The Forbidden Discovery of Kennewick Man.

On a hot July day in 1996 two young men took a walk along the Columbia River after attending the annual hydroplane races at Kennewick, Washington. As they waded in the shallow water near the shore they came across a human skull. The men notified the authorities who sent an anthropologist to investigate. Anthropologists are routinely consulted for the identification of skeletal material. This case, however, was far from routine since it soon attracted national attention and by October had landed in a federal court.

The litigation here involves a conflict between two antithetical sets of principles and interests. On one side are the principles of open debate, freedom of scientific and scholarly inquiry, and the primacy of rational procedures in public policy. On the other side stand the narrow interests of identity politics, "postmodern" revisionism, and an increasingly anti-science bureaucracy. Such a conflict has been going on in educational and other cultural institutions for a long time. The Kennewick case, however, marks the first time that it has appeared in such a direct manner in a court of law. It also clearly illustrates the increasing politicization of culture in this country, and reveals how scholarship, scientific research, and the public good will fare if this politicization remains unchallenged.

Anthropologist James Chatters had helped the coroner with such cases before. After receiving the skull, he went to the place where the cranium had been found to look for other pieces of the skeleton. In nine separate visits he was eventually able to collect three hundred and fifty pieces of bone to assemble the almost complete skeleton of a male about five feet eight inches tall, forty to forty five years of age, and exhibiting features consistent with those of a Caucasoid. The bones were not fresh. Chatters estimated that they were at least a few decades old and probably much older. A more accurate estimate was impossible at the time since the condition of such skeletal material is more a factor of the soil in which it has lain than it is of age.

While examining the bones, Chatters found a stone projectile point lodged in the illium. It had obviously been there a long time before death since the bone had partially grown around it. Chatters also found some scattered nineteenth century artifacts at the discovery site that he assumed were associated with the skeleton. Given the apparent age of the bones, the stone projectile point, the artifacts, and the Caucasoid features, he at first thought he might be dealing with the skeleton of a nineteenth century pioneer.

Chatters sought a second opinion from anthropologist Kathrine McMillan of Central Washington State University. McMillan concurred with Chatters's initial assessment as to the individual's age, sex, height, and racial characteristics. What surprised them, though, was that the projectile point embedded in the skeleton's pelvis turned out to be a type used in the Pacific Northwest not during the nineteenth century, but rather thousands of years earlier. A small portion of bone was then sent to the University of California at Riverside for radiocarbon dating. The results showed that Kennewick Man was approximately 9,300 years old. By now it was clear that the coroner was not dealing with a forensic case, nor even with a case of local antiquarian interest, but rather with an important archeological find.

The public has always been fascinated by archeology. Any news of Neanderthal Man, for example, is guaranteed a front-page story. Because of his Caucasoid features, Kennewick Man received even more attention than usual, especially since photographs of a facial reconstruction were widely published along with the news reports. Those pictures showed a middle-aged man who looked more like a European accountant than he did a Paleoindian hunter.

Diversity in America Eight Thousand Years Ago