CONTEXTSThe Annual Report of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology Volume 40 Spring 2015

About the MuseumThe mission of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is to inspire creative and critical thinking about global cultures, past and present, and to foster interdisciplinary understandings of the material world. Established in 1956, it sponsors original research, innovative teaching, and public education while stewarding a collection of over one million archaeological and ethnographic objects. The Museum serves Brown Universitys students and faculty, the city of Providence, the state of Rhode Island, and the general public.

The museums gallery is in Manning Hall, 21 Prospect Street, Providence, Rhode Island, on Browns main green. The museums Collections Research Center 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 02912www.brown.edu/Haffenrefferwww.facebook.com/HaffenrefferMuseum(401) 863-5700haffenreffermuseum@brown.edu

Contexts Editor: Kevin Smith Produced by: Graphic Services

On the covers: Jane Souths Prologue, when displayed in the 2015 RISD Faculty Biennial exhibition, projected a live image of her still life from the Haffenreffer Museums Collections Research Center in Bristol. The still life in Bristol is shown on Contexts front cover; on the back cover is the projected image, as seen in the Biennial exhibition.

1This past year has been busy at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and there is a lot of exciting news to share.

Our exhibition program is going strong. In Deo Spera-mus: The Symbols and Ceremonies of Brown University continues as part of the year-long celebration of Browns 250th anniversary. It is a wonderful introduc-tion to Brown University for the public and especially for prospective students and their families. Our La-kota Star quilt is back after touring with the Muse du quai Branlys traveling exhibition, The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky. The exhibition opened in Paris last spring, travelled to the Nelson-Atkins Museum over the winter, and was on display at the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art this spring.

Our Mellon funded Assemblages project with the RISD Museum is well underway. We have appointed four Teaching Fellows, two from Brown University and two from RISD. They are actively integrating our two mu-seums through their teaching, research, and artistic practices. For example, Jane South created a won-derful exhibition for the RISD Faculty Biennial. Titled PrologueStaging Still Life: The Mute Object Speaks, it enlists objects from both museums collections to serve as actors in a theatrical assemblage. She challenges us to consider how objects move between categories and contexts.

Brown faculty are increasingly using objects from our collections as a way of enhancing their pedagogy. Courtney Martin shares how museum objects from Africa, the Americas, and Asia supported her goals of broadening her course on the global history of art and architecture beyond the Western canon. Pat Rubertone discusses how examining actual prehistoric soapstone bowls from New England gave her students valuable insights into the details of their manufacture and their relationships to quarry sites. Ian Straughn draws at-tention to the power of gold to enchant us and how this power can sometimes hinder our ability to understand its symbolic and ritual use by other cultures.

Brown students are conducting innovative research. Mge Duruzu-Tanrver, a Joukowsky Institute grad-uate student, and her colleagues are studying our Luristan bronzes and comparing them to those in the collections of the RISD Museum. Luristan bronzes were widely faked, so they are conducting X-Ray Fluo-rescence spectroscopy (pXRF) analyses to assess their elemental signatures. Kellie Roddy, an undergraduate archaeology concentrator, is studying our West Mex-ican figurines for her senior thesis. These ceramics often occur in male and female pairs and were placed in shaft tombs. She is conducting both stylistic and pXRF analyses and has identified intriguing clusters.

Our collections continue to grow thanks to generous donations from faculty, alumni, and friends. We are especially fortunate to have received a gift of Meso-american objects from the John C. Scheffler Estate. Scheffler was part of the archaeological team led by E. Wyllys Andrews IV that excavated the famous Maya site of Dzibilchaltn in the early 1960s. He was a skilled draughtsman and produced the first detailed map of the site. The Scheffler family picked Brown as the appropriate home for the collection because of the Museums reputation as a teaching museum.

Finally, we have a new logo designed by Emma Funk, a Brown undergraduate who owns her own design firm. Our newly redesigned website is a wonderful way to learn more about our activities and programs. We have begun converting our database manage-ment system from Argus to Museum Plus. This pro-cess will allow us to make our collections publically available online.

I encourage you to attend our public lecture series and to visit us at Manning Hall to see our latest exhibitions.

Robert W. Preucel

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ts Assemblages ProgramMellon Teaching Fellows Appointed The Assemblages Advisory Board has appointed two sets of Mellon Teaching Fellows. The first group consists of Vazira Zamindar (Department of History, Brown University) and Jane South (Depart-ment of Sculpture, RISD). Their term is the 2015 calendar year. The second group is Graham Oliver (Department of Classics, Brown University) and Amy Leidtke (Department of Design, RISD). Their term is the 2015-2016 academic year.

Program Coordinator HiredAlexandra Poterack has been hired to serve as the coordinator of the Assemblages program. She will be based at the RISD Museum.

Photography Assistant HiredSophia Sobers, Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Digital + Media at RISD, has been hired as a Mellon Photography Assistant as part of the As-semblages project. Sophia is an accomplished pho-tographer and artist and her duties will be to assist with the digitization of our collections.

Dates set for Assemblages Conference The first Assemblages conference will be held on Sept 25 and 26, 2015. Invited speakers include David Joselit, Distinguished Professor of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center, and Rosemary Joyce, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at UC Berkeley.

Crystal Ngo Awarded Assemblages FellowshipCrystal Ngo has been selected for a Graduate School Interdisciplinary Opportunity Research Fellowship to work with the museum for the 2015-2016 academic year. Crystal is a doctoral candi-date in the Department of American Studies and will be conducting research complementary to the Assemblages project.

Faculty NewsDouglas Anderson Retires from Anthropology Department Douglas Anderson has retired from the Depart-ment of Anthropology as of June 30, 2014. He re-mains active as ever and will continue as Director of the Museums Circumpolar Laboratory.

Faculty Fellows Selected Five faculty fellows have been selected for the 2014-2015 term. These are Paja Faudree (Depart-ment of Anthropology), Cathy Lutz (Department of Anthropology), Courtney Martin (Department of History of Art and Architecture), Itohan Osay-imwese (Department of History of Art and Archi-tecture), and Patricia Rubertone (Department of Anthropology). Paja was also a fellow during the 2013-2014 term.

Faculty Affiliates Appointed The Haffenreffer Museum has established a Fac-ulty Affiliate position to recognize those faculty members with especially close ties to the Museum. We have selected Elizabeth Hoover (Department of American Studies), a past proctor and Faculty Fellow, Steve Lubar (Department of History), a past Director, and Bill Simmons (Department of Anthropology), a past Interim Director, to be our first Faculty Affiliates.

3Director receives Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Robert Preucel has been selected as one of two inaugural Faculty Fellows for the Smithsonian Institutions Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology. The program seeks to promote broader and more effective use of museum collections in anthropological research by providing a supplement to university training. Bob plans to use his SIMA Fellowship in two ways. He will work on extending the theory of object-based teaching. This will involve examining how it currently articulates with contemporary approaches to materiality, object agency, and thing theory. He also will enhance his Native American art and archaeology class that serves as introduction to the art and material culture of the indigenous peoples of North America.

Deputy Director Participates in NSF Panel and SAA Committee rolesKevin Smith served as one of five members representing the United States and NSF on a twelve-nation review panel for the Belmont Forums Collaborative Research Action fund for Arctic Observing and Research for Sustainability. He chairs the Committee on Museums, Collections, and Curation of the Society for American Archaeology and represents SAA on the Consortium for Collections, which advises the boards of SAA, the Society for Historical Archaeology, and the American Cultural Resources Association on issues relating to collections management and museums.

Deputy Director and Colleagues receive Research Seed GrantKevin Smith, along with Yongsong Huang, Peter van Dommelen, and Andrew Scherer received a Brown University Research Seed Award for their proposal Climatic and Environmental Reconstruction using Lipid Biomarkers in Ancient Bones: Applications in Archaeology, Paleoclimatology, and Paleontology.

This project will test an innovative new method developed by Huang to extract paleo-climatic data directly from the animal bones recovered at archaeological sites. Samples from Smiths excavations at Gilsbakki and Surtshellir, Iceland, and from J. Louis Giddings and Douglas Andersons excavations in Alaska, curated in the Museums Laboratory for Circumpolar Research, will provide northern sequences spanning at least the past millennium; while samples

from Van Dommelens on-going excavations in Sardinia and Scherers in Guatemala will provide complementary data from Mediterranean and tropical contexts.

