CONTEXTSTheAnnual Report of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

Volume 38 Spring 2012

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is Brown University’steaching museum. We inspire creative and critical thinking about cultureby fostering interdisciplinary understanding of the material world.

The museum’s gallery is in Manning Hall, 21 Prospect Street, Providence,Rhode Island, on Brown’s main green. The museum’s Collection ResearchCenter is at 300 Tower Street, Bristol, Rhode Island.

Manning Hall Gallery Hours:Tuesday – Sunday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Haffenreffer Museum of AnthropologyBox 1965Brown UniversityProvidence, RI 02912

brown.edu/Haffenreffer

(401) 253-8388haffenreffermuseum@brown.edu

About the Museum

Front cover: Left top: Quilled moccasins, Oglala Sioux, Rudolf F. Haffenreffer Collection; bottom: Plaster life casts in Facing the Museum exhibition,AmericanMuseum of Natural History transfer. Center: Taoist painting depicting TaiWai the High Constable, Mien, Thailand, Haffenreffer Family Fund purchase.Right top: Narragansett stonewall builders at work outsideManning Hall; bottom: Crafting Origins: Creativity and Continuity in Indigenous Taiwan exhibition.

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A year ago, inmy first director’s note, I proudlypointed to the range of exhibitions the museumhad produced – from Haitian Vodou to thehistory of Columbus Day. We can point to anequally wide range of exhibitions this year,too. Visitors to Manning Hall could learn aboutthe first century of Rhode Island, crafts ofthe indigenous peoples of Taiwan, and Taoistpaintings of the Mien people of Thailand.

Our exhibitions, and many of our other programsthis year, reflect an increased engagement across theuniversity, and new connections with institutionsbeyond Brown. This year was Year of China at Brown.We took advantage of that with co-sponsored lectures,and used the opportunity to show off our Chinesecollections – not just the Taiwan and Taoist exhibitsat Manning, but also our imperial Chinese robe, in ourdisplay case in the Roberts Student Center. We’veexpanded our strong partnership with the JoukowskyInstitute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, andbuilt connections with many academic departments.External partners this year include the RISDMuseumand the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Exhibitions show off the remarkable range of ourcollections, as well as the expertise of faculty, staff,and students. But they are just the most visible partof our work. Behind the exhibits and the programsstands amuseum infrastructure: spaces, collections,knowledge. Last year we got our storage into prettygood shape, completing the conversion of the oldmuseum in Bristol to the Collections Research Center.This year we built a new infrastructure that will allowus to use our space in Manning Hall in ways thatbetter support our educational mission.

Visitors to Manning will spot the difference immedi-ately. Design work by Erin Wells Design, a Cambridgefirm, has helped us optimize and rationalize our space.Designers Erin Wells and Mark Foster analyzedour space and devised a flexible plan that will providea coherent structure for a diverse set of exhibitions.A central nave defines the space. Short walls mountedaround building columns allow openings for threeexhibition spaces. Small exhibits can fit into the nave,too. Erin Wells Design also produced our new logo,the graphics that have redefined themuseum’s entry-ways, and templates that will allow us to produceexhibitions easily.

Central to our new use of Manning is CultureLab, theHaffenreffer’s signature educational space. It’s ahands-on, open-storage teaching space – a combinationseminar room, collections processing space, andlaboratory. You can learn more about it elsewhere inthis report, but the best way to understand it is to visit.Take a look at the collections being used in classesand some student-curated exhibits. Talk to the studentCultureLab assistants. Get hands-on with someartifacts we’ve made available for teaching.

This second note from the director is my last. I signedon for two years, which is up this summer. I haveenjoyed the museum and have come to appreciatewhat a wonderful resource it is for the university. I’vegotten to know the collections, the staff, the Friends,and the faculty and students who have worked with themuseum. There is still much to be done. Collectionsalways needmore cataloging, and we need to get infor-mation about them on the web. Most important, theyneed to bemore extensively used: faculty and studentsacross the university need to think of the museumas a resource for teaching, learning, and research.That’s the ongoing project of any university museum.

In July, I’ll go back to teaching aboutmuseums. I wishthe museum the very best, and look forward tobecoming one of many faculty who use themuseumin my teaching and research.

FromtheDirector

StevenLubar

ANewLook and Feel for theHaffenrefferMark Foster and ErinWells

Entering the museum from the quiet green.

When the museum asked Erin Wells Designto look at its on-campus gallery in ManningHall, it had some clear notions of what shouldchange. It wanted the gallery to have a greaterpresence on campus, to reflect current ideasin exhibit design, and to be flexible, with twoto three changing exhibits, a study area to becalled the CultureLab, and a new emphasison the east entry. All at minimum cost.

As designers, we feel that small museums can haveexhibits as attractive and sophisticated as thoseof larger institutions – it just takes a little design anddiscipline. At the Haffenreffer, we saw three funda-mental tasks: one, create a museum identity; two,reorganize the gallery plan for multiple exhibits, theCulture Lab, and circulation; and three, meld theseinto a system of graphics and displays flexibleenough to house a variety of changing exhibits whilemaintaining a consistent Haffenreffer identity.

That identity began with the logo. The typeface useddistinctive “ff” ligatures to play off the name. Thetraditional form of the letters spoke to history while

themix of small cap and lowercase helped set thelogo apart. Themuseum then chosemasks fromits collections to pair with the new logo, to communi-cate the breadth of the museum’s holdings, andto create a personal face with appeal to a universityaudience. A bold palette shook off any stuffinessandmatched the bold vision of the director. This newidentity was carried consistently through thegallery’s hierarchy of graphics, in its print, web andexhibit materials, beginning with a new exteriorbanner over the east entry.

A new gallery plan emerged from the space’s twomain constraints, an existing exhibit wall at the westthat could not be removed and two rows of unsightlycolumns. The space north and south of the columnswas divided, creating three areas for changingexhibits and one for the CultureLab. The area withinthe columns became a central circulation space,providing easy access to each exhibit area and a placeto feature signature Haffenreffer artifacts.

These new spaces were defined by existing artifactcases – easily rearranged for changing exhibits –and a series of simple exhibit panels built around

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Entering the museumfrom themain green.

Designer's layoutfor CultureLab graphics.

the existing columns. The panels carried the intro-ductory graphics for each exhibit and, at the east, forthe Museum, thereby emphasizing the east entry.Templates for all the graphics ensured a consistentmuseum identity, clear hierarchy, and accessibleformat, while also making new exhibits easy to pro-duce and assemble. For the CultureLab, a differentlook was developed: laboratory cabinets, counter-tops, and furniture created a laboratory ambiencewhile meeting the practical needs of museum staffand guests working with actual artifacts.

Color and light provided final touches. The frontof the exhibit panels and existing exhibit wallwere painted the same color, tying the new exhibitarchitecture together as a whole andmaking itdistinct from the historic building. Changes to lighting –

an essential exhibit element, often overlooked –were suggested by Abernathy Lighting Design.

Our intention was to create a system that workedlike a series of containers into which any exhibitcould be placed, while also maintaining the Haffenr-effer Museum identity. How well does the systemwork? Initial feedback has been positive – but timewill tell. Success will depend on both the strengthof the system’s design and how consistently itis implemented.

