CONTEXTS

The Annual Report of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology Volume 44 Spring 2019

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 About the Museum
The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology aims to inspire creative and
critical thinking about global cultures, past and present, and to foster
interdisciplinary understanding 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 University’s students
and faculty, the city of Providence, the state of Rhode Island, and the
general public

The museum’s Gallery is in Manning Hall, 21 Prospect Street, Providence,

Rhode Island, on Brown University’s Main Green. The Collections
Research Center is at 300 Tower Street, Bristol, Rhode Island.

Manning Hall Gallery:

21 Prospect Street, Providence, RI 02912
Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Collections Research Center:

300 Tower Street, Bristol, RI 02809
Hours: By Appointment

Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology:

Box 1965
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
(401) 863-5700
HaffenrefferMuseum@brown.edu

brown.edu/Haffenreffer
facebook.com/HaffenrefferMuseum
twitter.com/HaffenrefferMus
instagram.com/Haffenreffer_Museum

Contexts
Editor: Kevin Smith
Copyright 2019 Brown University | Produced by the Office of University Communications

On the covers: Front cover: Providence from College Hill, Courtesy of Brown University.
Back cover: Kuba cloth (detail), Democratic Republic of Congo, mid-20th century, Gift of
Cesare Decredico.

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 I am very pleased to report some exciting news!
From the Director
The Haffenreffer Museum is preparing for a much-
anticipated move! With the support of President
Christina Paxson and Provost Richard Locke,
we are embarking upon a multi-year project to
resituate the museum to Providence, Rhode Island.

Moving is always challenging, but moving museum

collections is a huge undertaking requiring
considerable planning and flexibility! Perhaps
the best-known move was the National Museum
of the American Indian’s Move Project in 2004.
It involved the move of approximately 800,000
archaeological and ethnographic materials from
the Bronx, New York to Suitland, Maryland. It
was successful due to extensive planning and
preventive conservation strategies established by
the staff and management. We hope to learn from
these experiences and adapt them to our needs.

The museum is currently divided between two

locations. The Collections Research Center
and the Circumpolar Lab are in Bristol and our
galleries and CultureLab are on Brown’s campus.
The Bristol location, some 45 min from campus,
continues to pose challenges for the museum in
realizing one of our key goals – to increase the
use of our collections in teaching. Moreover, the
constant transportation of objects back and forth
to campus puts objects at risk. The relocation will
We have received an extraordinary enabling grant
resolve these issues and more. It will unite the
of $5 million dollars through the generosity of
museum’s collections and exhibitions under one
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These funds,
roof, facilitate public access to the collections,
awarded over a four year period, will permit
and create new opportunities for research in
the inventory, conservation, photography, and
anthropology, Native American and Indigenous
rehousing of our remarkable collections. In
studies, and other academic disciplines at Brown.
order to implement the project, the Museum
It will also contribute to Providence’s vibrant arts
will augment its current staff with a Project
and culture community.
Manager, Conservator, Photographer, Community
The move to Providence is a longstanding goal of Outreach Specialist, and four Collections
the university and there have been more than a Assistants. This grant will coordinate closely with
few false starts over the years. In 1995, President our previous Mellon grant of $500,000 designed
Vartan Gregorian announced the purchase of to prepare our Native American collections
the Old Stone Bank building and the adjacent for the move, and $200,000 from the National
Benoni-Cooke House as the new home for the Park Service to prepare our Native Alaskan
Haffenreffer Museum. Gregorian noted that, “The archaeological collections.
city’s rich ethnic and cultural diversity makes
This is an exciting time as we advance towards our
Providence an appropriate permanent home for
goal of integrating the museum into the academic
the Haffenreffer’s collections, and the museum’s
and cultural life of the campus and city. Thank you
long-standing commitment to education and
for your continued commitment to and support of
outreach will make the Old Stone site a great asset
the Haffenreffer Museum.
for Providence schools.” The project was tabled

Robert W. Preucel
under the administration of President Gordon Gee,
but the need remains as pressing as ever.

