Dian Fossey, Pioneering Primatologist

Figure 1: Digit (left) and Dian Fossey (right) [Source: National Geographic]

 

Dian Fossey was born in 1932, and while she loved animals, she never grew up dreaming about saving and preserving mountain gorilla populations throughout Africa.  It was actually a series of random events that led her to eventually become a pioneering primatologist and the principal individual credited with changing public perception of gorillas.  This blog post will discuss Dian Fossey’s story and journey.

 

Dian Fossey grew up with her mother and step-father in San Francisco, California.  She always showed an interest in animals, taking up and mastering riding at an early age, but she ultimately opted to pursue a business degree, taking after her step-father.  Between her first and second year of college, however, she took a job at a ranch, which changed her course of study as it reignited her passion in studying and working with animals.  She returned to school with every intention of focusing on pre-veterinary studies, but when she found some of the curriculum challenging, she settled on a degree in occupational therapy.  This helped her land a job at a children’s hospital in Kentucky.  While she enjoyed her work she was once again drawn back to her first passion, animals, as she lived in the countryside and interacted regularly with farm animals.  Her passions reached a head in the early 1960s when a friend returned from a trip to Africa and regaled her with tales of their adventures.  This lit a fire within Dian Fossey that caused her to take a bank loan in 1963 so she could travel to and throughout Africa. 

 

This is where her journey to studying and interacting with gorillas started to take seed.  While traveling throughout the continent she met with Dr. Louis Leakey, while he was working in the Olduvai Gorge.  He spoke about his work with Jane Goodall, who was beginning her pioneering work with chimpanzees, and he encouraged her to pursue work with another group of primates he was interested in learning more about: gorillas.  On Leakey’s advice she traveled to Uganda, where she met with several early gorilla conservationists, and she got her first peak and interactions with gorillas at that time.  She took many photographs and notes before returning to the United States, vowing to return to continue her work.

 

The gap between her initial trip to Africa and her return allowed her to complete a lot of preliminary work that eventually set her up for that return.  She worked to pay off her bank loan debt, but she also composed a series of short articles and published her photographs.  She eventually met up with Leakey again when he visited a local university in Kentucky, and she used the opportunity to show him her work.  He was so impressed that he invited her to join his latest research project, which focused on gorillas. 

 

This allowed her to return to Africa, where she began her first sets of studies.  She based her methods on those previously created by primatologist, George Schaller, which successfully allowed her to habituate with the gorillas.  She also expanded these methods in that she mimicked the gorillas’ behavioral patterns, such as knuckle walking and chewing on local vegetation, in order to gain their trust.  She also drew upon Goodall’s work in that she named the gorillas and recorded their behaviors and personalities.

 

Eventually, she was forced to leave her original research site due to political strife and she continued her work in Rwanda.  She teamed up with several individuals, including Rosamond Carr and Alyette DeMunck, who aided her in initial research and eventually with her conservation efforts.  It was also during this time she earned her PhD in Zoology, thereby earning the credentials required to really publicize and legitimize her work.  As a result she gained the attention of the National Geographic, which publicly published stories about her and the gorillas.  This drew positive attention toward gorillas, as well as turned the public perception away from gorillas being violent creatures to gentle giants who had many human characteristics.  This aided Fossey and other conservationists to raise money to help conserve and preserve gorilla populations and their habitats. 

 

Fossey felt that these efforts were misaligned as she believed a more militaristic and direct approach was necessary.  Fossey was known for direct confrontations with poachers, which often included violence and other questionable behaviors.  She felt strongly that this was the best approach in abolishing poaching and saving gorillas, and her behaviors were further galvanized when a gorilla she named Digit (Figure 1) was killed by poachers while he was attempting to protect his troop.  Fossey’s story about what happened to Digit and other gorillas further raised awareness for the cause, and she used the money to begin the Digit Fund, which is currently known as the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. 

 

Fossey took a break from direct research with gorillas in 1980.  She took a visiting assistant professor position at Cornell University, as well as took the time to publish her book, “Gorillas in the Mist”.  This book was later turned into a film, which documented Fossey’s life and studies of the gorillas she worked with throughout Africa.  She returned to Rwanda in 1985 and less than a year later she was murdered at her camp.  It is unclear who murdered her or why she was murdered, but it is speculated that it could have been any number of individuals since her aggressive tactics against poachers gained her numerous enemies. 

 

Ultimately, her work and subsequent death initiated a series of efforts that have successfully managed to preserve gorilla populations throughout Africa.  While gorillas remain critically endangered according to many conservation groups their populations have not drastically declined since Fossey’s death, a result she did not see happening.  Despite her questionable tactics she was effective in staving off gorilla extinction.

 

References

Hogenboom, M. (2015, December 26). The Woman Who Gave Her Life to Save the Gorillas. BBC.

No Author. (2020). Dian Fossey Biography. Retrieved from The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International: https://gorillafund.org/who-we-are/dian-fossey/dian-fossey-bio/

The Gorilla Organization. (n.d.). Dian Fossey. Retrieved from The Gorilla Organization: https://www.gorillas.org/about-gorilla/dian-fossey/

 

What is Ethnography?

Cultural anthropologists are responsible for studying contemporary human groups as they currently or most recently existed.  The direct interaction with humans allows for cultural anthropologists to ask and answer questions concerning culture, specifically what it is, what it is not, and how it affect human thoughts and behaviors.  As previously discussed cultural anthropologists go about studying humans and learning about culture through various methods, but the end product is typically the same: the production of an ethnography.  Today’s blog post will address what ethnography is and why they are so important.