Mark Foster and Erin Wells are principals of ErinWells Design, Somerville, Massachusetts.

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As part of the Providence 375 anniversarycelebration this year, themuseum partneredwith the Rhode Island Historical Society tomount “Customes, Manners, andWorships”:Rhode Island Begins, on display from Octoberthrough April.

On a hot August day, Steve Lubar, Kevin Smith, andI mounted the narrow staircase to the John BrownHouse attic, led by RIHS curator Kirsten Hammer-strom.We did not knowwhat to expect and could notbelieve the rich collection we found there. We weretransported to a grandmother’s cluttered atticof heirlooms, yet everything was clean, in acid-freeboxes, and already cataloged – a dream cometrue! Anyone who has ventured into a museumstorage space knows the excitement we felt –history surrounding us, breathing on us.

Then, just as Roger Williams had done nearly fourcenturies earlier, the exhibit crossed boundaries.We borrowed objects and images from all over thestate, including the Newport Historical Society,the Greene FarmArchaeology Project (Warwick), theCocumscussoc Association (Wickford), the Rhode

Island School of Design Museum of Art, the JohnCarter Brown Library, and the Met School, as well asengaging the participation of Narragansett andWampanoag tribal members. By placing together inone gallery space a selection from the rich NativeAmerican collection of the Haffenreffer with some

of the state’s most valued colonial European objects,a more incisive and inclusive historical narrativeemerged – one closer to Roger Williams’ vision forRhode Island.

Nature knows no difference between Europe andAmericans in blood, birth, bodies &c. God havingof one bloodmade all mankind.

— Roger Williams

We organized the exhibit around daily activities:spirituality, commerce, domestic work, pleasuresof life, and war. This is not unlike the organizationof Roger Williams’ 1642 book The Key into theLanguage of America. But in the exhibit, all peoplepresent in Rhode Island’s first century become sub-jects for study, not just the Native Americans. Thelife ways – the “customes, manners, and worships”of The Key’s subtitle – of the Dutch, English,Narragansett, Wampanoag, Africans, and French arepresent throughout the exhibit space, representingthe distinct traditions as well as hybrid adaptivestrategies that gave character to Rhode Island’s17th and early 18th centuries. Each exhibit caseexemplifies how everyday technologies convergedas all early Rhode Island peoples shared in theuse of flintlock muskets, metal cook pots, clay pipesand American tobacco, shell trade beads calledwampum, corn, deerskin clothing, and reed basketry.

We did not want to whitewash painful momentsin this history, such as King Philip’s War and slavery,nor overlook the lived proximity and shared endeav-ors of diverse settlements, regardless of identityand group affiliation. This became the problematic

Rhode IslandBeginsCaroline Frank

Exhibits

Tobacco and the bear were sacred in Native American spirituality, beliefs thatcoexisted with many faiths in early Rhode Island but have been overshadowedby Protestant worships.

Imported tastes and pleasures were part of everyone’s lives in thefirst century, seen here in a coral-tipped baby rattle, silk and linenclad doll, and Imari-style jar.

Facing theMuseumSteven Lubar

This new introduction to themuseummines the collections to considerthe roles and contributions of research,collecting, and display in the anthro-pologymuseum.

Anthropology as a field spends a lot oftime explaining itself and consideringits roots. Anthropologymuseums needto do the same. Museum theoristMieke Bal argues that museums needto tell the story of “representationalpractice ... of the changing but stillvital collusion between privilege andknowledge, possession and display,stereotyping and realism.” Facingthe Museum tells that story by reinter-preting busts created a century agoto show “racial types” and by showingmasks that suggest the diversityof culture.

On one side of the case: five ethno-graphic busts, suggesting some

of the ways thatanthropologistsand othersthought about thepeoples of theworld in the earlydays of the modern anthropologymuseum. The staff of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History createdsome of these busts based on ethno-graphic research (the Yakut). Otherswere created at the 1904 St. Louisexposition (Pigmy andFiIipino), on Indianreservations (Seneca), and at aWildWest show (Sioux). We’ve reinterpretedthese, based on research in theAMNH archives, to tell the storiesof individuals, not racial types.

On the other side: fourmasks.Masksare ways that groups performtheir identities, in contrast to the busts,where outside scientists put groups

into hierarchies. (We usemasks aspart of our logo, for just this reason.)We chosemasks to tell the storyof how artifacts enter the museum.We have examples of archaeology(Mayan), ethnographic field collecting(Cashinaua), purchase from contem-porary artists (Haida), and purchaseon the openmarket (Kom).

Facing theMuseum brings facesto the museum, puts a human faceonmuseum history, and suggestsways that museumsmight face theirown history.

of the exhibit design: to bring everyone togetherin the full breadth of exchange, conflict, and culturalsharing. Domestic animals introduced by the English,for example, created strife among the colonists,and evenmore so in their relations with NativeAmericans. Within a short period of time, however,members of each of the groups owned livestockand each contributed to building the iconic stonewalls of Rhode Island’s landscape, especiallythe Native Americans.

Inmemory of those “hard labours” in “making stonefences” (Daniel Gookin, 1674), we invited RobinSpears, a Narragansett stonemason, to erect a smallwall on the grounds of Manning Hall for the exhibit’sopening day, which coincided with the university’sFamily Weekend. A large crowd of parents andstudents were drawn to the work, asked questions,and visited the exhibit, where Narragansett fluteplayers greeted them. Historical “contact” was butamoment; learning to live together despite cherisheddifferences is ongoing, as noted on the exhibit’sintroductory panel.

Caroline Frank, a visiting lecturer in Americanstudies, is the author of Objectifying China, ImaginingAmerica: Chinese Commodities in Early America(University of Chicago Press, 2012). The catalogfor this exhibition is available as a PDF on themuseum’s website.

A flintlock musket, owned by Roger Williams’ son, anda King Philip’s War era map represent the important placeof violent conflict in the colony’s first century.

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This exhibit explores two collections of mate-rial culture from the indigenous Austronesian-speaking peoples of Taiwan.

George L. Shelley III collected one of these in thelate 1960s while conducting his dissertation researchin linguistic anthropology among the Rukai tribeof Budai. It consists mostly of woodcarvings, alongwith a few fine examples of sacred pots and beadnecklaces. I collected the other last year, with a grantfrom themuseum, as part ofmy dissertation researchwith contemporary indigenous artists. These artistscreate objects ranging from ceremonial attire tocellphone pouches. While the two collections repre-sent different time periods, tribes, andmediums,they offer interesting contrasts and parallels whendisplayed together.

I use the theme of origin stories to organize theexhibition. Origin stories not only refer to traditionaltribal myths and legends referenced by recurringmotifs. They also encompass academic and popularstories regarding where objects come from andnarratives of creation and inspiration told by artistsfor individual pieces. These diverse stories shapeand reflect social values and are often contestedin struggles surrounding identity and authority.

In “Pots, Snakes, and Ancestors: Origins and Futures,”the prevalence and significance of particular motifsis explained. Several older carved wood panels fromthe Rukai tribe are displayed alongside contemporaryceremonial outfits from the Paiwan, Puyuma, andSeediq tribes. Both sets ofmaterials depict continuityof tribal motifs while demonstrating creativeadaptations of materials and styles.

