George W. Gill is an American anthropologist, and a

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

at the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

who specializes in skeletal biology.

Career

In the late 1980s, partly in response to demands from American

forensic anthropology Forensic anthropology is the application of the anatomical science of anthropology and its various subfields, including forensic archaeology and forensic taphonomy, in a legal setting. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification ...

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 scientific consensus to treat human races as social constructs. Gill suggests that "race denial" can stem from overstatements of the importance of clinal variation among human

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological pr ...

s, and from "politically motivated censorship" in the mistaken but "politically correct" 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''-sponsored panel in which he and five others debated the reality of race. Among Gill's opponents was American anthropologist

C. Loring Brace Charles Loring Brace IV (December 19, 1930 – September 7, 2019) was an American anthropologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan's Department of Anthropology and Curator Emeritus at the University's Museum of Anthropological Arc ...

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

Easter Island

Gill has researched human osteology on the

Polynesia Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of ...

n island and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an territory of

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its ne ...

, and in 1981 led the

National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, an ...

'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 and Ancient One are the names generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. It is one of the most complete ancient ...

, the skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found near

Kennewick Kennewick () is a city in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located along the southwest bank of the Columbia River, just southeast of the confluence of the Columbia and Yakima rivers and across from the confluence of the C ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. 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 and other American Indian tribes under a contested interpretation of the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act requires federal agencies and institutions tha ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gill, George W. American anthropologists Living people Forensic anthropologists University of Wyoming faculty Year of birth missing (living people)