The Field Museum of Natural History is one of the premier natural history museums in the U.S., with extensive collections in archaeology, anthropology, and many other disciplines. Last week, the Museum annnounced major budget cuts and restructuring that will reduce the scientific value of its collections.The museum evidently will cut back the scope of its scientific mission (collections and basic research) in order to pay back major debts and concentrate on exhibits.
This operation will be a disaster to archaeological research in a number of ways. First, the collections will be more difficult to access, and the infrastructural support for visiting scholars will undoubtedly be reduced. I have worked on Mesoamerican pottery in the Field Museum's collections on several occasions (the last time was just this past July). Museum collections are an invaluable resource for archaeology, crucial for many important research questions. See Smith (2004; n.d.) for some general statements of this view. For every object on display at museums like the Field Museum, there are perhaps hundreds (maybe thousands) curated in the research collections. If you haven't worked with museum collections, you should - there is an impressive amount of good, problem-oriented research to be done with these materials.
Aztec flute in the Field Museum
Here is just one example of the value of the Field Museum collections. The photo above shows an Aztec flute in the museum. I have excavated many small fragments of these objects in Aztec domestic middens, but never an entire example. When one just has the animal's ear, or a segment with a hole, or a fragment of the mouthpiece, it is hard to figure out just what these are pieces of. It is through study of the whole flutes in the Field Museum or other museums that I learned to interpret the tiny fragments of musical instruments, and of many other unusual items, from my excavations. Or consider our knowledge of Aztec music. Scholars such as Adje Both have reconstructed aspects of Aztec music by studying flutes like this and by playing them (and recording the tones and doing analyses of the sound diagrams). Museums are the only places with the resources for such research, and the Field Museum is one of the most important in the U.S. and the world.
A second negative impact of the proposed cuts concerns the curators at the museum. The Anthropology Department at the museum has a number of outstanding archaeologists who carry out original field research and also work on the collections. This is an important center for high-quality archaeological research, and the budget cuts cannot but injure this program.
Third, severe budget cuts will also have a negative impact on the archaeology program of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Their PhD program in anthropology has flourished through interaction with the scientific staff of the Field Museum, many of whom hold joint appointments with UIC.
Smith, Michael E.
n.d. Las bodegas de museos como fuente de información arqueológica: Las contribuciones de Felipe Solís Olguín. In Homenaje al maestro Felipe Solís Olguín, edited by Roberto García Moll and Rafael Fierro Padilla. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Volume in preparation.
Academia.edu is starting to be useful. I've had a page there for a year or so, posted a few papers, and done some snooping around to find people working on topics of interest to me that are outside of my own archaeological field. But in the past week, I've gotten a couple of good leads that would have taken much longer to find otherwise. First, I located someone (Jennifer Birch) whose work on Iroquois villages in Ontario is relevant to my transdisciplinary urbanism project (where one research thread is to investigate neighborhoods, or neighborhood-like spatial units, in "non-urban" settlements such as Southwest pueblos, or Iroquois villages).
Second, I got notice of a new paper by geographer Andrew Sluyter on recentism.I have talked about recentism in this blog previously,and I have a paper in press in the CAJ that deals with the topic. Here is Sluyter's paper:
Sluyter, Andrew 2010 The Geographical Review's Historical Dimensions and Recentism. The Geographical Review 100:6-11.
Until more people sign up for Academia.edu, I think its usefulness will remain limited. But perhaps it is reaching a tipping point now (or perhaps this is just random luck on my part). If you don't have a personal web page where you post your papers, Academia.edu is a good place to easily create such a page and get some increased exposure and citations. I thank Åsa M Larsson
for initially making this suggestion in a comment on this blog.
I am driving home to Arizona from Toluca, and my route takes me through Nayarit and then up the coast of Sinaloa. This brings to mind the recent publications of some classic archaeological reports from this area by the State of Sinaloa. They have translated three of these reports, from the 1930s and 1940s, into Spanish, and co-published them with Siglo XXI, a Mexican commercial publisher. The reports are listed below.