“Cultural Politics of Origins” highlights two of thesacred treasures of the Rukai and Paiwan – glassbeads and pottery. These objects, passed downfor generations within noble families and believedto have existed since time immemorial, have noevidence for local manufacture and thus are viewedby academics as possible keys to uncovering themigratory origins of these tribes. While it is likelythat beads were attained from a variety of sourcesat different points in time, competing academictheories take on political significance in current con-versations between Taiwan and China by suggestingcultural affinities and long histories of contact.

“Common Origins, Diverse Choices” draws mainlyfrom the contemporary collection of textiles andplant fiber pieces to display the diversity and similar-ities within a wide range of tribal cultures, includingthe Amis, Puyuma, Rukai, Bunun, Atayal, and Taroko.This display examines the interaction betweencommunity preferences and the interests of individualartists. These collective and individual innovationshave shaped contemporary material cultures thatare distinctly tribal while also embraced bymembersof other tribes as representations of a generalindigenous identity.

“Ruptures andRebirths: Origin of Industries” focuseson Paiwan and Rukai crafts – including beads,pottery, carving, and embroidery – to explore the roleof indigenous arts in the recent cultural revitalizationmovement. In response to threats to traditionalmaterial culture by social changes and the disappear-ance of sacred objects to collectors, beginning inthe 1970s indigenous artists conducted their ownethnographic and archival research. They developedmethods to produce new objects to replace thosethat were lost and founded workshops and schoolsto pass on this knowledge and skill to tribalmembers.The subsequent emergence of indigenous craftindustries led to growing pride in indigenous identity.

continued, p.8

CraftingOrigins:Creativity and Continuityin Indigenous TaiwanChristy DeLair

The entrance to Crafting Origins

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This is the Year of China at Brown, andwe have supported the initiative with a rangeof exhibitions and programs.

Taoist Gods fromChina: Ceremonial Paintings of theMien consists of seventeen hanging scrolls selectedfrom themuseum’s complete set of twenty-four rare17th century ceremonial Taoist paintings from theMien people of northern Thailand. The Mien, whoadopted Taoism during their long contact with China,blended some of their traditional animistic beliefswith Taoism. They maintain their unique traditionto the present day.

InMien tradition, the paintings serve as the physicalhome for the deities present during Taoist cere-monies, private events involving the initiation of priests,purification or exorcism, and funerals. The artistswho produce the paintings work in a state of religiousdevotion and ceremonial purity. They consecratethe paintings by “opening the eyes” of each character.

Entering the exhibition, you pass by the paintingsof Tai Wai, Marshal Chao andMarshal Teng, guardiansof the Taoist world and of the sacred precinct wherethe paintings are displayed. Their duty is to bar theway to demons andmalevolent influences. Most ofthe other paintings in the exhibition depict the major

deities of Taoism: the three Pure Ones, the JadeEmperor, the Master of the Saints, the Governorsof the Realms of Waters, the Sky, this World and theUnderground. Some paintings, like the one titled“The Administration,” give the viewer a diagram forthe place each deity occupies in the Taoist cosmos.One painting depicts the Taoist underworld andfollows the path the soul of the deceased throughthe courts of the ten kings (or judges) of hell.

In the Mien tradition, when the paintings are notin use they are rolled up in a bundle and stored ina cloth wrapping or a box hung in the house near thedomestic altar. Paintings are deconsecrated whenjudged too worn out to be suitable homes for thegods, or if there is no priest in the family to take overthe responsibility for their care.

Our exhibition complements From the Land ofthe Immortals: Chinese Taoist Robes and Textiles,an exhibition at the RISDMuseum of Art.

Thierry Gentis is curator at the museum.

Taoist Gods fromChina:Ceremonial Paintings of theMienThierry Gentis

Taoist Gods from Chinaincludes a touchscreeninteractive designedby computer scienceundergraduatesYudi Fu and Alex Hill.

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Carving Cultureon theNorthwest Coast:The TotemPoleEmily Button and Jonathan Olly

Museum objects are often valuedfor being “authentic,” but“authentic” is, for anthropologists,a complex concept.

When all societies change throughouttheir histories, from within andthrough interaction with others, whatdoes authenticity mean? As graduateassistants at the Haffenreffer in fall2011, we explored this question in asatellite exhibit at the RockefellerLibrary, investigating miniature totempoles as beautiful examples of conti-nuity through change.

The tradition of carving monumentalpoles out of wood, illustrating clanmyths and histories andmemorializingindividuals, has long had ceremonialsignificance in many Pacific NorthwestNative American societies. Yet agrowing demand for souvenirs andmuseum specimens among sailors,tourists, and anthropologists in thelate nineteenth century inspired artiststo create miniature wooden andargillite (slate) replicas.

Four miniatures in our exhibit illus-trate how Native American carversadapted their work for this trade.Providence teacher and journalistEmma Shaw Cocleugh collectedtwo of them in southwestern Alaska

in the 1880s. She also leftus evocative accounts offrenzied tourists barteringin a Native Americanvillage and the establishedsouvenir trade in largertowns like Sitka.

It was themuseum’s mostrecent acquisition thatfirst drew our attention:in 1997, themuseumpurchased a threefoot tall carving byWaynePrice, a Tlingitartist from Haines, Alaska. Price’ssculpture exemplifies both continuityand change. A century ago, even astourists and anthropological collectorsbecame fascinated with totem poles,the U.S. and Canadian governmentsrepressed the ceremonies for which themonuments were originally carved.By the 1960s, a resurgence of interestin totem poles among Native artists,scholars, and the public led to a revivalof the form and its entrance into theinternational art market. Today, NativeAmerican artists like Price carve notonly full size poles for the NorthwestCoast, but also smaller sculptures forprivate collections andmuseumdisplay.

Since the totem pole has taken onsuch varied forms andmeanings in thelast two hundred years, but representsa continuous artistic tradition, we

consider Native Northwest Coastartists the authorities on authenticity.They specify that unlike factory madesouvenirs, “real” totem poles, regard-less of size, are those made by mastercarvers and their apprentices whofollow the symbolic rules that havetraditionally given totem poles mean-ing. In our exhibit, we found thatanthropological collections can offermore than “authenticity” in suchhistories of creativity, connection,and transformation.

Emily Button, a PhD student inanthropology, and Jonathan Olly, a PhDstudent in American studies, weremuseum proctors this year.

Like legends of tribal origin, stories told aboutindigenousmaterial culture not only tell us howspecific things came into being, but also offer insightinto values and perceptions of identities pastand present. These objects, though differing in theircontext of creation, illustrate continuity with

traditional motifs and beliefs while allowingand even celebrating the creative re-crafting andre-telling of traditional stories andmeanings.

Christy DeLair is a Ph.D student in the departmentof anthropology.

Crafting, continued

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Artifacts across the DisciplinesEmily Stokes-Rees

Material culture – the things inmuseums, and the things all aroundus - tells us about place and time,about the people who created andused the objects, and about changeover time.We creatematerial culture,and we are shaped by thematerialculture that surrounds us.

