Alex Barker | University of Arkansas (original) (raw)
Papers by Alex Barker
The Commonality of Humans Through Art (Stuart Handler, ed.), 2024
Science, 2005
... I READ WITH CONSIDERABLE PLEASURE THE account of the ivory-billed woodpecker&#x27... more ... I READ WITH CONSIDERABLE PLEASURE THE account of the ivory-billed woodpecker's survival in Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in con-tinental North America (JW Fitzpatrick et al., Reports, 3 June, p. 1460) and Rediscovery of the ivory-billed ...
Recovering Ancient Spiro: Native American Art, Ritual, and Cosmic Renewal, 2021
The engraved shell art of Spiro has long been separated into two traditions, Braden and Craig. Br... more The engraved shell art of Spiro has long been separated into two traditions, Braden and Craig. Braden represents a more naturalistic and figural style, similar in certain respects to broader patterns of representational Mississippian art in other mediums across the southeast. Craig, by contrast, is the more distinctive and characteristic form found at Spiro and related sites in the trans-Mississippi South; it is marked by robust and schematized designs that seem to denote rather than depict details of figures and their accoutrements. Craig designs are relatively simple, with a strong tendency for the composition of the design to follow the long axis of the cup. Frequently, there is a secondary, perpendicular design axis following the shoulder of the cup as well. While Braden designs are often twodimensional designs draped over the surface of a three-dimensional object, Craig artists frequently employed the shape of the cup to accentuate or complement the overall composition, especially of human figures. Craig engraved shell forms include cups, gorgets, cameos, and figurines; gorgets are rare in Braden, and cameos and figurines altogether absent. Perhaps the most immediately distinctive characteristic of Craig-especially in its more characteristic forms-is a blocky and angular depiction of the human form. Heads are larger relative to the size of the body, and the lower part of the head grows in size relative to the upper portion. Faces may be portrayed in profile or facing the viewer-a departure from Braden, which allows only portrayals in profile. Ears grow in size-exactly the opposite of trends in Braden-and stylized conventions develop for how ears are represented; they are depicted in the same way regardless of whether the figure is in profile or frontal view. Thematically, Craig includes a broad range of individual motifs, depictions of human figures (human beings), humans performing secular or sacred tasks (human doings), humananimal composites or transformations, chimeric or hybrid animals combining parts of two or more taxa, and a much broader bestiary of animals than is found in Braden. Braden includes its share of fantastic beasts like amphisbaena, but they are fantastic creatures rather than hybrids or chimeric composites. Especially notable are the Craig chimeric creatures and juxtaposed elements of cat-bird-spider and snake-spider-raccoon. Birdmen are regularly portrayed in Craig shell art, and one of the most curious conundrums is the complete absence of birdman depictions in Braden, the tradition assumed to have closer ties to the broader Southeast, where birdmen are integral elements of canonical Mississippian iconography. Craig is usually divided into three phases, Craig A, Craig B, and Craig C, with Craig C being the most immediately recognizable and iconographically coherent of the three. But
Merrill Series on The Research Mission of Public Universities
useums and libraries are similar beasts. Both hold and offer access to growing amounts of informa... more useums and libraries are similar beasts. Both hold and offer access to growing amounts of information about objects-paper, digital, or dimensionalwhose value is directly related to their accessibility or findability. Both also play key roles in the archiving, presentation and preservation of knowledge, what has been called the knowledge archive. That similarity of role is not accidental; some of the founding theorists of the American museum movement-men like John Cotton Dana-came from a library background, and envisioned both kinds of institutions as fulfilling the same societal role with differing kinds of objects. And that value was understood from the outset to be not simply educational or scholarly but social and economic-Melvil Dewey went so far as to name the first college of library science, established at Columbia in 1887, the School of Library Economy (Vann 1961:28).
