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ROBERT M. CARMACK
Department of Anthropology
State University of New York, Albany
lhSTORY
AND
ANTHROPOLOGY
The relationship between history and anthropology has too often been
viewed in terms of the misleading dichotomy between the ideographic, the
specific and unique, and the nomothetic, the abstract, and general (see, for
example, Boas 13; Harris 40; Kroeber 46; White 102). Nagel (67), who
traces the dichotomy back to Aristotle, has convincingly demonstrated the
use of generalizations and specific cases in both history and science, and Sah
lins and Service have done a similar thing through their analysis of specific
and general evolution (75).
The early evolutionists were not historical in the ideographic sense but
they were in the diachronic and documentarian senses. The founding fathers
of anthropology-Morgan, Tylor, Maine, Marx, and others-sought to find
the origins and antecedents of sociocultural systems and to trace their evolu
tion through time. They based their studies on documentary accounts about
native cultures written by travelers, missionaries, etc. As Kroeber repeatedly
claimed, the historical approach was precociously applied in the social sci
ences, compared to the biological and physical sciences (47). The delayed
development of a historical approach in the other sciences, Kroeber argued
(48), was the requirement of a prior development of systematic, synchronic
generalizations.
This suggests one explanation for the patently ahistorical phase which
followed the evolutionary beginnings of anthropology-viz. the need for de
tailed, synchronic studies. The aversion of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski
to historical studies is well known. The structure-functionalism of British so
cial anthropology was ahistorical on all counts. In the study of the struc
tures of whole societies it was nomothetic, in the almost total reliance on
ethnographic observations it was antidocumentarian, and in failing to study
social change it was synchronic.
In spite of Harris' recent attempt to portray the American culture histori
ans' work as exclusively ideographic (41), there is good reason to view it as
ahistorical in certain fundamental ways. Certainly the culture historians can
not be accused of failing to make diachronic studies, as under Boas' guidance
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CARMACK
culture traits were studied in terms of their diffusion through time between
adjacent cultures. But Kroeber insisted that (46) by studying process, diffu
sion process, they were missing the essence of history, which is "descriptive
integration." It must be admitted that a view which conceived of culture
traits diffusing mechanically within culture areas along fixed vectors (age
area) does seem far more nomothetic than ideographic.
Kroeber also noted the culture historians' (46) general failure to use doc
umentary sources. Voegelin (99) reminds us that Sapir devoted only 5 of 86
pages in his famous essay on Time Perspective to the direct historical
method. Yet we can speak only of tendencies, for, as Fenton (33) an4. others
have pointed out, among the American culture historians there were pioneers
in the use of documents (e.g. Swanton, Speck, Dixon, and Keesing). Still, as
with their British counterparts, ethnographic fieldwork was the sine qua non
of anthropological research. In part this was a reaction to the rapid disap
pearance of native cultures, but it must also be seen as a distrust of and disin
terest in historical sources and problems.
Historical trend.-There has been a pronounced shift of interest in an
thropology toward history since the end of World War II. Mention has al
ready been made of Kroeber's early views on the subject, and in a series of
essays in the late 1950s he continued to discuss the topic (47). He argued for
the basic similarity between history and anthropology since both develop only
fluid and weak generalizations with few causal statements, both study civiliza
tion as a tradition of historically accumulated patterns, and both are natural
rather than experimental in their basic approach (49).
In 1945 White argued that the historical approach, the study of the origin
and diffusion in time and space of cultural forms, was itself a kind of "scienc
ing," but to be contrasted with the functionalist approach, also scientific, which
focuses on how cultural systems work as a result of the varying contributions
made by its different elements. A third approach, evolution, he believed to be
the most fruitful of scientific theories. This did not mean, however, that we
should ignore history. In fact, it was his argument that evolution was a pro
cess by which "an organization of functionally interrelated elements is tem
porally transformed" (103), and hence its explication depends on the com
bined approaches of history and functionalism.