The study ofmaterial culture is inher-ently interdisciplinary. This spring,students inmy AMCV1903T, “TheMateriality of History:Material CultureTheory and Practice”, are creatingan exhibition in the Roberts Centerthat explores a range of approaches

to things. They are interviewingBrown faculty and scholars frommany disciplines to learn how theirdiscipline thinks about the form,use andmeaning of artifacts.

The aim of the exhibit is to drawattention to the value of usingmaterialculture in research and teachingacross the disciplines. We’re alsousing the opportunity to display somelesser-known items in themuseum’scollections. The next time you arepassing through the student center,stop by the case on the lower level.Take a look at some of the artifacts

on display – a mummified ibis,Cashinahuanwife and husband disci-pliners, and three Australianboomerangs - and consider the vari-ousmusings on the objects. Reflectupon the different perspectives.Howwould you approach the studyof one of these objects yourself,and how does your backgroundinform your view?

ImperialDragonRobeEmily Stokes-ReesThis spectacular 19th-century blue silk robe,embroidered with silk and gold thread, symbolicallydepicts the Chinese cosmos – a celestial landscapeof mountains, oceans, and clouds where bats flyand five-clawed dragons coil and twist. Its symbol-ism suggests that it is a semi-formal robe (ch’i-fu)that belonged to a member of the imperial family orthe highest Chinese nobility. On imperial robes, eightlarge dragons appear on the exterior - one on thecenter of the chest and back, before and behind theknees, and on each of the shoulders. A ninth, hiddendragon is embroidered on the inside lining of thechest, protecting the robe’s wearer. Observed fromthe front or behind, five dragons can always be seen.In Chinese tradition, the numbers nine and fivesymbolize the dignity of the throne, and Shenlong,the spirit dragon, embodies the status and powerof the Emperor.

How did the robe get to themuseum? After defeatingthe Boxer Rebellion in 1901, Western powerssent troops to China to protect their interests. TheUSS Villalobos, an American gunship, patrolledthe Yangtze River. During the winter, when the riverdried up, the Villalobos moored in Lake Tung-t’ingnear Hangkou (present-day Wuhan). There, in 1927,Dr. Robert Ellsworth Baker, the ship’smedical officer,taught bacteriology for Yale-in-China’s medicalprogram and studied Mandarin. He became close

friends with his tutor, who presented him with therobe as a gift when the Villalobos and other Americangunboats retreated to Shanghai in May of 1927.His daughter, Diana J. Baker, Brown ’56, donatedthe robe to themuseum in 1999.

Emily Stokes-Rees is themuseum’s postdoctoralfellow in museum anthropology.

CultureLabSteven LubarThemuseum’smost important initiative this yearis CultureLab, a combination open storage andhands-on teaching space.

How can wemake collections more easily availableto faculty and students? How canwe take advantageof the enthusiasm that’s so obvious when studentsvisit museum storage? How can we offer visitorsand researchers an inside look at howmuseumswork?How can we make it easier for visitors to learnfrom collections?

The answer to these questions is CultureLab. It’svisible storage with a mission. Objects related tocourses are made available for display. In the centerof the space there’s a table that serves as a class-room for seminars, a place for students and thepublic to examine artifacts, and for staff to undertakemuseumwork usually hidden behind the scenes.A lab bench holds amicroscope and other tools that

allow for close looking at objects. A computer allowsexploration of the museum’s databases and images.

Here are some of the ways we use CultureLab now:

Objects for classes. Providing artifacts for facultyand students to use in their courses is the mostimportant part of the CultureLab program. Thissemester, several hundred artifacts for six coursesare available. Some faculty bring their classes toCultureLab once or twice, others almost every classsession. Some classesmeet exclusively in Culture-Lab. Faculty have devised a variety of assignmentsfor their students, including drawing, comparisons,and exhibitions.

Hands-on projects formuseum visitors. Themuseumhas a long tradition of working with school groupsin programs, and some of the exercises from theseprograms have been repurposed as hands-on

CultureLab

Museum proctorEmily Button at workin CultureLab.

Objects for use in courses on automobiles and pre-Columbianarchaeology on display in CultureLab

The CultureLab has been an enrich-ing addition to themuseum, allowingfor a muchmore interactive andappealing experience with the collec-tions on display. Being able to handleobjects changes the entire dynamicof the museum – when the itemleaves its sterile glass case it becomesa living object. Touching objectshelps to break down the sense offoreignness often engendered by thetraditional museum setting.

The selection of items by professorsfor their classes facilitates visitors’engagement with the collection,inviting curiosity by offering a frame-work within which to start askingquestions. For example, in my timeworking in the lab, my own under-standing of the concept of currencyhas been augmented looking at theobjects and by looking through thebooks on the shelves. The CultureLabfosters discourse on the ways that

the museummediates our relation-ship with the items it displays.

Allison Grosso, a CultureLabAssistant, is a senior in theBrown/RISD dual degree program,studying painting at RISD andanthropology at Brown.

Working in CultureLabAllison Grosso

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In Spring 2012 I taught a course inthe Joukowsky Institute for Archaeologyand the Ancient World titled: “ColdHard Cash: A Materiality of Money inAncient and Modern Finance.” I wasasked to teach this course long beforeI had any idea that the collections ofthe museum included hundreds ofrelevant objects, traditional currencies(e.g., cowrie shells, wampum shells,metal rings) from all corners of theglobe. Soon after my first visit to Bristoland discovery of this remarkablecollection of currencies, museum staffasked if I would be interested in usingCultureLab as a teaching forum. Asan archaeologist I have long enjoyedteaching with objects and I jumpedat the opportunity.

The course used anthropological andhistorical approaches as ways to offer

time depth, cross-cultural comparisonand insight into our own troubledfinancial systems. Through numerousancient, historical, ethnographic andmodern case studies, the courseexplored how specific kinds of objects,materials, and non-materials can beinvested with financial value. Studentsfrom a wide range of academic back-grounds enrolled in this course: someweremajoring in the ancient world,others in business-related subjects.

Together with staff from themuseumI co-curated a CultureLab teachingcollection of about 300 traditional cur-rencies from the Haffenreffer Museumand several examples of ancientGreek and Roman coinage from theJoukowsky Institute. The studentsengaged with CultureLab objects intwo forums: in class, where object

handling complementedmy lectures,and through a final class project.Student feedback on CultureLab wasoverwhelmingly positive. Seeingand handling relevant objects enhancedtheir learning experience onmanylevels. Students also commented onthe helpfulness and friendliness ofthe CultureLab staff.

CultureLab is an excellent initiativeandmy students and I would like totake this opportunity to thank the staffof the museum for facilitating thismemorable learning experience.

Christoph Bachhuber is a postdoctoralfellow in the Joukowsky Institutefor Archaeology and the Ancient World.

TEACHINGINCULTURELAB

ShowMe theMoney:Currencies in CultureLabChristoph Bachhuber

Museum proctor Mu!geDurusu-Tanrıo !verat work in CultureLab.

activities aimed at family visitors. Reconstruct aceramic pot from sherds. Identify a projectile pointby using a step-by-step procedure.

Small exhibits. Our storage shelves can also serveas quick-and-simple spaces for student exhibitprojects. A single 3-foot shelf makes for an idealclass exhibit assignment: a few objects and a label.A shelf unit of five 3-foot shelves makes a goodplace for a class exhibit, or an exhibit curated bythe Haffenreffer student group.

