Turning "Crisis" into Opportunity: Rediscovering and Reconnecting with a Colonial Era California Collection

Summary

In the late 19th century museum collectors recovered an abundance of cultural materials from the Channel Islands and dispersed them to national museums. Although they recorded important ethnological observations, their practices were often not in the best interests of native peoples or even academics. Many of the artifacts were stored without provenience information and in many ways disregarded.

However, the unique preservation of legacy collections provides an excellent opportunity to recover valuable information without filling more valuable space on repository shelves. Institutions such as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are supporting research of such collections. Current research on the Schumacher Collection aims to rediscover the material practices of the Tongva people on Catalina Island. Many of the artifacts embody how the Tongva were integrating local and non-local materials as new people were arriving on California shores. Although these artifacts were originally removed from their community, they now offer a fresh chance for archaeologists to help reconnect native peoples with the brilliant traditions of their ancestors.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Crisis and Opportunity: Legacy Collections and Archaeological Research in the 21st Century

Keywords

Spatial Coverage