Eggan (28) argued a similar thing, without the evolutionary connotations
of White. He called for a synthesis of the structure-functionalism of British
social anthropology, and the culture historians' interest in temporal
"process." This could be done through what he called "controlled compari
sons," where structure-functional systems are placed in limited geographical,
cultural, and historical frameworks. Eggan was only stating a position al
ready largely adopted in ethnology, as may be seen from Lewis' analysis of
comparative studies in anthropology between 1950 and 1954. Lewis (57) dis
covered that comparisons between historically related societies-i.e. those
found within a single community or in the same culture area dr nation-
ETHNOHISTORY
229
made up about 60% of the cases, versus only 40% of cases where this con
trol was not used.
A simultaneous historical trend was taking place among the British social
anthropologists. Evans-Pritchard (30) , influenced mainly by the work of so
cial historians like Maitland, Vinogradoff, Bloch, and Weber, warned that the
very concepts of structure and function could be demonstrated as valid only
through historical studies. What is needed, he said, is an enlightened combi
nation of specificity and generality, so that analysis becomes neither so gen
eral as to be valueless (as he claims has happened with such concepts as ta
boo and lineage), nor so specific as to be trivial (which is too often the case
with the writings of historians) .
Evans-Pritchard, like Eggan, was reflecting a view held by many of his
colleagues. The appropriate field of study for most British social anthropolo
gists had become a structure-functional unit over time (Gluckman
38;
Smith
(42)
cock 50; V oege lin 99). There was no other recourse but to turn to the docu
ments in order to obtain such detail. In the phrase of Herskovitz, "'historical
reconstruction has given way to ethnohistory"
(42).
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CARMACK
"
recent students of anthropological method and theory who state that there is
a pronounced humanist, literary aspect in the writings of anthropologists
(Manners & Kaplan 61). Historians make ethical judgments about the sub
ject matter they study, while anthropologists only analyze cultures. Recent
discussions in anthropology (see volume 9 of Current Anthropology) make it
abundantly clear that this has not been the case for anthropologists.
The view, stated well by Taylor (91), that history does not involve the
tion" (Spaulding 85). Perhaps we should agree with Mills (63), that more
important in the long run than whether or not historians are social scientists
is the point that the social sciences are "historical disciplines."
DEFINING
ETHNOHISTORY
"
fined. In fact, the derivation of the term itself is not known for certain, and
its meaning varies widely from one context to another. In a series of essays
discussing the concept, published as volumes 8 and 9 of the journal Ethnohis
olson
70).
Sturtevant (89) suggests that there are three basic "dimensions" which
to that with which archaeologists have wrestled. They too recognize the his
torical side of their work, for they study the past, have a dominant interest in
chronology and produce mostly particularistic constructions (Spaulding 84).
,
ETHNOHISTORY
231
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CARMACK
"
"
"
"
"
'
ETHNOHISTORY
233
the usual questions must be asked of each source: who wrote it, why, when,
and where-and it must also be carefully compared with all other relevant
sources. Although this undoubtedly sounds commonplace, particularly to any
trained historian, anyone familiar with the pre-Hispanic branch of Mesoamerican
ethnohistory is well aware how rarely it has actually been accomplished in
practice.
Evans-Pritchard sees our deficient use of source criticism as carrying over
into other aspects of our research. Ethnographic monographs are documents
too, he reminds us, and we have trusted them far too uncritically (30). Many
ethnographies fail to provide us with an evaluation of the sources of informa
tion from which the descriptions were taken. It is not necessary that we know
the names of informants, but we should at least be given information about
their sociological positions, their relations to power, and personality factors
which might uniquely influence their reports. The same information about
the ethnographers recording the data is needed.
