Native Culture Areas - Historical Backdrop to the Discipline (Module 03)

	Principle 2: Diverse Interests - Descendant communities and the scientific community compete
	    for and have vested interests in the nonrenewable resources of the past.

		Discussion - This discussion focuses on the ways early museology in the United States tried to establish 
		that Native cultures were responses to local environmental circumstances ("food areas") and that these led 
		to the formation of the concept of "culture areas." Much early archaeology tended to perceive Native cultures 
		as if governed by natural laws, leading to environmentally-deterministic explanations. Emphases upon 
		assembling trait lists, description and classification - things that were useful in the life sciences of the time - 
		was applied to archaeological explanation, leading to a "genus-is-to-species" as "type-is-to-variety" approach - 
		something that contributed to a "specimenization" approach in archaeology. This emphasis upon "scientific 
		method" was, I contest, ultimately dehumanizing and fundamentally eliminated the valuation of the Native 
		perspective.