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 March, 2018
In the News
Museum receives a grant from
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Last March, the museum received a $500,000
grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The grant, entitled “Engaging the Americas:
Reinvigorating the Native American Collections
of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology,
Brown University” is enabling museum staff to
document, conserve, and reorganize the Native
American ethnographic and archaeological
collections. For more information on “Engaging
the Americas”, see page 7.
May, 2018
Registrar participates
in American Institute for
Conservation’s Annual Meeting
The American Institute for Conservation’s (AIC)
45th Annual Meeting sessions, in Houston, Texas,
centered on the theme “Materials Matter.” The
museum’s registrar, Dawn Kimbrel, attended a
symposium “Whose Cultural Heritage, Whose
Conservation Strategy,” participated on a panel,
“Talking Grants – Hear from IMLS Reviewers,”
and offered a poster session during for the
Collection Care Network Idea Fair. As editor for
the Collection Care Network, she also attended
the Collection Care Network and American
Institute for Conservation’s Publications
Committee business meetings.
June, 2018
Research Associate receives
new NSF grant
Michèle Hayeur Smith has been awarded a new
grant by the National Science Foundation for her
three-year project: “Archaeological Investigation
of the Eastern North Atlantic Textile Trade and
Globalizing Economic Systems.”  This is her third
NSF award from Arctic Social Sciences that she
has done through the Haffenreffer Museum. For
more information on this grant and Michele’s on-
going research, see pages 9 and 22.
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July, 2018
Deputy Director Investigates
Viking Travels in North America
Kevin Smith received a crowd-funded research
grant through Experiment.com to conduct new
research with Museum Research Associate
Christopher Wolff (University of Albany) on
archaeological collections from the only
documented Viking site in North America –
Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux Meadows. In late
July, they traveled to Parks Canada’s collection
facility in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, to analyze
stone fire-starters carried by the Vikings to, and
from, the site. They were privileged to work with
Birgitta Wallace, who has overseen fieldwork
and research at L’Anse aux Meadows since
the 1970s, and were interviewed and filmed
by a crew from German state television for a
series on the Vikings in North America that
will air during the summer of 2019. For more
information on this research, see page 21.
Museum Research
Associate and Deputy
Director Interviewed by
Canadian News Media
Michèle Hayeur Smith and Kevin Smith
published a study that shows that the Dorset and
Thule people, ancestors of today’s Inuit, created
spun yarn some 500 to 1,000 years before
Vikings arrived in North America. The finding,
made possible in part by a new method for dating
fiber artifacts contaminated with oil, is evidence
of an independent, indigenous development of
fiber technologies – using wild Arctic animals’
hair, wool, and tissue – rather than a transfer
of knowledge from Viking settlers. They were
interviewed live, coast-to-coast, on CTV –
Canada’s largest television network – and for
nearly a dozen Canadian newspapers and online
science news sites.
 December, 2018
In the News
Museum receives a
transformative grant from The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The museum received a major $5,000,000 grant
from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The
grant, entitled “Transforming the Haffenreffer
Museum at Brown University” is enabling
museum staff to document, conserve, and
reorganize the ethnographic and archaeological
objects in the Haffenreffer collections. See
From the Director for more information, and
page 8 for more information on “Transforming
the Haffenreffer.”
Director gives a paper at
TAG-Deva, England
Robert Preucel gave a paper at the Theoretical
Archaeology Group meeting at the University of
Chester, England. The paper offered a critique of
the ontological turn in archaeology and made a
plea for the value of collaborative research.
April, 2019
New Faculty Fellow selected
Our Faculty Fellows Program is an opportunity
for faculty to develop and refine their skills
in object-based pedagogy. We have appointed
Yannis Hamilakis as a new faculty fellow. He will
be curating an exhibition on the nomadic age and
refugees in the Mediterranean.
HMA well represented at
the SAA annual meeting in
Albuquerque
Robert Preucel, Kevin Smith, Michèle Hayeur
Smith, and Annalisa Heppner participated
in the Society for American Archaeology’s
annual meeting in Albuquerque, NM. Bob
was a discussant for Scott Ortman and Bruce
Bernstein’s session on partnerships with
Pojoaque Pueblo. Kevin gave a paper in a
symposium celebrating Anna Kerttula and her
contributions to Northern Research. He and
Michele moderated a forum and coordinated a
poster symposium with Elie Pinta (Sorbonne)
for a new interest group, SANNA – Social
Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic.
Annalisa was a discussant in SANNA’s forum
and presented a poster on our NPS-funded
Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project (see
pages 10 and 23).
May, 2019
Director participates in
TAG-Syracuse
Robert Preucel gave two papers at the
Theoretical Archaeology Group meetings in
Syracuse, NY. The first was on the problematic
implications of the growing interest in ontology
at the expense of addressing indigenous
community needs and the second (with Sam
Duwe) addressed methods of decolonizing
Southwestern Archaeology.
Registrar attends annual
meeting of the American
Institute for Conservation
Dawn Kimbrel, the museum’s registrar, will
attend the American Institute for Conservation’s
annual meeting entitled “New Tools, Techniques,
and Tactics in Conservation and Collection
Care” in Uncasville, Connecticut with student
registration assistant Elsabet Jones (Brown ’20).
June, 2019
Manager of Museum Education
and Programs to attend annual
meeting of the Association of
Academic Museums and Galleries
Leah Burgin will participate in the annual
meeting of the Association of Academic
Museums and Galleries from June 27-30, 2019
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Staff changes
New grants and plans for a move are bringing
the Museum opportunities to increase staff.
This year we welcomed Pinar Durgun (Ph.D.,
Brown, Archaeology) into the Museum’s team
as a Collection Assistant on the Mellon-funded
“Engaging the Americas” grant. Pinar is the first
of ten new staff members to be hired through the
“Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the
Haffenreffer” grants.
Lewis Turley also joined the museum’s staff for
the summer and fall as a seasonal Collection
Technician, assisting Dawn Kimbrel on a wide
range of collection management projects.
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 Remembering Bill Simmons
Milestones
Patricia E. Rubertone, Professor of Anthropology
breaking contribution to the study of Native
American history and survival for its attention
to Native-centered interpretations. In his 1987
presidential address to the American Society for
Ethnohistory, he said that what he found exciting
was “to connect the historic record with the
ethnographic present” by listening to the voices
of ancestors speaking through the distinctive
voices of the present generation. To Native
people, he was a gentle spirit, gifted storyteller,
and a generous person who will be missed, as he
is by his students, who knew him as an inspiring
teacher, a source of support, and a welcoming
presence with a wonderful sense of humor. To
his colleagues, he was respected as a scholar,
skilled administrator, and moral compass.
Upper left: Bill Simmons in 2014 at the opening of “In Deo
Speramus”, his exhibit honoring Brown’s 250th anniversary
while director of the Haffenreffer Museum