Often it is argued that ethnohistoric methodology is distinguished by its
eclecticism: documentary analysis is combined with archaeological, ethno
graphic, linguistic, and other kinds of data-gathering methods. Hence, its cul
tural reconstructions of the past are broad when compared with those of his
tory. While it is true that anthropologists are especially prone to combine
archaeological and ethnographic data with their use of documents, historians
also have a long tradition of such "multi-disciplinary" approaches to the
study of the past. Bloch, who has written perceptively on all of these ques
tions (10), emphasized the importance of studying "tracks" left by peoples
of the past-artifacts, old customs, archaic words, etc. Further, he gave it as
a basic maxim that only through understanding social life of the present can
we hope "to derive the elements which help us restore the past" (11). He
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CARMACK
ETHNOHISTORY
235
In that ethnohistoric methods do not differ from those of history except for a
somewhat greater emphasis on combining these methods with those of ar
chaeology, linguistics, etc, ethnohistory is less easily defined as a subdiscipline
than archaeology or historical linguistics. Yet many anthropologists who con
sider themselves to be ethnohistorians feel that it has a subject matter, how
ever vaguely it might be defined, and that this, combined with its historical
methodology, qualifies it as a subfield of anthropology.
A careful reading of the literature with this question in mind leads to the
conclusion that the following subjects are the ones most often studied by eth
nohistorians: specific history, historical ethnography, and folk history. These
topics all involve a concern with Sturtevant's cultural reconstruction and dia
chronic dimensions (89), which along with the methodological requisite of
using sources were said to characterize ethnohistory.
In the summary to follow of ethnohistoric research related to these three
topics, I shall briefly discuss each topic in terms of the development of meth
ods, concepts, and conclusions from ethnohistoric research on native cultures
in North America, Africa, and Mesoamerica. No comprehensive summary of
the ethnohistory of these three areas is attempted here, but rather, I have
selected a few noteworthy and illustrative cases. Good bibliographic reviews
of Mesoamerican ethnohistory are available, and the interested student
should consult them (see the bibliographies in the Handbook of Middle
American Indians, volumes 2, 3, 4, 10, 11; Bernal 7; Nicholson's annotated
bibliographies in the Handbook of Latin American Studies from 1960 to
1970). Students of North American Indian tribes have produced a great
amount of ethnohistoric research, especially since the historical impetus re
sulting from the Indian Claims Act of 1946. The journal, Ethnohistory, is
primarily devoted to ethnohistoric studies of North American Indians, and
can profitably be consulted for that purpose. For African ethnohistory, the
best survey articles are by Vansina (95), Lewis (56), and Adams ( 1). In
addition, the volumes of the Journal of African History provide a compen
dium of much important ethnohistoric work on African cultures for recent
years.
There is a growing interest in ethnohistoric research on cultures of other
areas besides these three. For example, recent ethnohistoric research on cul
tures of the Pacific islands can be followed in the Journal of Pacific History,
while summaries of work now being undertaken in East and Southeast Asia
have been prepared by Benda (6) and Cohn (25). Murra (66) has summa
rized the rather extensive ethnohistoric research on the native cultures of An
dean America.
The Journal of Comparative Society and History, broadly representative
in its areal coverage, though strongly sociological in its orientation, has many
articles which fit our definition of ethnohistory. The student will find there
considerable discussion of areas of traditional interest to historians, such as
early Western Europe, classic Greece, Rome, China, and India. These cul
tures in the past have received scant attention by anthropologists though
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CARMACK
some ethnohistoric work has been initiated on a limited scale (Cohn 25;
Kluckhohn 45). The historical topic which has received perhaps more schol
arly research than any other in the West, the Judeo-Christian cultural devel
opment, has been virtually ignored by anthropologists. We might anticipate
that a closer integration of Biblical and classical research with anthropologi
cal studies might some day provide a strong impact on the direction and so
phistication of ethnohistory.
Specific histories.-By specific history I will mean the writing of histories
of specific societies in terms of their past events or culture traits as mani
fested in time, space, and concrete act. For anthropologists, this has generally
implied the construction of past events for tribal, peasant, and other societies
neglected by Western historians.
As might be expected, such histories have tended to be more social and
cultural than narrative, though the latter type history has been written in a
few cases. Mostly this kind of work has been labeled "culture history" since,
rather than reconstruct specific names, dates, or activities. the origin and dif
fusion of culture traits have been traced within the context of general areas
and relative times. In practice, narrative history and culture history are usu
ally combined, the culture historian using exact dates, places, and events
when they are available, and the historian trying to work out patterns of
migration and relations with surrounding cultures as these are indirectly sug
gested by a variety of informational sources (Greenberg 39).
