Sunday, June 05, 2016

Camille Paglia at Salon on the Lack of Speculative Skill and Larger Vision in Northeastern Paleoamerican Archaeology and Anthropology

There may be a more intelligent woman and better media writer than Camille Paglia out there in F. Scott Fitzgerald's dark fields of the Republic somewhere, but we have not found her yet.

Camille's recent takes on the American political scene and the U.S. Presidential election in particular are marvelous creations of the best journalistic art. We have to ask her: is Gatsby Trump?

See her newest contribution at Salon.com in Zombie time at campaign Hillary: Camille Paglia on Trump’s real strength and Clinton’s fatal sleepwalking. If the Clintons used the lead photograph of that article to try to get elected, it would be all over but the shouting.

There is also some excellent discussion via commenter Sam Atwood of Nashville and Camille about the archaeological and anthropological scene as well, both academic fields suffering from the same dusty malaise that marks the political and legal culture: as Camille so unmistakeably describes it:

"a lack of speculative skill and larger vision".

Posted by Andis Kaulins at 6/05/2016 12:59:00 AM

Most Popular Posts of All Time

Sky Earth Native America


Sky Earth Native America 1:
American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy,
Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

  • Sky Earth Native America 2:
    American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
    Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy    ,
    Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins.

    • Both volumes have the same cover except for the labels "Volume 1" viz. "Volume 2".
    The image on the cover was created using public domain space photos of Earth from NASA.

    -----

    Both book volumes contain the following basic book description:
    "Alice Cunningham Fletcher observed in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist
    that there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures in Native America, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska,
    geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens.
    See Alice C. Fletcher, Star Cult Among the Pawnee--A Preliminary Report,
    American Anthropologist, 4, 730-736, 1902.
    Ralph N. Buckstaff wrote:
    "These Indians recognized the constellations as we do, also the important stars,
    drawing them according to their magnitude.
    The groups were placed with a great deal of thought and care and show long study.
    ... They were keen observers....
    The Pawnee Indians must have had a knowledge of astronomy comparable to that of the early white men."
    See Ralph N. Buckstaff, Stars and Constellations of a Pawnee Sky Map,
    American Anthropologist, Vol. 29, Nr. 2, April-June 1927, pp. 279-285, 1927.
    In our book, we take these observations one level further
    and show that megalithic sites and petroglyphic rock carving and pictographic rock art in Native America,
    together with mounds and earthworks, were made to represent territorial geographic landmarks
    placed according to the stars of the sky using the ready map of the starry sky
    in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
    That mirror image of the heavens on terrestrial land is the "Sky Earth" of Native America,
    whose "rock stars" are the real stars of the heavens, "immortalized" by rock art petroglyphs, pictographs,
    cave paintings, earthworks and mounds of various kinds (stone, earth, shells) on our Earth.
    These landmarks were placed systematically in North America, Central America (Meso-America) and South America
    and can to a large degree be reconstructed as the Sky Earth of Native America."


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