William S. Simmons, a beloved Professor of

Anthropology, passed away on June 2, 2018.
Bill, as most of us knew him, was a native
son of Providence and graduate of Classical
High School. He earned a B.A. cum laude with
highest honors in Human Biology from Brown
University, and Master’s and doctoral degrees
in Anthropology from Harvard University. He
joined the Anthropology faculty at the University
of California, Berkeley in 1967, where he was
appointed Director of the Center for the Teaching
and Study of American Cultures and Dean of
the Division of Social Sciences. In 1988, he
returned to his beloved Providence as Brown’s
Executive Vice-President and Provost. During
the next twenty years, he served as senior vice
president for academic outreach and affiliated
programs, directed both the Center for the
Bill Simmons, as an undergraduate in 1958, advancing the
Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Haffenreffer
archaeological record on the coast of Alaska
Museum of Anthropology, and chaired the
Anthropology Department.
Bill’s dedication to anthropology was matched
As an undergraduate, Bill was mentored by his commitment to the community. He was
by J. Louis Giddings – the Museum’s first a trustee of the Providence Public Library and
director – and was invited to participate in Rhode Island Historical Society, and a board
his archaeological projects in Alaska. That member of several organizations, including the
relationship marked the beginning of his Providence chapter of the National Association
involvement with the Haffenreffer Museum and for the Advancement of Colored People that
nurtured his interest in archaeology beyond awarded him the prestigious Roy Wilkins Award
the Rhode Island sites that he had biked to for Social Justice. He will be remembered not
as a boy. During his distinguished career, Bill only for his professional accomplishments, but
did ethnographic research in Senegal and also for his feats as a high school track star,
among Native Americans in California and his cowboy boots, the conversations he shared
New England on religion and folklore. His book, on walks, road trips, and over coffee, and
Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History his humanity.
and Folklore 1620-1984, has been called a path-

