Reply #13: Article here:

[Igel]

http://www.bridgetwaller.com/SAMSONWALLER2010.pdf

Why read the summary by a science reporter when you can read the article itself?

The article itself is funny. Of course, I'm not in the field. I find a lot of this kind of anthropology funny: It's "anthropology at the interstices," where you derive the meaning from the gaps, where there's silence. Derrida would be proud.

The number of assumptions made is about equal to the number made by the "bared-teeth = fearful" crowd. They're just different. Diametrically, opposed, in fact. Where it used to be assumed that "natives" were warlike and primitive, now the assumption is that they were peaceful and advanced. "Just people" seems to be an impossible assumption.

Here's an example of the kind of logic: "The word “Taı´no” means “I am good” or “I am noble,”
in other words, a ringing verbal statement of benign intent, a quality the indigenous people emphasized in meetings with the Spanish (Hulme 1986; Love´n 1935:502–503)." Now, imagine that whites in the US called themselves "the good." "I'm one of the good. Jose, he's not one of the good." Another example of "benign intent," I suppose. My point: Autonyms that aggrandize one's own tribe--whether it's Inupiaq = "real person" or any of the others allow the inference that others aren't. Whether or not they intend the implication or act on it is a different matter. Sometimes they're just traditional; sometimes they're threats of genocide.

Personally, I think some of the expressions look like smiles. Others may be smiles, but poorly drawn--it's hard to sculpt detail in hard substances without steel or at least iron. But for me, a smile has turn turn up at the corners of the mouth; there's the woman's faked, forced smile, but using that kind of a posed smile does nothing for the article's argument. A growl shows more teeth, the corners don't turn up--and the creases around the nose are deeper. Even after reading the article, some of the images still look vicious. And it's unclear to me that the underlying assumtion in each set of scholars' assumptions--that all the BTM faces need to be interpreted in the same way--isn't necessary.