These are classic reports on west Mexican archaeology. The new editions each have a new historical introduction about the authors. Isabel Kelly was a true pioneer in Mesoamerican archaeology, and there is a great photo of her with an early 1930s car in the field. The polychrome ceramics from these sites relate to the "Aztatlan" style or complex, and the new publications are worth the price just for the ceramic drawings.
The Aztatlan ceramics share some iconography and stylistic elements with the so-called "Mixteca-Puebla" ceramics of central Mexico. Given the center-dominant paradigm of Mesoamerican archaeology, the obvious explanation had to be that these elements diffused from central Mexico to peripheral areas like Sinaloa, a notion enshrined in an influential paper by H.B. Nicholson (1960). This led my wife and I to point out in a seminar paper (published as Smith and Heath-Smith (1980) that the ceramic traits in question appeared EARLIER in the periphery than in the center, suggesting that center-to-periphery diffusion could hardly explain the distribution patterns.
Looking at these ceramics again after many years shows that there is still much to learn about chronology and cultural developments in Sinaloa and Nayarit. On this trip I stopped at the INAH museums in Guadalajara, Tepic and Mazatlan to take photos of ceramics. The Mazatlan museum has a particularly good collection of Aztatlan ceramics, and the "old city" of Mazatlan around the museum is fun and fascinating (far different from the gringo-oriented resorts of the north beach area). The coast highway goes around Culiacan and right through Guasave; I wonder what the old excavation areas look like now.
Anyway, in this age of shrinking publications budgets and the increasingly difficult task of finding publishers for archaeological data reports, it it nice to see a state agency republishing important out-of-print reports. Way to go, Sinaloa!
Ekholm, Gordon F. (1942) Excavations at Guasave, Sinaloa, Mexico. Anthropological Papers vol. 38, pt. 2. American Museum of Natural History, New York.
Ekholm, Gordon F. (2008) Excavaciones en Guasava, Sinaloa. Siglo XXI, Mexico City.
Kelly, Isabel T. (1938) Excavations at Chametla, Sianaloa. Ibero-Americana vol. 14. University of California, Berkeley.
Kelly, Isabel T. (1945) Excavations at Culiacan, Sianaloa. Ibero-Americana vol. 25. University of California, Berkeley.
Kelly, Isabel T. (2008) Excavaciones en Chametla, Sinaloa. Siglo XXI, Mexico City.
Kelly, Isabel T. (2008) Excavaciones en Culiacán, Sinaloa. Siglo XXI, Mexico City.
Nicholson, H. B. (1960) The Mixteca-Puebla Concept in Mesoamerican Archaeology: A Re-examination. In Men and Cultures: Selected Papers from the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, edited by Anthony F. C. Wallace, pp. 612-617. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
I heard from colleagues at the SAA meetings in Atlanta last week that Felipe Solis had just died in Mexico City. Mesoamericanists and museum professionals will recognize his name, but for others, Solis was curator of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City and a noted expert on Aztec sculpture, art, and archaeology. There will be lots of obituaries, scholarly tributes, and biographical pieces coming out soon about Felipe. Here, I want to use him as an example to comment on an aspect of archaeological publishing: The importance of publishing museum collections. I will briefly discuss his publications in three categories. None of these lists are complete; they are meant to illustrate the quality and quantity of his published works.
1. Scholarly papers on Mesoamerican art and architecture:
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1982)The Formal Pattern of Anthropomorphic Sculpture in the Ideology of the AztecState. In The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, edited by Elizabeth H. Boone, pp. 73-110. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1985)Arte, estado y sociedad: la escultura antropomorfa de México-Tenochtitlan. In Mesoamérica y el centro de México: Una antología, edited by Jesús Monjarás-Ruiz, Rosa Brambila and Emma Pérez-Rocha, pp. 393-432. Instituo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1986)La estructura pirámidal de Castillo de Teayo: un edificio en proceso constructivo o un peculiar estilo arquitectónico. Cuadernos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana 8:73-79.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1987)Elementos rituales asociados a la muerte del sol entre los mexicas. In Arte Funerario: Coloquio Internacional de Historia de Arte, edited by Beatriz de la Fuente, pp. 65-76. vol. 2. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1992)Evidencias arqueológicas de la práctica del juego de pelota en la antigua México-Tenochtitlan. In El juego de pelota en Mesoamérica: raíces y supervivencia, edited by María Teresa Uriarte, pp. 143-155. Siglo Veintiuno, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1997)Andrés Molina Enríquez y la arqueología de Jilotepec Estado de México. Expresión Antropológica (Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura) 4-5:43-48.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R., Richard F. Townsend and Alejandro Pastrana(1996)Monte Tláloc: un proyecto de investigación de etnohistoria y arqueología. In Los arqueólogos frente a las fuentes, edited by Rosa Brambila Paz and Jesús Monjarás-Ruiz, pp. 157-169. Colección Científica. vol. 322. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
2.Large-format books, including catalogs of major museum exhibits.
