Anthropology’s main purpose is to teach us about others—other cultures and people from other times. The study of the other was meant to show us human diversity and similarities. This helps us figure out what stems from culture and what lies in our biology, often with a focus on the shared biology that makes us human.
Anthropology is a wondrous field with research that takes us from the depth of the Amazonian jungle, where Napoleon Chagnon conducted his groundbreaking research on the “fierce people” (the Yanomami), to the Siberian steppes, where anthropologists discovered tattooed ice mummies of the Iron Age buried with their horses. In order to draw conclusions about their discoveries, anthropologists integrate, form bonds with, and converse with those whom they are studying. They also practice archaeology, one of the four subfields of anthropology, which includes, in its data, structures as grand as the Giza pyramids in Egypt and the slender bone needle found in Idaho’s Buhl Burial, which is over 10,000 years old.
Anthropologists have abandoned their desire to understand others, and identity-politics activists have hijacked the field.Archaeology is the science of what’s been left behind. Physical anthropologists, now often called biological anthropologists, look at fossils such as those of our nearly two-million-year ancestors Homo erectus to reconstruct past lives—the lives of those who couldn’t leave a written record. All of these aspects of traditional anthropology, and the many more I haven’t covered, are fascinating, data-driven, and reveal clearly why anthropology is a true social science.
Anthropologists have provided us with better ways to extract DNA from badly deteriorated human remains. Techniques used in Neanderthal studies are now employed in all sorts of fields, including forensics. Anthropologists have also helped us understand the origins of diseases, for example through their work on the prion diseases (like mad cow and Kuru) tied to cannibalism. Anthropologists have brought us together by figuring out adaptive purposes and other causes of human variation, thereby explaining away discriminatory myths about human differences.
Throughout the U.S., biological anthropology has been a popular choice for students looking to fulfill their science general-education requirement. Cultural anthropology and archaeology often fulfill other general-education requirements, too. Thus, in the U.S., many students of all majors take at least one anthropology class.
For all these reasons, anthropology is exceedingly important, but it has fallen into disrepute. Today, anthropologists have abandoned their desire to understand others, and identity-politics activists have hijacked the field. This can be clearly seen in the many identify groups, which I call “neo-tribes,” present in anthropological associations, such as the American Anthropological Association, the Society for American Archaeology, and the American Association for Biological Anthropology. Consider, for example, the following, all of which are now present in the discipline:
- Women in Archaeology Interest Group
- Biological Anthropology Women’s Mentoring Network
- Association for Queer Anthropology
- Queer Archaeology Interest Group
- Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists
- Association of Indigenous Anthropologists
- Association of Black Anthropologists
Across the pond, the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology lists “Black Archaeology Organisations” that include
- Decolonise British Archaeology
- The Society of Black Archaeologists
- Academics for Black Lives
- Aspire Black Suffolk CIC
I wasn’t aware of this neo-tribal takeover until 2020, when my book (coauthored with James W. Springer), Repatriation and Erasing the Past, came out. The book focused on the problem of anthropologists losing skeletal collections to repatriation ideology and laws. Repatriation ideology is “any ideology, political movement, or law that attempts to control anthropological research by giving control over that research to contemporary American Indian communities.” It exists because of a postmodern agenda that focuses on the perceived victimhood status of a given narrator, rather than on whether the narration is accurate. Postmodernists, after all, do not accept the concept of objectivity or truth.
Repatriation ideology focuses on the perceived victimhood status of a given narrator, rather than on whether the narration is accurate.Since the publication of Repatriation and Erasing the Past, I have been on the receiving end of multiple cancelation attempts, including one to try to de-publish the book itself. Another one occurred over a talk I gave to the Society for American Archaeology that questioned the validity of repatriating collections based on indigenous creation myths (rather than on scientific evidence). More recently, the talk I had planned to give to the American Anthropological Association on the validity of the sex binary was canceled, as well, as was the entire panel including four other anthropologists who assert that sex is binary, biological, and a necessary component in understanding human nature, culture, and behavior. I wrote about these cancelations in my latest book: On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.
Throughout each attempt to cancel me, the aforementioned neo-tribes reared their ugly heads. These neo-tribes were upset because I had dared to question the validity of victims’ narratives. If one victimhood narrative is questioned, could the neo-tribes’ other narratives—all of which are based on identity politics and victimhood status—be questioned, as well?
