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We are therefore treated to numerous examples of American anthropologists pillaging tomb sites, hauling Native American artifacts into museums and generally displaying their brutish prejudices at every turn. True, Thomas also shows us the surpassingly liberal inclinations of a man like Boas while grudgingly admitting that it hasn't been all bad. But in general the men who created American anthropology are viewed as "anthros" -- white supremacists in mortar boards. We are then breezily told that "the American academic community -- led by grave-digging archaeologists -- has robbed the Native American people of their history and their dignity."

Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology and the Battle for Native American Identity By David Hurst Thomas Basic Books, 270 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com

This is, of course, a fairly silly calumny. One wonders if the Egyptians or the Greeks, too, feel that their "history and dignity" have been abnegated by "grave-digging archaeologists"? Now, it is true that the former often wish the return of antiquities plundered by Indiana Jones-style 19th century archaeologists like Luigi Belzoni or the repulsive Lord Elgin. But they also acknowledge that these same early "grave diggers" were creatures of their time and often the very people who lifted ancient cultures out of oblivion.

Whether we like it or not, Egyptology began with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt: Before that, Ancient Egypt had been more or less forgotten. Is Egyptology, therefore, a creation of imperialism? Of course it is. Is it therefore "imperialist" in nature? Hardly. One thing does not necessarily entail the other, and Egyptians themselves have embraced Western scientific Egyptology with passion -- for what else is there? Knowledge is never a pure commodity.

On the other hand, it might be countered that the conquest of the Americas was unique in many ways, and that it has unleashed uniquely painful pathologies and racial distrusts. The Egyptians, one could say, are not a conquered people. (Actually, they are, since the Arabs were imperialists not indigenous to Egypt.) One could also argue that, because Indians have failed to achieve much in the way of tangible concessions from any Western society, their academic champions resort to hit-and-miss intellectual guerrilla war instead.

Nor, for that matter, can one really blame Indians for hating the powerful civilization that overwhelmed them. As Lawrence pointed out, dispossession and extermination do not exactly improve one's mood. What, in any case, is the Indian supposed to feel but distrust? Gratitude for affordable electricity?

But condemning whole intellectual disciplines as a way of "healing" these bitter divides is a cheap gambit as best. In much the same way, Martin Bernal tried this spin on the 19th century classicists in his polemic "Black Athena," crudely trying to represent the massive, groundbreaking scholarship of that era as a conspiracy allied to colonialism. Bernal's amateurish exaggerations, dubious linguistic conjectures and hyperbole eventually cost him dearly when he was painstakingly unravelled by the Wellesley classicist Mary Lefkowitz in her devastating "Not Out of Africa." Modishly insulting a few 19th century scholars, Lefkowitz showed, not only misrepresented many of them but also embarrassingly highlighted Bernal's own grindingly parochial political agenda. Their scholarship, in other words, was largely more professional than his -- but then again, most of Bernal's readers had never read the originals.

There are two critical questions relative to Kennewick Man, however, that Thomas does try to tackle with a minimum of politically correct rhetoric. The first is the possible relation between the ancient Neolithic American Clovis culture that flourished around 7,000-8,000 B.C., and a European equivalent, the Solutrean culture of the Slavic region and the Ukraine. As Thomas acknowledges, there are extraordinary similarities in tool-making technologies between these two cultures, while, surprisingly, none exist between Clovis and the equivalent Neolithics of northeast Asia, where Native Americans are supposed to have originated.

This is an intriguing avenue of speculation and an exciting frontier in North American archaeology, though not one that Native Americans themselves seem to feel very keen about. Surely, one would think, there is room for a reasonable examination of the Kennewick remains in the light of this evolving line of inquiry? Europeans could well have migrated across the subpolar tundra into the Americas or even taken boats.

Thomas seems to agree. But, disappointingly, he devotes little space to this fascinating issue and wafflingly concludes only that ancient America was "the original melting-pot." (Which part of the world was not a "melting pot"?) Why, the reader asks in frustration, are there only three pages about this possible provenance of Kennewick Man (not a certainty by any means, but a viable possibility) -- the same amount as are devoted to squabbles about the name of the Washington Redskins, the American Indian Movement of the '70s, the Boston Tea Party and Indian Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe?

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