Week Six: Do it like a Boas

Hola, Um waynuma?, Rimaykullayki, Gude, konnichiwa, Hello!

We have successfully completed our 6th week! That's 3/4ths of the way through before we are all home-bound which will be a breath of fresh air (no pun intended...) for all of us. This week started out as a typical Monday with a little rocky morning due to subway complications but we didn't let it kill our work vibe! To date, we completed three more cabinets this week with a running total of 22 cabinets! Spirits were high this week with many jokes in between the adversities of curation with missing specimen labels, poorly archived boxes, and uneven ethafoam liners. Getting out of the windowless basement is also always an adventure. This week some of the interns ate lunch at a make-your-own-salad restaurant. Yum! 

A specimen with an exemplary example of scientific terminology in the world of paleontologists.

This week's scientific tour was of the Anthropology collection. Anthropology by definition is "the science of human beings". It has been concentrated into four main fields: biological or physica, cultural or social anthropology, linguistic, and archaeological anthropology. The better and more specific definition by Marriam Webster is, "The study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture." Much of the collection from the Pacific Islands at AMNH is from the research and field work from Margaret Mead. Margaret Mead was an anthropologist who studied under Franz Boas, Father of American Anthropology. Franz Boas researched fields of physical anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology.

On our way to the tour is always started with analyzing the quality, size dimensions, technological advancement, and sketchiness of the elevator's design status.

 Our tour of the collection was guided by Senior Museum Technician, Mike Quigley. We began in one of the old anthropology exhibit halls revamped into a high quality, climate controlled collections room. The anthropology has similar curatorial concerns as other collections but on steroids.Their biggest concerns are bug infestations, human contact, light exposure, and temperatures. To prevent bugs getting into the collections, they try and get rid of every nook and cranny a bug can hide. They have epoxy covered floors that reach a couple inches above the contact between the floor and wall to create an seamless transition. They have large cabinets that vary in size kept off the floor. It is definitely a step up from the old storage rooms that were in a section of the museum that loosely resemble a prison-like layout (pictured left). To prevent human oils from destroying colors or material of artifacts, they wear gloves when any contact needs to be made (pictured right). Light exposure is controlled by dark window shades or covering the older collection cabinets with brown paper. 

First, we started in the newest and nicest collection hall with textiles from South America. 

The curation organization were similar to the Invertebrate Paleontology. Each artifact is given an individual catalog number. The difference is each item gets two numbers in a fraction form. The top number is its accession number that groups similar objects that has more than one of the same type. The bottom number is the individual catalog number. The information associated with each item can describe materials, who collected it, when it was from, field notes, and sometimes the artist, are added to the paper manuscripts considered 'the bible'. More recently, it was digitized into a public database (sound familiar!?) with accompanying photographs. The anthropology department uses acid free archival tubes, cardboard, and tissue paper. They also use ethafoam to house artifacts. 

In the Southern US collections, we viewed different pottery, musical instruments, clothes, decorative items, baskets, and dolls. The red blanket from Peru pictured left is an example of "increeeeeeeedible" (-Ernesto) preservation of color and material of a mummy plain woven wrap.

The Kachina dolls pictured above were made by the Hopi people used for tribal teachings about the spirits. 

Next, we adventured into the Pacific Peoples collection from New Guinea and New Ireland.

Our mascot, Chester, feeling right at home with the Nautilus pompilius

Thought to be mortuary masks

Mike was very open to requests of what we wanted to see so we also got a peek at the Japanese collection.

Minda looking very excited.

Keara's Declassified Museum Survival Guide: a novice tip guide for curators

Tip #1: "This work matters" (2016 intern suggestion). Double checking our work that the database information, locality, and paper tag associated with the specimen all correlate is a major key! 

Seen above is our supervisor, Bushra, and Sarah working out a discrepancy where the tag and database information do not correlate 

One of the other most important tips is communication to make sure we're all on the same page with information we're entering and fixing. There are various posters with information to ensure that all our information correlates with each others databases for when it is entered into the main database in the future. The importance of correlation is because this work is going to be available for researchers and the public alike.

Tip #23: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle!!

Most of us are geology majors, but we care about more than just rocks! We have a stock pile of old or non-archival boxes that are put in a bag to be used for other purposes that get picked up every once and a while. Sarah and myself have begun our own little collection of reusable boxes to save the environment one box at a time.

Tip #30: Can't read a label? Ask our decipher expert, Ryan, to have a look!

As frustrated as we get at some of our labels, we always have a chance of deciphering the chaos with the helpful eyes of Ryan: master in reading scratchy, shaky, and impossibly illegible handwriting!

Tip #45: Be innovative!!

Some of the interns have complained about the uncomfortable chairs, but us scientists always find a way!

Not only was our tour about Anthropology, we had an inspiring conversation Franz Boas might've been proud of. In Boas' journal article, Approach to Language, "The human language is the most important manifestations of mental life."

We talked about common English variations that we all have different names for depending on our region. Some interesting things include: water fountain vs. drinking fountain, sneakers vs. tennis shoes, you guys vs. y'all, incomparable names for drive through liquor stores that Pennsylvanians can't relate to, the fact there's a name for the area of grass between the sidewalk and street, soda vs. pop, vs. soda pop, a surprising distinct difference between supper and dinner, and grinder vs. the existence of the term hoagie.

We took the dialect quiz from the NY Times from 2013. Click here to take the quiz yourself!

Until next week, "so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, and adieu to yieu and yieu and yieu".

-Keara and the interns