Documenting Indigeneity in the Peabody Museum’s Ainu Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Ainu are an indigenous group currently inhabiting the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Traditionally the group practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle incorporating plant cultivation and trade, yet forced assimilation into the Japanese state in 1869 significantly altered this way of life. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University stewards a collection of roughly 300 Ainu artifacts, including clothing, weapons, ritual items, cookware, and photographs. These materials were donated overwhelmingly by a handful of Western collectors from the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, and while they are relatively large in number, they do not constitute a representative survey of Ainu material culture, nor engagement with indigenous concerns. Rather, gaps and repetition in this collection reflect biases of the collectors. By examining these artifacts in conjunction with the Peabody’s accession files, other associated artifact documentation, and the personal papers of these Western collectors, it is possible to explore what motivated them to acquire artifacts: what they viewed as their role in this process, the value judgements they made about the Ainu community, and their goals in making donations to Harvard. The Ainu example provides insight into the popularity and motivations of documenting non-Western cultures during this period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37384.0