García Moll, Roberto, Felipe R. Solís Olguín and Jaime Bali(1990)El tesoro de Moctezuma. Chrysler México, Mexico City.
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo, Alfredo López Austin, Miguel León-Portilla, Felipe R. Solís Olguín, Miguel A. Fernández and José Enrique Ortiz Lanz (editors)(1995)Dioses del México Antiguo. Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City.
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo and Felipe Solis(2005)The Aztec Calendar and Other Solar Monuments. Grupo Azabache, Mexico City.
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo and Felipe R. Solís Olguín (editors)(2002)Aztecs. Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Serra Puche, Mari Carmen and Felipe Solís Olguín (editors)(1994)Cristales y obsidiana prehispánicos. Siglo Veintiuno, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1991)Gloria y fama mexica. Smurfit Cartón y Papel de México; Museo Franz Mayer; Galería Arvil, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(2004)The Aztec Empire: Catalogue of the Exhibition. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R. (editor)(2004)National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City. Harry N. Abrams, New York.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R. and Ted Leyenaar (editors)(2002)Art Treasures of Ancient Mexico: Journey to the Land of the Gods. Niewe Kerk, Amsterdam.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R., Gabriela Uruñuela, Patricia Plunket, Martín Cruz and Dionisio Rodríquez (editors)(2007)Cholula: The Great Pyramid. Editorial Azabache, Mexico City.
Early in my career I was dismissive of books like this as lavish, colorful, “coffee-table” books, nice for art historians perhaps but not much use for a dirt archaeologist like me. I have now reversed my opinion, recognizing these as important scholarly works. First, most of these books make contributions to scholarship on Aztec and Mesoamerican art and archaeology. Second, they bring the objects and scholarship to a wider audience. And third and most relevant for this blog, they are important vehicles for the publication of museum collections.
3. Catalogs of Museum Collections
This category consists not of catalogs of public exhibits, but catalogs of the thousands and thousands of objects in museum storage facilities. Solís published a number of catalogs of collections, mostly of Aztec objects.
Castillo Tejero, Noemí and Felipe R. Solís Olguín(1975)Ofrendas mexicas en el Museo Nacional de Antropología. Corpus Antiquitatum Americanensium vol. 8. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1976)La escultura mexica del museo de Santa Cecilia Acatitlan, Estado de México. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R.(1981)Escultura del Castillo de Teayo, Veracruz, México: catálogo. Cuadernos de Historia del Arte vol. 16. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Mexico City.
Solís Olguín, Felipe R. and Davíd A. Morales Gómez(1991)Rescate de un rescate: colección de objetos arqueológicos de el Volador, ciudad de México. Catálogo de las colecciones arqueológicas de Museo Nacional de Antropología. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
And finally, here are some museum catalogs that were published with the help and encouragement of Felipe Solís. This is a series of catalogs, and I find that my bibliography file lacks a number of them (i.e., my list is very incomplete):
Díaz Oyarzábal, Clara Luz(1990)Colección de objetos de piedra, obsidiana, concha, metales y textiles del Estado de Guerrero: Museo Nacional de Antropología. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Flores, Dolores and Araceli Rivera Estrada(1992)Ofrendas funerarias de Chupícuaro, Guanajuato: catálogo de las colecciones arqueológicas del Museo Nacional de Antropología. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
García Moll, Roberto, Daniel Juárez Cossio, Carmen María Pijoan Aguade, María Elena Salas Cuesta and Marcela Salas Cuesta(1991)Catálogo de entierros de San Luis Tlatilco, México, temporada IV. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Sodi Miranda, Federica and Hugo Herrera Torres(1991)Estudio de los objetos arqueológicos de la cultura matlatzinca. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Comment
I don’t think the above lists (incomplete as they are) need much comment. There can be little doubt that Felipe Solís was not only a leading scholar and museum curator, but he did more than anyone else to publish (and to promote the publishing by others) of museum collections. Why is that important? See my paper:
The University of Pennsylvania Museum is trying to fire 18 archaeologists and close MASCA (the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology) and other research labs and centers in archaeology. If this sounds outrageous, please read and sign the petition that objects to this act and requests that the Museum reconsider its actions.