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 Engaging the Americas: Re-invigorating
Grants and Projects
the Native American Collections of the
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
Robert Preucel, Director, and Kevin Smith, Deputy Director
This year, the Museum received a grant of
$500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
for a four-year (2018-2022) project intended
to strengthen the care of and scholarship on
our core Native American archaeological and
ethnographic collections.
The Haffenreffer Museum’s ethnographic
collections were largely acquired by Rudolf
Haffenreffer in the 1910s and 20s during his
trips across the United States to inspect his
investments and properties in the West, as
well as through connections and alliances that
he built across the Eastern United States. His
ethnographic collections have special strengths
in the material culture of Native American
societies during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries in the Great Plains, the American
Southwest, California, Southeastern Alaska, the
Great Lakes, the Northeast, and the Canadian
Subarctic. Some of these collections have been
published by Barbara Hail in three exhibition
catalogs – Hau Kola! The Plains Indian Collection
of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
(Barbara A. Hail, 1981), Out of the North: The
Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of
Anthropology (Barbara A. Hail and Kate C. Duncan,
1991), and Gifts of Pride and Love: Kiowa and
Comanche Cradles (Barbara A. Hail, ed., 2000).
The Museum’s archaeological collections contain
more than 45,000 specimens. Most are from
Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts’
Narragansett Bay drainage basin. Haffenreffer’s
records identify the counties, towns, villages,
crossroads, and at times farms from which
at least 20,000 of the artifacts came, but not
the time periods they represent, which were
unknown during his lifetime. Reorganizing and
rehousing these collections, using Haffenreffer’s
documentation of their find spots and current
knowledge of their age will allow these artifacts
to be systematically organized for the first
time as a valuable resource for understanding
the development of Native American cultures
and communities across New England and for
contributing new information on eastern North
American prehistory.
The project will facilitate:
1. e
 ntering object records into
the Museum’s collections
management system
2. p
 hotographing the Museum’s
holdings of Indigenous North,
Central, and South American
material culture
3. e
 stablishing conservation
priorities for the Museum’s
Native American objects, and
stabilizing items of beadwork,
quillwork, and hide-work that
are currently too fragile or
unstable to be moved safely
4. r ehousing and reorganizing
Rudolf Haffenreffer’s extensive
archaeological collections from
southern New England.
This project will contribute to
Brown’s institutional goals regarding
education, research and community
engagement. First, increasing the
accessibility of these collections
will provide immediate and direct
benefits to Brown’s efforts to increase
educational opportunities for Native
American faculty and students and
foster scholarship about and with
Native American communities by
enhancing its capacity to integrate
the material record of Native American
achievements – past and present – into
educational and research-based initiatives.
Second, the inclusion of students, including
Native American students, from Brown in
the process of improving these collections’
conditions and accessibility, within the context
of these campus-wide initiatives, will provide
immediate educational opportunities for
introducing a new generation of museum
professionals to these materials.
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Grants and Projects
Transforming the Haffenreffer Museum of
Anthropology
Robert Preucel, Director, and Kevin Smith, Deputy Director
The HMA has received an extraordinary grant of
$5 million from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
for use over the next four years (2019-2022)
to assist with the costs of inventorying our
collections and transferring them from their
current location in Bristol, RI to a newly renovated
facility in Providence.

