William Y. Adams – författare

Classifications are central to archaeology. Yet the theoretical literature on the subject, both in archaeology and the philosophy of science, bears very little relationship to what actually occurs in practice. This problem has long interested William Adams, a field archaeologist, and Ernest Adams, a philosopher of science, who describe their book as an ethnography of archaeological classification. It is a study of the various ways in which field archaeologists set about making and using classifications to meet a variety of practical needs. The authors first discuss how humans form concepts. They then describe and analyse in detail a specific example of an archaeological classification, and go on to consider what theoretical generalizations can be derived from the study of actual in-use classifications. Throughout the book, they stress the importance of having a clearly defined purpose and practical procedures when developing and applying classifications.

This book is a study in depth of the work of Franz Boas and twenty of his students at Columbia University in the early years of the twentieth century. Collectively they laid the entire institutional as well as the intellectual foundations of American anthropology as it exists today. The book begins with a discussion of the historical context of Boasian anthropology, and an overview of its nature and limitations. The work of Boas and his leading students is then discussed in detail, including biographical data, a review and critique of their research, a review in detail of each of their major publications, and an overall assessment of their contribution to anthropology, as seen in their own time and today.

Throughout its long history Qasr Ibrim was the most important settlement in Egyptian Nubia. During the Middle Ages is was both an administrative capital and a centre of Christian worship. As an archaeological site it has produced an unprecedented wealth of material, including objects of wood, leather, and textile that are rarely preserved archaeologically. Also preserved are hundreds of specimens of written material in many different languages. This volume describes and illustrates in detail the architectural, artifactual, and textual finds from the earlier medieval period, from about AD 550 to 1200. An earlier volume in the same series (Qasr Ibrim, the Later Medieval Period) describes the remains from the succeeding period.

Throughout its long history, Qasr Ibrim was the most important settlement in Egyptian Nubia. During the Middle Ages, it was both an administrative capital and a centre of Christian worship. As an archaeological site it has produced an unprecedented wealth of material, including objects of wood, leather and textile that are rarely preserved archaeologically. Also preserved are hundreds of specimens of written material in many different languages. This volume describes and illustrates in detail the finds from the immediate pre-Christian period, from about AD 350 to 600.

This volume completes the documentation of excavations at the Nubian site of Qasr Ibrim conducted by the Egypt Exploration Society, continuing the tradition of documenting the history and archaeology of the site phase-by-phase. Previous monographs dealt with the Ballaña phase (c. AD 350-600), the earlier (c. 600-1172) and the later medieval period (c. 1172-1500). The present work carries the story forward to the final abandonment of the site in AD 1812, the period when Lower Nubia was annexed to the Ottoman Empire, and an Ottoman garrison was installed at Qasr Ibrim. Part I deals with the historical record of the site, based on archival sources, Part II presents the archaeological evidence, followed in Part III by brief summaries on the Ottoman period artefacts found at the site, in particular pottery (by William Y. Adams), basketry (by Boyce N. Driskell), and textiles (by Nettie K. Adams)

Down to Earth Archaeology collects sixteen archaeological papers by Professor William Y. Adams chosen by the author, who added introductory commentary to each. These articles were written at various times during his lengthy and productive academic career for different purposes and for different audiences. Most of those selected had been previously published only in a limited way, either as conference proceedings or contributions to various Festschriften, and as such he wanted to enable them to reach a wider readership than they had originally. He described this collection as his ‘dernières pensées’.The essays encompass a wide range of topics, from reflections upon the successes, failures and lessons learned from the UNESCO International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia in the 1960s, in which Bill was very much a leading figure and which he was uniquely positioned to critique, to discussions and criticisms of the theoretical framework of ‘New’ or ‘Processual Archaeology’ and its application of ‘scientific’ methods. Other papers included here are seminal works discussing the ideological concepts of typology and classification and their practical application to archaeological excavations, notably his own major excavations conducted at the large Nubian cityscapes of Meinarti, Kulubnarti and Qasr Ibrim, and the ceramic kilns at Faras.

William Y. Adams grew up in an Indian Service family in an Indian Service town in the 1930s. Window Rock, Arizona was the newly founded administrative capital for the vast Navajo reservation, and all 298 of its residents were Indian Bureau employees or their families. With the exception of a few low-level service personnel, none were Navajo, nor did they have any detailed familiarity with the world of hogans and corrals. They were technocrats, skilled in agriculture, range management, forestry, mining, education, public health, and law enforcement, among other things. Despite their varied backgrounds and skills, however, they shared a common determination to “do right by the Indians” after decades of government neglect and mismanagement. That concept, however, originated not in Window Rock but in Washington, the administrative headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.In the years following World War II, Adams lived and worked among Navajos and Hopis in a number of different capacities. As an archaeological explorer, an ethnologist, an interviewer for the Arizona Bureau of Ethnic Research, a livestock drive foreman, and - perhaps most importantly - a trader, he became aware of the myth of the Indian: a belief in “the Indian” as a kind of unitary, symbolic figure, who stood as the surrogate for hundreds of tribes, cultures, and languages spread across the American continent.In Indian Policies in the Americas, Adams addresses the idea that “the Indian,” as conceived by colonial powers and later by different postcolonial interest groups, was as much ideology as empirical reality. Adams surveys the policies of the various colonial and postcolonial powers, then reflects upon the great ideological, moral, and intellectual issues that underlay those policies.