What Have We Missed by Perpetuating the Pristine Myth?
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Campus where you would like to present
SURC 140
Start Date
17-5-2012
End Date
17-5-2012
Abstract
In The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492, William Denevan focuses on the issues, misconceptions and residual problems associated with the “Pristine Myth” which is a term he uses to describe the common perception by certain scholars that the Indians in the New World had not altered their natural landscape. This perpetrated the idea that after 1492, the colonists and settlers who came to the New World dramatically and detrimentally altered the former “Pristine” landscape the Indians inhabited. Indians are nature and thus their alteration of the landscape is natural, albeit a modification nonetheless. Contemporary researchers have examined the Pristine Myth and continually demonstrate that the Pristine Myth is not supported in the Archaeological Record; promulgating the idea of the Pristine Myth masks the true history of human occupation and the subsequent effects of landscape alteration and environment. Native populations were efficient resource managers who tailored their practices to the landscape they were using and implemented techniques to protect and sustainably exploit their resources as ‘ancient conservationists’. The Pristine Myth is a state of mind, not reality. It is my argument that the long held biases in the study of prehistory have misguided research for much too long and that as researchers we have to ask ourselves, what have we missed in the Record by perpetuating the Pristine Myth?
Recommended Citation
Alberg, Winifred, "What Have We Missed by Perpetuating the Pristine Myth?" (2012). Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 156.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2012/oralpresentations/156
Additional Mentoring Department
Geography
What Have We Missed by Perpetuating the Pristine Myth?
SURC 140
In The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492, William Denevan focuses on the issues, misconceptions and residual problems associated with the “Pristine Myth” which is a term he uses to describe the common perception by certain scholars that the Indians in the New World had not altered their natural landscape. This perpetrated the idea that after 1492, the colonists and settlers who came to the New World dramatically and detrimentally altered the former “Pristine” landscape the Indians inhabited. Indians are nature and thus their alteration of the landscape is natural, albeit a modification nonetheless. Contemporary researchers have examined the Pristine Myth and continually demonstrate that the Pristine Myth is not supported in the Archaeological Record; promulgating the idea of the Pristine Myth masks the true history of human occupation and the subsequent effects of landscape alteration and environment. Native populations were efficient resource managers who tailored their practices to the landscape they were using and implemented techniques to protect and sustainably exploit their resources as ‘ancient conservationists’. The Pristine Myth is a state of mind, not reality. It is my argument that the long held biases in the study of prehistory have misguided research for much too long and that as researchers we have to ask ourselves, what have we missed in the Record by perpetuating the Pristine Myth?
Faculty Mentor(s)
Jennifer Lipton