Curator takes new positionNathan Arndt, Assistant Curator, has accepted a position as Curator at the University Museum of the University of Northern Iowa. He will oversee the closing of the old building and the move of its operations to the center of campus. Nathan will continue advising the Haffenreffer Museum in his capacity as a curatorial affiliate.

New Registrar Hire ApprovedThe Office of the Provost has approved the hire of a new registrar. The Registrar oversees the Museums collection records as part of the curatorial team, helps to establish policies and priorities for managing the collections and their records, oversees its collections database, helps to organize storage areas to ensure that objects are adequately and accurately tracked, is responsible for documenting loans and gifts, and assists, as necessary, on team-developed projects including exhibitions, internships, and student research. A key task will be overseeing the conversion of the collections database management system from Argus to Museum Plus.

Research Associates AppointedTwo Research Associates have been appointed. These are Edward Ned Dwyer (RISD) and Wanni Anderson (Department of Anthropology). Ned is a specialist in Andean archaeology and Andean textile arts. Wanni is a specialist in Arctic and Southeast Asian cultures and focuses on issues of diaspora, displacement, ethnicity, and refugees.

Postdoctoral Fellow Appointed Christy DeLair has been appointed our Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Studies. Christy is a specialist in global indigeneity and well known to the Museum. A 2013 Brown Anthropology Ph.D., she curated a well-received exhibit at the Haffenreffer Museum entitled Crafting Origins: Creativity and Continuity in Indigenous Taiwan, which was the Museums featured exhibit at Manning Hall from November 2011 through November 2012.

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4The Assemblages ProjectRobert Preucel Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

John SmithDirector of the RISD Museum

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and the RISD Museum of Art have initiated

Assemblages, a four-year project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This

project is the first major collaboration between our two museums and involves

expanding the theory and method of object-based teaching and learning. We are

excited about this project and hope it will serve as a basis for future collaborations

and as a model for other university-based anthropology and art museums.

The organizing concept is the idea of the assemblage. This term has a variety of meanings derived from its diverse uses in the disciplines of art, art history, literature, archaeology, anthropology, and science studies, among many other fields. We seek to work across these different meanings as we explore the shape and contours of key representational issues in art and society. Our method involves breaking down the digital/analog divide by exploring the use and interpretation of collections in their relational contexts. We are also interested in developing object-based teaching pedagogy that enables students to foster deeper relationships with objects and their digital representations.

Our project is directly linked to the distinctive missions and strategic plans of our two institutions. It will enhance Brown Universitys commitment to intellectual creativity, collaboration, and social purpose to achieve greater levels of academic distinction by uniting innovative education and outstanding research to benefit the community, the nation, and the world. It will also contribute to the RISD Museums mission to interpret works of art and design representing diverse cultures from ancient times to the present. It will further RISD Colleges new initiative to provide increased opportunities for faculty research.

BackgroundThe Museum community, including university-based art museums and anthropology museums, is deeply entangled in a series of key debates about the interrelationships of culture and society. One line of investigation has addressed art and aesthetics. From this perspective, art is valued because it facilitates the contemplation

of transcendent human values. A second focus is on art and civilization. Here art is approached as an index of cultural progress or evolutionary stage, often with the idea of a linear progression from craft to fine art. A third focus is on art and commodification. This perspective examines the circulation of art from contexts of production to contexts of exhibition and examines the construction of value through the art market and the practices of connoisseurship.

These approaches have been and continue to be critiqued from a variety of perspectives and in an increasingly globalized art environment. For example, anthropologists have observed that there is no category that corresponds with the Western concept of art in most indigenous cultures. This insight shifts the focus from art as a universal human expression to the idea of making as universal human practice. Similarly, anthropologists and science studies scholars have challenged the idea of art as an index of cultural progress and have begun to reexamine the complex interrelationships of technology and society. Finally, artists and art historians have questioned the commodification process as representing the end of art and considered the circulation of objects in local and global contexts as creative processes in their own right.

Artists and anthropologists have recently taken inspiration from each others fieldwork. These scholars are exploring the techniques of artmaking and the methods of engaging with communities as models for new cross-disciplinary collaborations. The Assemblages project seeks to build on this movement by interrogating the kinds of interpretive and semiotic practices that characterize our associations with objects, broadly defined. We are particularly interested in examining the spheres

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of value that are produced by the circulation of objects and their images. For example, some of the most interesting contemporary work involves visualizing patterns of dissemination after art objects are created, and studying the diverse

networks into which they enter. This is a key topic in David Joselits book After Art, and constitutes what he calls a new epistemology of the search, defined as the formatting and reformatting of existing content.

On Assemblages The term assemblage is a rich concept that crosses a wide variety of fields. In the visual arts, it refers to the making of artistic compositions by putting together found objects. In archaeology, the term describes a group of artifacts found in close temporal and spatial association, that is to say, in context. In literary studies, assemblage is a key analytical concept related to desire and the state of becoming. In science studies, assemblage is linked to heterogeneous networks of people and things. As

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Project Components

1) We are creating a group of Mellon Teaching Fellows drawn from the faculties of both of our institutions. These scholars are making use of our collections in their teaching pedagogy, they are developing innovative exhibitions, and they are conducting cutting-edge research. We expect that a significant number of students (approximately 100) will be involved in these innovative courses over the term of the project.

2) We are establishing annual teaching workshops led by our staff to introduce fellows and other interested faculty to best practices related to object-based teaching. Fellows will also lead a workshop reporting on the outcomes of their pedagogical experiences at the ends of their appointments.

3) We are establishing an annual seminar on topics related to the material and digital interfaces of art, anthropology, and society. Digitization has magnified the separation of objects from their physical qualities, thereby changing the material foundations of cultural production. These seminars will allow our fellows and students to engage with nationally recognized scholars.

4) We are communicating the project outcomes to the public, interested scholars, and museum professionals both online and in collaborative publications and projects.

Roseanne Somerson, President of RISD, Robert W. Preucel, Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, and John Smith, Director of the RISD Museum, at the inaugural luncheon for the Assemblages Project.

2015 termVazira Zamindar is Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. She works at the intersection of anthropology and history with an interest in cross-border histories for rethinking a divided South Asia, as well as the politics of violence and its impact on the writing of history. Her book, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, was published by Columbia University Press in 2007; Indian and Pakistani editions came out in 2008. She is presently working on a second book on the history of archaeology

and war on the northwest frontier of British India, bordering Afghanistan, and has received the International Institute of Asian Studies Fellowship, the Fulbright, and the National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship, amongst others, for this project.

Jane South is a practicing artist and part-time faculty member in the Department of Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and Pratt Institute (New York). She has held solo exhibitions at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT), the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC), Spencer Brownstone Gallery (New York), and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Her work was included in Burgeoning Geometries: Constructed Abstractions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria in 2007 and SLASH: Paper Under the Knife at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York) in 2010. Other exhibitions include The Drawing Center (NY), Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA), and Mass MoCA, (North Adams, MA).

2015-2016 term Graham Oliver is Professor of Classics and History at Brown University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Greek history and literature and has directed and taught international graduate programs in epigraphy at Oxford University and the British School at Athens. He has authored, edited, or co-edited numerous books including The Epigraphy of Death: Studies in the History and Society of Greece and Rome (Liverpool University Press, 2000), Hellenistic Economies (Routledge, 2001), and War, Food, and Politics in Early Hellenistic

Athens (Oxford University Press, 2007). He has recently co-edited a collection of essays, Cultures of Commemoration: War Memorials, Ancient and Modern (Oxford University Press, 2012), which examines commemorative practices in Western culture from the fifth century B.C.E. through the World Wars and to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Multidisciplinary design practitioner, artist, and RISD educator Amy Leidtke is an engaged scholar with over twenty years professional experience in research, participatory design, strategic and master planning, exhibit and product development and design, curriculum design, educational symposia, and public speaking. Sample RISD studio courses include Curiosita: Practical Applications for Innovative Thinking, Introduction to Industrial Design, Sketching and Rendering for Industrial Design, Nature-Inspired Design Innovation, and Industrial Design Graduate Studio. Recent independent research activities involve creating design education products and experiences for K-12 students and educators.

