Archaeology and Material Culture in Museums

Collections and Object Histories

• How do we work with objects that have complex histories?
  • Collections, donations, and purchases.
  • Archaeology (excavation, studies).
  • Understanding objects and the idea of secrecy.

Secrecy and Revealing

• Paradox of writing about secret objects: disrespecting the culture by revealing secrets.
• Tension between concealment and revealing.
• Scholarly endeavor of learning about objects and dealing with multiple layers of secrecy.
• Communities wanting to conceal vs. flaunting of a secret.

Life Force and Spirituality

• Objects are imbued with life force energy (similar to the concept of "Mictate").
• Ache: Life force energy rooted in West African (Yoruba) culture (Nigeria, Ghana, Abeni).
• Spiritual connection: the artist as interpreter, infusing spirituality into their work.
• Activation through use: objects tap into divinity (e.g., Yoruba crowns).

Philosophical Underpinnings and Responsibility

• Learning the philosophical underpinnings of a community before working with their objects.
• Decentering the Western perspective and centering community experiences.
• Community experiences include lived experience, histories, philosophies, and future aspirations.

Decentering Western Perspectives

• Not only de centering a Western perspective, but more importantly, centering the community experiences.
• Experiences include not only lived experience but histories, philosophies, and thinking also of the future aspirations.

Repatriation and Care

• Repatriation: returning objects and caring for material culture.
• Building museums on reservations or reactivating existing ones.
• Healthy hesitation: indigenous communities consider how to care for material culture connected to ancestors and histories.

Material Culture

• Centers fieldwork, centers digs. When we say digs what we're talking about is excavation, right, excavation sites.
• All the tangible objects that make up a social history.

Archaeology

• Archaeology centers fieldwork and digs (excavation sites).
• Early experiences often involve natural history museums and dinosaurs.
• Material culture in museums includes:
  • Tools, arrowheads.
  • Pottery.
  • Remains showing evidence of ways of living.

Purpose of Archaeological Work

• Understanding daily life in the past.
• Discovering dramatically changed landscapes over millions of years.
• Understanding interactions between different groups of people.
• Identifying trade routes and technologies.

Landscape and Living

• Landscape largely determines how people lived.
• Examples:
  • Los Angeles builds for earthquakes.
  • Salish community relied on waterways.

Salish Community and Canoe Making

• Specific trees were used to efficiently make the biggest canoes.
• Canoes allowed traversing shallow waters, enhancing the tribe's influence.
• Connects to a way of life, sustenance, navigation, and trade (salmon fishing, smoking, drying).

Methodologies and Ethics in Archaeology

• Archaeology has developed and refined its methods and ethics.

Skowlitz Archaeological Project

• Collaboration between the Skowlitz community and researchers to understand their history.
• Telling students they had to be respectful, and they had to have good feelings when they went over there. And the way they went over there was the way they had to come back. Like, not bringing bad thoughts back from the mountains.
• Discoveries:
  • The site transformed from village to cemetery.
  • Interactions between people along the Fraser and Harrison river systems.
  • Orientation of houses to the river and equinoxes.
  • Connection to earlier houses with the same orientation.

Narrating Artifacts

• Artifacts should be accompanied by narration explaining their use and date.
• Tools found indicate fishing, logging, and mining activities.

Connecting Past, Present, and Future

• Archaeology helps reconnect those dispossessed from their identity, land, and history.

Potential of Archaeology

• Inferring cultures, beliefs, or spirituality.
• Understanding similar living practices among communities along river systems.
• Justification: finding connections between the present and the history of one's culture to advocate for land rights and cultural preservation.
• Recovering histories of disappeared communities.

Material Culture and Museums

• Narrations accompany artifacts to explain their importance.

• Knowledge helps secure those objects.

• Knowledge from communities about their practices helps understand objects.

• Centering community experiences and understanding diverse ways of being.

• Museums preserve material culture, and also communities build their own strategies and mechanisms to support their own material culture.

Baskets

• Baskets tell family stories and record lived experiences.
• Four winds design represents northeast, south, and west winds.

Symbolism and Cultural Exchange

• Different symbols can have wildly different interpretations.
• Geometric symbols can be common across cultures.

Four Winds Symbol and Swastika

• Four winds design vanished after World War II due to association with the swastika.
• Basket (Comish tribe) used as a teaching tool to preserve the design.
• Design was turned over and changed by Adolf Hitler and became known as a swastika.