Anthropology, History, and American Indians : Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant

Merrill, William L., and Ives Goddard, editors. Anthropology, History, and American Indians: Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, number 44, 357 pages, frontispiece, 86 figures, 13 tables, 2002.—This collection of 31 essays and one bibliographic compilation is presented as a festschrift for William Curtis Sturtevant. Since 1956 a research anthropologist, and, since 1965, a museum curator, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C, Sturtevant is one of the world's leading scholars of the cultures, languages, and histories of the indigenous peoples of the New World. Over the course of his career, he has also served as general editor of the Handbook of North American Indians, president of four of anthropology's major professional organizations, university professor, consultant, and public lecturer. He has contributed in myriad ways to the development of contemporary anthropology and to the research endeavors of scores of anthropologists and scholars in many other disciplines. The volume is organized into six sections. The first begins with recollections of Sturtevant's childhood and early adulthood by his younger sister, Harriet Sturtevant Shapiro, followed by an overview of his professional career and a compilation of his writings from 1952 through 2001. The second section offers a range of perspectives on the history of anthropological and historical research on themes related to Native Americans, and the third examines the transformations that have occurred in their lives and circumstances from the time of European contact to today. The fourth section considers the relationship of anthropological collections and repositories to the development of the field and the shifting significance of museums, archives, and universities as the settings where anthropological research has traditionally been conducted. The fifth section presents the results of a series of research projects focused on museum and archival collections, and the sixth explores the complex interconnections between the cultural and natural worlds. The essays provide an indication of the variety of topics and approaches represented in North Americanist studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. Together they address issues central to current scholarly debate: the political implications of cross-cultural research; the transcending of traditional disciplinary boundaries; the impact of colonialist and post-colonialist projects on native peoples and their responses to these projects; the relevance of anthropological repositories and collections to research; and the linkages among material and nonmaterial dimensions of human existence. Reflecting the scope of Sturtevant's own research, they stand as testimony to his intellectual breadth and to the extent of his influence on contemporary scholarship.