Anthropos 81.1986: 415-433
Symbols, Ecology, and Cultural Variation
Gary A. Wright
Every landscape appears first of all as a vast
chaos, which leaves one free to choose the
meaning one wants to give to it. (Lévi-
Strauss 1974: 48)
1. The Symbolic Problem in Prehistory
2. The Environmental Context
3. The Plains Perspective
4. Cultural Facts and Natural Facts
l. The Symbolic Problem in Prehistory
Robert H. Hall (1978) has suggested recently
that archaeologists should consider more se
riously the ideological components, in partic
ular the cosmologies, of the prehistoric cul
tures they investigate. He believes, for example,
that he can trace an uninterrupted ideological
succession in the archaeological record of the
Eastern United States that directly links the
Adena “culture” of the first millennium B.C.
^ith several historic Native American groups,
^his linkage is not necessarily in ethnicity but is
rather in “ideas underlying certain symbols,
Particularly those relating to sun and fire”
(1978:265). In essence, then, Hall proposes
*hat there is a deep structure wich endured for
*Uore than two thousand years between prehis
toric Adena burial ceremonialism and histori
city recorded American Indian rituals such as
the Sun Dance, the Earth Diver creation myth,
the Green Corn Dance, to name but a few. 1
Gary A. Wright is a Professor of Anthropology at the
tat e University of New York at Albany. He has conduct-
heldwork in Turkey, Israel, France, the U.S. Great
a kes, and for the past 10 years in mountainous northwest-
e bî Wyoming. He has written seven books and mono-
p a Phs, the most recent of which is “People of the High
° u ntry: Jackson Hole Before the Settlers” (1984). He
as also published 50 articles in journals and as book
Cba pters.
Several crucial problems arise in any at
tempt to join the past and present however.
First is the difficulty in isolating the significant
individual artifacts or design elements. Which
ones were truly meaningful ideologically or cos-
mologically? Second, because symbols them
selves are created by the arbitrary bestowal of
meaning, how do we select the correct value(s)
from a range of possible interpretations where
we lack written records referring directly to
these symbols? Neither question has an obvious
solution at this time.
Directly related to these issues is the broad
er problem of methodology. Typically, possible
parallels from myths, tales, and the material
culture of ethnic units, linguistic units, or both
have been assembled, regardless of any proba
ble relationship between the historic or ethno-
historic groups from which these data are origi
nally derived and the prehistoric situation under
investigation. These are then, in turn, employed
in the construction of ethnographic analogies.
We may illustrate this approach with two exam
ples.
A total of 55 conjoined copper tubes, or
pan-pipes, have been recovered from 27 Hope-
well burial sites in the Eastern United States
(ca. 300 B.C. to A.D. 400) (Griffin et al.
1970: 99). They are considered by archaeolo
gists to be ceremonial paraphernalia for either
courting rites or rainmaking rituals; they are
also interpreted as symbols of plant or animal
fertility, or both. Additionally, they are refer
red to as symbolic of shamans, of other, less
1 Hall (1978) uses data from a large number of North
American tribal groups in his analysis including the Arapa-
ho, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Mandan, Menomi
nee, Ojibwa, Omaha, Osage, and Plains Cree.