MA Thesis, 1988
Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of... more Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of cultural taxonomies for the region. Depending on which sites are included within the taxon, the St. Helena phase seems similar to Upper Republican, Initial Coalescent, or Nebraska phase. This study considers whether a series of
Recovering Ancient Spiro: Native American Art, Ritual, and Cosmic Renewal, 2021
The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and the Fulbright Triptych, 2017
American Anthropologist, 2020
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2018
Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the worl... more Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the world, and it is widely acknowledged that despite what we know about the scale of site destruction, the reality is worse. Available evidence suggests that the scale and severity of looting are increasing. Legal and ethical remedies exist but have not proven adequate to reduce the impact of looting and antiquities trafficking. This reflects, in part, inadequate resources and uneven enforcement, and also the pressures of rising prices for antiquities, growing market demand, severe economic depression, and lawlessness, particularly in conflict zones. But it also reflects expanding ideological causes for site destruction by others, as well as competing epistemologies and deontological expectations within the discipline itself challenging the site preservation imperative in archaeology. More than ten years ago, a previous review of these topics found the response inadequate; a decade later, matters are worse. 455
The Future of Our Pasts: Ethical Implications of Collecting Antiquities in the Twenty-First Century, 2012
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2010
From their beginnings, archaeology museums have reflected a complex and dynamic balance between t... more From their beginnings, archaeology museums have reflected a complex and dynamic balance between the demands of developing, documenting, and preserving objects on the one hand and sharing knowledge, access, and control on the other. This balance has informed and inflected the ways that museums present the past, including both practical aspects of pedagogy and exhibition design as well as more critical and contested issues of authority, authenticity, and reflexivity in interpretation. Meeting the complex requirements of curation, deliberate collections growth, management, and conservation, as well as the need to respond to continuing challenges to the museum's right and title to hold various forms of cultural property, archaeological museums play an active role in both preserving and shaping the public's view of the past and reflect the prospects and perils of being at once a temple to the muses and a forum for sometimes contentious public discourse.
Review in Anthropology, 2017
In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as ... more In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as a discipline. Both address the display of anthropology and the ways it presented itself to the public and represented itself to the field during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and provide alternative views of the coalescence of the field. I argue that each provides valuable insights into those formation processes without fully coming to grips with the contradictions inherent to the discipline during its formation, and which remain as fault lines in anthropological inquiry today.
Anthropology News, 2009
To be effective, ethics codes need to be living documents, developed and updated as matters of co... more To be effective, ethics codes need to be living documents, developed and updated as matters of course (rather than crisis), and periodically reviewed and revised to ensure that they speak directly to the ever-evolving needs and character of the discipline. As was reported in the February 2009 issue of Anthropology News, the AAA Executive Board (EB) appointed a task force to review the association's Code of Ethics and recommend changes as needed. Although the members of the task force were selected to represent a broad range of constituencies and viewpoints, anthropology is nevertheless too diverse and inclusive a discipline for all views to be adequately represented by this working group. Thus, members of the task force will solicit opinions and comments from the AAA membership at large, AAA sections, and other related and outside organizations or associations that might have an interest in any proposed revisions, or that could provide broader commentary on proposed changes.
