Alfred L. Kroeber

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The American anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) was one of the major proponents of the so-called Boasian school of American anthropology.

Alfred Kroeber was born on June 11, 1876, in Hoboken, N. J. He entered Columbia College in 1892, where he helped to found Morningside Magazine. He received a bachelor's degree in 1896 and a master's degree in 1897.

During his junior year Kroeber began to study with Franz Boas, who had come to Columbia in 1895 to build a department of anthropology. Kroeber signed up for Boas's course in North American Indian languages and became fascinated by the grammatical intricacies of Chinook. In 1897 Kroeber interviewed Eskimos brought to New York by Adm. Perry. His first articles, on their folklore, appeared in 1899. That same year Kroeber began his first fieldwork among the Arapaho, and this work formed the basis for his dissertation on Arapaho decorative art. He received his doctorate in 1901.

Kroeber then accepted a position as instructor in a new department of anthropology established at the University of California at Berkeley. The department was originally intended as a research institution, but Kroeber almost immediately began offering academic instruction as well. He taught at Berkeley until 1946 and was professor emeritus until his death. He was also curator of the anthropological museum from 1908 to 1925, when he became director, a position he held until 1946.

Under Kroeber's leadership, California developed the country's strongest undergraduate anthropological teaching program. The founding of academic departments, at California and elsewhere, meant formalization of existing teaching methods. Kroeber thus wrote an introductory textbook, Anthropology (1923), and prepared a reader, A Sourcebook in Anthropology (1925), in collaboration with T. T. Waterman.

Gradually, Kroeber came to consider description of California Indians as his life's work. Linguistic classification provided a valuable means of recovering the cultural history of the American Indians. Accordingly, in 1903 Kroeber and Roland Dixon attempted to classify the linguistic diversity of California's Indians, placing 16 languages in only three structural types, which they named Penutian, Hokan, and Ritwan. A decade later, addition of systematic vocabulary lists to grammatical evidence led to the conclusion that the structural similarities were genetic.

Archeology and Ethnology

Kroeber was one of the first to apply seriation, or typological classification, to archeological finds in North America. His work at a Zuñi pueblo in 1915 convinced him that archeology, as well as ethnology and linguistics, could be used to reconstruct the history of cultures without written records. In 1922 Kroeber began his studies of Peruvian archeology, using seriation to the virtual exclusion of archeological context. His major summary of the Peruvian work appeared in 1944. After a heart attack in 1943, however, Kroeber decided that his possible contributions to the systematization of California ethnology deserved priority.

American archeology and ethnology relied heavily on the concept of the culture area - a geographical region sharing numerous cultural traits. Kroeber's Cultural and Natural Areas of Native America (1939) stressed the ecological correlates and technological skills of such areas for exploitation of the same environments at different times in history. He also argued that culture areas focused around a "culture climax," or area of greatest elaboration. Consequently, Kroeber sought regularities in the growth of arts and industries in historically distinct cultures, but his data failed to reveal any broad-scale patterns.

Spokesman of American Anthropology

Kroeber became the recognized spokesman of American anthropology. In 1948 he revised his textbook, expounding his view of the integrated nature of the discipline. By 1952 "culture" had come to be the integrating concept of a holistic anthropology in America. Indeed, Kroeber had long believed that culture was "superorganic," that is, larger than the individual and independent of the biological nature of individuals.

Although Kroeber specialized in California ethnology, he was concerned with other areas as well, writing, for example, on the peoples of the Philippines. He also turned to problems of relating anthropology to other disciplines, particularly psychology and biology. He sought to define human nature by the range of known cultural diversity and by contrast with social life of different kinds of animals.

Kroeber was a member of numerous scientific societies, and he held six honorary degrees. After his retirement in 1946, he continued to teach at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, and Yale until his death in Paris on Oct. 5, 1960. With the increased specialization of anthropology, it is unlikely that any future anthropologist will control the range of knowledge and interests characteristic of Kroeber's entire career.

Further Reading

There is an excellent biography of Kroeber, written by his wife: Theodora Kroeber, Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration (1970). The development of Boasian anthropology is discussed in detail in Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), and George W. Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1968).

Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred L. Kroeber with Ishi in 1911.
Born	June 11, 1876 Hoboken, New Jersey
Died	October 5, 1960 (aged 84)
Education	Columbia University
Occupation	Anthropologist
Spouse(s)	(2) Theodora Kracaw
Children	Karl, Ursula, Ted, Clifton.

Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was one of the most influential figures in American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century.