Cataloging in public. One of thegoals of CultureLab is to open upthe museum’s behind-the-sceneswork to the public. Catalogingmay seem dull, but it can serve asan educational opportunity: talkto the curator about his or herwork. Curators and students catalogfor a few hours a week in Culture-Lab. A sign invites visitors to askquestions. If there are few visitors,the cataloging work gets done. Ifthere aremany, it’s a public program!

The increased accessibility to artifacts expandsthe possibilities for close encounters with objects.A study for the Harvard Art Museum foundthat in “study centers, visitor learning is a matterof interaction and engagement, rather thanthe absorption of information.” We look forwardto CultureLab fostering opportunities for criticalthinking and reflection that complement traditionalgallery experiences.

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Native American people have had a mixedrelationship with themuseumworld, fromthe history of hurt and anger over the collectionof sacred and inappropriate objects to gratitudefor the preservation of American Indian arttraditions. Given this complicated history,how canmuseums appropriately display NativeAmerican culture? This is the questionwe grapple with in ETHN1890N, “Thawingthe ‘Frozen Indian;’ American IndianMuseumRepresentation.”

Starting with a tour of the Collections ResearchCenter, and continuing with weekly visits to theCultureLab, the class used themuseum’s collectionsto understand this history and answer this question.Among the objects we considered were somecollected to preserve the beautiful material cultureof a people seen as doomed to extinction: A seriesof beaded Haudenosaunee bags, a Huron birch bark

cigar case decorated with flowers embroideredin moose hair, a Teton Dakota beaded and quilledpipe bag, a pair of bright red quilled moccasins,with century-old soil still crusted to the soles.Others were ominous, male-crafted objectsmeantto demonstrate the dangerous leanings of this“doomed” race: A pair of grim faced Penobscot rootclubs, a Cree tomahawk, a Fox gunstock war club,a Plains slungshot club.

This extinction never occurred, much to the reliefof this indigenous professor, and so we next turnedto the role that Native people have begun to play inthe conservation and display of their cultural objects

in museums. A wonderful example inthe Haffenreffer’s collection is the 19thcentury Kiowa cradle that was repairedfor themuseum by Kiowa beadworkerVanessa Jennings, who did not wanther culture to be represented by a sad,disintegrating cradle. The class alsoread about Navajo weavers connectingwith museum collections to learnmoreabout the art of their grandmothers,and had an opportunity to themselvesexamine the Haffenreffer’s Navajotextiles. Students could see for them-selves the value of examining in personthe different yarn types, textures,and weaving styles.

There are also objects that themuseum has acquired over the yearswhich, at the request of Native people,will not be seen by either my class or abroader audience: Ghost Dance shirts,sacred bundles, the Burr’s Hill grave goods collectionrepatriated to the Wampanoag. This is part ofthe delicate and developing conversation betweenAmerican Indian communities and museums.

For their final project, students will curate an exhibitfor the museum that will not only highlight themuseum’s collections but also get visitors to thinkabout the appropriation and display of Nativeimages. They will show how Native images havebeen appropriated to the commercial benefit of non-Natives, for example through cigar store Indians,or, more recently, the “Navajo” underwear andflasks sold by Urban Outfitters. Conversely, they willdisplay examples of Native art applied creativelyto a Western medium, for example quilled andbeaded baby bonnets and bibs, and a pair of beadedsneakers. Come visit and explore with us Nativeimages in many contexts.

Elizabeth Hoover is assistant professor in ethnicstudies and American studies and a faculty curatorat the Haffenreffer Museum.

Thawing the “Frozen Indian”Elizabeth Hoover

Museum curator Thierry Gentis discusses museum collectionswith Prof. Hoover's class in CultureLab.

Collections

As a survey archaeologist, I could never expectto stumble upon many artifacts dating tothe 1stmillenniumBCEwhile working throughsurface collections. But as the JoukowskyInstitute proctor for the HaffenrefferMuseum,I was handed a box of “Luristan bronzes.”My task: catalog them, document them, getto know them.

Luristan bronzes are a well-known and well-distributed corpus of metal artifacts fromwesternIran. They were first acquired by museums duringthemid-19th century. Since then, there have beenmany systematic archaeological excavations in Iran,where these objects have been found in their originalcontexts, giving us better data about the dating,provenance and functions of these metal artifacts.

The small corpus of bronzes in the Haffenreffercollection was donated by Thomas Hesslein. Thereare twenty-one items in total, containing severaltypes of artifacts. There are cast “animal pendants,”pierced towards their center, to be worn on the neck.A significant artifact is an ornamental bell, with

a loose pellet inside, which would be fastened on topof a pole on a chariot, to ring while the chariot wason themove. Bracelets are an important componentof Luristan bronze collections, and we have twonoteworthy examples. One is a ring bracelet with twosnake head finials. The other is a decorated braceletof sheet metal, incised with palmette leaves andgeometrical designs.

The Haffenreffer collection of Luristan bronzes isnow fully documented, photographed and in somecases, drawn. The next step we envision is X-rayfluorescence analysis, to help us answer importantquestions of authenticity and provenance.

Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver is a doctoral studentin the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and theAncient World.

Luristan BronzesMüge Durusu-Tanrıöver

Téjela: Weaving Stories,Weaving Lives opens in May,the product of a serendipi-tous collaboration. MargotSchevill, a Brown-trainedanthropologist and researchassociate at the Haffenrefferin the 1990s, donated herextensive collection ofGuatemalan textiles to themuseum this year. Alexan-der Crane, a Brown senior,has been working withQxib‘ B’atz’ (Three Threads),a group of immigrants

from Quiche, Guatemala, now living in New Bedford,Massachusetts, creating contemporary garmentsusing traditional techniques. And we began workingwith Margot’s collection as an experiment in“cataloging in public” in the CultureLab.

The exhibition brings all this together: garmentsdesigned by Alex and woven by Qxib’ B’atz’, and

selected pieces fromMargot’s collection. We hopethat our curation encourages dialogue about collect-ing andmigration, showing how creative practice isnot suspended in time but extends across borders,and over many generations. We are interested in thejourneys of objects, the hands that have touchedthem, and the lives that they have touched. There isa unique physicality and bodily element to the textileswe are working with. Experiencing these objectsin an intimate, tactile way, we feel as though we area part of a narrative that extends far beyond us.

The breadth of Margot’s collection reflects changeover time. By situating some pieces from her collec-tion in relation to those being produced today, wehope to show how the same creative tradition is stillbeing practiced. We hope to provide a context andcounterpoint to Alex’s project, weaving together thestories of the textiles and the stories of the people.

Anna Ghublikian and María Quintero are graduatestudents in Brown's public humanities program.

Sharing Collections:FromCataloging to CuratingAnna Ghublikian andMaría D. Quintero

Examining a large amulet in the shape of a horsefrom Luristan, Iran, 1st millennium BCE.

María Quintero catalogingthe Schevill collection.

