Rating: 
Summary: Factual, biting and rivetting style
Review: As an author myself, one of the kindest remarks about my work was paid by a detractor. She had written that "Davis' words may be factual, but they are biting, irreverent and at a total disregard for social ideals.." "Skull Wars" puts me in mind of this same quote, only I am hardly a detractor. Thomas's style IS biting. His "no holds bared, this is the plain truth" writing may well ruffle some eurocentric feathers. And it may well upset more than a few Arianists. So what? His work is direct, lucid, and to the point. His willingness, and in some areas blatant will for the disregard for political correctness must be applauded. This is a great bit of writing. Period. In an age of "warm and fuzzy, let's all get along at any cost", too many Americans have forgotten (or are ignorant of) the bloody history of our forefathers. I have often remarked that the Native people's biggest mistake was not burning those three ships right into the sea.This is an excellnt example of an interesting page turner brimming with facts in favor of social-political agendas. A must for all historians.
Rating:
Summary: Factual, biting and rivetting style
Review: As an author myself, one of the kindest remarks about my work was paid by a detractor. She had written that "Davis' words may be factual, but they are biting, irreverent and at a total disregard for social ideals.." "Skull Wars" puts me in mind of this same quote, only I am hardly a detractor. Thomas's style IS biting. His "no holds bared, this is the plain truth" writing may well ruffle some eurocentric feathers. And it may well upset more than a few Arianists. So what? His work is direct, lucid, and to the point. His willingness, and in some areas blatant will for the disregard for political correctness must be applauded. This is a great bit of writing. Period. In an age of "warm and fuzzy, let's all get along at any cost", too many Americans have forgotten (or are ignorant of) the bloody history of our forefathers. I have often remarked that the Native people's biggest mistake was not burning those three ships right into the sea. This is an excellnt example of an interesting page turner brimming with facts in favor of social-political agendas. A must for all historians.
Rating:
Summary: Skull Wars tells it like it is
Review: David Hurst Thomas has produced an amazing book in Skull Wars. It is at once a serious scholarly history of the relationship between archaeologists and Native Americans and at the same time a good read, accessible to an informed public. Thomas tells it like it is when it comes to this history. As he points out it is a history that archaeologist cannot be proud of. He does an excellent job of demonstrating how the colonial context of archaeology shaped the actions of scholars to bad ends, often despite their good intentions. Those individuals who call for a more balanced account of this history only wish to deny or cover up the ugly truth. Thomas is if anything too kind to many of the key figures of early archaeology and in the recent Kennewick controversy. As Thomas argues archaeologists need to learn from this history and not simply hide behind naive good intentions. Thomas demonstrates how informed archaeologists can work with Native American people to build common ground and interests. He shows us how we can go beyond the controversy to link good intentions with good actions. I cannot verify or deny Thomas' comments on the Asatru religion but the reviews that react so negatively to them are focusing in on only a couple of paragraphs in the book. These comments have little to do with the overall point of the book or its content. Virtually no professional archaeologists accept the idea that there is evidence for Norse or other European settlement or exploration in North American much before AD 900 or that these explorations extended beyond the east coast of Canada. Even the theory advanced by a few archaeologists that paleolithic Solutrian peoples from the Iberian Peninsula may have crossed the arctic ice to become the North American Clovis culture has been recently dismissed in American Antiquity. As a professional archaeologist and a scholar who has written extensively on relationships between archaeologists and Native Americans I welcome this readable account. It is a book that should be read by anyone interested in North American archaeology and I hope that it will become required reading of all archaeology students.
Rating: 
Summary: Origins of the Army Medical Museum and its collecting policy
Review: Dr. Thomas' discussion on pages 57-58 of the Army Medical Museum's role in collecting human remains is misleading. The Museum (now the National Museum of Health & Medicine) was established in 1862, during the American Civil War, to begin the study of military medicine and surgery in wartime. It was not established at the urging of Professor Agassiz. US Army Surgeon General Hammond's orders pertained specifically to collecting the remains of Union and Confederate soldiers, who were overwhelmingly white, to study surgery before the era of x-rays or aseptic surgery. Thousands of specimens were sent into the Museum, including General Daniel Sickles' leg, which he personally had shipped after it was struck by a cannon ball and amputated. The specimens were studied and used to compile the six-volume study, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. After the war, the Museum did expand its collecting focus and collected Indian anthropological artifacts and remains. The artifacts were deposited with the Smithsonian Institution, based on an agreement the Smithsonian proposed in 1869. Human remains were transferred to the Medical Museum, where they were kept and studied side by side with those of American soldiers. The Museum continued collecting Native American remains until the late nineteenth century when the role was returned to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains today.