 

The term ethnography is best defined as a record of a culture or aspect of culture produced through in-depth study, typically using the participant-observation method, interviews, or both, by a social scientist.  Ethnographic field methods allow for direct, in depth study of modern human groups, thereby leading to the production of data that can be used to understand the similarities and differences among human cultural groups.  These data also allow for the study past and unavailable human groups among biological anthropologists and archaeologists seeking to understand human behavior.  Ultimately, ethnographies offer information into what specific behaviors are inherently human.

 

Ethnographies are descriptive and interpretative in nature-they describe the culture or aspect of culture being studied, as well as provide interpretations for how and why the behaviors exist and persist.  Classic ethnographies focused on the “anthropology of the other”, meaning cultural anthropologists would study cultures and people outside of their own culture to learn about a different cultural group (e.g. the Azande or Basseri).  Today, ethnographies can and are completed among one’s own culture, typically understanding a specific subcultural group (e.g. goths) or aspect of cultural behavior (e.g. the Shaking Tent ceremony of the Ojibwa).  This switch to the study of one's own culture has been adopted by various organizations, institutions, and businesses since it allows for the in depth study of people, problems, and potential solutions.  One of the key requirements of ethnographies is to show the cultural group’s view points (known as the emic perspective), while also including the outsider’s interpretations (etic perspective). 

 

Ethnographies are typically the end product of sociocultural anthropological research and detail the whole of the sociocultural research.  Traditionally, ethnographies were exclusively large, written texts, and many still are.  Ethnographies, however, have undergone their own evolution, and a variety of ethnographic films (such as those produced by Sam Dunn), comics, photography, or art are now available to both anthropologists and the general public.  The paramount goal of ethnographies is to detail and share information about culture and cultural groups, so making them more accessible only aids in providing greater access to the cultural information.

 

Works Cited

Ethnographic Research Center, National Park Service. What is Ethnographic Research? N.D. Electronic. 26 March 2021.

Royal Anthropological Institute. Ethnography. 2021. Electronic. 26 March 2021.

Welsch, Robert, Luis Vivanco and Agustín and Fuentes. Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture. . Oxford University Press, 2016. Document.

 

 

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Holly Martelle, Founder and Principal Archaeologist of Timmins-Martelle Heritage Consultants, Inc.

 

Holly Martelle (Image Source: Martelle)

Today’s blog post will feature another applied anthropologist, Dr. Holly Martelle, one of the founders and current Principal Archaeologist of Timmins-Martelle Heritage Consultants, Inc. (TMHC), a cultural resource management firm in Ontario, Canada.  Martelle’s journey to founding TMHC was the culmination of years of educational, research, and professional experience.  These experiences provided her the background to found TMHC, as well as establish her as one of the leading archaeologists in the region.  This blog post will provide you with additional information into her educational and professional pursuits, along with her advice for aspiring professional archaeologists.

Holly Martelle pursued her undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.  When she began her anthropological studies it was predicted that there would be a need for professional archaeologists throughout the province as employed archaeologists aged out and retired.  Those who would fill these open positions would need significant amounts of experience, training, and certifications, which meant graduate work.  Although this prediction did not turn out quite as predicted Martelle committed herself to her studies, absorbing all she could from her professors at both the undergraduate and graduate level.  This persistence paid off as she was eventually employed in various archaeological capacities, including as a Heritage Planner for the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport (a position similar to what Karyn de Dufour does in Nevada). 

During her educational pursuits, particularly while conducting her doctoral research at the University of Toronto, Marcelle dedicated herself to providing a voice to those who were never prominently featured (if at all) in historical spheres.  This included groups such as women, immigrants, African-Canadians, the working class, and Indigenous populations.  She felt compelled not only to study these groups in the past but work with their descendant and Indigenous populations to help her better understand what she was discovering and researching through her archaeological work.  Her approach was ahead of its time as today it is rapidly becoming more common to work with these groups in archaeological research.  Martelle notes that by incorporating multiple voices and perspectives into archaeological interpretation a richer and more accurate result is produced.

It was a combination of her professional experiences and research interests that led to her cofounding TMHC in 2003, with partner Dr. Peter Timmins.  TMHC has and continues to work closely with Indigenous populations whenever their archaeological work intersects with their history and identity.  This is just one of many reasons why the firm received the Ontario Archaeological Society’s award for Excellence in Cultural Resource Management the same year it was founded.

Martelle encourages those interested in pursuing careers in archaeology to always be open to learning-be it in a classroom or during fieldwork.  The field of archaeology is always changing and growing, so keeping up with the latest methods and theoretical approaches is key to staying employable.  She also urges novice archaeologists to listen to established archaeologists.  Their knowledge and experience is a great source of information and optimal educational opportunity, not just about how to pursue fieldwork but how the field has changed and continues to evolve over time.

 

Bibliography

Museum of Ontario Archaeology. (2019, March 7). For International Women’s Day, MOA is celebrating women in archaeology! . Retrieved from Museum of Ontario Archaeology: https://archaeologymuseum.ca/for-international-womens-day-moa-is-celebrating-women-in-archaeology/

No Author. (2021). Holly Martelle, PhD - Principal Archaeologist - Heritage Planner. Retrieved from Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants: https://tmhc.ca/people/principals/martelle#main_begins