Department of Anthropology Papers
Penn Anthropology continues to pioneer innovations in anthropology and beyond. Our evolutionary anthropologists study population genetics and reproductive health, ancient hominids and modern primates, whether at laboratories on campus or at field sites in South America and the Middle East. Our archeological anthropologists study ancient Mesopotamia, the Maya, the Inca, colonial North America, and heritage culture around the world. Our sociocultural and linguistic anthropologists investigate contemporary media, politics, corporations, globalization, migration, race, and urban poverty. Faculty in all three sections contribute to programs in Culture Contact and Colonialism, Medical Anthropology and Global Health, and Native American Studies.
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Publication Considering the Feather Headdress(2016-01-01) Bruchac, MargaretDuring the Spring 2016 course Ethnohistory of the Native Northeast, students are studying Native American objects in the Penn Museum collections by combining close material analyses (elements, construction, design, condition, etc.) with other forms of evidence: textual, photographic, historical, and ethnographic. In many cases, the objects we’re studying have little to no provenance data. So, we are seeking out similar objects, reaching out to consult with Indigenous cultural experts, and considering non-material evidence, such as community identity, memory, oral traditions, and other Indigenous knowledges that might illuminate these objects. By sharing this research via social media, we hope to recover object histories, and draw links among museums, archives, and Native communities, in ways that can encourage broader cross-cultural conversations outside of the Museum.Publication Fesenjan and Kashk: Culture and Metaculture(1986) Spooner, BrianPublication Publication Publication Continuity and Change in Rural Iran: The Eastern Deserts(1971) Spooner, BrianProfessional ethnography did not enter Iran until the late fifties. For a variety of reasons which are largely non-Iranian and non-anthropological the anthropologists who have worked in Iran since then have concentrated their attention on pastoral nomads, and little work of any anthropological significance has been done in the village sector of Iranian society. My general interest in the historical ecology of the desert areas of eastern Iran led me to embark in the summer of 1969 on a series of preliminary studies of oasis village communities. This essay relies on the data collected in two short seasons1 and a long familiarity with the Iranian deserts in general. Small isolated settlements in eastern Iran are of course in no way representative of Iranian villages in general. However the fascination of the deserts for a fieldworker interested in social processes lies in the immense distances and the low density of population. Problems which are difficult to isolate in the more typical areas of relatively high population density may be exposed in simple relief in the deserts. The solutions may of course not be the same. At this stage I am suggesting only that what can be extrapolated from the results of preliminary studies in the east may prove valuable in future studies of more typical and more densely populated areas of the country. Because these villages are so isolated modern types of change have been slow to reach them and such mod-em processes of change that have touched them are easier to isolate.Publication Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet(1988) Spooner, BrianOriental carpets have been recognized as prestigious furnishing in the West since the Middle Ages. In many ways, they represent the epitome of Western concern with alien things - especially utilitarian alien things. Carpets entered the Western cultural arena as a rare alien item of interest and eventually became a commodity. But commoditization does not adequately explain their continuing success in the market or the special attention they receive from collectors.Publication Afghan Languages in a Larger Context of Central and South Asia(2012-01-01) Schiffman, Harold F; Spooner, BrianThe pioneer Western investigator of the languages of Afghanistan, Georg Morgenstierne, who began his work in 1924, called Afghanistan linguistically “one of the most interesting countries on earth.” Linguistic work by local scholars began in the following generation. When one of us [Spooner] first met Dr. A. G. Ravan Farhadi (the author of Le Persan Parlé en Afghanistan, 1953) in Kabul in 1972, he announced that in the latest count the number of languages known in Afghanistan had reached 48.Publication Ecology in Development: A Rationale for Three-Dimensional Policy(1984) Spooner, BrianThis combination of theoretical, topical and geographical focus integrates the social and natural science approaches to problems of ecology in development in South-west Asia. Permits coherent treatment, in an argument of reasonable length, of (1) some of the major areas of accumulation of ecological knowledge and insight in relation to development, (2) the changes of emphasis in ecological interests among planners, (3) the development and integration of theory (especially the efforts to straddle the boundaries of sociological and ecological understanding), (4) the changing perceptions of man's relation to nature, and (5) the underlying moral problems of management and welfare. The changes of orientation in each of these arenas over the last decade are treated below not simply as another stage of progress to confirm our faith in the perfectibility of man, but as a function of a larger historical process of increasing awareness and communication, the beginnings of which would have to be sought at least as far back as the Industrial Revolution.Publication Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies(2012-01-01) Spooner, BrianPersian is an important language today in a number of countries of west, south and central Asia. But its status in each is different. In Iran its unique status as the only official or national language continues to be jealously guarded, even though half—probably more—of the population use a different language (mainly Azari/Azeri Turkish) at home, and on the streets, though not in formal public situations, and not in writing. Attempts to broach this exclusive status of Persian in Iran have increased in recent decades, but are still relatively minor. Persian (called tajiki) is also the official language of Tajikistan, but here it shares that status informally with Russian, while in the west of the country Uzbek is also widely used and in the more isolated eastern part of the country other local Iranian languages are now dominant. In Afghanistan, although Persian (officially renamed dari in 1964, but still commonly called farsi) is the official language, the national language is Pashto, and there is no official restriction on the use of other languages (see discussion by Nawid in this volume). Persian also continues to be spoken in some of the northern and western parts of Pakistan and the southern littoral of the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, for most people in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, for reasons that are explained later, Persian is informally recognized as a classical language. In the other countries of the region—Turkey, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and the other Central Asian republics—somewhat negative, discriminatory attitudes are found with regard to Persian. This situation is a consequence of the nationalisms that have emerged over the past fifty years or so. This unusual combination of vast geographical distribution and country-by-country variation can be explained only by detailed reference to the history of the language. Persian makes an interesting historical case study, because it includes in a somewhat exaggerated form a number of features that are found in other modern languages that have long textual records—features which throw a shadow of the continuing development of language policies in all these countries, and may illuminate some of the less tangible factors behind language policy in general.Publication Balochi: Towards a Biography of the Language(2012-01-01) Spooner, BrianBalochi is known in the literature of area studies and linguistics as a series of dialects, for the most part mutually intelligible, differing mainly in vocabulary and the degree of influence from neighboring languages, mainly Persian (cf. Elfenbein 1989a, 1989b). It is spoken by three to five million people in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Oman and the Persian Gulf states, Turkmenistan, East Africa, and diaspora communities in other parts of the world. But some communities on the peripheries of this distribution, isolated from other Balochi-speaking communities in Punjab, Sindh, India and elsewhere, have ceased to be Balochi-speaking. The most important contributors to modern studies of the Baloch have been Joseph Elfenbein and Carina Jahani. Jahani (1989:86-90) summarises the official status of Balochi in each country, and is a valuable source for the situation with regard to standardization and literacy up to 1989.