Kroeber was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and attended Columbia College at the age of 16, earning an A.B. in English in 1896, and an M.A. in Romantic drama in 1897. He received his doctorate under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, basing his 28 pages long dissertation on decorative symbolism on his field work among the Arapaho. It was the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He spent most of his career in California, primarily at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked as both a Professor of Anthropology and the Director of what was then The University of California Museum of Anthropology (now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology). The anthropology department's headquarters building at the University of California is known as Kroeber Hall. He was associated with Berkeley until his retirement in 1946.

Although he is known primarily as a cultural anthropologist, he did significant work in archaeology, and he contributed to anthropology by making connections between archaeology and culture. He conducted excavations in New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru. Kroeber and his students did important work collecting cultural data on western tribes of Native Americans. The work done in preserving information about California tribes appeared in Handbook of Indians of California (1925). He is credited with developing the concepts of Culture Area and Culture Configuration (Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America, 1939).

His influence was so strong that many contemporaries adopted his style of beard and mustache as well as his views as a social scientist. During his lifetime, he was known as the "Dean of American anthropologists". His anthropological paradigms have introduced the word Kroeberian into the English language. Kroeber and Roland B. Dixon were very influential in the genetic classification of Native American languages in North America, being responsible for groupings such as Penutian and Hokan. He is noted for working with Ishi, who was claimed (though not uncontroversially) to be the last California Yahi Indian. His second wife, Theodora Kroeber, wrote a well-known biography of Ishi, Ishi in Two Worlds. Kroeber's relationship with Ishi was made into a film The Last of His Tribe (1992), starring Jon Voigt as Kroeber. His textbook, Anthropology (1923, 1948), was widely used for years, and was one of ten books required for all students during their first year at Columbia in the late 1940s.

Kroeber was father of the academic Karl Kroeber and the writer (primarily of fantasy and science fiction) Ursula K. Le Guin by his second wife, Theodora. He adopted the two children of Theodora's first marriage, Ted and historian Clifton Kroeber. Clifton and Karl recently (2003) edited a book together on the Ishi case, Ishi in Three Centuries. This is the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Indians.

Kroeber died in Paris on October 5, 1960.

Contents 1 Indian Land Claims 2 Partial list of works 3 References 4 External links

Indian Land Claims

Kroeber served early on as the plaintiffs' director of research in Indians of California vs the United States. ^[1] His associate director as well as the director of research for the federal government had been his students –- Omer Stewart, of the University of Colorado, and Ralph Beals, of the University of California, Los Angeles.^[2] Kroeber's impact on the Indian Claims Commission might well have established the way expert witnesses presented testimony before the tribunal.^[3] Several of his students also served as expert witnesses–– e. g., Stewart directed the plaintiff research for the Utes and for the Shoshones.^[4]

Partial list of works

• Indian Myths of South Central California (1907), in University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:167-250. Berkeley (Six Rumsien Costanoan myths, pp. 199-202); online at Sacred Texts.
• The Religion of the Indians of California (1907), in University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:6. Berkeley, sections titled "Shamanism", "Public Ceremonies", "Ceremonial Structures and Paraphernalia", and "Mythology and Beliefs"; available at Sacred Texts
• Handbook of the Indians of California (1925). Washington, D.C: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78 http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=%2Fbba&CISOPTR=1120&REC=0&CISOBOX=Handbook
• The Nature of Culture (1952). Chicago.
• with Clyde Kluckhohn: Culture. A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952). Cambridge.
• Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes (1963). Harcourt: Brace & World, Inc.

References

1. ^ 13 Ind. Cl. Comm.369 (1964).
2. ^ Beals, R. L. (1985). "The Anthropologist as Expert Witness: Illustrations from the California Indian Land Claims Case," inIrredeemable America: the Indians' Estate and Land Claims, ed. I. Sutton (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press): ch. 6.
3. ^ Stewart, Omer C. (1961). "Kroeber and the Indian Claims Commission Cases," Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 25: 181-190.
4. ^ Stewart, Omer C. (1985). "The Shoshone Claims Cases," inIrredeemable America..., op. cit., ch. 8.

Darnell, Regna (2001). Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology. Critical studies in the history of anthropology series, vol. 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1710-2. OCLC 44502297. 

Kroeber, Theodora (1970). Alfred Kroeber; A Personal Configuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03720-0. OCLC 6202748. 

Wolf, Eric R. (2004). "Alfred L. Kroeber". in Sydel Silverman (ed.). Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology (2nd edition ed.). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. pp. 27–50. ISBN 0-7591-0459-X. OCLC 52373442. 

External links

• Sex in Natural History (talk at UC Berkeley, 1956) (online audio recording)
• American Ethnography -- Kroeber's obituary, written by Julian H. Steward

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