The star rating was insisted on by Amazon's computer - this note only pertains to Dr. Thomas' pages on the Army Medical Museum.
Michael Rhode, Archivist
National Museum of Health & Medicine
Rating:
Summary: A very good reading.
Review: History id the record of those event and people that happened in our past and the history are usually slanted to the side that the author wants you to believe. Most of these books I find hard to read so when Skull Wars arrived I was ready for another slanted look into American history, I was wrong, very wrong. In one this years best readings, I found myself engrossed by how well the author was able to make his point and deliver hard facts to back up every statement. His look into the controversy that started in July 1996 in Kennewick, Washington is one of the most compelling books I have ever read. Follow along and look into how the discovery of a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in the Columbia River could create a stir in major anthropological and archaeological circles that may rage well into the 21st century. David Hurst Thomas has written a book that gives you another look into not only American History, but also far more importantly Native American History and for that he should be congratulated. Check out Basic Books website for more titles, you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Where do I begin?
Review: Skull Wars is a fascinating survey of the relationship between anthropologists and Native Americans. In the process of telling this story, Thomas discusses many of the interesting episodes along the way such as the discovery of Kennewick Man, the Greenland Eskimos in New York, and the emergence of Ishi. Central to the book is the struggle over "scientific racism" which is really still continuing today. In the past, skull size was often seen as an indicator of intelligence. Thomas devotes a great deal of space to the ideas of Franz Boas who denied a biological basis for race by showing the irrelevance of skull size, paving the way for the idea of race as a social construction. Thomas also discusses how much Native Americans have generally hated the desecration of their ancestor's bodies by grave-robbing anthropologists who were looking for specimens, noting that people of European descent do not expect their dead to be treated in this way. The ideas of Vine Deloria seem to have had a great impact on Thomas's thinking and he is cited frequently in the book mainly in the context of putting Native peoples back in charge of their remains. Congress has made it official by passing the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. Another issue that Thomas deals with and ties in to the issues already cited is the origin of people indigenous to the Americas. Thomas seems to come down on the side of saying that it is an open question and that the Bering Strait theory is by no means a closed case. All in all, a very interesting and provocative book.
Rating:
Summary: Skull Wars
Review: Skull Wars is a superb read - engagingly written and forcefully presented - it has relevance well beyond the anthropological and Native American communities. Thomas'interweaving of history, American socio-political history and the emergence of social sciences as practiced in the US is fascinating. He's packed an amazing amount of research into this volume. I learned much and disagree with little. Coming to terms with the issue of race in this country is still in many ways largely intractable, but made much more complex by issues of class. When compounded with the Native American experience the complexities are even more magnified. The issues confronted in Skull Wars are particularly germane for those Native American groups that have retained some semblance of generational continuity. Thomas accurately touches on the "top down" weaknesses of the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Thomas clearly articulates that there is not a one-size fits all approach to accommodating and reconciling the concerns of legitimately affected Native Americans and the archaeological community. The positive examples at the end of the book serve as models for much of the country. I hope Skull Wars reaches the wide audience it deserves. I enthusiastically recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Skull Wars
Review: The historical perspective that is the core of David's book makes the positions of the adversaries in the Kennewick Man dispute more understandable. I expected a telling of the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man, and perhaps some suggestions about what the remains mean to theories concerning the peopling of the New World. What I got was a lucid history of the stormy relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists that forms a good part of the background for the Kennewick Man controversy. David goes some distance (maybe too far)to be charitable to all the players in this scientific soap opera. He makes it clear, however, that Native American remains are part of Native American history and identity, not specimens to be mined for cranial measurements and loopy inferences about intellectual capability. I am left with a nagging question that David doesn't address, but is at the center of this controversy: how do we KNOW the affiliation of human remains? Surely NAGPRA can't ascertain affiliation, although it can apparently assign it. In the absence of some rigorous examination of remains by qualified individuals we are left with the prospect of conflicting claims that characterizes "Kennnewick Man: The Soap". If affiliation is determined by legislative fiat or dueling attorneys, we all lose. Classifying remains as Native American because they are found in North America does some violence to common sense - are Toyotas indigenous because we find them here? Vine DeLoria's views notwithstanding, the peopling of the New World remains a story to be told. It is possible that the Americas were peopled more than once by groups from parts of the world that conventional wisdom has long dismissed. David closes his book with the account of a collaborative project in Alaska that offers a real alternative to the disputes surrounding Kennewick Man. Hopefully such cooperation will be a model for archaeological research, and the picture of Native American prehistory that it renders will be more complete because of its inclusiveness. All in all, a superb read that encourages us to examine our motives and to recall the obscenities that have occurred in the past, and almost certainly will occur again, for "Science".