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Assemblages Mellon Teaching Fellows

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As an artist who began in the theater and evolved through performance and painting into sculpture and installation, I have long been intrigued by the many roles that objects enact in different cultures and contexts.

The opportunity of a 2015 RISD Andrew W. Mellon Teaching Fellowship at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is a gift of time and access with which I might explore how objects participate in the world, to inquire into their capacity to inhabit and shift habitations amongst and between definitions and contexts, and to ponder the terrains of slippage that objects perform between such presumed binaries as animate/inanimate, functional/nonfunctional, art/artifact.

My Fellowship work is evolving as I explore the Haffenreffers collections through the lens of performativity. Seeking to activate discussion and experimentation around some of the notions outlined above, each stage of investigation will involve the creation of a work and/or event that performs a scenario within which these terrains of slippage might be enacted.

It seems natural, when speaking of performing and enacting, to frame these stages within the language and structure of theater. The first stage, recently exhibited as part of the 2015 RISD Faculty Biennial, is therefore titled: Prologue - Staging Still Life: The Mute Object Speaks. In this work, live video feed from a still life staged at the Haffenreffer Museums Collections Research Center in Bristol, RI, was projected onto a wall-mounted construction at the RISD Museum. The object-participants in this still life (which mimics the kind of set-up commonly seen in a still life painters studio or an art school) were curated from the Haffenreffers collection to perform in the theatrical space of the still life and co-exist alongside other objects/representations of objects from sources outside of the Haffenreffers collection. These foreign or non-privileged objects served to complicate and elucidate ideas of object status and relationsmaking visible (dis)connections across media, time, and context.

On a shelf jutting from the wall-mounted construction, and beneath the live still life video projection, sat Joseph Beuys Capri-Batterie (loaned by the RISD Museum). As the only real object in the assembly, this work enacted multiple roles; performing as Master of Ceremonies to link the two museums and acting as sculpture, alchemical artifact, and high-

value (authenticated) commodity, while further articulating complex conceptual sitings across diverse territories.

Moving forward from Prologue, I anticipate extending these ideas of performance and theatrical staging to new sites and contexts, further activating objects from the Haffenreffer collection by introducing them to unfamiliar settings, co-stars, and relationships. It is my hope to engage communities at Brown, RISD, and beyond by staging works/events to demonstrate how much these mute objects really have to say.

Prologue - Staging Still Life: The Mute Object SpeaksJane South, Department of Sculpture, RISDMellon Teaching Fellow

Jane Souths Prologue, on display in the 2015 RISD Faculty Biennial exhibition, projects a live image of her still life from the Haffenreffer Museums Collections Research Center in Bristol. The still life in Bristol is shown on Contexts front cover; on the back cover is the projected image, as seen in the Biennial exhibition.

8Digital TranslationsSophia Sobers Department of Digital + Media Mellon Photography Assistant

Since starting as the Mellon Photography Assistant this past February on a project to expand the accessibility of the museums collections, I have spent much time thinking and working with objects, their stories, and how to represent them through the camera. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, I have realized while photographing Taino objects how important lighting is to help display a story, add dramatic effects to otherwise unobtrusive objects, produce expressive faces, bring out faded colors, or highlight details.

This experience has made me reflect on the act of translating physical objects into digital images that will ultimately exist only on a screen. Even with a scale, a sense of their size and volume can be lost in translation, and the experience of moving a pot that looks sturdy but feels fragile is something difficult to translate. Thus the photographers tools - backdrop, lighting, aperture and lens - become the new media on which an object must rely for an accurate translation into its digital self; while the camera becomes the filter through which to process that object.

You, the reader, will ultimately view these images through databases, web browsers, phone applications, email, and other media still to be developed; interacting with them using your mouse, track pad, or finger. Through this interaction, each and every object travels through multiple filters before reaching its final destination on the screen. I shall end with a question I believe is relevant in the early 21st century, and one that I shall ruminate on as I continue this photographic journey - how can distant or different cultural objects hold a sense of presence in this digital age?

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9Global History of Art and Architecture Courtney J. MartinAssistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture Faculty FellowAs a 2014-15 Faculty Fellow, I was able to draw on the expertise of the Haffenreffer Museums staff and its expansive collection to shape the course that I co-taught with Professor Sheila Bonde in fall 2014, Global History of Art and Architecture. This new course ventured away from traditional art historical surveys that often ignore, or diminish, art and architecture produced outside of Western Europe toward one in which objects from Africa, the Americas, and Asia were considered part of the larger history of art and architecture.

One of our lectures, Imperial Benin and Its Global Consumption: The Benin Bronzes (13th century-1897), drew on the history, use, reception, and circulation of Benin bronzes. Professor Bonde and I met with Haffenreffer staff to learn more about the cultural and material concerns of these objects, specifically those contained within the Museums collection. The Museum placed a selection of these on view in Manning Hall so that students could view and, in some cases,

handle them during the week of the Benin bronze lecture. This interaction was a very important pedagogical moment for us students engaged with objects they were learning about in class and our graduate teaching assistants learned to handle museum objects and lead discussions with actual art objects rather than reproductions. This was a useful professional development exercise for our graduate students, many of whom are interested in curatorial careers.

We also used two African objects from the Haffenreffers collection a 19th century terracotta and a 19th century brass as subjects for one of the three required paper assignments. For this assignment, students compared and contrasted the formal and functional qualities of these objects with others located at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. In addition to encouraging student writing about artwork, this assignment showed them how to use museums as scholarly resources.

Who Owns the Past?Patricia RubertoneProfessor, Department of Anthropology Faculty FellowThis spring, I taught Who Owns the Past?, a first-year undergraduate class examining why the archaeological past matters. The class examined how objects, sites, monuments, and human remains are valued, claimed, and used by different stakeholders and encouraged students to think about the meaning of responsible citizenship and ethical stewardship and to participate in engaged scholarship by listening to voices from the local historical preservation, museum, Native American, and African American communities.

The Faculty Fellows program provided critical opportunities to enrich the course and achieve its goals. We examined soapstone bowls from the Museums New England collections to learn about the regions stone landscapes, the challenges in preserving them, and the collecting habits of early antiquarians. The bowls, made 4,000-5,000 years ago from soapstone quarried at outcrops like the Ochee Springs Quarry in Johnston, Rhode Island, helped students make

connections between in-situ depressions, cuts, and partial bowls shown in photographs of that site and finished objects in the Museums collections. One of the students, Ashley Aldridge, said that seeing the bowls taught her more about the way they were carved, the people who made them and what they were used for based on their shapes, handles, sizes, and markings helped bring them to life. The larger lesson was that so-called mysterious stone ruins found locally and throughout the world might not be as enigmatic as some have claimed.

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The class also visited CultureLab, where Thierry Gentiss case-by-case, object-based discussion helped them understand the challenges museums face in complying with NAGPRA and international antiquity laws. Isabelle Williams said that learning about objects and their histories made the implications of repatriation for institutions and communities that she had only read about seem more real. These opinions were echoed as students worked on research projects

using the Museums collections to explore whether certain objects would be repatriable under NAGPRA or whether the Museum should accept or reject certain objects based on its policies and a countrys antiquity laws. Expanding students learning experiences beyond the traditional classroom and through objects made a huge difference in teaching about why the past matters so fiercely to different stakeholders.

Golden Splendor and the Anthropology MuseumIan StraughnJoukowsky Family Middle East Studies Librarian Adjunct Assistant Professor of AnthropologyPrecious metals do not immediately come to mind when thinking about anthropology museum collections such as at the Haffenreffer. Other materials ceramic, stone, wood, iron, etc. dominate its shelves and drawers; still, on a whim, I approached my colleagues to see what might be tucked away in Bristol to support a new course I developed for Anthropology: Gold: the Culture of a Barbarous Relic. Both the curators and I were surprised to discover how many objects, even if not made entirely of gold themselves, could articulate the ways in which this element has participated in the cultural lives of peoples past and present.

