserve, exhibit and educate; and at NMNH we do all that and more.  Most of the collections we work with have a research purpose, but that does not rule out the possibility of using a particular piece of pottery or stone tool in a future exhibit or for an educational program.  Museums are educational institutions and most have collections that tell a story, or provide the research materials on which a topic is based.  For instance, a natural history museum collects, studies, and preserves a portion of the biodiversity of the planet and many also collect, study, and preserve the material evidence of human cultures--artifacts.  These artifacts are part of the collective memories of past and present societies.

We try to make a difference in the world we share through serious research efforts on a myriad of topics, from airplane bird-strikes, endangered species, climate change, forensics, volcanology, food and sustainability, developing DNA barcoding to help us avoid poisonous foods, to studying the way language shapes how we understand the world and helping to sustain incredible indigenous knowledge through our Recovering Voices Program.  Due to our amazing collections, partnerships with other institutions, and other resources, the Smithsonian’s scientists are uniquely able to use what we know about the past to predict what might happen in the future. 

Stay tuned for more on how Dr. Dan Rogers is working on just such a project together with his colleagues at George Mason University!

 -Meghan Mulkerin with Dr. J. Daniel Rogers.