such as various labyrinths, ladders, and game boards, may 

 relate to the progress of a human soul toward an afterlife or 

 rebirth. Those, too, may reflect an extension of genealogi- 

 cal thinking, for the afterlife is often regarded as the realm 

 ot the ancestors. 



Ai 



nthropologists have 

 been burned so often 

 by such ambitious attempts 

 to draw far-flung connec- 

 tions that students are 

 trained to be leery of them, 

 to say the least. A symbol can 

 mean different things at dif- 

 ferent times and places. Its 

 meaning can even change 

 within one culture in the pres- 

 ence of other symbols, just as a word's 

 meaning can shift from sentence to sen- 

 tence. Any enthusiast who chooses a 

 simple design, assigns it a single mean- 

 ing, then bestows that meaning on all 

 similar designs, is more likely to be 

 ridiculed than respected. A person who 

 bases a theory on bits and pieces from 

 different cultures becomes the anthro- 

 pological equivalent of Victor Franken- 

 stein, assembling a monster by taking an 

 arm from here, an ear from there. 



When Schuster juxtaposed recent and 

 ancient motifs, then assigned to them a 

 common explanation, what made him 

 any different from the many "nut cases" 

 who lurk along the fringes of anthropol- 

 ogy? That was my initial reaction. I resist- 

 ed his comparisons. But what I couldn't 

 resist was the evidence. Gradually I yield- 

 ed. We corresponded for ten years after our 

 first encounter, and met wherever our paths 

 crossed. I was with him when he died in 

 1969. He despaired that his life's work would 

 be lost. I offered to see it to completion. 



orn to a prosperous Milwaukee fami- 

 'ly in 1904, Carl Schuster attended 

 Phillips Exeter Academy and earned bache- 

 lor's and master's degrees from Harvard University. The fain- 

 German astrological diagram from the late Middle Ages (right) por- 

 trays a figure divided into male and female halves, possibly conserving 

 a tribal genealogical motif. The representation is overlain with addi- 

 tional, contemporary meaning. The twelve signs of the zodiac are dis- 

 tributed around the central figure, and a line across the navel further 

 subdivides the figure into four parts, each associated with one of the 

 four temperaments ascribed to the "humors" of the body: black bile, 

 blood, phlegm, and yellow bile. 



ily fortune va- 

 porized in 1929, 

 however, and the 

 young Carl moved 

 to China on a Harvard- 

 Yenching Institute fel- 

 lowship, where he studied 

 Chinese language and began to 

 collect folk textiles. From 

 1 933 until 1 934 he studied at 

 the University of Vienna, re- 

 ceiving a doctorate in art his- 

 tory with a dissertation on Chi- 

 nese peasant embroideries. He 

 then returned to China, trav- 

 eling extensively and mostly 

 on foot, photographing de- 

 signs wherever he went. 



Nothing diverted him. 

 He lived an almost ascetic 

 life. In rural areas, he could 

 readily satisfy hunger with a 

 heaping bowl of fresh rice, 

 which cost one cent. He nev- 

 er raised his camera to record 

 Mao's Long March, though 

 he witnessed it. Detained by 

 Japanese soldiers in rural China, he recorded the event mere- 

 ly to explain why certain notes and negatives were missing. 

 He literally walked through famine, revolution, and war. 



Back in America during the Second World Wir, Schus- 

 ter worked briefly as a cryptanalyst for the Office of Strate- 



FlXGi^AT SANGVIN 



/WW 



, 7AEJLA-NC 



COUfiRJC 



May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 



43 