It is something of a truism in the museum world that if you can get gold into the exhibition title and advertise with some glittering jewel-encrusted object, your visitor numbers will spike. In the context of our course, objects were chosen for display in Manning Hall and for hands-on examination in CultureLab, allowing students to reflect on those very museum practices that often give gold a place of honor at the expense of other materials. While many objects demonstrated the materialization of power and authority or golds

role in various ritual and symbolic practices, others permitted students to examine close connections of gold to the body, whether through forms of adornment or the various funerary contexts in which much archaeological gold is found. Serendipitously, the adjacent display of university regalia, with its many golden references to the ritual performances of European aristocracy and political elites, reinforced these connections.

Nevertheless, as Shakespeare famously penned, all that glitters is not gold, and in our work with the Museums collections we were fortunate to compare our golden treasures to artifacts such as the coppers of the Pacific North West that provided cross-cultural balance to our perceptions of value. Gold in the museum, we discovered, was something of a double-edged sword. While we might capitalize on its power to grab our attention and draw us into conversations about an object and the culture that produced it, our own cultural fascination with this rare metal could equally predetermine, even stifle, the ways in which we allow particular artifacts to speak.

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Return to Taiwan: Laying the Foundation for New Research on Indigenous Artists and MuseumsChristy DeLairPostdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology and Museum Studies

This winter I returned to Taiwan for the first time since collecting contemporary indigenous crafts with a grant from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in the summer of 2011. The purpose of this trip was twofold. First, I reconnected with artists and shared with them research results including pictures of their art on display in our 2011 exhibit Crafting Origins. Second, I laid the foundation for a new project on indigenous artists relations with museums in Taiwan, their collaborations on exhibits and access to collections, and how these engagements help shape contemporary artistic expressions and perceptions of community heritage.

Having been away for several years, a number of changes were pronounced. These included an increase in tourism, particularly from mainland China, and the development of supporting infrastructure such as high-speed trains, large hotels, and entertainment complexes. The price of indigenous art has jumped, in some cases doubling or tripling. Most artists have been able to sustain their businesses. More can now focus solely on art, support the building of new cultural centers, and hire family or community members to deal with the increasing tourist traffic. While they are concerned about the direction of

development in their communities and the impact on the environment, they are also hopeful that younger generations are taking an active interest in their heritage.

My new project draws significantly from established relationships with artists in Taitung, but is expanding to include artists from around the island. Artists frequently conduct museum research while developing artistic skills and knowledge of traditional styles and meanings, some even traveling abroad to access collections, particularly in Japan. Other artists curate and collaborate on museum exhibits, or participate in international exchange programs run through museums. Through analysis of these interactions and networks, I explore how artists engagements with museums help shape the development of indigenous identity and community.

I am also building connections with museum professionals, including curators at the National Taiwan Museum currently working on projects to improve indigenous communities access to collections and share curatorial authority. Their goals closely align with the practical aims of my research - to understand and improve indigenous communities access to their cultural heritage held by museums worldwide.

Ketagalan Culture Center, a small museum serving urban indigenous communities in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan.

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In Search of EmbudoRobert W. PreucelDirector of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

Severin M. FowlesDepartment of Anthropology, Columbia UniversityOn January 29, 1694, Diego de Vargas, the Governor of New Mexico, captured a Pueblo Indian at Namb Pueblo. The man, named Nicolas, related that he had come to Namb with another Indian to get maize to take to the outpost they called Embudo. He described its location as being next to the box canyon of the Rio del Norte on the way to Picuris Pueblo from San Juan Pueblo. He reported that the Tano Indians from San Lazaro and San Cristobal Pueblos were there, as well as most of the inhabitants of Tesuque Pueblo. Vargas was disturbed to learn this information. Embudo, and the other mesatop villages established by the Northern Rio Grande pueblos after the Revolt of 1680, represented severe threats to his reconquest program.

Archaeologists have only recently begun to document systematically these mesa villages and interpret their social roles in the post-Pueblo Revolt period. The senior author has conducted archaeological survey and mapping at Kotyiti (Old Cochiti) in the Cochiti district. Matt Liebmann has mapped Patokwa, Astialakwa, Boletsakwa and

Cerro Colorado (Old Zia) in the Jemez district. Joseph Woody Aguilar is currently conducting dissertation research on Black Mesa in the Tewa district. Significantly, each of these projects has been conducted in close collaboration with the descendant communities.

Last summer, the authors identified a possible candidate for the Embudo outpost. The site (LA 179595), located on private land, is a rectangular pueblo with basalt slab footings. Very few dividing walls are preserved within the roomblocks. There is evidence for an entrance or opening in the east wall. There is a historic torreon built on top of the southwest corner. The site is located adjacent to a basalt talus slope containing rock art dating to the Archaic, Pueblo, and Historic periods.

With the assistance of Fowles field crew, Dick Ford, Charlie Haecker, Woody Aguilar, and local volunteers, we conducted a surface survey of the site. We were especially interested in identifying diagnostic artifacts that might help us determine the period of occupation. Unfortunately, we found only a few utility ware sherds that may date to the Coalition period (12001325). Charlie performed a metal detector survey and located a penny whistle, possibly used by a Hispanic sheepherder. Lindsay Montgomery prepared a detailed site map.

At present, we are exploring several different interpretations. Because of the lack of construction materials, Sev wondered if the village had ever been completed. Dick suggested that the basalt slabs may have been foundations for a jacal superstructure. Bob thinks that it is an historic site, since it doesnt look like the Coalition period Tewa villages. So have we found Embudo? Only more research will tell!

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Building Bridges from ClothMichle Hayeur SmithMuseum Research Associate

My NSF funded research project, Weaving Islands of Cloth, is a comparative examination of textiles as primary evidence for womens labor and roles in the Norse colonies of the North Atlantic that developed from the 9th-19th centuries into the modern nations of Iceland, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

This year I expanded my focus to examine Green-landic, Faroese, and Scottish textiles from the Viking Age into the 17th century, while continuing work on Icelandic collections. This has been par-ticularly fruitful in documenting how the products women made changed over the course of a mil-lennium in the different North Atlantic colonies. For example, while Icelandic women industrially produced textiles to be used as currency through the Middle Ages, Greenlanders products appear to have shifted through time in response to local cli-matic and social hardships. The Faroese and Scot-tish Norse trajectories are just beginning to emerge from the data but already seem different and complex. Thanks to this research, Weaving Islands of Cloth now forms part of a collaborative research project on Danish colonial political economy during the early modern period, organized by Dr. Gavin Lucas of the University of IcelandCommodity En-tanglement, The Archaeology of the Trade Monopoly.

Through collaborative research, we have begun to expand and pioneer new approaches to document-ing the production and circulation of these textiles. For example, work with Dr. Karin Frei (National Museum of Denmark) is using strontium isotopes to characterize local cloth from Icelandic sites, document imports, and hopefully identify where they were made. DNA research with Mikkel Holger Stander Sinding (University of Copenhagen) is docu-menting the ways that Greenlandic farmers shifted farming strategies at the start of the Little Ice Age by identifying the different species whose hair was added to cloth as conditions for sheep farming dete-riorated. AMS dating, coupled with analyses of car-bon and nitrogen isotopes in wool clothing, is also allowing me, with colleagues at the Haffenreffer and the National Museum of Denmark, to document long-term recycling of cloth in Greenland, while collaborative work using pXRF is showing promise for tracking the movement of cloth at the inter- and intra-regional levels.

Thanks to this research, Weaving Islands of Cloth is building bridges across the North Atlantic as broad as the networks over which cloth once moved. These new connections are leading to the development of pioneering analytical techniques with Scandinavian colleagues and their integration into trans-regional and trans-disciplinary research collaborations that link the Haffenreffer Museum to research groups in national museums and universities across the North Atlantic and northern Europe.

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Color Matters: The Selection and Use of Lithic Raw Materials in Late Prehistoric New EnglandKevin P. Smith Deputy Director/Chief Curator

In the early twentieth century, Rudolf Haffenreffer amassed one of New Englands largest archaeological collections by purchasing artifacts from farmers and collectors around the Narragansett Basin. In his day these artifacts could not be dated; and with little to say about them, his interest waned. However, over the past 70 years radiocarbon dating has allowed prehistoric sites, and the artifacts found within them, to be assigned to different

periods in North Americas 13,000-year archaeological record. Today, the objects

in Haffenreffers collection can be assigned ages through comparison

with well-dated styles.