Rating:
Summary: Archeology's Dark Past Shouldn't Cloud the Quest of Science
Review: The question of whether the 9,400 year-old skeleton of Kennewick Man belongs to Native Americans indigenous to the Northwest, or to the possibly greater interests of science has become one of the most controversial and perplexing issues of our day. In this dispute Thomas has taken the high ground in presenting his fellow archeologists' point of view, but also in admirably presenting a long history of evils archeology has done unto Native Americans. In support of the NA position Thomas chronicles how archeologists, operating under a "scientific racism", lied to the Indians, cheated them, and dug up tons of bones, often of very recent ancestors, and shipped them to museums in the East and in Europe. In this light Native American rage at the idea of disturbing even 9,400 year-old bones of a possible ancestor is understandable. Further, the Umatilla tribe's claim that "our oral history goes back 10,000 years" gives credence to their claim to the Kennewick bones and is substantiated by Thomas's telling of local Indian legends regarding Crater Lake (once Mount Mazama). These legends clearly relate events that occurred 7,600 years ago. Thomas presents a strong case for the NA position, and concludes that the anwer to this and other disputes between archeologists and Native Americans rests on "a relationship based on mutual respect and consensus." The courts have now ruled in favor of the NA desire to forever inter Kennewick Man. However, Thomas has presented ample evidence that the pursuits of science should persevere. Amerindians, migrating from Beringia 11,000 years ago, did occupy much of North America for the first time, but there is growing evidence that they did not occupy all of the Americas alone or even for the first time. Tom Dillehay's exhaustive work at Monte Verde, THE SETTLEMENT OF THE AMERICAS, documents a people who thrived in southern S. America before Beringia migration was possible. Walter Neves' discovery of the earliest known American, E. Brazil's 11,500 year old "Luzia", became all the more profound when Neves' tests, and independent morphologists' confirmations, found that Luzia's teeth and skull exhibited the characteristics of South Pacific Islanders. Discoverer James Chatters described Kennewick Man as having the morphology of a European, but he could as easily have been a Polynesian. We need to know. NA origin myths are very old but so are Central and South American myths which describe their founding as from across the sea. And the great spheres of Costa Rica, described in ATLANTIS IN AMERICA:Navigators of the Ancient World, show that an ancient seafaring culture existed in Central America many thousands of years ago.
Rating:
Summary: It's more than just "skull wars"
Review: This book is much needed. He posed questions that many people (both scientists and Native people) can't answer. The underlying question, being "What is an Indian?" AND "Who has the right to determine that?" He thoughtfully took the current "hot topic" of the Kennewick Man and showed how archaeologists haven't changed their philosophy from the past and points out that archaeology does need to change. Although, I feel some people might get caught up in the Kennewick issue TOO much this clouds many of the issues he brings up. By using the Kennewick Man to discuss these issues he demonstrates how the "Native American Image" continues to hurt the Native people of today. Cultures do change especially over 9,000 yrs. and there will be little or no "scientific" evidence to show that the Kennewick Man is an ancestor to the Native people. But oral tradition will, but Native American "Image" doesn't allow for oral tradition to be considered "truth." Overall, Thomas poses a lot of questions for the archaeological society to think about as well as mainstream society. It is well written and easy to understand for non-archaeological people.
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