I just posted photos of a very odd ceramic object on my Calixtlahuaca Archaeological Project blog. I have no idea what this thing was used for, and I am hoping that someone will provide some clues or suggestions. Our puzzlement over this object brings back my complaints about the lack of publication of museum collections of Aztec materials (Smith 2004). Aztec ceramics (the materials I work most closely with) are very poorly published. There is not a single adequate descriptive report on an excavated collection of Aztec ceramics (I know, I shouldn't throw stones -- I'm sure my colleagues are asking why my book on Tlahuica Ceramics has been listed as "in press" for ten years now. But that is another story..... ).
Museums in Mexico, the U.S. and Europe are full of Aztec ceramic objects that remain unpublished. Most Aztec ceramics aren't as nice as, say Classic Maya polychromes or Mixteca-Puebla polychromes, so they haven't attracted much attention from connoisseurs or art historians. Many examples of the finer Aztec ceramics, such as the fancy stuff excavated from offerings at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, are published in expensive art books and elsewhere. But at the provincial sites I excavate, we don't get too many of these fine objects. But we do get some rare and complex things like musical instruments and various kinds of incense burners. But they are almost always in very fragmentary form, and the lack of publication of the whole objects in museum storage collections really hampers the intepretation of these things; this is the theme of my 2004 paper.
But why aren't these museum collections published? Here are some off-the-cuff answers to that question.
Its too expensive publish museum collections. Even for internet publication, which saves the costs of printing and binding, someone has to take the time to photograph and document the museum collections, organize the data, and write descriptions (not to mention producing the html and host the project).
Its not fashionable to do documentation projects. Most art historians would rather spend all their time on a couple of really fine objects than on documenting the range of variation within a material category. Its difficult or impossible in art history or archaeology to get funding for documentation projects; they just aren't sexy enough. When museums start documenting their collections digitally, the Aztec ceramics are pretty low on their priority scale.
Museums don't have the resources to document their collections. When I started working at Calixtlahuaca, I wrote to museums in Europe to see if they had collections from the site (it was a favored stop for foreign collectors in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and many museums have collections from that time). One beleaguered curator replied that he had absolutely no idea whether his museum had anything from the site, and that he had no way to even find that out, given recent budget cuts.
Museums often put up roadblocks. Some museums charge a fee for any use of images of their objects, whether for print publication or internet posting. Others allow such images to be posted, but add restrictions. For example, as an experiment a few years ago I posted a collection of ceramic vessels from Calixtlahuaca and other sites in two U.S. museums. I got permission from the museums, but one required that their reproduction policy be available within a single click of each image. That seems reasonable, but it meant that the automated program I used (it was called Arles) was unable to produce the html files, which required hours of hand editing.
Archaeologists avoid museum collections, since most are poorly documented with many unprovenienced objects. Yet I don't need to know precisely where a particular Aztec ceramic widget came from in order to get some use out of the object.
I don't have any big conclusions or solutions here. One of my many fantasy "retirement projects" is to travel to the great museums of Europe and document their collections of Aztec ceramic objects. But that is a long way off, and I would really like to know NOW what some of the weird ceramic fragments we get really are.
I just found a news story stating the the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has just announced a new initiative to digitize its entire inventory and post images and information on the internet (but I couldn't find any information about this on the University Museum's web site. Hmmmmm). This is great news. I know they have some Aztec pottery; maybe they have a complete example of one of these weird objects.....
