The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture
Temporal flatness of the available data is the one great weakness of that branch of historical science called ethnology. For the student of prehistory, historical perspective almost invariably means speculative reconstruction. This circumstance, together with the fact that ethnology has often been called upon by other sciences, such as history, sociology, law, ethics, to give a categorical answer to the problems of ultimate origins, is responsible for the over-crowding of anthropological books and journals with fantastic speculations which are at best of interest as material for the ethnologist rather than as contributions to ethnological science. The critical student is therefore doubly concerned about a careful methodology of historic reconstruction in ethnology. For him Dr. Sapir's Study in Method will prove a rare treat. The author brings to his task good general knowledge of anthropological fact and theory as well as distinctly unusual qualifications as a linguist. This explains the unequal value of the two parts into which the work informally falls. The first, considerably the longer, deals with time perspective in connection with general cultural data, and presents no more than a clear and concise summary of work done by others, often with greater wealth of argumentation and more fortunate in formulation. The briefer second part examines linguistic evidence from the same standpoint; it brings original data and opens new vistas.
To turn to some of the generalizations arrived at in the first part. Culture elements which are presupposed by other elements in order to make the existence of the latter possible, must be regarded as earlier in time (p. 15). A well-defined style in any domain of culture always stands for relative age (p. 18). The larger the territory covered by a cultural trait, the older, ceteris paribus, the trait (p. 28). The interrupted distribution of a feature may serve to establish its minimum age, for it must clearly be ascribed to a period preceding that in which were active the factors responsible for the discontinuous distribution (p. 41). Incidentally the author takes pains to emphasize, with great justice, that the various aspects of culture, such as social organization, religion, art, mythology, technical features, display vastly different modes of behavior in connection with cultural diffusion (p. 32). Therefore, adds the author, it is of the greatest importance to ascertain the paths of diffusion of culture in North America, a task hardly begun (pp. 35–36).
Passing to the linguistic discussion. Dr. Sapir cautions that linguistics can be drawn upon for historical reconstruction in culture only to the extent to which language reflects culture (pp. 51–52). This is eminently the case with vocabulary, which can often be utilized for purposes of relative chronology. Noting, e. g., that the Tsimshian term for phratry defies analysis while that for crest is readily analyzable, one is led to conclude that some form of phratric division antedated among the Tsimshian the appearance of phratric and clan badges (pp. 55–56). Another test is the "criterion of morphologic irregularity": a culture concept associated with an archaic linguistic process is itself an old one; although the reverse conclusion cannot be drawn with safety (p. 64). The analysis of grammatical categories may also throw light on cultural conditions: thus the existence of
numerical classifiers in Yurok referring specifically to woodpecker scalps and obsidian blades is in a high degree symptomatic of the great age of the custom of prizing these objects as valuable forms of property and further implies that the keen sense of property evinced by these Indians is by no means a recent development. Similarly, the occurrence in both Salish and Tsimshian of numerical classifiers defining canoes necessitates the conclusion that both groups of tribes have not only been acquainted with the canoe from time immemorial, but have long been dependent on it in the pursuit of their livelihood; this comes out even more strongly in the case of Tsimshian, which employs entirely distinct stems for "one" and "two" when these numbers refer to canoes (p. 65).
When a term used in one language can be shown to belong to another used by a different tribe, the fact is valuable not merely as indicating diffusion, but the direction of diffusion as well (p. 69).
Specific enumeration of the author's conclusions must stop at this point, but before closing one is tempted to emphasize the double significance of Dr. Sapir's contribution. On the one hand, it kindles the hope that the deficient historical perspective in ethnology will in time be offset, at least in a measure, by the rigor of reconstructive technique. On the other hand, the Study in Methods is symptomatic of the new spirit of ethnologic science, which, having gathered in vast stores of descriptive data, begins to take stock of its resources, and sets about the task of interpretation and reconstruction with a method progressively more critical and precise, and under the guidance of a rapidly maturing body of theoretic doctrine.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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