And so the cancelations rolled in. The British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology wrote a letter to “encourage the University of Florida Press to withdraw from sale and digital access ‘Repatriation and Erasing the Past’” and hoped “that the Press [would] act, and use this moment to highlight the work of our BIPOC colleagues.”
Responding to our talk at the Society for American Archaeology, the Queer Archaeology Interest Group wrote that the Society for American Archaeology should “develop an environment not of tolerance, but of genuine inclusion, in which no member feels marginalized for their identity or ideas (provided that they are in keeping with the Society’s stated ethics and goals).”
In the course of my American Anthropological Association cancelation, the organization itself put out a letter entitled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” In it, they wrote, “We are committed to upholding the value and dignity of transgender people.”
Unfortunately, the neo-tribes of anthropology are ruining anthropological research by looking at the past through their neo-tribal lenses. For instance, queer archaeologists look for evidence of nonbinary individuals at each site. They do this by forgetting that sex is the independent variable, and artifacts are the dependent variables. As I explain in my article for the Archives of Sexual Behavior, you cannot determine sex or gender with artifacts. You determine sex with bones, and the artifacts may reveal what sexual divisions of labor existed, whether grave goods were sorted by sex (or another grouping such as class or age), and how people treated the dead. A female with a “male” artifact is no less a female than a female buried with what we may assume is a “typical female” artifact. Yet, for queer archaeologists, the purpose of examining the past is to validate their behaviors and beliefs, not to understand past peoples.
For queer archaeologists, the purpose of examining the past is to validate their behaviors and beliefs, not to understand past peoples.In the black archaeology and anthropology neo-tribes, there is a movement to get an “African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” passed—to stop the study of past black lives. Furthermore, professors who use human remains in forensic classes have been under attack. As reported by the Volokh Conspiracy, on April 26, 2021, the Association of Black Anthropologists, the Society of Black Archaeologists, and the Black Bioanthropology Collective wrote a letter stating that they “condemn” the treatment of skeletal remains from the MOVE bombing (a tragic case where the government bombed a black cult that was terrorizing the neighborhood they lived in). The same day, the professor who taught the class in question, Janet Monge, was locked out of her laboratory and all curation spaces. She is currently suing the university and claims that these actions were the result of retaliation by an unprincipled black student who was caught cheating, plagiarizing, and stealing DNA samples.
The problem goes beyond one case. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has sent skulls of African origin that were collected from Cuba back to Cuba. Ironically, these skulls were not from Cuba in the first place but ended up there as a result of the slave trade! This truth doesn’t matter, however, as long as it is the neo-tribal victim narrative that is acted upon.
Neo-tribes so far don’t seem to be engaging in intra-tribal warfare; rather, they are supportive of each other. This may be because of the intersectionality of identity politics—many people belong to multiple neo-tribes. This focus on identity politics and intersectional allyship may be why progressives are okay with (and actively engage in) ad hominem attacks on individuals but get upset when anyone criticizes a neo-tribal member. The neo-tribes are allies, making any one of them a formidable enemy.
For instance, in the letter against my Society for American Archaeology talk, the Black Trowel Collective wrote that it “stands in solidarity with our Indigenous colleagues to condemn the platforming of openly anti-Indigenous scholarship.” The Biological Anthropology Women’s Mentoring Network urged the use of “Cite Black Authors” databases and recommended that anthropologists should donate money to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Neo-tribes are activist organizations, using anthropology to push their political agenda rather than to understand the past or others. This couldn’t be made clearer than it has been in recent job ads, such as one from Albion College. For a visiting professor of biological anthropology, Albion College seeks a person who “will actively promote diversity, belonging and equity in all of their interactions with others on campus, especially historically marginalized students, faculty, and staff (e.g., those who are first-generation, low-income, undocumented and DACA, LGBTQIA , BIPOC, [or] religious minorities).”
Anthropology is becoming an activist field rather than a scholarly endeavor. The neo-tribes are taking their shovels and burying science. And this decay is spreading through all of academia.
Elizabeth Weiss is professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University. She is on the board of the National Association of Scholars. Her latest book is On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.