Keywords: sourcing obsidian artifacts by X-ray fluorescence, central western Romania, neolithic a... more Keywords: sourcing obsidian artifacts by X-ray fluorescence, central western Romania, neolithic and early eneolithic (Abstract) Compositional analysis conducted using the latest equipment, provided new data and clarifications regarding the exploitation of sources of obsidian and the distribution of material from different sources used by Neolithic and Eneolithic communities in central and western Romania. Our current results suggest a more complicated and evolving set of trade relationships, with obsidian from at least three sources (Mad-Kakaseghy, Tolcsva and Vinicky-Cejkov) represented, which come from the sites at Foeni (Sălaş and the Orthodox Cemetery), Uivar-Gomilă, Caransebeş-Balta Sărată, from Banat, Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă from central Transylvania and Zăuan, Suplacu de Bărcău/Porţ-Corău and Pericei-Keller Tag from northwestern Romania. The analysis proved that at the beginning of the early Neolithic in Banat (the Foeni-Sălaş site), the raw materials from which the tools were made of came from Mad-Kakaseghy, and at the end of this period, in phase IVA of the Starcevo-Criş culture of Transylvania (in the Zăuan and Porţ-Corău sites) the obsidian came only from Vinicky-Cejkov sources. During the Middle Neolithic in Banat (Vinca B site of Caransebeş-Balta Sărată) and Transylvania (Vinca B site of Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă and Pişcolt II site of Porţ-Corău) all of the raw material came from Vinicky-Cejkov. This source will be exclusively exploited by all the late Neolithic communities (site Pişcolt II of Porţ-Corău and Suplac III of Porţ-Corău and Pericei-Keller tag) and early Eneolithic (Foeni II/Foeni-Petreşti cultural group II of Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă) from Transylvania. During the late Neolithic in Banat, Vinca C culture , the majority of the raw material came from Vinicky-Cejkov, but at the Vinca C site of Uivar-Gomilă, Tolcsva obsidian was found as well. This situation is also maintained during the early Enoeolithic, as two samples analyzed from the Foeni – Cimitirul Ortodox site came from Tolcsva, and another sample, published in the previous year (Glascock et al 2015, 47–49), came from Vinicky-Cejkov.
In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as ... more In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as a discipline. Both address the display of anthropology and the ways it presented itself to the public and represented itself to the field during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and provide alternative views of the coalescence of the field. I argue that each provides valuable insights into those formation processes without fully coming to grips with the contradictions inherent to the discipline during its formation, and which remain as fault lines in anthropological inquiry today.
This article concerns the chemical analysis by X-ray fluorescence and source determination for fi... more This article concerns the chemical analysis by X-ray fluorescence and source determination for five obsidian artifacts from archaeological sites in Banat (Southwest Romania). The results show that all of the artifacts could be assigned to an obsidian source located in the Kosice region of Slovakia. The specific source is known as Čejkov and it is a sub-source of the Vinicky source.
Museum Anthropology Review, 2015
One of the most far-reaching, systematic, and unsettling changes in museum anthropology over the ... more One of the most far-reaching, systematic, and unsettling changes in museum anthropology over the course of the past four decades has been a shift in the perceived relationship between museums collecting materials and the source communities from which those materials are derived. In the minds of many museum professionals it was and had long been, for the most part, a close and collaborative relationship, in which museums curators served as advocates for and interpretive experts on source communities and countries. More recently it has become clear that these sources took a very different view, seeing the relationship as fundamentally exploitative, premised on profound disparities in power, and one in which the alienation of objects was based on coercion rather than freely given consent.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2006
... (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006, 318 PP., HBK, ISBN 13 978 0 521 84011 8, PBK, 1... more ... (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006, 318 PP., HBK, ISBN 13 978 0 521 84011 8, PBK, 13 978 0 521 54942 4). Авторы, Alex Barker Museum of Art & Archaeology University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. Журнал, European Journal of Archaeology. ...
The Commonality of Humans Through Art (Stuart Handler, ed.), 2024
Science, 2005
... I READ WITH CONSIDERABLE PLEASURE THE account of the ivory-billed woodpecker&#x27... more ... I READ WITH CONSIDERABLE PLEASURE THE account of the ivory-billed woodpecker's survival in Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in con-tinental North America (JW Fitzpatrick et al., Reports, 3 June, p. 1460) and Rediscovery of the ivory-billed ...
