Museums Are Repositories of Knowledge: Using Museum Collections to Recontextualize Culture Contact and Colonial Entanglements in the Pacific Northwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Museum assemblages enable and support conservation archaeologies by facilitating comprehensive and multifaceted studies that consider large study areas, time depth, and multiple artifact types. Museums can also work to facilitate ethical research practices by supporting conversation and collaboration between researchers and descendant communities. However, assemblages must be examined critically, acknowledging the colonial beginnings of many current collections. My research focuses on the specific ways that Indigenous populations on the Northwest Coast used copper to create a range of artifacts, and how these traditional practices changed through the fur trade and the colonial period spanning from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Prior to contact, Indigenous copper resources in the region are thought to have largely been restricted to local sources such as native and drift metals. Examining the ways in which the metal was chosen and worked, and studying the objects created once European material was introduced into Indigenous repertoires, allows for critical discussions regarding how Indigenous populations navigated this period of upheaval. This research has required access to a plethora of artifacts housed at several museums around the world and was only possible through collaboration with these repositories for archaeological and historic material and knowledge.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32562