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NewAcquisitionsThierry Gentis

1

2 3

4 5 6

1. Cheyenne pipe bag. The Charles Ewing Collection. Gift of the Ewing family. 2. Subarctic shirt. The Charles Ewing Collection. Gift of theEwing family. 3. Asante figure of Sasabonsam. Gift of Anna Cooper. Heath in Honor of Dr. Marina Kuperman-Beade. 4. Vodou bottle of BosouTrois Corne from the altar of Houngan Nesly in Haiti. Field collection by Katherine Smith. 5. Acoma olla. Gift of Virginia A Williamson.6. Colima standing figure, Mexico. Anonymous gift.

Themuseum continues to build its collections throughgifts and through its support of ethnographic field work.348 objects were accessioned this year.

Museums balance two considerations in collecting.They build on strengths, acquiring objects that allowcontrasts and comparisons. This kind of collectionattracts researchers and can lead to in-depth exhibitions.And they fill gaps. This brings into the collection areasof the world, or types of objects, that we don’t have. Gap-filling collections are good for surveys and for supportinga range of classes. Both types enhance themuseum'spedagogical mission.

Some of themost important gifts this year:

• TenNorth American Indian items, from the plainsand subarctic regions, collected by Charles Ewing, whowas appointed as the first Catholic Commissioner forIndianMissions in 1873. Donated by the Ewing Family.

• Four Pueblo ceramics, collected by Minnie WalkleyEllinwood in the early twentieth century. Donatedby Virginia A. Williamson.

• Twenty-three Pre-Columbian objects, including twoOlmec ceramics, a figurine and a head from a figure,as well as a rare Olmec stone bowl; two charmingHuastec figurines. Donated by Alan and MarianneSchwartz and an anonymous donor.

Themuseum also acquires artifacts through its supportof Brown students, faculty and researchers workingaround the world. The museum’s collecting grantsnot only build the collections, but also support Brownresearch. This year we supported two researcherswhose fieldwork fills significant gaps in themuseum’s collections:

•Christy Delair, a graduate student in Brown’s anthropol-ogy department, purchased handicrafts expressiveof traditional art revivals among Taiwan’s native commu-nities. This collection is currently on view in CraftingOrigins: Creativity and Continuity in Indigenous Taiwan.

•Katherine Smith, a postdoctoral fellow in the depart-ment of Africana studies and the history of art andarchitecture, acquired Haitian Vodou material fromVodou practitioners this summer. She documentedeach object’s history through recorded interviewsand photographed them in situ.

Every object entering themuseum’s collections is reviewedby themuseum’s Collections Committee to determineits long-term value to themuseum and the university, andto ensure that the collectionmeets foreign, internationaland domestic laws.

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Sixth graders from Providencepublic schools visited themuseum this fall as part of theThink Like an Archaeologistprogram. They were learningabout archaeology. Wemetthem there, also as partof a course we were taking,“Museums and Learning,”taught by Shari Tishman at theHarvard School of Education.We were learning about them.

Our experimentwas structuredaround the idea of a “thinking routine,” a conceptinvented byHarvard’s Project Zeromuseumeducationprogram. Thinking routines were developed tostimulate thinking in amuseumenvironment, allowingindividuals to create their own educational experi-ences. The thinking routine we employed was onecalled “Think, Puzzle, Explore,” a routine that worksbest with students who have background knowl-edge on a subject. In a series of three discretephases, students are first asked to think about whatthey already know about the subject, to puzzle aboutwhat else they would like to know, and finally, toexplore the ways that theymight learnmore aboutthe subject.

We introduced the students to a museum artifact,and asked them to think deeply about it. The studentsenjoyed the exercise, and especially seemed toappreciate the opportunity to build off of some of theirprevious knowledge. But the experience was noteducational only for the sixth grade participants.We were interested in analyzing how the successof thinking routines is affected by the size of thegroup working together, and so we structured ourexperiment by looking at the different answersproduced by individuals, pairs, and large groupsof approximately fifteen students.

After collecting data from over one hundred students,we determined that even though the number ofresponses dropped off with increases in group size,the quality of the answers produced increased withlarger group sizes. It’s clear that social learningplays a significant role in the educational experienceof field trips.

We hope to publish the results of our research,to share with a broader audience. It will alsobe immediately useful as we consider next year’sHaffenreffer’s programs.

AnnaWada, SarahReusché, and Jessica Unger areMA students in Brown’s in public humanities program.

Thinking Likean ArchaeologistJessica Ungerand Alexandra Goodman

MuseumEducation Research:Thinking RoutinesAnnaWada, Sarah Reusché, and Jessica Unger

Programs

To the sixth graders in the Providence public schools,archaeology may feel a world away. Think Likean Archaeologist, a collaborative effort between theJoukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the AncientWorld, the RISD Museum, the Haffenreffer, andProvidence social studies teachers, shows them thatarchaeology can be integrated into their everydayeducation and life.

Think Like an Archaeologist, now in its third year,includes in-classroom experience sessions to intro-duce basic archaeological concepts, and a visit to theHaffenreffer and the RISDMuseum. The programintroduces themulti-faceted world of archaeologicalwork, including the themes of teamwork, closeobservation, and pattern recognition.

Teaching in this program has informed our publichumanities studies. We have learned about the

needs of a classroom from a classroom; how tomanage students; how to communicate effectively;and how to remain relevant to the students andtheir environment. We have also learned to translateour knowledge to a specific audience.

Sixth graders who take part in this program learnto usematerials as away to analyze theworld. Primaryresources are no longer bound to books, but canbe found in objects that tell stories of human experi-ences. Teachers and students are introduced toarchaeological objects as resources, andmuseumsas creative spaces to learn.

Jessica Unger and Alexandra Goodman areMAstudents in Brown's public humanities program.

Jessica Unger and sixth gradersfrom the Nathan Bishop Middle Schoolexamine the Narragansett stone wallin front of the museum.

AnnaWada and sixthgraders thinkinglike archaeologists.

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FALL SEMESTER

Themuseumpartneredwith the Rhode IslandHistorical Society on a series of publicprograms to celebrate the 375th anniversaryof the founding of Providence and complementour Rhode Island Begins exhibit.

• For this year’s Barbara Greenwald MemorialArts Program, Robin Spears & SonsMasonryof the Narragansett Tribe, visited themuseum andbuilt a stone wall as an outdoor extension of theRhode Island Begins exhibit. During the buildingdemonstration, members of the Student Grouporganized family activities, and Narragansettflautists Ridge E. Spears and Christian Hopkinsplayed inside themuseum.

• Diana Loren (Peabody Museum of Archaeologyand Ethnology, Harvard University) spoke about herresearch into the Harvard Indian College andshared evidence of daily life from archaeologicalexcavations done at the site of the old college.

• Caroline Frank, visiting lecturer and curatorof Rhode Island Begins, discussed the researchthat went into the exhibit. She also shared herexperiences excavating the daily lives of the peoplesand cultures of early Rhode Island.

For the Jane Powell Dwyer Memorial Lecture,Joshua Bell of the National Museum of NaturalHistory talked about his work with the I’aicommunities in the Purari Delta area of PapuaNew Guinea and their land struggles withlogging and oil exploration.

SPRING SEMESTER

Themuseum collaborated with Brown’s Yearof China on two exhibits and several programs:

• A Chinese Lantern Festival Gallery walking tourof exhibits at the John Hay Library, the David WintonBell Gallery, and the museum. Christy DeLairand Thierry Gentis answered visitors’ questions aboutthe exhibits they curated.

