KENNEWICK MAN

The reconstructed face of the Kennewick Man.

'Kennewick Man' is the name for the remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, USA on July 28, 1996. The discovery of Kennewick Man was accidental: a pair of spectators found his skull while attending the annual hydroplane races.^[1]
The remains became embroiled in debates about the relationship between Native American religious rights and archaeology. Based on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), five Native American groups (the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, Wannapum, and Colville) claimed the remains as theirs, to be buried by traditional means. Only Umatillas continued further court proceeding. In February 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a cultural link between the tribes and the skeleton was not met, opening the door for more scientific study.
In July 2005, scientists from around the United States convened in Seattle for ten days to study the remains, making many detailed measurements, and determined the cause of death.

Scientific significance

Ownership controversy

Scientific significance

The remains of the Kennewick Man.

The remains were first examined by anthropologist James Chatters. After ten separate visits, Chatters was able to collect three hundred and fifty pieces of bone as well as the skull, which completed almost a full skeleton.^[2] The cranium was fully intact except for two teeth. All of the major bones were found but in several pieces.^[3] Surprising results showed that they were dealing with a 9000 year old skeleton rather than a man of the nineteenth century, as originally thought. At the University of California at Riverside, a small piece of bone was used for radiocarbon dating to determine that the Kennewick Man was approximately 9,300 years old.² After collecting all the bone pieces, Chatters concluded the subject was a Caucasoid male about tall who died in his mid fifties.²
Lodged in the illium, part of the pelvic bone, Chatters found the bone had partially grown around a stone projectile.³ On x-ray, nothing appeared. Chatters put the bone through a CAT scan, and it was discovered that the projectile was made from a siliceous gray stone that was found to have igneous origins.³ Geologically, this refers to a stone that formed in a silica rich environment during a volcanic period. The projectile was leaf-shaped, long, broad and had serrated edges; all fitting the definition of a Cascade point. This type of point is a feature of the Cascade phase (5000 and 8000 B.P.).³
Photographs of a facial reconstruction showed a middle-aged man who looked more like a "European accountant than a Paleo-Indian hunter".² To help determine the mystery of the Kennewick man and help to find out if the skeleton does in fact belong to the Umatilla Native American tribe, an extraction of DNA was analyzed but could not be completed because it contradicted Native American values protected under NAGPRA.² Anthropologist Joseph Powell of the University of New Mexico was finally allowed to examine the remains and his conclusions were contradictory. The Kennewick Man was in fact not European but rather resembled south Asians and the Ainu people of northeast Asia.² The results of a graphic comparison, including size, of Kennewick Man to 18 modern populations conducted by Chatters et al. to determine the skeleton’s relation to modern ancestry showed that he was most closely related to the Ainu. However, when he excluded size, the Kennewick Man was left out with no association to any population.³ His physical features are what show that he is most similar to Pacific Islanders and the Ainu people, not to any modern-day Native Americans.³ This evidence further contradicts the three-wave migration hypothesis into the Americas. So the question that scientists often ponder is: what happened to that early population? Scientists have a few hypotheses, but there is one that is supported elsewhere in the world: previous hunter-gatherer populations, like the Ainu, were replaced by rice cultivating people. The advantages of this agriculture were enough to drive the hunters and gatherers into disappearance.²
The biological diversity among ancient skulls has contradicted the possibility that the Kennewick Man is closely related to any modern Native American tribes.² Skulls older than 8,000 years old have been found to possess greater physical diversity than do those of modern Native Americans. This range implies that there was a genetic shift in populations about 8,000 years ago. The heterogeneity of these early people shows that genetic drift had already occurred, meaning that the racial type represented by Kennewick Man had been around a while.²
With the recent discovery of the Kennewick Man along with other ancient skeletons, scientists argue over the exact origin and history of Native American people.²
For half a century, textbooks and scientists had agreed on a common theory that hunters following large herds of game wandered across the Bering Strait land bridge 12,000 years ago.² While some still believe the old hypothesis, many other scientists hold that there were numerous waves of migration to the Americas. The different races discovered through ancient skeletal remains support this latter theory and the Kennewick Man was an individual representative of one of the multiple races to have roamed the Americas during the pre-historical period.²

Ownership controversy

According to NAGPRA, if human remains are found on federal lands and their cultural affiliation to a Native American tribe can be established, the affiliated tribe can claim them. The Umatilla tribe of Native Americans requested custody of the remains, wanting to bury them according to tribal tradition. However, their claim was contested by researchers hoping to study the remains; if Kennewick Man has no direct connection to modern-day native tribes, then NAGPRA should not apply.
The Umatilla have argued that their origin beliefs say that their people have been present on their historical territory since the dawn of time, so a government holding that Kennewick Man is not Native American is tantamount to the government's rejection of their beliefs.
After initially ruling in their favor, on February 4, 2004, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected the appeal of the Umatilla, Colville, Yakama, Nez Perce and other tribes on the grounds that they were unable to show any evidence of kinship. The tribes dropped their lawsuits for custody.
In April 2005, United States Senator John McCain introduced an amendment to NAGPRA which, in section 108, would change the definition of "Native American" from being that which "is indigenous to the United States" to "is or was indigenous to the United States."^[4] By that definition, Kennewick Man would be Native American, whether or not any link to a contemporary tribe could be found. Proponents of this argue that is in accord with current scientific understanding, which is that it is not in all cases possible for prehistoric remains to be traced to current tribal entities, not least because of the social upheaval, forced resettlement and extinction of entire ethnicities caused by disease and warfare in the wake of European colonization. Doing so, however, would still not remove the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man as then it would have to be decided which Native American group should take possession of the remains if he could not be definitively linked with a current group. To be of practical use in a historical and prehistorical context, some argue further that the term "Native American" should be applied so that it spans the entire range from the Clovis culture (which cannot be positively assigned to any contemporary tribal group) to the Métis, who only came into being as a consequence of European contact, yet constitute a distinct cultural entity.
The remains are now at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, where they were deposited in October 1998, but they are legally the property of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, since they were found on land belonging to the Corps.

Notes and references

1. Skull found on shore of Columbia Stang, John
2. The Forbidden Discovery of Kennewick Man, Custred, Glynn, , , Academic Questions, 2000
3. The Recovery and First Analysis of an Early Holocene Human, Chatters, James C., , , American Antiquity, 2000
4. Native American Omnibus Act of 2005 (Reported in Senate)

★ "Mystery of the First Americans" transcript of NOVA program. Airdate February 15, 2000.

★ "Skeleton from Kennewick, Washington." American Antiquity, Vol. 65, No. 2. (Apr., 2000), pp. 291-316. May 11, 2007.

★ "Last Word on Kennewick Man?" Archaeology 55.6 (2002): 17. Academic Search Elite. 8 May 2007.

External links

★ Kennewick Man on Trial Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

★ Kennewick Man's bone dating

★ Forensic observations by James C. Chatters

★ Kennewick Man Case from Friends of America's Past - events, press releases, court documents

★ Kennewick Virtual Interpretive Center from Tri-City Herald

★ National Park Service AEP: Kennewick Man (all text and images from this site are in the public domain)

★ The Umatilla Tribe's official position

★ Kennewick Man and the New World Entrada, by Kris Hirst at About.com

★ Hear a radio interview with David Hurst Thomas, curator of the Ancient History Museum in New York, about Kennewick Man

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KENNEWICK MAN

Scientific significance

Ownership controversy

See also

Notes and references

Further reading

External links

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