In recent years, I have been working through Haffenreffers collections with students,

assigning type designations to the artifacts, then plotting them on maps to visualize changes through time. One of the most striking patterns is an abrupt change in raw material use and color choices in the last centuries before European contact. The Narragansett and Boston Basins provide sources of stone suitable for making tools in a wide range of colors: white quartz; yellow jasper; green argillites; red felsite; black, grey, and beige rhyolites. Through most of New Englands prehistory, all of these raw materials were used; their frequencies on different sites generally reflecting the use of the nearest sources. During the Late Middle Woodland Jacks Reef period, ca. 650-1000 AD, all of these colors were used, with yellow jasper becoming especially important and possibly obtained from sources up to 300 kilometers distant.

However, around 1000 AD, at the start of the Late Woodland period, this changed radically.

Sources of red, black, and white stone became almost exclusively used, with

arrow points of these three colors found in roughly similar proportions

on all sites across the region.

The anthropologist George Hamell, among others,

noted that Northeastern indigenous communities at the time of European

contact viewed red, black,

and white as a symbolically potent color triad. In the body paints used to denote personal states of being, in ceremonial dress, and in objects deployed within political or ritual contexts, white represented social states of being (e.g. peace, law, and power), black was associated with asocial states of being (e.g. death, mourning, solemnity, and ancestral authority), and red symbolized antisocial but highly active or emotionally charged states of being, including war.

We cannot simplistically assume from this that red arrows were associated with war, white with peace, and so on; although it might well be reasonable to infer that the intentional selection

of stone types with color symbolism for the production of objects with clear

indexical symbolic value, as tools of aggression or production, might

suggest meanings incorporating these valences. Yet

the simultaneous recognition that these raw materials were

also moved over considerable distances to assemble

comparable assemblages of red, white, and black arrow points

at sites across the region suggests that those meanings were potentially more nuanced than direct equivalences and were activated in practice by shared understandings of where the materials were quarried, by whom they were acquired, how they were distributed, and whether there were specific contexts in which their selection could incorporate both performative and indexical referents.

Regardless of how these objects were interpreted in use, the sudden and ubiquitous shift, at the start of the Late Woodland period, to the use of stone types mirroring the red/white/black color symbolism documented for the Contact period, seems likely to mark an important ideological or cultural shift among the people of this region. While we may not yet now exactly what those changes signified, this pattern has never before been documented and this new clue from Haffenreffers old collections is allowing us to pose innovative new questions about New Englands indigenous history.

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The Beat of a Different Drum: Drum Production and Use Among Northern PeoplesChristopher B. WolffAssistant Professor of Anthropology, SUNY-Plattsburgh Museum Research Associate

In 2014, I began a new research project, in collaboration with archaeologist Tim Rast, to study the use and production of drums in the Arctic. Our research began with an interest in studying the enigmatic Dorset Paleoeskimo drums and shamanic paraphernalia recovered from the Button Point Site on Bylot Island, Nunavut. These fascinating drums led me to expand my research to examine drum traditions broadly among Arctic and Subarctic cultures. A focus of this research is the examination of the historical relationships between prehistoric cultures through new analyses of drum production and the sharing of musical traditions within contexts of shamanism, storytelling, and other ceremonial practices, many of which prominently featured the drum. This study may provide key information about cultural interactions among pre-contact northern cultures and the degrees to which they were transformed by contact and colonialism, early missionization, and assimilation efforts that, in places, forbade the use of the drum.

Musical traditions, particularly those associated with religious activities, are often culturally distinct and conservative,

allowing few changes that may affect the efficacy of the performance. Therefore, we expect that

drumming traditions may incorporate distinct cultural practices that could be

recognized through high-resolution studies of drum styles and

musical performances. Early analyses we conducted at

the Canadian Museum of History demonstrated just

thatclear typological distinctions between

the Dorset drums and Historic Inuit styles.

One of the next drums to be studied is a small one, initially identified as a toy drum, collected by J. Louis Giddings and his crew at Cape Krusenstern, Alaska, and now in

the collections of the Haffenreffer Museum.

Examined together with its associated

archaeological assemblage and context,

this rare instrument will extend our knowledge of these

traditions into the pre-contact Thule period of Inuit history and,

along with the Button Point drums, will provide the foundation for a multi-

year ethnoarchaeological study of past and present drum use and production around the

circumpolar north.

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Scientific Testing of the Luristan Bronzes at the Haffenreffer MuseumMge Durusu-TanrverGraduate Student, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient WorldBrett KaufmanPostdoctoral Fellow, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient WorldDavid ElitzerUndergraduate Student, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient WorldSusan E. AlcockDirector of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient WorldThe corpus of artifacts collectively known as Luristan bronzes, dating to 1300-650 BCE and originating from the Luristan region of Western Iran, rank among the most problematic of archaeological artifacts. Numerous museum examples have dubious archaeological provenance, since they came from illegal rather than controlled excavations and were then sold on the art market. Further, their portability and charm make them good candidates for forgery.

The Haffenreffer Museum has 20 Luristan bronzes with poorly understood provenances and dates. Mge Durusu-Tanrver cataloged them during a Joukowsky Institute proctorship with the Haffenreffer Museum in 2012. At the end of this project, which used stylistic and archival evidence, many questions regarding the authenticity of the artifacts arose, and scientific analysis was envisioned to be the next step.

In November 2014, we started our investigation with portable X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF), a non-destructive and non-invasive technology that enables us to ascertain the artifacts elemental signatures and assess their consistency with known historical alloys. This work is now complete, and we are in the process of interpreting the results using recently published archaeometallurgical data for Luristan-type artifacts from archaeological excavations of Iranian sites, such as Sangtarashan, as well as from testing different ores from the area.

Our next steps are conducting pXRF analysis on the Luristan bronzes from the collections of the RISD Museum, disseminating our results through publications, and assembling an exhibition bringing together the collections of the two museums.

New Perspectives on West Mexican FigurinesKellie RoddyUndergraduate Student, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient WorldFor my undergraduate thesis I am examining a group of West Mexican figurines from the Museums collections. Studies of prehistoric West Mexico face a difficult paradox- thousands of sculptures and figurines held by museums pique interest in the area, but the looting that provided these objects has eliminated much of the archaeological context needed to understand them.

These sculptures and figurines reflect a remarkable, but poorly understood, ceramic tradition. They are known to come from shaft tombs found in western Mexico, but only recently has archaeological evidence started to illuminate their original cultural contexts.

My goal is to place the Museums figurines into that broader context by conducting both stylistic and instrumental analyses. The stylistic analysis relates the Haffenreffer figurines to objects in other museum collections and uses existing typologies to assign them to regional styles using existing typologies. The instrumental analysis employs semi-quantitative X-Ray Fluorescence to obtain elemental fingerprints of the figures ceramic matrix in order to examine questions of standardization among the pieces and to identify repaired or reconstructed areas on the objects themselves.

Presumed Luristan bracelet, whose composition is consistent with ancient alloys as shown by XRF analysis.

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Kevin P. SmithDeputy Director/Chief CuratorIn May 2014, I was surprised when a colleague in arctic research, Stephen Loring, wrote to ask whether the Haffenreffer Museum would be interested in a collection of Maya artifacts from the estate of a distant relative, John C. Scheffler, who had accompanied E. Wyllys Andrews IV to Mexico in the early 1960s on Tulanes project to map the ancient Maya city of Dzibilchaltn. Mr. Scheffler never returned to archaeology after that expedition, but he acquired a large collection there that his heirs sought to place in a university

museum where it could inspire a new generation of students and scholars. This fall, John Schefflers collection and meticulously organized photographs and documentation came to the Haffenreffer Museum. Nick Carter, a recently minted Brown Mayanist, assisted as we opened the boxes containing the collection. As it emerged, he helped us see patterns in the collection that continue to excite us. Nicks thoughts, below, provide a sense of the wonder and potential in this collection.

Unpacking the Past: The John C. Scheffler Teaching CollectionNicholas P. CarterAdjunct Lecturer in AnthropologyWhen I was invited to examine the Scheffler collection, I suspected I was in for a treat. I wasnt disappointed: from boxes and newspaper wrappings came jade beads and clay spindle whorls, ceramic pots and vases, ornaments and sculptural fragments. Examining the collection, I came to realize thatapart from a few whimsical fakesthe pieces were genuinely Mesoamerican and ancient, and would make valuable teaching resources for the Museum and Brown.