Recovering Ancient Spiro: Native American Art, Ritual, and Cosmic Renewal, 2021
The engraved shell art of Spiro has long been separated into two traditions, Braden and Craig. Br... more The engraved shell art of Spiro has long been separated into two traditions, Braden and Craig. Braden represents a more naturalistic and figural style, similar in certain respects to broader patterns of representational Mississippian art in other mediums across the southeast. Craig, by contrast, is the more distinctive and characteristic form found at Spiro and related sites in the trans-Mississippi South; it is marked by robust and schematized designs that seem to denote rather than depict details of figures and their accoutrements. Craig designs are relatively simple, with a strong tendency for the composition of the design to follow the long axis of the cup. Frequently, there is a secondary, perpendicular design axis following the shoulder of the cup as well. While Braden designs are often twodimensional designs draped over the surface of a three-dimensional object, Craig artists frequently employed the shape of the cup to accentuate or complement the overall composition, especially of human figures. Craig engraved shell forms include cups, gorgets, cameos, and figurines; gorgets are rare in Braden, and cameos and figurines altogether absent. Perhaps the most immediately distinctive characteristic of Craig-especially in its more characteristic forms-is a blocky and angular depiction of the human form. Heads are larger relative to the size of the body, and the lower part of the head grows in size relative to the upper portion. Faces may be portrayed in profile or facing the viewer-a departure from Braden, which allows only portrayals in profile. Ears grow in size-exactly the opposite of trends in Braden-and stylized conventions develop for how ears are represented; they are depicted in the same way regardless of whether the figure is in profile or frontal view. Thematically, Craig includes a broad range of individual motifs, depictions of human figures (human beings), humans performing secular or sacred tasks (human doings), humananimal composites or transformations, chimeric or hybrid animals combining parts of two or more taxa, and a much broader bestiary of animals than is found in Braden. Braden includes its share of fantastic beasts like amphisbaena, but they are fantastic creatures rather than hybrids or chimeric composites. Especially notable are the Craig chimeric creatures and juxtaposed elements of cat-bird-spider and snake-spider-raccoon. Birdmen are regularly portrayed in Craig shell art, and one of the most curious conundrums is the complete absence of birdman depictions in Braden, the tradition assumed to have closer ties to the broader Southeast, where birdmen are integral elements of canonical Mississippian iconography. Craig is usually divided into three phases, Craig A, Craig B, and Craig C, with Craig C being the most immediately recognizable and iconographically coherent of the three. But
Merrill Series on The Research Mission of Public Universities
useums and libraries are similar beasts. Both hold and offer access to growing amounts of informa... more useums and libraries are similar beasts. Both hold and offer access to growing amounts of information about objects-paper, digital, or dimensionalwhose value is directly related to their accessibility or findability. Both also play key roles in the archiving, presentation and preservation of knowledge, what has been called the knowledge archive. That similarity of role is not accidental; some of the founding theorists of the American museum movement-men like John Cotton Dana-came from a library background, and envisioned both kinds of institutions as fulfilling the same societal role with differing kinds of objects. And that value was understood from the outset to be not simply educational or scholarly but social and economic-Melvil Dewey went so far as to name the first college of library science, established at Columbia in 1887, the School of Library Economy (Vann 1961:28).
MA Thesis, 1988
Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of... more Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of cultural taxonomies for the region. Depending on which sites are included within the taxon, the St. Helena phase seems similar to Upper Republican, Initial Coalescent, or Nebraska phase. This study considers whether a series of
Recovering Ancient Spiro: Native American Art, Ritual, and Cosmic Renewal, 2021
The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and the Fulbright Triptych, 2017
American Anthropologist, 2020
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2018
Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the worl... more Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the world, and it is widely acknowledged that despite what we know about the scale of site destruction, the reality is worse. Available evidence suggests that the scale and severity of looting are increasing. Legal and ethical remedies exist but have not proven adequate to reduce the impact of looting and antiquities trafficking. This reflects, in part, inadequate resources and uneven enforcement, and also the pressures of rising prices for antiquities, growing market demand, severe economic depression, and lawlessness, particularly in conflict zones. But it also reflects expanding ideological causes for site destruction by others, as well as competing epistemologies and deontological expectations within the discipline itself challenging the site preservation imperative in archaeology. More than ten years ago, a previous review of these topics found the response inadequate; a decade later, matters are worse. 455
The Future of Our Pasts: Ethical Implications of Collecting Antiquities in the Twenty-First Century, 2012
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2010
From their beginnings, archaeology museums have reflected a complex and dynamic balance between t... more From their beginnings, archaeology museums have reflected a complex and dynamic balance between the demands of developing, documenting, and preserving objects on the one hand and sharing knowledge, access, and control on the other. This balance has informed and inflected the ways that museums present the past, including both practical aspects of pedagogy and exhibition design as well as more critical and contested issues of authority, authenticity, and reflexivity in interpretation. Meeting the complex requirements of curation, deliberate collections growth, management, and conservation, as well as the need to respond to continuing challenges to the museum's right and title to hold various forms of cultural property, archaeological museums play an active role in both preserving and shaping the public's view of the past and reflect the prospects and perils of being at once a temple to the muses and a forum for sometimes contentious public discourse.