• With the co-sponsorship of the JoukowskyInstitute, Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard Universityspoke about his archaeological work in China,documenting evidence of early agricultural activities.

• Christy DeLair, Ph.D. student in anthropology andcurator of Crafting Origins: Creativity and Continuityin Indigenous Taiwan, shared her experiencesworking with contemporary indigenous craftspeoplein Taiwan, the creation of new crafts traditions inmaterial, design, andmethod, and collecting thesecrafts for themuseum collections.

• A gallery walk of the sister Taoist exhibits at theRISDMuseum and the Haffenreffer Museum. ThierryGentis lead the tour of Taoist Gods from China:Ceremonial Paintings of the Mien.

Public ProgramsGeralyn Ducady

Robin Spears explains how he builds a stone wall.

Christy DeLair shows images of “innovative beads” that drawon traditional indigenous Taiwanese designs and stories.

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The Culture CaraVan program is still going strong.Kathy Silvia, the museum’s education coordinator,takes eight experiential programs to schools in RhodeIsland and southeastern Massachusetts. Favoritesinclude Native People of Southeastern New England,Dig It!: Discovering Archaeology, and Culture Connect:Experience the Cultures of the World.

In times of strict budgets that limit school field trips,teachers look to the CaraVan to bring hands-on

educational experiences to the classroom. In additionto our core K-12 classrooms, Kathy has visitedpreschools, senior centers and retirement homes,and developed and taught after-school programsfor the Colt Andrews School in Bristol.

To learn more about our Culture CaraVan programrequest a brochure or check the museum’s website.

Culture CaraVanGeralyn Ducady

For the Edward G. and Barbara A. Hail Lecture,Margot Schevill talked about her more than thirty-year relationship with aMaya family with whom shestudied backstrap weaving. A former Brown studentand Haffenreffer curator, Schevill recently donateda significant collection of Guatemalan textiles, someof which will be displayed in an exhibition in May.

For the first Shepard Krech III Lecture, ShepardKrech III, professor emeritus of anthropology andformer director of the museum, returned to Brownto discuss the results of a research project onfolk ornithology.

Museum members went on a field trip to thePeabody Essex Museum to see Shapeshifting:Transformations in Native American Art. The PEMborrowed one of the Museum’s cradleboards fordisplay in this exhibition.

With the opening of the new CultureLab, we hosteda series of gallery talks featuring faculty andstudents who use the new space:

• Christoph Bachhuber, postdoctoral fellow inarchaeology, talked about the way his students usedobjects in CultureLab for his course “Cold, Hard,Cash: The Materiality of Money in Ancient andModern Finance.”

• Elizabeth Hoover, professor of American studiesand ethnic studies, spoke about her experienceusing the CultureLab with her class “Thawingthe ‘Frozen Indian’: American Indian MuseumRepresentation.” Her class met in the CultureLabso her students could explore objects from themuseum’s collections.

•Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver, doctoral student at theJoukowsky Institute and proctor at the museum,showcased the collection of first-millenniumBCELuristan objects she worked on in CultureLabthis semester.

• Laura Berman and Allison Iarocci talked aboutthe student exhibit “Shoes have Soul,” curatedby members of the Haffenreffer Museum StudentGroup and featured in CultureLab.

Mu!ge Durusu-Tanrıöver speaks about her work in CultureLab.

Margot Schevill shows off some of her collectionof Mayan textiles after her lecture.

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HaffenrefferMuseumStudent GroupHannah Sisk and Ben Jones

A new name, official recognition, and newways to connect students with themuseum.

This year has been an important one for the Haffenr-effer Museum Student Group: the UndergraduateCouncil of Students recognized us as an officialstudent group. That’s raised our profile and broughtus newmembers. It’s helped us as we work onbringing themuseum to students and the studentsto themuseum. We also hosted our first-ever openhouse for Brown undergraduates. Themuseumwas open afterhours to undergrads who enjoyedrefreshments and exhibits, tried out themuseum’snew CultureLab, and learned about themuseumand the HMSG.

Several HMSGmembers have been trained asCultureLab assistants and volunteer on a weeklybasis to help students and visitors interact withobjects from the Haffenreffer’s collection. We’ve alsocontinued to engage local community members. Inthe fall, we helped with a day of family programmingto coincide with the opening of the “Customes,Manners, andWorships”: Rhode IslandBegins exhibit.HMSG volunteers spent the day teaching aboutcrafts inspired by Native American practices andgames. Young visitors especially likedmaking

wampum necklaces and playing the game of “hub-bub.” HMSGmember Laura Berman ‘14 madetraditional johnny cakes that were enjoyed by all.

We have several projects underway this spring. Ourexhibits committee is preparing to install an exhibi-tion on shoes from around the world. Our programscommittee will be hosting an open house and gallerytalk for the newly-admitted class of 2016, and we’replanning a family event at the Brown Bookstore forthe bookstore’s Cub Explorer program to celebrate

Japanese Children's Day with traditional craftsand activities.

We want to thank Geralyn Ducady, Tony Belz, ThierryGentis, Nathan Arndt and Steve Lubar for theirguidance and assistance. The HMSG is proud to bean officially recognized student group and excitedto further engage undergrads across campus.

Hannah Sisk ’13 and Ben Jones ’13 are chairs ofthe HMSG. Hannah is a junior concentrating in NearEastern archaeology. Ben is a junior Egyptologyand archaeology concentrator. Both have beeninvolved with the Haffenreffer museum since theirfreshman year.

Shoes Have Soul, this year's student group exhibition.

Above and to the right: Student assistants in CultureLab.

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An NSF-supported research project at themuseum explores the role of women in Icelandthrough archaeological textiles to helpestablish an archaeology of gender in theNorth Atlantic.

In Iceland, womenwere themain producers of cloth,transforming raw wool into thread and threadinto cloth. Some of this cloth went to clothe Icelandichouseholds, but woollen cloth was also medievalIceland’s main export product. By the 11th centuryit had become Iceland’s main form of currency,used to pay rents, tributes, and tithes. By the 13thcentury, its production was standardized andheavily regulated.

Medieval documents provide a very abstract andpartial glimpse of this industry. But the archaeologi-cal record can tell us muchmore. Supported by agrant from the National Science Foundation’s ArcticSocial Sciences program, I am conducting researchon curated archaeological textile collections fromIceland to learnmore about this work. The focus ofmy research is an in-depth analysis of archaeologi-cally recovered textiles from sites dating from theViking Age (AD 870-1050) through the late 18th cen-tury. I hope to understand the roles of women inworking wool and weaving cloth, and through this,to develop an archaeology of gender in the NorthAtlantic. This project will help us understand howpeople from a homogenous, isolated and culturallypristine society adapted and fared through centuriesof hardship, environmental degradation and climatechange, shedding light on the web that wove women,households, Iceland, andmedieval Europe together.