Until recently, specific history dominated ethnohistoric research on North
American Indian tribes. This type of approach was applied by Boas, and is
well illustrated by his reconstruction of the diffusion and transformation in
form of folktales among the Northwest coast tribes (12). Very early Sapir
abstracted the general principles and controls needed to effectively use the
method and evaluate its results (76). According to a modern summary of
ethnological research on the North American Indian (Fenton 33), culture
history continues to be one of the main tasks of ethnohistory.
Recently, American ethnohistorians have begun to argue for a '''history in
the round," in which a more narrative history of the American Indians would
be written in order to counterbalance the Anglo-oriented accounts which
dominate our American histories (Leacock 5 1; Washburn 100). A limited
amount of general North American Indian history has already begun to ap
pear (Leacock & Lurie 52).
In African studies there has been a shift away from the history of Euro
pean expansion to the investigation of aboriginal, local history (Vansina 95).
The Africans themselves have insisted upon the development of a history
comparable to that produced by Western historians, and not merely the
broad patterns of culture history (Vansina, Mauny & Thomas 98). This view
harmonizes well with the social anthropologists' general skepticism of ethno
logical studies, and the result has been a predominance of histories shallow in
time depth and narrow in cultural scope.
ETHNOHISTORY
237
The extensive use of oral traditions by African peoples has provided cases
where culture historical methods can be checked against results obtained
from documentary studies. One conclusion reached by African ethnohistori
ans is that while tribal tradition, such as contained in genealogies, can be
historically misleading (Bohannan 15; Cunnison 26), it usually contains
some historical reliability (Lewis 55; Vansina 96). Different segments of gen
ealogies may have different historical validity, just as different types of so
cieites are found to express different levels of historicity in their genealogies
and other oral traditions. Of these social types, state societies are the most
reliable (e.g. Southwold 83). The first steps in working out regional histories
of aboriginal African states have been taken, by focusing in chronology and
dynastic list comparison (see volume 11 of The Journal of African History).
What has most impressed and pleased the social anthropologists working
in Africa is that specific histories have proved useful in improving functional
analysis. Accurate historical reconstruction of such matters as lineage origins,
dynastic successions, changes in brideprices, etc, provide a basis for under
standing the relationship between social function and political manipulation
(Lewis 56).
Specific history in the form of culture history has long dominated Me
soamerican ethnohistoric studies. There is both an extensive corpus of native
and Spanish documents and a rich archaeology for the area, so that in no
other part of the world would the application of the direct historical method
seem more favorable-with the exception of the ancient Near East. As a re
sult, Mesoamerican specific histories often manifest an enlightening blend of
specific detail and general statement which tends to be lacking in similar
work from other parts of the world.
Considerable narrative history has also been produced by Mesoamerican
ists, on such topics as the origin and development of the Aztecs, the decline
and fall of the Toltecs, the formation of Maya political states, etc. Biographi
cal history forms part of this literature, and includes accounts of prehispanic
luminaries (such as Moctezuma, Nezahualcoyotl), and the Spanish conquis
tadors.
Most Mesoamerican culture historic studies have focused on those civili
zations which reached the highest levels of cultural development-viz. cul
tures from the Valley of Mexico, Valley of Oaxaca, Yucatan, and highland
Guatemala (Nicholson 71). The literature on these kinds of studies is too
extensive to summarize briefly, though the interested student might gain some
of the flavor of this work by consulting the most ambitious attempt at culture
historical reconstrution yet attempted, Jimenez-Moreno's summary of the his
tory of the major cultures of central Mexico (43).
Surprisingly little specific history has been written on the posthispanic
cultures of Middle America, and the use of oral tradition for historical pur
poses lags behind other research. Redfield, who pioneered community studies
in the area, virtually ignored oral tradition and local histories, and most of
his successors have perpetuated that unfortunate trend. However, recent pub-
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239
ETHNOHISTORY
240
CARMACK
its expression in language with our own patterns. More recently, attempts
have been made to generalize about cultural ideas of time and to assign them
to different levels of cultural evolution (Kirsch & Peacock 44). The timeless
view of the past, characteristic of "primitive" cultures, is contrasted with the
cyclic concept of archaic and historical societies, which in turn gives way to a
more linear, open view as modern society is ushered in.