Review in Anthropology, 2017
In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as ... more In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as a discipline. Both address the display of anthropology and the ways it presented itself to the public and represented itself to the field during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and provide alternative views of the coalescence of the field. I argue that each provides valuable insights into those formation processes without fully coming to grips with the contradictions inherent to the discipline during its formation, and which remain as fault lines in anthropological inquiry today.
Anthropology News, 2009
To be effective, ethics codes need to be living documents, developed and updated as matters of co... more To be effective, ethics codes need to be living documents, developed and updated as matters of course (rather than crisis), and periodically reviewed and revised to ensure that they speak directly to the ever-evolving needs and character of the discipline. As was reported in the February 2009 issue of Anthropology News, the AAA Executive Board (EB) appointed a task force to review the association's Code of Ethics and recommend changes as needed. Although the members of the task force were selected to represent a broad range of constituencies and viewpoints, anthropology is nevertheless too diverse and inclusive a discipline for all views to be adequately represented by this working group. Thus, members of the task force will solicit opinions and comments from the AAA membership at large, AAA sections, and other related and outside organizations or associations that might have an interest in any proposed revisions, or that could provide broader commentary on proposed changes.
Keywords: sourcing obsidian artifacts by X-ray fluorescence, central western Romania, neolithic a... more Keywords: sourcing obsidian artifacts by X-ray fluorescence, central western Romania, neolithic and early eneolithic (Abstract) Compositional analysis conducted using the latest equipment, provided new data and clarifications regarding the exploitation of sources of obsidian and the distribution of material from different sources used by Neolithic and Eneolithic communities in central and western Romania. Our current results suggest a more complicated and evolving set of trade relationships, with obsidian from at least three sources (Mad-Kakaseghy, Tolcsva and Vinicky-Cejkov) represented, which come from the sites at Foeni (Sălaş and the Orthodox Cemetery), Uivar-Gomilă, Caransebeş-Balta Sărată, from Banat, Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă from central Transylvania and Zăuan, Suplacu de Bărcău/Porţ-Corău and Pericei-Keller Tag from northwestern Romania. The analysis proved that at the beginning of the early Neolithic in Banat (the Foeni-Sălaş site), the raw materials from which the tools were made of came from Mad-Kakaseghy, and at the end of this period, in phase IVA of the Starcevo-Criş culture of Transylvania (in the Zăuan and Porţ-Corău sites) the obsidian came only from Vinicky-Cejkov sources. During the Middle Neolithic in Banat (Vinca B site of Caransebeş-Balta Sărată) and Transylvania (Vinca B site of Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă and Pişcolt II site of Porţ-Corău) all of the raw material came from Vinicky-Cejkov. This source will be exclusively exploited by all the late Neolithic communities (site Pişcolt II of Porţ-Corău and Suplac III of Porţ-Corău and Pericei-Keller tag) and early Eneolithic (Foeni II/Foeni-Petreşti cultural group II of Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă) from Transylvania. During the late Neolithic in Banat, Vinca C culture , the majority of the raw material came from Vinicky-Cejkov, but at the Vinca C site of Uivar-Gomilă, Tolcsva obsidian was found as well. This situation is also maintained during the early Enoeolithic, as two samples analyzed from the Foeni – Cimitirul Ortodox site came from Tolcsva, and another sample, published in the previous year (Glascock et al 2015, 47–49), came from Vinicky-Cejkov.