The project will facilitate improved collections

care, enhance academic study, increase public
accessibility, and allow for greater engagement
with Native American and other peoples whose
The museum promotes a variety of creative
cultural heritage the museum stewards. The
expressions from world cultures including dance,
grant will enable activities for establishing the
music, literature, and art. These performances
necessary level of intellectual control over the
have often been associated with exhibitions
collection in advance of its move, it will assist
featuring relevant collections from the Museum
in the preparation of objects for the move, and
and involved various Brown Departments
it will cover a share of the physical move costs
and Centers.
themselves. The museum plans to implement the
relocation process in two phases. The museum is devoted to representing the
breadth and diversity of the human experience
The first phase will involve several critical
through time and across space. We are
tasks. These include conducting an inventory of
committed to using our collections to learn
the collection (excluding the Native American
from the historical record, to analyze present
and Native Alaskan collections covered by the
conditions, and to comprehend our future
“Engaging the Americas” grant and National Park
possibilities. We are known as a leader in
Service Cooperative Agreement, respectively),
student-curated exhibitions where students plan
completing a conservation condition survey and
and install exhibitions.
performing remedial treatment for “high risk”
objects; photographing objects and uploading The museum is particularly interested in the ways
digital images into our collections management new technologies mediate knowledge production.
system; purchasing new state-of-the-art cabinets We have worked with the Joukowsky Institute to
and equipment; and rehousing the collections. In create digital prints of archaeological materials.
order to accomplish this work, the museum will Our researchers are using pXRF to chemically
hire four Collection Assistants, a Conservator, a characterize medieval textiles from the North
Photographer, and a part time Project Manager. Atlantic. We have embraced social media and are
This work will take place during the first three using it to promote our programs and exhibits
years of the grant. as well as to create new relationships between
students and the museum. The museum is also
The second phase encompasses the move
connecting to the world through its research and
itself. This phase will involve contracting with a
by putting our collections online.
professional art handler to pack and transport
the collection from Bristol to our new location in The move of the Haffenreffer Museum
Providence. Staff and movers will work as teams to downtown Providence will not only be
in close collaboration to support the safe handling transformative for Brown’s educational mission,
of the collection throughout the project. This it will also be transformational for the broader
phase is scheduled for the fourth year of the grant. Providence community. The new location
will provide new programing opportunities
The move will enable the museum to contribute
and facilitate collaborations with the city’s
to several initiatives articulated in President
distinguished cultural institutions.
Christina Paxson’s “Building on Distinction” Plan.
These include cultivating creative expression,
exploring human experience, technology
and education, and connecting to the world.

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Grants and Projects
Archaeologically Investigating Women’s
Involvement in Trade Across the North Atlantic
Michèle Hayeur Smith, Museum Research Associate
In the spring of 2018, I was awarded a $650,103
research grant from the National Science
Foundation’s Arctic Social Sciences program for a
project entitled “Archaeological Investigations of the
Eastern North Atlantic Textile Trade and Globalizing
Economic Systems” (Award number 1733914).
This three-year grant will support continued
archaeological research on the development of
trade networks across the North Atlantic and
women’s roles in weaving cloth and participating
in these trade networks for 1000 years – from the
Viking Age until the early nineteenth century. It
builds upon two earlier grants, the first of which
supported the study of women’s roles in Icelandic
textile production through the analysis of nearly
9,500 archaeologically recovered fragments
of cloth from Iceland. The second three-year
grant, with a one-year supplement, allowed a
Colorful post-medieval warehouses rise above the site of the medieval
comparative study of textile production in the
harbor in Bergen, Norway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
medieval Norse colonies of Greenland, the Faroe
Islands, and northern Scotland. This new grant
takes the analysis farther east – to the emerging The project will employ a mixed methodology to
urban trade centers of medieval Norway, England, document and analyze ancient textiles in existing
Ireland, and Denmark through which North museum collections from rural and urban North
Atlantic women’s textiles passed as trade goods, Atlantic and European contexts. Radiocarbon
and from which other materials needed in the dating, dye and material analyses, strontium
North Atlantic’s islands were obtained. isotope analyses, and X-Ray Fluorescence
(pXRF) will be employed to further characterize
Historical studies frequently suggest that trade
North Atlantic collections and compare them to
in the Middle Ages connected the North Atlantic
previously collected data assemblages (see page
islands to only one country – first Norway and
23). Bringing together analyses ranging in scale
then, after 1600, Denmark. However, analysis of
from trans-continental trade to assessments
the cloth itself and legal systems of measurement
of individual women’s handiwork and to their
for its standardization suggests that nearly 1,000
products’ elemental and isotopic signatures,
years ago communities in Iceland made cloth to
this project will help us to continue building
meet demands in London and other European
an engendered, interdisciplinary perspective
markets. This suggests that at least 1,000 years
on trade, women, and the emergence of early
ago, women in places as far away as the islands of
globalized economies in the North.
the North Atlantic were making cloth for distant
markets and that the ways they produced their This year, my research has taken me to Norway
wares changed in response to distant demands. to review collections from the cities of Bergen
This is important because it suggests that (pictured here) and Trondheim, and the long-
women’s work was key to developing commodity abandoned port of Borgund Kaupang. Upcoming
markets that were the ancestors of today’s research in Ireland, Denmark, and the United
market economies. By understanding how early Kingdom, along with collaborative research
international trade began in the North Atlantic here at Brown, will expand the frameworks
and eventually expanded as far as the Volga for analysis as we trace the products of North
river, I hope to learn more about the emergence Atlantic women from their home islands into the
of today’s globalized trade systems, how trade emerging marketing networks of Europe and the
affects women’s labor, and how people make circumpolar world.
decisions about what to make and what to trade.