The study of folk history among tribal peoples raises the question of
myth, legend, and their relations to history, a somewhat neglected topic in
anthropology according to Evans-Pritchard (30). The old view that folk his
tory can be classified as myths, involving nonhuman characters, legends,
where supernatural persons are thought to represent distorted historical facts
(Clarke & Clarke 23), and history per se is inadequate for anthropologists
studying societies whose folk histories do not parallel those of the West. A
reading of papers from a symposium on the study of myth held in 1955 (Se
beok 78) makes it clear that folklorists and anthropologists have generally
turned away from the historical implications of myth and other folktales.
Topics now being emphasized are the semantic structure of myth, its rela
tions to ritual, its basis in psychological states, its social functions, and its use
in culture historical reconstruction (see the essays in the Sebeok volume by
Bidney, Levi-Strauss, Raglan, and Thompson). Still, in working out the struc
ture of meanings which folklore holds for different peoples, some clarification
of their folk history is usually made, however implicitly. Further, there are
folklorists who insist on the historic element in folklore, and that it must be
taken into account if we are to correctly understand the material (Dorson
27).
ETHNOHISTORY
241
stated caveat is that these functions have to be taken into account in working
on historical problems. For example, Boston (16) states that "each people's
oral traditions have their own kind of historical perspective and the
historian's first task is to understand this perspective before trying to fit the
traditions into a unilinear time scale."
When sociopOlitical function and context are taken into account, different
types of historical tradition can be distinguished. Thus, Vansina (97) is able
to distinguish between the more complete history of a centralized state
(Ruanda) compared to that of a segmentary state (Burundi) , and he dis
cusses other types corresponding to town and village organization. Similarly,
many students have argued that truly historical traditions are maintained only
by societies organized on a state-level (e.g. Cohen 24; Vansina 96).
On the other end of the scale, folk histories of tribal society have been
shown widely to take the form of lineage genealogies, which seem to function
more as supportive charters for present structural conditions than as factual
accounts of the past (Bohannan 15: Cunnison 26). Often included in the
accounts of tribal folk history is some description of their concepts of time.
This interest owes its relative popularity to Evans-Pritchard's (31) unsur
passed descriptions of Nuer time reckoning, which, he demonstrated, was
based on ecological and structural factors (lineage alliances, age grading) .
The situation is complex, however, and cases of tribal societies with distinct,
historical traditions have been described (Lewis 55).
Studies of prehispanic Mesoamerican folk history can be referred to as
historiography, since most of the focus has been on the view of the past
recorded in written documents. Even though the purpose of much of this
work has been simply to translate or interpret the glyphs, or, in the case of
the chronicles written in latin characters, to reconstruct the history or culture
of a people, the question of the societies' view of history has necessarily
arisen, and has been discussed many times.
The best understood historiography is that of the Aztecs and closely re
lated peoples from the valley of Mexico. Nicholson (68) has called our at
tention to the extent to which a genuine historical "consciousness" in central
Mexico was dependent upon complex political developments and well-devel
oped writing and calendric systems. Garibay (36) and Leon Portilla (53)
have pointed to the important role played by oral tradition and memoriza
tion, even for cases of chronologized history. All seem to agree that Mexican
chronicle history can be clearly distinguished from myth, though saga-like,
epical tradition is common (and widespread in Mesoamerica) , and is very
difficult to interpret historically (as an example, see Nicholson's study of the
legendary Quetzalcoatl, 69).
The Oaxacan and Yucatecan codices have been the object of much histo
riographic concern, though most attention has focused on the translation of
the sources rather than specific history per se. Caso (21), working with the
Mixtec codices, has shown that they are mainly historical, the earliest con
taining a date of A.D. 692. The content of these histories is primarily politi-
242
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243
ETHNOHISTORY
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