The Calusa: Linguistic and Cultural Origins and Relationships

Preface

Preface Like the work of the late Joseph Greenberg, to whose stature i am not comparing myself, this volume will be considered by many trained solely in 1960s and post-1960s archaeology, ethnography, or ethnohistoryasahard -to-believeorimpossible-to-believestatementbased on what they will view as minimal data handled in a manner quite foreign to or more likely absent from their education and professional training and experience other than, perhaps, the usual inadequate minimal course or two in beginning elementary linguistics. This “can’t-be-so”reactiontomyanalysisandpresentationof Calusa language data is primarily the result of the academic fragmentation of present-day anthropology into the now largely separate and quite isolated disciplines of archaeology, ethnography/ethnology, physical anthropology, and linguistics and the general lack of adequate training and, particularly, fieldwork experience, provided in all but the individual’s major subdiscipline to those educated since the 1960s. The disbelief of ladies and gentlemen trained in any of these now separate and isolated branches of post-1960s anthropology is to be regrettedbutisunfortunately,intheopinionofthiswriter,quiteunderstandable in these days of a vastly diluted and fragmented American academic system. xii / Preface The time and content difference between my critics’ training and that of myself, educated in the 1940s and 1950s in the then still anthropologically unified era, largely explains the “i-can’t-believe-it” response of these ladies and gentlemen. The techniques and field of phonological, morphological, and semological language analysis, which is the focus of the present volume, are for better or worse unfortunately alien to most modern-day American archaeologists, ethnologists , and ethnohistorians, a group of otherwise perfectly intelligent and hard-working men and women whose work i in no sense mean to disparage. it is, rather, such all too frequent academic lacunae in this country’s once first-class but now from my point of view severely sagging and fast-failing fourth- or fifth-class university educational system that i sorely lament. bycontrast,withthelatefranzboas,RalphLinton,Georgemurdock , Clellan ford, David stout, and Raymond Kennedy in general anthropology and ethnology/ethnography; John Goggin, frank f. f. Roberts Jr., irving Rouse, Wendell bennett, emil haury, and marian White in archaeology; floyd Lounsbury, henry Lee smith Jr., Charles f. hockett, bernard bloch, mary haas, Warren Cowgill, morris swadesh, and George Trager in linguistics; and others as my mentors, teachers, and advisors, i grew up and was educated to consider archaeology, ethnography/ethnology, physical anthropology, and linguistics as necessarily inseparable parts of an academic, realworld , and philosophical whole in the definition of any human group and its behavior and activities. To acquire a bachelor’s degree in anthropology , which i did at yale University, one was then required to have at least four years and often more of detailed academic and, particularly,in-the-fieldtrainingtoobtainevenbeginningexpertise and an academic degree, this accompanied by the preparation and writing of a thorough and lengthy bachelor’s level fieldwork-derived Preface / xiii thesis in one or more of the anthropological subdisciplines—in my case abachelor’sthesisonbahamianarchaeologyunderirvingRouse— and a formal, somewhat frightening, verbal defense of that thesis before the assembled faculty of one’s entire department. The m.A. and Ph.D. required many more years before those degrees were granted in similar manner: the m.A. a minimum of four years of course work plus a fieldwork-based thesis and defense—in my case an 800-plus-page thesis on bahamian archaeology at the University of florida under the direction of John Goggin with the assistance of irving Rouse; the Ph.D. an additional five to six years’ course work, in my case at the Department of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of buffalo, plus a fieldwork-based dissertation and defense—in my case a dissertation on the Zuni language written under the direction of Charles hockett, George Trager, and henry Lee smith Jr. with the advice of mary haas as well as much earlier personaladvicefrom franzboas,whowasafamilyfriendduringthe later years of his life. i well realize that such a system has not been in force for many, many years now, but for better or worse i still quite adamantly adhere to that original training, intellectual contract , and philosophical conviction in my approach to any anthropologicalstudytowhichiturnmyattentionandefforts .Thisisperhaps to some an outmoded view of the world, but it is one that experience over eight-plus decades tells me should not be abandoned, for results of its application in my opinion yield far more detailed and cogent results than the fragmented approaches...