Invisible citizen

Catherine Cameron, a CU professor of anthropology who does archaeological study on the pre-historic American Southwest, is researching the transmission of culture from the captives to captors.

She is the editor of a new book, “Invisible Citizens,” which examines cultural transmission from many periods and perspectives. Lenski wrote a chapter about the cultural mingling facilitated by slaveholding of ancient Romans and Germans.

“You think of captives and slaves as being such marginal people that they’d have nothing to contribute. You imagine no master would ever take on the attributes of the slaves,” Cameron says. “But there was much mixing.”

Cameron is careful to note the sometimes-overlapping categories of captives, mostly women and children, and slaves. “They formed an almost invisible stratum in many societies, strangers in strange lands, without kin and largely outside the social systems in which they lived,” Cameron writes.

“Captives were victims of war and oppression, but they were also, often, agents of change.”

Usually, the dominant culture is seen as imposing its traditions on the conquered society. Europeans, for instance, arrived in the Americas, and some subjugated natives adopted the dress, religion and mannerisms of the conquerors. “But we’re now realizing that it’s also going the other way,” Cameron says.

Cameron notes the large body of study of African American contributions to American society. This is an instance of cultural transmission that is not unique. It’s also not a given. Cameron is trying to understand the circumstances under which cultural transmission from captive to captor is more likely.

“One of the factors is the attitude of captor to captive,” Cameron says. Are the captives repulsive or people you could marry? Another factor concerns the kind of work captives do. Are they being forced to work on something they know nothing about or things they’re familiar with?

When captors are less repulsed by captives, cultural transmission is more likely.



Judith Habicht-Mauche, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a contributor to the book “Invisible Citizens,” has observed pottery in the Texas panhandle that originates from people in pueblo areas to the west. She suggests it probably comes from women who were captured elsewhere and held in bondage.

Pottery wasn’t a main technology on the plains, where the dominant industry was buffalo hunting. “Making and using these pots was a handy thing, but maybe the dominant culture wasn’t concerned with how they looked,” Cameron observes. “Partly for that reason, pottery that reflected the captives’ roots could be introduced and survive.”

Captives are often reviled but sometimes have useful skills. One such skill was linguistic. Some women were sold many times, and each time they learned a new language. So they were highly skilled communicators, able to negotiate among different people.

Some of these women become quite powerful, Cameron says. Sacagawaea, a member of the Shoshone tribe, was captured by another tribe, then escaped but forced to marry a Frenchman. Before she turned 20, she knew several languages. So she was invaluable to Lewis and Clark, whose expedition she helped lead.

Sometimes, captives bring exogenous rituals to some regions. In Africa, captive women brought the Muslim religion, Cameron observes. “It’s a common thing to have ideology transferred.”

Cameron explains the genesis of her interest in cultural transmission by captives. She recalls seeing a picture of a white woman captured by Native Americans. She had been tattooed. “I thought, she must have brought cultural things with her.”

“In history and ethnohistory and cultural anthropology, this stuff is known,” Cameron says. But it’s new to archaeology, “and that’s what’s so exciting.”

“My big hope is that this will stimulate other people to look at this as well.”

“In history, there are volumes and volumes on slavery, but very little on captives.”



Cameron notes that the opportunity for cultural transmission from captives to captors can vary. For one thing, people who are much-hated will have less opportunity to transmit traits, she says. “If you detest somebody, you’re not going to say, ‘Oh you made a beautiful piece of cloth.’”

An interest in slaves and captives seems to run in Cameron’s blood. She had a great-aunt in San Francisco who rescued Chinese girls from tongs, immigrant gangs who forced kidnapped girls into prostitution.

Cameron’s aunt was a Presbyterian missionary, “a very proper religious lady,” who dragged girls out of sordid back rooms and to freedom. “So I had this background interest in (slavery).”

Like Cameron, another CU faculty member was drawn to study slavery because of his concern about oppressed people. And like her, he argues that their influence and contributions to the dominant culture have been overlooked.

Previous: Slaves ‘a necessity’
Next: Defying the Greek ideal