Excavating the Museum: New Research on Old Collections
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
Most anthropology or natural history museums have hidden treasures in their collections, materials collected but not published or inadequately published. Many of these collections have never been completely analyzed or described or been used to address in-depth research questions. These overlooked artifacts, many of which date to the early years of our profession, warrant reexamination using current theoretical approaches and research methods. In this symposium, presenters working with older archaeological research collections of textiles, baskets, footwear, cordage, and other perishable artifacts, as well as more durable materials, discuss their new findings and interpretations of these long-forgotten resources.
Other Keywords
Conservation •
Museum Collections •
Perishables •
Aztec •
Earl Morris •
Aztec Ruins •
Museum •
Basketry •
Textiles •
Description
Geographic Keywords
North America - Southwest •
South America •
Mesoamerica •
Europe •
North America - NW Coast/Alaska •
North America - Southeast
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-16 of 16)
- Documents (16)
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Aztec Imperial Strategies in Guerrero, Mexico: Evaluating the Greengo Collection from the Burke Museum, Seattle (2016)
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Aztec presence in Guerrero, Mexico is documented ethnohistorically, but archaeological work can be difficult to undertake in this volatile region. The Triple Alliance provinces in Guerrero served as important sources of tribute, but also as buffers against the hostile Purépecha regime to the west. Though Aztec imperial strategies varied in different provinces, tribute policies in Tepecoacuilco were thought to have facilitated intensification of production and reorganization of economic...
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Buried Museum Textiles from the Prehistoric Americas (2016)
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The Arizona Museum of Natural History (AzMNH) has previously unexplored perishable materials, including fifteen textile fragments of Peruvian, Mexican, and Southwestern origin. I present the results of a technological analysis and description of the manufacture of these fragmentary remains. Although this is a small sample for statistical research, it is sufficient for descriptive purposes. As these textiles have not received prior exposure, they should be described and presented. Taken together...
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Discovering Plies in Back and Then, Just About Everywhere: Perishable Artifact Studies from the Eastern U.S. Beginning with Tennessee (2016)
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The Tennessee State Museum has several collections of perishable artifacts from dry rock shelters and caves on the Cumberland Plateau containing varieties of cordage, basketry, textiles, footwear, worked hide, wood, feathers and other items that appear to date between the Archaic and Mississippian periods. Preliminary analyses explore the origin, distribution, and fusion of styles that became the enduring traditions of the indigenous peoples of the American Southeast. Ethnographic and...
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Fifty-year-old boxes illuminate the Middle Horizon in Ica, Peru: Textile conservation and new research opportunities (2016)
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As part of a Practicum in Analysis and Conservation of Organic and Textile Artifacts, class participants worked with materials recovered in salvage excavations between 1955 and 1975, which form part of the collections at the Museo Regional de Ica “Adolfo Bermudez Jenkins.” We carried out documentation and preliminary interventions to improve preservation of textiles from a mortuary context, as well as miscellaneous artifacts with unknown provenience, diverse in materials and techniques. Here we...
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Forgotten but Not Gone: Restoring the Research Potential of Older Perishable Artifact Collections from Southeastern Utah (2016)
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During the 1890s, more than 4000 well-preserved textiles, baskets, wooden implements, hide and feather artifacts, and other organic materials were excavated by local “cowboy” archaeologists from Basketmaker and Pueblo-period archaeological sites in the greater Cedar Mesa area of southeastern Utah. Most of these artifacts were shipped to museums outside of the Southwest, where they were largely forgotten by archaeologists and the public. In 2010, the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project was born to...
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Funerary Bundles from the Storeroom: Conservation Choices and Research Opportunities in Alejandro Pezzia’s Salvage Collections. (2016)
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Until recently, most textile collections from Peru’s Middle Horizon were the product of looting operations. Fine tunics and headdress elements abound in museum collections, but their relationship to a deceased individual and full textile assemblage is unknown. As a result, items classified as “Wari” have been disconnected from the complex social identities and relationships that they once influenced in life, or reconfigured after death. Several mortuary contexts with unknown provenience have...
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Gone but not forgotten: Perishable artifacts from Aztec Ruins (NM) preserved in photographs, 1916-1923. (2016)
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When excavated 100 years ago, many of the perishable items found at Aztec Ruins did not long survive the process. Fortunately, chief archaeologist Earl Morris was an avid shutterbug and modern researchers are treated to dozens of curated photos of in situ perishable objects that include architectural features, basketry, fibers, etc. When (re-)placed into context with other archaeological data, these items are helping to tell new stories about Aztec Ruins.