In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as ... more In this essay I review two quite different works concerning the rise of American anthropology as a discipline. Both address the display of anthropology and the ways it presented itself to the public and represented itself to the field during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and provide alternative views of the coalescence of the field. I argue that each provides valuable insights into those formation processes without fully coming to grips with the contradictions inherent to the discipline during its formation, and which remain as fault lines in anthropological inquiry today.
This article concerns the chemical analysis by X-ray fluorescence and source determination for fi... more This article concerns the chemical analysis by X-ray fluorescence and source determination for five obsidian artifacts from archaeological sites in Banat (Southwest Romania). The results show that all of the artifacts could be assigned to an obsidian source located in the Kosice region of Slovakia. The specific source is known as Čejkov and it is a sub-source of the Vinicky source.
Museum Anthropology Review, 2015
One of the most far-reaching, systematic, and unsettling changes in museum anthropology over the ... more One of the most far-reaching, systematic, and unsettling changes in museum anthropology over the course of the past four decades has been a shift in the perceived relationship between museums collecting materials and the source communities from which those materials are derived. In the minds of many museum professionals it was and had long been, for the most part, a close and collaborative relationship, in which museums curators served as advocates for and interpretive experts on source communities and countries. More recently it has become clear that these sources took a very different view, seeing the relationship as fundamentally exploitative, premised on profound disparities in power, and one in which the alienation of objects was based on coercion rather than freely given consent.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2006
... (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006, 318 PP., HBK, ISBN 13 978 0 521 84011 8, PBK, 1... more ... (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006, 318 PP., HBK, ISBN 13 978 0 521 84011 8, PBK, 13 978 0 521 54942 4). Авторы, Alex Barker Museum of Art & Archaeology University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. Журнал, European Journal of Archaeology. ...
Masters Thesis, 1988
Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of... more Sites of the St. Helena phase in northeastern Nebraska play a pivotal role in the construction of cultural taxonomies for the region. Depending on which sites are included within the taxon, the St. Helena phase seems similar to Upper Republican, Initial Coalescent, or Nebraska phase. This study considers whether a series of sites in Dakota County, Nebraska, placed in the taxon in 1963, should be removed and reclassified as has been recently proposed. Stylistic patterns in domestic architecture and ceramic decoration are examined in light of studies of the nature of stylistic variation by Martin Wobst and Polly Wiessner. This examination reveals statistically significant patterning at the level of the household and the community, but does not justify the removal of the Dakota County sites from the St. Helena taxon. Because of the marked differences between site groups in Cedar, Dixon, and Dakota Counties, however, it is suggested that each be considered a subphase in the Willey and Phillips nomenclature until the temporal, spatial, and cultural relationships obtaining between the site groups can be resolved.
Routledge, 2016
This volume examines general ethical principles and controversies in the social sciences by looki... more This volume examines general ethical principles and controversies in the social sciences by looking specifically at the recent three-year revision process to the American Anthropological Association’s code of ethics. The book’s contributors were members of the task force that undertook that revision and thus have first-hand knowledge of the debates, compromises, and areas of consensus involved in shaping any organization’s ethical vision. The book-reflects the broad diversity of opinion, approach, and practice within anthropology and the social sciences;-develops ethical principles that reflect core values rather than the latest ethical controversies;-crafts clear, broad statements, increasing the likelihood that the ethical code will be a meaningful part of the daily discourse of practicing anthropologists;-develops the ethical code as a living document, or a process of experience and debate, subject to future revision and amplification;-provides explanation through internet links and other resources, ensuring that the finished product be relevant and vibrant.
