Robert McGhee

Archaeology and Development [and Comments and Reply]

The establisment of a national site survey in the Solomon Islands provides a case study of the way in which the discipline of archaeology, developed in highly industrialised, wealthy countries, must be adapted if it is to prove meaningful in other parts of the world. Such changes are not only organisational and logistical; they extend to the conceptual basis of archaeology and to the relationship of the discipline to society. Specifically discussed are the problems of interpreting archaeological discoveries in terms of traditional perspectives of the past, the establishment of an archaeological unit and fieldwork programme, the question of decentralisation, rescue archaeology, protective legislation, the use of archaeology within the educational system, and the role of the external researcher.

Disease and the Development of Inuit Culture [and Comments and Reply]

Early ethnographic descriptions of the Inuit, the original inhabitants of Arctic Canada and Greenland, depict a culture and society assumed to have been relatively untouched by European influence. Archaeology has shown that this way of life had developed over the past five centuries from the Thule culture, which was technologically richer and more economically secure than that of the historic Inuit. The transformation from Thule to Inuit culture has generally been explained in terms of adaptation to a deteriorating environment. This paper argues that the development of Inuit culture can be more satisfactorily interpreted as a response to early and continued contacts with Europeans and the effects of repeated epidemic diseases resulting from such contacts.