George W. Gill
Encyclopedia
George W. Gill is an American anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wyoming
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...

 and is "widely recognized as an expert in skeletal biology".

Easter Island

Gill has researched human osteology
Osteology
Osteology is the scientific study of bones. A subdiscipline of anatomy, anthropology, and archeology, osteology is a detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, morphology, function, disease, pathology, the process of ossification , the resistance and hardness of bones , etc...

 on the Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

n island and Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an territory of Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

, and in 1981 led the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...

's Easter Island Anthropological Expedition. Materials that he has gathered form part of the osteological collection of Chile's national museum. He is collaborating with former students on a book about the island, which will aim to "explain the origins of the people and the decline of their ancient advanced culture".

Kennewick Man

Gill has studied Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man is the name for the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, USA, on July 28, 1996...

, the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found near Kennewick
Kennewick, Washington
Kennewick is a city in Benton County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Washington, near the Hanford nuclear site. It is the most populous of the three cities collectively referred to as the Tri-Cities...

 in the U.S. state of Washington. Gill was among the scientists who successfully sued the United States in order to gain access to the remains, which had been claimed by the Umatilla
Umatilla (tribe)
The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American group living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States....

 and other American Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 tribes under a contested interpretation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act , Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law passed on 16 November 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American "cultural items" to...

.

Race

In the late 1980s, partly in response to demands from American forensic anthropology
Forensic anthropology
Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology and human osteology in a legal setting, most often in criminal cases where the victim's remains are in the advanced stages of decomposition. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased...

 organizations to scrutinize methods of racial identification in order to ensure accuracy in legal cases, Gill tested, supported, and developed craniofacial anthropometric and other means of estimating the racial origins of skeletal remains. He found that the employment of multiple criteria can yield very high rates of accuracy, and even that individual methods can be accurate more than 80 percent of the time.

Gill cites these findings in arguing against the prevailing tendency among American anthropologists to treat human races as social constructs. Gill suggests that "race denial" can stem from overstatements of the importance of clinal
Cline (population genetics)
In biology, an ecocline or simply cline describes an ecotone in which a series of biocommunities display continuous gradient...

 variation among human phenotype
Phenotype
A phenotype is an organism's observable characteristics or traits: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior...

s, and from "politically motivated censorship" in the mistaken but "politically correct"
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...

 belief that "race promotes racism". Gill argues that "we can often function within systems that we do not believe in": Categories can have practical utility, even if they also seem conceptually problematic.

Gill served on a NOVA
NOVA (TV series)
Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...

-sponsored panel in which he and five others debated the reality of race. Among Gill's opponents was American anthropologist C. Loring Brace
C. Loring Brace
C. Loring Brace is an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. He considers the attempt "to introduce a Darwinian outlook into biological anthropology" to be his greatest contribution to the field of anthropology.-Life and work:...

—a fellow plaintiff in the Kennewick Man case—who maintains that the term "race" is not warranted by "a biological entity".
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