I am working with colleagues from across theNorth Atlantic region to rehabilitate long-neglectedcollections of textile scraps from previously exca-vated archaeological sites to reconstruct not onlyitems of clothing but also the processes by whichtextiles weremade, the standards to which theywere made, and the uses to which they were put.With my students, I have begun to identify andto reconstruct elements of clothing frommedievalIceland, linking them to changing styles in continentalEurope, Scandinavia, and Greenland. By painstak-ingly counting the threads in scraps of cloth, we candocument changes in how Icelandic cloth wasmade and, critically, define through archaeologicaldata the degree to which Iceland’s womenweavers

shifted from producing cloth for diverse householdneeds to making standardized cloth as currency,literally makingmoney on their looms. We are alsodocumenting changes in the ways that womenproduced cloth for household needs as the climatechanged from temperate to frigid during the LittleIce Age (1500-1800).

Several Brown University students are participatingin this work. Susan Ortega worked with me on aproject comparing Icelandic textiles of the 10th-15thcenturies with ancient Peruvian textiles of the sameage in the Haffenreffer’s collections. Anya Eber, astudent in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeologyand the Ancient World, is currently doing an inde-pendent study on dress practices from AD 1450-1800,reconstructing garments from samples and patternscollected through this project – a project that willresult in a museum exhibit this year. Laura Leddy, ajunior, will work on collections from the 17th to the19th century, exploring Iceland’s integration into theindustrial world.

Museum Research Associate Michèle Hayeur Smith,principal investigator for the NSF grant on Icelandictextiles, is an archaeologist with experience inIceland and North America. Her research interestsare in material culture, dress (textiles, jewellery),the body, and gender.

Rags to Riches:An Archaeological Studyof Textiles and Genderin Iceland fromAD 874 to 1800Michèle Hayeur Smith

The inside of a tortoise brooch from from a Viking Age burial siteat Gamla Berjanes, Iceland, reveals the type of cloth it was pinned to.

Research

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In 1958, William Simmons, then an undergraduateat Brown, was working under the direction of theMuseum’s first director, J. Louis Giddings, document-ing ancient settlements on ancient beach ridges inwhat is now Cape Krusenstern National Monumentin northwestern Alaska. There he found a small

settlement containing the first traces of what Giddingsand Douglas Anderson termed the “Old WhalingCulture.” At roughly 3,500 years old, this has longbeen thought to provide the earliest evidence forthewhale hunting by humans in the region. The originsof these people and their historic connections withother cultures in the Bering Strait region remainenigmatic. Subsequent researchers have questionedGiddings’ interpretations of the site, suggesting thatit may contain deeply buried layers representing acomplex history of Old Whaling occupations there.

Last summer, Christopher Wolff, an Assistant Pro-fessor at SUNY-Plattsburgh andMuseumResearchAssociate of the Haffenreffer, Thomas Urban (Brownalumnus), and Luke Brown (an undergraduatestudent from SUNY-Plattsburgh) revisited the sitewith funding from a National Science Foundationgrant administered through the Haffenreffer. Theyused geophysical methods to search for underlyingdeposits that could clarify the occupational historyof the Old Whaling site. Their work suggests thatthe complex geological history of the beach ridgeon which the site sits may account for the apparentpresence of deeper cultural deposits there,supporting the original interpretations of Giddings,Anderson, and Simmons.

AnAlaskanHomecomingKevin Smith

The 2012 field camp on Cape Krusenstern, Alaska. Most of the collectionsrehoused by ZoeWeiss in themuseum's Circumpolar Lab came fromHaffenrefferMuseum excavations at Cape Krusenstern in the 1950s and 1960s.

Teaching Old DogsNewTricks:Research in the Circumpolar LaboratoryKevin SmithAnalyzing DNA from dog bones in themuseum’s arctic collections revealsmigrationpatterns of dogs and humans.

For at least 15,000 years, humans have traveled,hunted, and shared their meals with dogs. Recentstudies suggest that the earliest dogs weredomesticated in Southeast Asia, yet how they spreadaround the world is less well known. Genetic studiesusing fossil DNA from archaeologically recovereddog skeletons are paving the way to new discoveries.Themuseum is participating in those studies. Dr.Christyann Darwent (University of California, Davis)and Drs. Sarah Brown and Ben Sacks (UC-Davis) areanalyzing ancient DNA in dog skeletons recoveredfrom archaeological sites across the North AmericanArctic with funding from the National ScienceFoundation. Since dogs travel with their masters,these studies may provide new insights into ancientmigrations and interaction across the far North.

Themuseum’s collections are central to this newresearch. Work done by themuseum’s first director,J. Louis Giddings, by Professor Douglas Anderson,and by generations of Brown students in Alaskaproduced vast collections from key sites spanningthe Arctic’s prehistoric record. These collections,curated at the Collections Research Center in Bristol,include dog bones spanning at least 3,000 yearsthat are critical to the new research. Zoe Weiss ’13spent the spring term rehousing themuseum’sArctic faunal collections, identifying dog remainsfor inclusion in this research project.

Kevin Smith is Deputy Director and Chief Curatorand an arctic archaeologist with fieldwork and publi-cations in Alaska, Iceland, and subarctic Canada.

Friends Board Jeffrey SchreckPresident

Susan HardyVice President

Diana JohnsonTreasurer

Elizabeth JohnsonSecretary

Susan Alcock

Peter Allen

Edith Andrews

Gina Borromeo

KristineM. Bovy

Bolaji Campbell

Robert Emlen

David Haffenreffer

Rudolf F. Haffenreffer

Barbara Hail

Alice Houston

Steven LubarEx Officio

Catherine LutzChair, Department of Anthropology

Sylvia Moubayed

Mark SchlisselProvost

Kevin SmithEx Officio

Loren Spears

Patricia V. Symonds

Museum Staff Alexandra AllardtConservation Consultant

Douglas AndersonDirector, Circumpolar Lab

Nathan ArndtCuratorial Assistant

AnthonyM. BelzMuseumGuard/Greeter

Emily ButtonProctor

Sarah CraftProctor

Geralyn DucadyCurator of Education/Programs

Carol DuttonOffice Manager

Mu!ge Durusu-Tanrıo!verProctor

Thierry GentisCurator

Rip GerryExhibit Preparator/StorageManager/Photo Archivist

Anna GhublikianCollections Assistant

Alexandra GoodmanOutreach Intern

Barbara A. HailResearch Associate/Curator Emerita

Steven LubarDirector

Jonathan OllyProctor

Rod PachecoProperty Manager

María D. QuinteroCollections Intern

Kathy SilviaOutreach Coordinator

Kevin SmithDeputy Director/Chief Curator

Michèle Hayeur SmithMuseumResearch Associate

Emily Stokes-ReesPost-Doctoral Fellow

Jessica UngerOutreach Intern

ChristopherWolffMuseumResearch Associate

Back cover: Left top: Pair of Pre-Columbian Huastec female figures, anonymous donation; bottom: Photograph of Paiwanweaver in the Crafting Originexhibition. Center: Carving Culture on the NorthWest Coast: The TotemPole exhibition at the Rockefeller Library. Right top: Imperial dragon robe, China,Gift of Diana J. Baker Brown ’56; bottom: Sixth-graders inManning Hall attending “Think Like an Archaeologist” program.

Haffenreffer Museum of AnthropologyBrown UniversityP.O. Box 1965Providence, RI 02912

brown.edu/Haffenreffer

Non-ProfitOrganizationUS PostagePAIDPermit No. 202Providence, RI