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Marriage Patterns and Material Culture: A Pueblo/Fremont Test Case Using Basketry (2016)
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At various times, archaeologists have proposed that the Great Basin Fremont, who lived in Utah and nearby areas between AD 500 and 1250, were Pueblo colonists, a purely indigenous Great Basin development, intrusive Athabaskans, or something in between. Fremont material culture is generally not very different from that of their neighbors, except in a few cases. Four artifact categories distinguish the Fremont: rock art and pottery depictions of trapezoidal figures; grey coiled-construction...
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Mesoamerican Grooved Curved Sticks: Short Swords, Fending Sticks, or Other Purpose? (2016)
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Curved sticks with longitudinal facial grooves were dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá at the start of the 1900s. They are also depicted in art there and at other sites such as Tula. These artifacts are similar to specimens recovered from various sites throughout the North American Southwest, where one suggested function was for defense against atlatl darts. Accepting this speculative account, Mesoamerican archaeologists have identified these artifacts as fending sticks. Starting in...
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The Orphaned Archaeological Collections and its Place in the Modern Museum: A Case Study from Tell Hadidi, Syria (2016)
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Destruction of ancient sites along the Euphrates River in Northern Syria due to the construction of the Tabqa Dam and the formation of Lake Assad led to salvage excavations conducted between 1974 and 1978 by the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) at the site of Tell Hadidi, Syria, under the direction of Dr. Rudolph Dornemann. The 300,000 artifacts collected by the project are now housed at the MPM but this material has never been completely published. In 1991, with the retirement of Dr. Dornemann,...
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Parallel Analysis of Ancient Human mtDNA Sequences and Radiocarbon Ages of Quids from the Mule Springs Rockshelter, Nevada, USA (2016)
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Ancient DNA research is revealing unprecedented information about past human migrations and residency. During the late Holocene people exploited food and material resources near Mule Spring Rockshelter in the Spring Mountains of Southern Nevada. In the 1960s hundreds of chewed plant remains (quids) were recovered from the shelter deposits. To better constrain patterns of human residency, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was extracted and partially sequenced from twenty representative quids that have...
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Plant Fibre Diagnostics: Retrospect and Prospect (2016)
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Here I review ethnographic studies of hunter-gatherer groups from North America, Siberia, and Scandinavia to examine plant-fibre material cultural heritage and natural husbandry practiced by these societies. This study considers plant-fibre textiles and their diagnostic differential typology to aid understanding of plant fibre processing and utilization and attendant diagnostic features. The poor preservation of European plant-fibre directs diagnostic trials to modern reference material and...
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Poorly Provenienced Perishables at the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum: New Directions for Old Utah Collections (2016)
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The Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah contains an impressive collection of textiles and other perishable artifacts from Eastern Utah. Many of these artifacts were donated by private individuals early in the museum’s history and have very limited information on their discovery and provenience. Despite these limitations, these items can become much more than striking art objects displayed to the public. Recent efforts have focused on expanding the useful data...
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Re-Awakening a 2,000 Year Old Salish Sea Basketry Tradition: Master Salish Basketmaker and Wet Site Archaeologist Explore 100 Generations of Cultural Knowledge (2016)
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I often invited Ed Carriere, Suquamish Master Basketmaker and Elder, to help us recover 700 year old cedar bough pack baskets while excavating the Qwu?gwes wet/waterlogged site, Olympia, Washington. He is the last known Salish Sea weaver still making these cedar clam baskets. While preparing to analyze 2,000 year old Biderbost wet site pack baskets at the U.W. Burke Museum in Seattle, I called Ed and suggested he try to replicate these baskets, fully 100 generations back through his line of...
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Revealing Pre-Columbian Bundles: Collaborative Student-Faculty Research at the Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit College (2016)
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Recent research at the Logan Museum of Anthropology combines student and faculty expertise with archaeometric methods to reveal new information about coastal pre-Columbian Andean collections brought to the museum in the early- to mid-twentieth century. With student collaborators we scanned a possible “bird mummy” with computed tomography to reveal that there was no avian body but rather a complex suite of offerings within its cloth wrapping. They included maize cobs, shell, and other materials....
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Wrinkle-free Clothing: Conservation and Rehousing of Prehistoric Cotton Textiles from Navajo, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki National Monuments, Arizona (2016)
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In 2014 the Flagstaff Area National Monuments received funding to conserve and re-house more than 300 non-burial related prehistoric cotton textiles from Navajo, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki National Monuments housed at the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA). The textiles were woven in the 1100s A.D. and range from expediently constructed objects to technologically complex clothing with dyes. These prehistoric remnants of cloth were excavated by archaeologists in the 1930s and 1960s, and many...