Many of the vessels are stylistically similar, made from a fine, high-fired, orange clay, slipped and polished to a high sheen. Bands of geometric or pseudoglyphic designs, painted in black or incised with a fine point, reinforce that similarity. One has the impression that they could even have come from a single workshop; but if so, broken rims and root crazing suggest that it was a pre-Columbian one. I suspect an origin for these vessels in the northern Yucatan Peninsula during the Late Postclassic period (ca. A.D. 1200 1519), where Mr. Scheffler bought them (as a single lot?) from a dealer in Mrida. A few pieces came from

points farther west: the pottery heads of a jaguar and an enigmatically smiling ritual celebrant are typical of Late Classic (ca. A.D. 600 830) coastal Veracruz. Particularly interesting are a pair of earflares carved from marine shell and covered at one time with bark paper glued on with resin, most of which has worn away. These may be unique in the archaeological record but seem to find an artistic parallel in Late Postclassic art from northern Maya centers. There, gods and priests wear brightly colored earflares hung with streamers made of cloth, or, as the Scheffler earspools suggest, of bark paper.

The Scheffler collection has already been an invaluable teaching resource. Graduate and undergraduate students in my course on archaeological illustration have been gathering weekly in CultureLab to examine, photograph, and draw its pots and ornaments. Getting gloves-on experience with these pieces has excited their interest in archaeology and museum studies, or so Id like to think.

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New AcquisitionsThierry Gentis, Curator/NAGPRA CoordinatorSignificant collections, including 639 objects from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, and Oceania, along with two photographic collections with 168 images were added to the Museums collections this past year through purchases, bequests, and the generosity of many benefactors. Donors have found the Museum an appropriate home for their collections in large part because of the Haffenreffers mission to deploy its collections for research and education. Indeed, many of these new acquisitions are already in the Museums Manning Hall exhibition gallery and CultureLab for use in teaching and student research. Among these are a spectacular Pre-Columbian gold ornament from the Tairona culture of Colombias Caribbean coast, given by anonymous donors and currently on display in CultureLab for Ian Straughns

class on gold (see page 10), and elements of a large and important collection of Late and Post-Classic Maya objects from northern Yucatan donated by the estate of John C. Scheffler (see page 17). As with all antiquities that enter the collections, these objects and their acquisition records were scrutinized by the Museums Collections Committee to ensure that their acquisition meets the requirements set by the Museums collections policy, the UNESCO Convention of 1970, and relevant laws and treaties between the United States and these objects countries of origin. Satellite cases in the Rockefeller Library, the Roberts Campus Center, and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World provide further opportunities to share our collections with the greater campus community and the public.

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The objects and images on pages 18-21 represent a small sample of the new acquisitions accepted by the

Haffenreffer Museum this past year. Although space prevents us from showing all of these gifts or recognizing

all of our donors, these provide a sense of the richness and diversity of the donations.

A. Nyamwezi healing figure, early 20th century, Tanzania. Anonymous gift.

B. Ewe shrine figure, 20th century, Togo. Gift of Cesare Decredico.

C. Shipibo janiform ceramic vessel, mid-20th century, Peru. Gift of Edward Dwyer in memory of Jane P. Dwyer.

D. Tairona gold double spiral ornament, A.D. 1000-1500, Colombia. Anonymous gift.

E. Taino ceramic figurative vessel spout, A.D. 1200-1500. Dominican Republic. Gift of Lauren Butler Fay, Brown 01.

F. Taino bone carving of a Zemi (deity), A.D. 1200-1500, Dominican Republic. Gift of Lauren Butler Fay, Brown 01.

G. Taino figurative stone pestle, A.D. 1200-1500, Dominican Republic. Gift of Alison Collins Fay, Brown 99.

H. Detail from a textile with condors and camelids, mid-20th century, Bolivia. Gift of Diana Baker.

I. Mikmaq birch bark box with porcupine quillwork, late 19th century, Nova Scotia. Gift of Elizabeth Gebhard.

J. Pre-Columbian Maya ceramic vessels, Mexico, primarily Late Postcclassic, A.D. 1200-1519. The John C. Scheffler Teaching Collection; gift of the John C. Scheffler estate.

K. Fon silver bracelet, early 20th century, Republic of Benin. Gift of Dwight B. Heath and Anna Cooper.Heath.

L. Taino zoomorphic shell ornament, A.D. 1200-1500. Dominican Republic. Gift of Lauren Butler Fay, Brown 01.

M. Chert retouched blade, Archaic period (ca. 2,000-4,000 BC), Dominican Republic. Gift of Alison Collins Fay, Brown 99.

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Documenting Our WorldAnthony Belz, Guard/GreeterRip Gerry, Photographic Archivist/Exhibition PreparatorKevin Smith, Deputy Director/Chief Curator

The Haffenreffer Museum not only collects material culture but also collections of photographs that document the ways that life is lived around the world today. This year, the Museum accepted a generous gift of photographs taken in Myanmar by Philip Lieberman, the George Hazard Crooker University Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, whose eye for composition and content provides the museum with rich opportunities to document the contrasts and contradictions that exist between globalized material culture and local cultural expressions in all parts of the world today. These photographs add to a collection of more than 400 photographs and objects of material culture, primarily from South Asia, donated over the years by Professor Lieberman and his wife, Marcia Lieberman.

The Museums archives also provide critical documentation of our research and acquisitions, supporting our collections in myriad ways. This year, a major effort has been made to bring together all of our records surrounding the life and activities of the pioneering Arctic archaeologist, anthropologist, and naturalist

J. Louis Giddings (1909-1964), who came to Brown from the University of Pennsylvania in 1956 as Associate Professor of Sociology and the first director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Through the Haffenreffer familys donation of the Museum and Giddings efforts, Browns Department of Anthropology was born. His mission to involve students as full colleagues in cutting-edge fieldwork, collections management, and exhibition development remains central to our mission today. Giddings archives provide a record of interest to archaeologists across the North, whose work still relies on his discoveries, his keen perception of large-scale patterns and fine detail, and his early commitment to collaborative research with indigenous communities.

Woman spinning cotton in a workshop at Inle Lake, Myanmar, 2014. Photograph by Philip Lieberman. Gift of Marcia Lieberman.

Researching Great Lakes Collections at the HaffenrefferRuth B. PhillipsCanada Research Chair and Professor of Art History, Carleton UniversityI recently spent a day in the Haffenreffers storage studying its North American Great Lakes collections as a bonus of my recent trip to lecture at Brown. I am delighted that the museum will partner with the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing database (GKS), a collaborative project bringing together material culture, historical photographs, depictions, documents, and Indigenous language resources in repositories around the world. GKS is the key research platform of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture (GRASAC). This collaboration of researchers was founded in 2003. GRASACs goals are to stimulate and support individual and collaborative research on Great Lakes Indigenous histories and forms of expressive culture and to facilitate on-line access to heritage for members of Indigenous communities. The project has received major funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Premiers Discovery Award of the Province of Ontario. It has also been supported by its two key Indigenous partners, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation and the Woodlands Cultural Centre in Ontario and the generous in-kind contributions of museums, large and small, in North America, Europe, and New Zealand.

With the help of the Museum staff, I viewed the Haffenreffers collection and discussed its history. We opened drawers and scanned shelves to gain a sense of the scope of the Haffenreffers holdings, which include magnificent beaded bandolier bags, birch bark boxes ornamented with porcupine quills or designs scraped into the bark, cradleboards, crooked knives, corn husk dolls, and calling card trays and feather fans exquisitely embroidered in moosehair. We also laid plans for a second phase of work. This summer, GRASAC will fund two PhD candidates from Carleton University to travel to Bristol to take detailed, high resolution photographs and record the collection for GRASACs database. Alexandra Nahwegahbow is Anishinaabe from Manitoulin Island and is writing her dissertation on cradleboards and the material culture of child rearing, while Wahsontiio Cross is Mohawk from the Kahnawake community outside Montreal and is writing on historic and contemporary Haudenosaunee beadwork. We would also very much like to engage Brown students in the ongoing work and, as a contributing institution, the Haffenreffer will automatically become a partner in the project with full access to the GKS. We very much look forward to working together in the future.