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 The Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project
Grants and Projects
Annalisa Heppner, Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project Coordinator
We have made a lot of progress since starting “I’m a first-year student in the Master’s in
the Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project in Public Humanities program here at Brown. I
2018. In our first year, we focused on conducting came to the Circumpolar Lab as a collection
a “basic” inventory of the collection and created management assistant and have been working
a spreadsheet that describes every artifact and primarily on photographing, digitizing, and
its location within the CPL. In Year 2, we will organizing the Onion Portage and Cape
refine what we learned during the inventory, Krusenstern collections from Alaska, which
making sure that what goes into the museum’s includes data entry as well as rehousing objects
database is as close to perfect as we can get in archival containers with updated labels. I’ve
it, and we will photograph, re-house, and label really enjoyed getting a sense of the daily activity
every cataloged object. that happens behind-the-scenes in museums,
and I find that even in the short time I’ve worked
Most importantly, the CPL is being integrated
here the collections already appear to be more
into life at Brown. Over the past year, we
transparent and accessible, though the process
hired four students as collections assistants,
of fully organizing is still underway. Being able
each from a different department. I’m really
to handle and interact with the objects in these
excited that none of the students had any
collections is arguably the best part of
prior experience in Alaskan archaeology and
the work, and one of the objects I like
that we’ve been able to explore these objects
best is an 800-year-old comb made
together. Here are a few comments from two
of ivory from the Cape Krusenstern
of the project’s excellent student employees.
collection. The comb is around three
It’s been a great experience to introduce them
inches long, with six prongs. The four
to inventory practices and the archaeology of
in the middle are intact, and the two
NW Alaska:
on the outside are broken. The
“My work at the Haffenreffer has been one of my prongs are connected to an
favorite parts of this year. I didn’t have any prior imperfect square base that
experience in either museology or archaeology has curved carvings around
before starting, and exposure to the field has the edge for decoration,
sparked a new interest and helped shape the with a small carving in
course of the rest of my undergrad experience! the center that looks a bit
It’s so cool to be able to get experience in what like a stick figure with
real museum work is like while still an undergrad. no arms or a head. The
While it definitely involves a lot more card handle is just under an
catalogue work and labeling than one might hope, inch in length and is
even that’s been interesting, as object labels carved with a pattern
reveal information not just about the archive but that is similar to the
about the archaeological work which went into edges of the square
their acquisition. The work I actually get to do base, but in the shape
with the artifacts themselves – mostly labeling of a triangle. The comb
and storage optimization – means I get to see a itself reminds me a bit
lot of different types of artifacts, as well as lot of of a hand, and I often
different instances of similar tools. My favorite think about giving it a
artifacts to see are leister prongs – the barbs high-five. But a comb
on ancient Iñupiat fishing spears, but I’m also is not a hand, so I’ll
interested in harpoon parts, microblades, etc. likely tuck it back
for similar reasons: I love the parts of compound into a box with other
tools that serve both as “functional” parts of the labeled artifacts
object, as well as elements that can be removed that have been rehoused and
and replaced as they experience wear.” get on with my work.”

