3 ms·

I don’t think it’s political, but rather a matter of record. There is much more writing from Greece than the Amazon. Having the Iliad amounts to a cheat code i

I don’t think it’s political, but rather a matter of record. There is much more writing from Greece than the Amazon. Having the Iliad amounts to a cheat code in archaeology.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
There are certainly political threads. American westward expansion had to be justified, for example, by claiming cultural superiority over the people who were being displaced.
- nradov 3y ago
  Most of the Americans who did the actual westward expansion didn't bother with justification. They saw the land was lightly populated and took it.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Westward expansion was much more than individuals taking land. There were military outposts, laws passed, articles written, battles fought, court cases argued, protests, disagreements among Americans, etc. See this summary linked here and copied in full below: https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-justify-westward-expansion.html https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-jus... "How did Americans justify westward expansion?" "Americans justified westward expansion through the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the mid-1840s. It claimed that the United States was providentially designed to spread across the continent. Believing their "civilization" to be superior to Native and Mexican peoples, it supposed their lands should rightfully be part of the United States. This led to the brutal subjugation of Native tribes as millions of Americans flooded west in the decades after the Civil War."
    - 3seashells 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - omegaworks 3y ago
    >They saw the land was lightly populated and took it. This framing is passive and hides the history that our own government even admits to[1]. The west wasn't simply lightly populated. There were state-sponsored and well documented extermination campaigns that cleared the land for white settlement. 1. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison....
    - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
      The West, other then the coastline itself, is lightly populated now. It was absolutely lightly populated back then.
      - Tostino 3y ago
        Then why did we feel the need to clear the land of them? cough genocide cough
      - omegaworks 3y ago
        > It was absolutely lightly populated back then. What makes you say that? Some studying the California natives put their population at 300,000, some all the way up to 1.5MM and that's after they were hit by waves of infectious disease.
- secondcoming 3y ago
  What has this got to do with archaeology?
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Primarily this is just a direct reply to the person above me. That said, the way we view historical cultures is impacted by politics, and to properly understand the archeological record we need to be able to separate politics from facts. We cannot do this if we don’t recognize the distinction.
AlecSchueler 3y ago
Though in the cases of colonial history our access to the records are based in politics. Many texts were destroyed and our connections to the cultures that produced them were destroyed along with them.

I don’t think it’s political, but rather a matter of record. There is much more writing from Greece than the Amazon. Having the Iliad amounts to a cheat code in archaeology.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

There are certainly political threads. American westward expansion had to be justified, for example, by claiming cultural superiority over the people who were being displaced.

nradov 3y ago
Most of the Americans who did the actual westward expansion didn't bother with justification. They saw the land was lightly populated and took it.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Westward expansion was much more than individuals taking land. There were military outposts, laws passed, articles written, battles fought, court cases argued, protests, disagreements among Americans, etc. See this summary linked here and copied in full below: https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-justify-westward-expansion.html https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-americans-jus... "How did Americans justify westward expansion?" "Americans justified westward expansion through the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the mid-1840s. It claimed that the United States was providentially designed to spread across the continent. Believing their "civilization" to be superior to Native and Mexican peoples, it supposed their lands should rightfully be part of the United States. This led to the brutal subjugation of Native tribes as millions of Americans flooded west in the decades after the Civil War."
  - 3seashells 3y ago
    [flagged]
- omegaworks 3y ago
  >They saw the land was lightly populated and took it. This framing is passive and hides the history that our own government even admits to[1]. The west wasn't simply lightly populated. There were state-sponsored and well documented extermination campaigns that cleared the land for white settlement. 1. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison....
  - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    The West, other then the coastline itself, is lightly populated now. It was absolutely lightly populated back then.
    - Tostino 3y ago
      Then why did we feel the need to clear the land of them? cough genocide cough
    - omegaworks 3y ago
      > It was absolutely lightly populated back then. What makes you say that? Some studying the California natives put their population at 300,000, some all the way up to 1.5MM and that's after they were hit by waves of infectious disease.
secondcoming 3y ago
What has this got to do with archaeology?
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Primarily this is just a direct reply to the person above me. That said, the way we view historical cultures is impacted by politics, and to properly understand the archeological record we need to be able to separate politics from facts. We cannot do this if we don’t recognize the distinction.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

Though in the cases of colonial history our access to the records are based in politics. Many texts were destroyed and our connections to the cultures that produced them were destroyed along with them.