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Lost Museum FoundEmily AveraGraduate Student, Department of Anthropology

Bryan MarkovitzGraduate Student, Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies

Students affiliated with Browns Program in Science and Technology Studies worked with the Haffenreffer to create a project for Browns Lost Museums Symposium to be held this spring.

The group focused on exploring the Museums collections through artistic practices that responded to the Symposiums themes, including loss and forgetting. For example, they studied a Baoul mouse oracle (gbekre) from Cte dIvoire that requires a largely unknown form of apprenticeship with a diviner to use.

To learn more about such objects, the group conducted studies using catalog records, video walks through the collections, sketches, library research, and even X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy scanning to make material replicas, or surrogates of the objects for interactions beyond the museum. By making surrogates, Emily explained, we could learn from the objects qualities and find ways to reinterpret its meaning in relation to life in the present. The surrogates took on a number of forms, from paper maquettes and illustrations to songs and scenarios performed around the city.

The groups interests in science and technology studies also led them to question how knowledge is produced in the museum. In searching the collections with staff, they were able to observe the Museums collections management systems and discuss various issues that govern the care of collections. They also explored the ways that their own inquiry eventually took on the form of an archive of its own.

Museums are passive storehouses, Bryan noted. Our goal was to experiment with creative ways to transform our encounter with material culture into new objects, and new experiences in life. By connecting the Museums collections with heuristic research methods that link past, present and future, the Haffenreffer is helping students to imagine how museum experiences might evolve.

Students of the Lost Museums Project search the Haffenreffer collections. Left to Right: Emily Avera, Dorin Smith, and Jess Leyva, assisted by Deputy Director Kevin Smith

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Lectures and Public Programs Geralyn DucadyCurator for Programs and EducationThe Haffenreffer Museum, with support from its Friends group and campus co-sponsors, annually offers a series of talks and demonstrations linked to its exhibits and anthropological topics of interest to students, faculty, and the Providence community.

We started the academic year with Creating Relics for Brown and the Search for a Useable Past, an illustrated lecture by Robert P. Emlen, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Brown, to celebrate Browns 250th Anniversary Alumni Weekend. William Simmons also gave a curators tour of In Deo Speramus: The Symbols and Ceremonies of Brown University. These programs were co-sponsored by the Brown 250th Committee.

Clark L. Erickson, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, presented the Shepard Krech III Lecture with a talk entitled Pre-Columbian Monumental Landscapes in the Bolivian Amazon.

Egyptologist and graduate student, Jen Thum, showed how she deciphered a badly damaged Old Kingdom relief in CultureLab during Family Weekend. The block, along with her translation, is currently on display in CultureLab.

Kevin McBride, Director of Research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, gave a talk, Uncovering the 1676 Battle of Nipsachuck, about current research linking battlefield archaeologys methods with a King Philips War site in Rhode Island.

Eva Andersson Strand of the Danish National Research Foundations Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, spoke about Textiles and Textile Production in Viking Age Scandinavia.

William Simmons, Professor of Anthropology, closed the fall semester with a popular talk entitled Paths to the Great Swamp Fight, December 19, 1675. This well-attended talk was co-sponsored with the John Carter Brown Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Jaune Quick-to-see Smith started our spring semester as the Barbara A. and Edward G. Hail Lecturer with A Survey of Contemporary Native American Art. This program was co-sponsored by the Department of Visual Art at Brown.

Ruth Phillips, Carleton University, spoke as the Jane Powell Dwyer Lecturer presenting Aesthetic Primitivism Revisited: How the Love of Primitive Art Gave Rise to Indigenous Modernism.

Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary joined us as the Barbara Greenwald Memorial Arts Program speaker and presented a talk entitled (A) yx w daa yoo tuxaatnk: This is How Im Thinking About It.

In Women and Ledger Art, Author Richard Pearce was joined by Curator Emerita Barbara Hail and Guest Artist Dolores Purdy Corcoran to discuss recent Plains ledger art, as explored in Pearces book of the same name.

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Reaching OutGeralyn DucadyCurator for Programs and EducationOur Culture CaraVan outreach program offers eight hands-on programs using objects from the Museums education collection to provide enhanced understandings of the worlds cultures for K-12 schools throughout Rhode Island and adjacent parts of Massachusetts. The favorites this year were Native Peoples of New England, Culture Connect, and Dig It: Exploring Archaeology. Our programs are designed to meet current state and Common Core standards but are tailored to a wide range of audiences, within and beyond schools. These programs, run by Kathleen Silvia reach about 3,000 participants each year! Education collections assistant Christopher LaChapelle has been working with Geralyn and Kathy to reorganize and conserve the educational collections.

We also offer on-line curriculum resources for teachers and learners beyond our region, with six curriculum packets, many of which complement the outreach programs. Grace Cleary, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, interned with the Museum to create a new online packet for teachers on Archaeological Ethics. Intern Keller Anne Bumgardner is aligning this and our other on-line packets with new Common Core standards, Next Generation Science standards, Rhode Island and Massachusetts History and Social Studies standards, and WIDA Institute standards for English Language Learners.

Through partnerships with the Joukowsky Institute, the RISD Museum, and the Providence Public Schools, we are in our sixth year of Think Like an Archaeologist, a five-session program that introduces sixth graders to archaeology and complements their studies of ancient civilizations. The program presents archaeology as a scientific process from survey, through excavation, to analysis of artifacts in the lab, and interpretation.

Encouraging critical thinking and skills required for Common Core, students participate in four in-class sessions and one Museum session at the Haffenreffer and RISD Museums. Haffenreffer education interns Molly Kerker and Rachel Himes and I taught the classes alongside RISD Museum staff and Joukowsky Institute proctors. Think Like an Archaeologist has proven successful locally and in January served as an example of archaeological outreach at the Archaeological Institute of Americas first educators conference, Building a Stronger Future for Archaeological Outreach and Education A Working Conference for Educators.

This was our third year partnering with the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, Inc. With the help of interns Molly Kerker and Rachel Himes, I ran hands-on sessions in classrooms where three- and four-year olds learn about museums and object handling. Each class has had a number of in-school sessions, and the four-year olds also visited the Museum to learn about museum exhibits and symbols. The four-year olds have also started working on a new exhibit to open later this year at the Rochambeau Branch of the Providence Community Library.

The Museums various outreach programs would not be as rich or as valuable for the schools we serve, nor as integral to the Haffenreffer Museums role in training students from Brown University and other schools, without the help of interns, whose thoughts about their programs and experiences follow.

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Intern Reflections

Christopher LaChapelleSince September of 2014, I have been working as a collections assistant intern for the Haffenreffer Museums education department. While Ive primarily been involved in inventorying and organizing the education collection, I have also had the chance to spend time in our conservation lab addressing parasite infestations and cleaning items that just needed a little love.

This work has provided me opportunities to get my hands on some of the most fascinating things theyll ever touch. But, even more amazing than that, working on the education collection gives me the chance to support younger students in their learning through the Haffenreffers outreach programs. Writing from my own experience, this is absolutely invaluable: it was frequent attendance at museums and museum programming that helped me discover my passion for anthropology and eventually led me to museum work, which I can easily say has been some of the most fulfilling of my life.

Keller Anne BumgardnerThis year I have been incredibly grateful for my experience as an Educational Outreach Intern under Geralyn Ducadys supervision. Working with Geralyn has helped me apply my skills and knowledge of developing curriculum guidelines to update the Haffenreffers published lesson plans and curricula. They will soon reflect new and more rigorous frameworks of learning, such as the Common Core State Standards, to help teachers assess how and when to best use these plans.

The landscape of K-12 education is shifting. With the introduction of Common Core State Standards, increased learning support standards for English Language Learners, and increased interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning, teachers are in a time of transition. The Haffenreffer Museums rich collection of on-line lesson plans and curricula, in topics as diverse as the transatlantic slave trade, Native American cultures, and archaeological practices and ethics, are valuable resources for teachers and their students.

Working on this project has been a very engaging experience, making me proud to play a part in helping children explore the world through anthropology and history. Ive even recommended the Dig It! curriculum to several former colleagues in Memphis, as a great resource to introduce students to the themes and concepts they explore in their science and social studies classes. I wish I had known about it when I was teaching!

