BLACK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX PETROGLYPHS

supported…at a vulgarly high cost to the American Indian; and American as well as Indian history.

 

The problem with anthropology and archaeology today, is that desktop researchers mistake their Victorian era methodology for Boasian scientific research.  They read all the books (developed grand theories); before they do 'hands on' field work (collect evidence) ... they have reverted back to the arrogant, self-appointed, Victorian academic experts which they profess to have overcome; as modern, more intellectual students of Boasian Theory...

 

“...collecting bodies of data through intensive fieldwork was archaeology.”...new strategies have been invading the discipline of archaeology in California. Better planning for more complete data-gathering has largely replaced the collecting of data as an end in itself.” (Riddell 2004)

 

While Riddell recognizes “new strategies have been invading the discipline of archaeology”.  What he doesn’t say is that the 'planning' is based upon a 'premise' which is a preconceived notion based upon pre-existing theory; which in turn makes the process Victorian era methodology.  Its Morganism, two-faced double-speak ; saying one thing and doing another…professing science while pursuing legal proclivities…deception on a grand scale.

 

Morganism: Delusion, Distraction, Illusion, Deception or Fraud?

 

It can be hard to criticize those you highly respect, but there comes a time when you have to stop the 'Hero' worship and admit that you have been deceived: Lewis Henry Morgan is not a great man because of his ethnological or anthropological research.  More, in-depth investigation should prove he is more likely to be the greatest attorney who ever lived because he pulled off the greatest legal deception ever devised…distracting everyone’s attention with his ethnological studies, while having the government evict Indians from their lands for the benefit of his clients the railroads, mining and banking interest.  All of which he did without publically getting his hands dirty…

 

“His contemporaries in Rochester would have been surprised. They knew him as a man who had come to Rochester as a young lawyer, eager, but without money. Perhaps not entirely unexpectedly he did legal work for the Elys, one of the city's prominent business families, investing his fees in some of their projects and similar interests: railroad, mining and smelting. He had come to Rochester determined to make money, and make money he did. Within a relatively short time, he amassed a considerable fortune, one that allowed him to give up his law practice within two decades to pursue his scientific studies.” (Tooker 1984)