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Re: The Iceman is my uncle
Alx V. Dark (avd5863@IS.NYU.EDU)
Fri, 3 Feb 1995 17:25:16 -0500
On Thu, 2 Feb 1995, joseph stimpfl wrote:
> In my family (Austrian by the way), there is a very old family story
> of my very distant uncle going over the mountains between Italy and
> Austria and never being heard from again. It seems logical to assume
> (at least as logical as what the rest of you are saying) that this is
> my uncle. Wouldn't that therefore make him a proto American?
Yet another abstract counterexample instead of reality (or are you
serious?). No matter, the issues are NOT addressed by these European
examples. Just as no one has yet suggested that one Indian tribe pay
compensation to another tribe for past wars, Austria hasn't apparently
been griping with Italy for the theft of cultural property. It seems
logical to assume this is because Austria and Italy, although very
different, hold similar ideas about archaeology, museums, and digging up
very old dead people. So you're out of luck, precisely because you're
Austrian. Going back to the issues, Indian people have not historically
been given the input to decide whether a body buried the next hill over
should be dug up for the sake of science (whose science, anyway) or left
alone or what -- IF they agreed with the majority on this as people
apparently did in the European case (just as native peoples were all on
the same diplomatic level when they had at each other a long time ago),
then we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?
______________________________ ____________________________
Alx V. Dark Department of Anthropology
internet: avd5863@is.nyu.edu New York University
"Wash your brains, think 25 Waverly Place
again, double check" -- H3O New York, NY 10003 USA
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