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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. I 



University, secretary to serve five years; and 

 Professor E. S. Woodworth, Columbia University, 

 member of tlie sectional committee to serve five 

 years. 



The question of a cliange of name from Section 

 H, Anthropology and Psychology, to read ' ' Sec- 

 tion H, Anthropology," raised at the Washington 

 meeting came up for discussion, and the sectional 

 committee recommended that the name remain 

 unchanged for the present. 



ADDRESSES AND PAPERS 



The address of the retiring vice-president of 

 Section H, Professor Greorge Trumbull Ladd, on 

 ' ' The Study of Man, ' ' is printed in this issue of 

 Science. In the absence of President John A. 

 Lomax, of the American Folk-Lore Society, his 

 address on ' ' Stories of an African Prince ' ' vras 

 read by Dr. Charles Peabody. Some of the impor- 

 tant papers read at the joint meeting are repre- 

 sented in this report by abstracts : 



The Ceremonial Schemes of Certain Plains Indian 



Tribes: Clark Wissler. 



Anthropology being essentially a science of cul- 

 ture, one of its necessary concerns is the distribu- 

 tion of cultural traits. In the distribution of 

 such traits we have a complex problem, one of the 

 first steps in whose solution is the description of 

 each culture as found. The next and most inter- 

 esting step is a comparative examination of these 

 cultures. Were cultural traits all objective, this 

 would be fairly simple, as is the case in many 

 aspects of material culture; but many important 

 traits are not very objective, especially those of a 

 religious, ethical and social nature. When we 

 come to compare religious conceptions of certain 

 Plains tribes, we find a peculiar difficulty. First 

 we are struck by the apparent absolute differences 

 and the absence of all exact parallels. On closer 

 inspection, however, we do find many units or 

 subordinate traits that are exact parallels. It 

 became necessary therefore to develop methods of 

 handling this comparative problem. 



It was noted that some tribes seem to have 

 definite ceremonial schemes. The particular 

 schemes for the Dakota, Blackfoot and Menominee 

 were outlined and characterized as general pat- 

 terns according to which almost every ceremonial 

 was fashioned. The inference here is that if a 

 tribe should take over a new ceremony the tend- 

 ency would be to work it over into the tribal pat- 

 tern. Examples of such making over of borrowed 

 ceremonies were cited. The suggestion then is 



that in the comparative study of these tribal cere- 

 monies allowance must be made for the deliberate 

 change of pattern and evidences of contact sought 

 in parallel units of a more detailed character. 

 Notes on Eastern Sioux Dances: Robert H. Lowie, 

 The Santee, Wahpeton and Sisseton, though dif' 

 fering somewhat among themselves, shared a num 

 ber of dances with the Plains tribes to the west 

 where these dances are usually practised by mill 

 tary societies. Among the Eastern Sioux, however, 

 it is exceedingly difficult to determine whether the 

 dances are performed by definite organizations or 

 merely by a congregation of membership varying 

 from dance to dance. The idea is prominent that 

 some one individual, who has had a corresponding 

 vision, must see to the performance of his par- 

 ticular dance, on pain of being struck by lightning 

 if he failed. 



Plate Armor in America, a Sinological Contribu- 

 tion to an American Problem: Berthold 

 Ladfer. 



The paper is chiefly intended as a contribution 

 to the much-ventilated question of historical 

 methods applied to ethnology. Plate armor in 

 northwestern America and northeastern Asia was 

 hitherto believed to be due to contact with Japan, 

 and interpreted as having been made in imitation 

 of iron plate armor. From two important pas- 

 sages occurring in the Chinese Annals it becomes 

 evident that bone plate-armor existed among the 

 Su-shen, a tribe of presumably Tungusian stock, 

 in the first centuries of our era, and the conclusion 

 is reached that such armor can not have been made 

 in imitation of Japanese plate-mail, which did not 

 exist at that time. Also in China, Siberia and 

 Korea, iron armor is not very ancient and develops 

 almost contemporaneously with bone armor, which, 

 however, is older than iron plate armor. It is 

 pointed out that plate armor occurred also in 

 western Asia and other ancient culture-groups, 

 contrary to previous opinions, so that the problem 

 is not truly historical, but rather amounts only 

 to a technical question. The imitation theory, 

 therefore, is highly improbable, and the inde- 

 pendent origin of plate armor in the north Pacific 

 culture-group must be maintained. Japan has 

 never had any influence on the latter nor on 

 American cultures, and American-Asiatic culture 

 relations and exchanges must be studied in the 

 light of the ancient ethnology and archeology of 

 that region — particularly northern Manchuria and 

 Korea — which remains to be reconstructed in the 

 future. 