Molly KerkerThink Like An Archaeologist does more than elicit wonder at the pastit entices students to think about human culture today. After taking part in hands-on archaeological activities in the classroom, students react in awe to ancient objects as they visit the Haffenreffer Museums CultureLab. This Year, the In Deo Speramus exhibit displayed signs and symbols from a contemporary and familiar institutionBrown University, which I used to encourage students to consider the ways in which they also use symbolsfrom clothing logos to school mascotsto communicate shared meaning. My favorite element of this lesson was when students created their own symbol-laden seal (in the image of the Brown University seal) to represent themselves. They sketched images of Dominican flags, families holding hands, computer game characters, soccer balls, and paintbrushes. Many were excited to take their drawings home to add more symbols. I appreciate Think Like An Archaeologist for how it links the past to the present, the seemingly foreign to the personal. I incorporated this lesson

Christopher LaChapelle is a class of 2015 Anthropology student at the University of Rhode Island.

Keller Anne Bumgardner receives her MA in Urban Education Policy from Brown University this May.

Molly Kerker receives her MA in Public Humanities from Brown University this May. This is her second year as an intern with the Museum.

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in the preschool program we run with the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, Inc. In Deo Speramus provided a great context for learning about symbols and three and four-year-olds that visited the museum over the last two years were able to connect this lesson easily with what they learned at school.

Rachel Himes As a Haffenreffer Museum education intern, I taught four-year olds that visited from the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, Inc. The lesson I developed with the Images of Power: Rulership in the Grasslands of Cameroon exhibit continued their exploration of symbols.

I also taught lessons for the sixth grade Think Like an Archaeologist program. One of the great strengths of this program is that it encourages students to draw their own conclusions about the objects and information they are presented with, rather than offering prescribed interpretations. One of my favorite sessions is the first classroom visit, when groups of students are given a pair of mystery objectssmall tools and decorative pieces that range from the identifiable to the unrecognizable. They are asked to think like an archaeologist and hypothesize about these objects identities through a process of careful analysis, comparison, and observation. One object in particular, a bright orange crescent of hollow plastic tubing, always elicited responses which surprised me with their insights and diversity. Students hypothesized that it was a garden hoe, a drinking implement, a periscope, a dagger sheath, a ceremonial trumpet. Participating in this exchange forcefully reminded me how mysterious artifacts from the ancientor recentpast often are to us, eluding facile identification or explanation. The open nature of object interpretation in Think Like an Archaeologist has caused me to consider more expansive approaches to objects and information in my own academic work at Brown.

This Year with the Haffenreffer Museum Student GroupAbby Muller and Arianna RivaHMSG President and Vice PresidentThe Haffenreffer Museums Student Group accomplished a great deal this year. We expanded, reorganized, and provided opportunities for our newest members to become involved in our accomplishments.

We got off to a running start by organizing a trip to the Collections Research Center to look at the collections and develop exhibit ideas. By bus and car we got our members out of the city and down to Bristol for an afternoon. We toured the buildings and even visited Metacoms seat in a snowy drizzle. Were now using ideas from that visit to research ideas for a new exhibit that we hope to install next year using beautiful objects from the museums collections.

In the fall, we organized a screening of National Treasure on campus at the Museum. It was a fun event that also helped us learn more about financing and organizing logistics. We hope to continue finding opportunities to get students into Manning Hall and engaged with the Museum in entertaining ways. One such project that weve begun is to form a student docent corps to engage

visitors with the Museum. Weve had our first training session and hope to develop a more concrete program and tour schedule soon.

We are incredibly grateful to the Haffenreffer Museum for supporting us in these endeavors and to our members for the extra work needed to make them happen. This has been an exciting and full year. We hope that the next year will be as successful!

Rachel Himes is in the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Class of 2015. Her concentrations are Religious Studies and Illustration.

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Grants and Awards Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

National Science Foundation, Arctic Social Sciences

Rhode Island Foundation, Haffenreffer Family Fund

Rhode Island Foundation, Samuel Cate Fund

Brown University, Office of the Vice President for Research

Institutional PartnersMuse du quai Branly

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

National Museum of Scotland

Danish National Museum/Nationalmuseet

Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen

Greenland National Museum/Nunatta Katersugaasivia/Grnlands Nationalmuseum

Historical Museum of the Faroe Islands/Froya Fornminnissavn

National Museum of Iceland/jminjasafn slands

The Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland/Minjastofnun slands

Icelandic Institute of Natural History/Nttrufristofnun slands

University of Iceland/Hskli slands

Snorrastofa Cultural/Research Centre

Icelandic Archaeological Institute/Fornleifastofnun slands

National Archives of Iceland/jskjalasafn slands

Smithsonian Institution, Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

Cochiti Pueblo

Rhode Island PartnersRhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design Museum

Rhode Island Historical Society

Tomaquag Museum

Rochambeau Library, Providence Community Library

Providence Public Schools

Gallery Night Providence

Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, Inc.

Brown University PartnersJohn Carter Brown Library

Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America

Department of Anthropology

Haffenreffer Museum Student Group

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown

Native Americans at Brown

Brown Green Events

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Friends Board Jeffrey Schreck, PresidentElizabeth Johnson, SecretarySusan Alcock, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

and the Ancient World Peter Allen, Rhode Island CollegeEdith Andrews, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head

(Aquinnah)Gina Borromeo, RISD MuseumKristine M. Bovy, University of Rhode IslandVicki Leigh Colvin, Provost David Haffenreffer, Haffenreffer Family FoundationRudolf F. HaffenrefferBarbara A. Hail, Curator EmeritaSylvia Moubayed, CAV Restaurant Daniel Smith, Chair of AnthropologyRobert W. Preucel (Ex Officio)Kevin Smith (Ex Officio)

AdministrationRobert W. Preucel, DirectorDouglas Anderson, Director of the Circumpolar

LaboratoryKevin P. Smith, Deputy Director/Chief CuratorCarol Dutton, Office ManagerThierry Gentis, Curator/NAGPRA CoordinatorBarbara A. Hail, Curator EmeritaNathan Arndt, Curatorial Affiliate Rip Gerry, Exhibit Preparator/Photo ArchivistAnthony M. Belz, Museum Guard/Greeter

Programs and EducationGeralyn Ducady, Curator of Programs and

EducationKathy Silvia, Outreach CoordinatorChristopher LaChapelle, Education Collection

AssistantKeller Anne Bumgardner, Outreach InternRachel Himes, Outreach InternMolly Kerker, Outreach Intern

ResearchMichele Hayeur Smith, Research AssociateChristopher Wolff, Research AssociateWanni Anderson, Research AffiliateEdward (Ned) Dwyer, Research Affiliate

Faculty FellowsPaja Faudree, Associate Professor of AnthropologyCatherine Lutz, Professor of AnthropologyCourtney Martin, Assistant Professor of History of

Art and ArchitectureItohan Osayimwese, Assistant Professor of History

of Art and ArchitecturePatricia Rubertone, Professor of Anthropology

Faculty AssociatesElizabeth Hoover, Assistant Professor of American

Studies and Ethnic StudiesSteven D. Lubar, Professor of American Studies,

History of Art and Architecture, and HistoryWilliam S. Simmons, Professor of Anthropology

Postdoctoral FellowChristy Delair, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology

and Museum Studies

Mellon Teaching FellowsAmy Leidtke, Faculty of Industrial Design, RISDGraham Oliver, Professor of Classics and HistoryJane South, Faculty of Sculpture, RISDVazira Zamindar, Assistant Professor of History

Mellon Photography AssistantsChristopher Alviar, Post Production Photography

Assistant, RISDSophia Sobers, Department of Digital + Media, RISD

Student AssistantsJessica Nelson, ProctorArianna Riva, Collections AssistantNicole Amaral, Collections InternChelsea Johnston, Collection Intern

Student Guards/GreetersMorayo AkandeBrooke GasdaskaNora HakizmanaAnisa KhanmohamedOdalmy MolinaAbby MullerKavya RamananCaroline SeylerDaniela Serna Destin SisemoreSonja StojanovicSeito Yamamoto

Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology Brown University Box 1965 Providence, RI 02912

brown.edu/Haffenreffer

Non-Profit Organization US Postage PAID Permit No. 202 Providence, RI