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Thomas S. Abler

Thomas Abler

Click on the picture above to view a 2.8 MB Quicktime video, with audio, of Dr. Abler describing some of his research

Thomas S. Abler, Professor, received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1969, having earned a B.A. in anthropology from Northwestern in 1963 and an M.S. in anthropology (museology specialization) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1965. His research interests involve historical aspects of socio-political organization of the Native Peoples of North America, including warfare (also war ritual), factionalism, kinship, and mythology.

Contact Information

He can be contacted via email: tsabler@uwaterloo.ca

 

The following are recent publications by Dr. Abler

Books

2007 - Cornplanter: Chief Warrior of the Allegany Senecas.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. 224 pp.  http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2007/cornplanter.html

2005 - Chainbreaker: The Revolutionary War Memoirs of Governor Blacksnake. Paperback edition with a new preface by the editor [original publication 1989]. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 306 pp.  http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bookinfo/4821.html

1999 - Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic Uniforms. Oxford: Berg. 200 pp.  publisher's book page

 

Book Chapters and Journal Articles

2010 - Anthony Wallace (1925 -  ). Fifty Key Anthropologists. Robert Gordon, Andrew P. Lyons, and Harriet Lyons, eds. London: Routledge. pp. 244-250.

 

2010 - Uniforms as Work Dress for Civilians and Military. Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion. Volume 3: United States and Canada. Joanne B. Eicher, Editor-in-Chief. Phyllis G. Tortora, vol. ed. Oxford: Berg. pp. 308-315.

 

2008 - [with George Hamell and Arthur Einhorn] Guy Johnson, Benjamin West, and Cohoes Falls: Issues of (Mis)Identification. New York History 89: 190-203.

2006 - Upstream from Old Coldspring: William N. Fenton and the Investigation of Seneca Culture in Time.  Northeast Anthropology 71: 1-8.

2006 - A Mi'kmaq Missionary among the Mohawks: Silas T. Rand and His Attitudes toward Race and "Progress".  With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian & Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada.  Celia Haig-Brown and David A. Nock, eds.  Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 72-86.

2004 - Seneca Moieties and Hereditary Chieftainships: The Early Nineteenth Century Political Organization of a Multi-reservation Community. Ethnohistory 51(3):459-488.

2004 - [with Barbara W. Lex] Iroquois. Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember, eds. New York: Lluwer Academic/Plenum. pp. 743-754.

2000 - Iroquois Policy and Iroquois Culture: Two Histories and an Anthropological Ethnohistory. Ethnohistory 47:483-91.

1999 - [with Joy Bilharz] L’héritage de Kinzua: La reconquête du pouvoir chez les femmes sénécas. Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 29 (2): 51-62.

1999 - Brant, Joseph; Cornplanter; Guyasuta; Red Jacket; Rickard, Clinton; Skenandoa. American National Biography. New York: American Council of Learned Societies and Oxford University Press.

1998 - Glooscap Encounters Silas T. Rand: A Baptist Missionary on the Folkloric Frontier. Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory. David T. McNab, ed. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 127-141.

1998 - [with Arthur Einhorn] Tattooed Bodies and Severed Auricles: Images of Native American Body Modification in the Art of Benjamin West. American Indian Art Magazine 23 (4):42-53, 116-117.

1998 - Introduction. Red Jacket: Seneca Chief by Arthur Caswell Parker. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. ix-xix.

1997 - Iroquois: The War Kettle and the Tree of Peace. Portraits of Culture: Ethnographic Originals, Volume 1: North America. Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, and David Levinson, eds. Eaglewood Cliff: Prentice-Hall, pp. 1-34.

1996 - [with Arthur Einhorn] Bonnets, Plumes, and Headbands in West's Paintings of Penn's Treaty. American Indian Art Magazine 21 (3):44-53.

1992 - Beavers and Muskets: Iroquois Military Fortunes in the Face of European Colonization. War in the Tribal Zone: The Impact of Expanding States on Indigenous Warfare. R. Brian Ferguson and Neil Whitehead, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research. pp. 151-174.

1992 - Protestant Missionaries and Native Culture: Parallel Careers of Asher Wright and Silas T. Rand. American Indian Quarterly 16:25-37.

1992 - Scalping, Torture, Cannibalism and Rape: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Conflicting Cultural Values in War. Anthropologica 34:3-20.

1991 - [with Anne L. Moulton] Lithic Beings and Lithic Technology: References from Northern Iroquoian Mythology. Man in the Northeast 42:1-7.

1991 - Aggregation and Aggression: The State of War in Anthropological Thought. Reviews in Anthropology 17:285-294.

1990 - Micmacs and Gypsies: Occupation of the Peripatetic Niche. Papers of the Twenty-first Algonquian Conference. W. Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University. pp. 1-11.

1988 - [with Michael H. Logan] The Florescence and Demise of Iroquoian Cannibalism: Human Sacrifice and Malinowski's hypothesis. Man in the Northeast No. 35:1-26.