August Fuertes, Ariana Wescott, Master’s

Classics and Archaeology, Class of 2020 student, Public Humanities

10
 The Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum
Friends
Emily Jackson, Museum Operations and Communications Coordinator
The Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum was
established forty-seven years ago with the goal
of encouraging “a close association between
the community and the Museum.” Membership
is a tried and true path for museum audiences
to participate in the museum’s activities.
Since 1972, the Friends have helped to make
Haffenreffer Museum events, exhibits, and
programs possible. Today, the group boasts
nearly 3,000 members from around the world
and continues to grow each year.
Our 2,835 Friends come from diverse
backgrounds – members of the public interested
in anthropology or museums, alumni who
started their careers or developed important
memories through the Museum, and current
members the Brown University community.
To support its mission to the campus, the
Haffenreffer Museum offers free memberships
to Brown University students and faculty.
Today, more than 1,700 students at Brown – 1
out of every 6 students – are members of the
Museum, compared with just 24 in 2002 and 81
students in 2010, the year we first offered these
free memberships to the campus community.
Student memberships allow us to reach out
across departments to all parts of campus with
news about our activities, our programs, and
opportunities for students to engage with us in
research, exhibition development, our Student
Group, outreach, assistance with programs, and
all of the other activities described in this issue
of Contexts.
These stickers, handed out to students and appearing on
computers around campus, were designed by Annalisa
Heppner, Circumpolar Laboratory Project Coordinator
Memberships support the Museum’s events,
programs, and publications – including Contexts.
As a gift to all donors, the Museum provides a
complementary membership in the Association
of Science and Technology Centers’ (ASTC)
reciprocal Passport Program, which provides
our members with free or reduced access
to nearly 300 museums across the United
States and around the world. The most popular
donation level is the Family membership and
we are thrilled to be able to share this gift of
museum experiences with families all over
the United States. This year, the Haffenreffer
Museum opened up a new membership level,
Plus One, to allow individual members to bring a
friend on their museum trips.
Through the support of its members, the
Haffenreffer Museum hosted public events
this year that were attended by more than
300 guests. These programs included guest
lectures, a Global Game Night, a special panel
event – Seventh Generation Rising: A Discussion
with Native Youth Activists – and other events
that not only brought new insights to our local
community, but also reached global audiences
on YouTube. Since the Friends group has grown
and continues to expand, the Museum also hired
two student employees, Nidhi Bhaskar and
Aaron Cho, as Membership Assistants to help
coordinate and process memberships.
Each year, the Museum looks for new ways
to encourage close associations with the
community and to invite Friends to participate
in the Museum. In the coming year, we plan to
transform our higher levels of membership
into “giving circles” that will allow Friends
to target membership gifts higher than
$100 towards specific goals – “kick starting”
scholarships, the acquisition of objects for the
collections, support for students working with
the museum’s collections, conservation of the
Museum’s objects, and more. You, our Friends,
are a vital part of the Haffenreffer Museum’s
regular activities, and we appreciate your
continued support.
11
 Knowledge  Lost  Found  Shared: India in a
Teaching
Global Context
Holly Shaffer, Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architecture
This term my students in The Arts of India were of the god Krishna, were made by Indian artists
faced with a challenge in their engagement who traveled to America in 1986 to display their
with objects in the Haffenreffer Museum: only artistic processes at the Festival of India, hosted
a few were actually made in India. A stone by the Smithsonian Institution.
sculpture of the elephant-headed Hindu god
With the generous support of Leah Burgin,
Ganesha was once in the Jenks Museum,
Thierry Gentis, and Kevin Smith among others
Brown’s former museum of natural history.
at the Haffenreffer, and steady research in
Carved in Indonesia around the ninth century,
the CultureLab and campus libraries, the
this iconic sculpture was purchased, picked
students have collaborated over the course of
up, or elsewise obtained from an unknown
the class to create an exhibition that highlights
temple by Baptist missionaries in the nineteenth
the entanglements of Indian arts with those
century. A wooden painted mask made by the
produced across the globe in connection to the
Guro people in western Africa, displays the
extensive movement of objects and people. They
figure of Mami Wata, a water spirit whose
have questioned “how knowledge is revealed
imagery is entwined with European fantasies
and disseminated, suppressed and obfuscated,
of Indian snake charmers
revived and adapted, through these objects”
and Indian goddesses
and faced difficult questions. For one, “how
mass printed in vibrant
should we,” they have asked, “as students
color lithography in
and curators, approach the display of
circulation overseas.
works with fragmented histories?” They
A bronze sculpture
have titled the show Knowledge Lost 
of the Hindu
Found  Shared: India in a Global
goddess
Context to acknowledge the gaps
Durga, as
in knowledge as well as the gains.
well as a
Their exhibition will be on view
conch shell
in the Haffenreffer Museum’s
carved with
display cases in the Stephen
narratives
Robert ’62 Campus Center and the
from the life
Rockefeller Library by the end of
the term.

12
 From Dog Sleds to Oil Rigs
Teaching
Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History and
Environment and Society
A 2018-2019 Faculty Fellowship from the we learned about how they came to be in the
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology brought Haffenreffer’s collections and about the artists
great things to my course The Arctic: Global and societies that made them.
History from the Dog Sled to the Oil Rig, a seminar
My students were particularly excited to see
for first-year students. My goal in the class is to
physical versions of themes we had read about
share my love of two things with my students –
in class. In particular, after several weeks
the Arctic, and using the tools of a historian to
learning about how Iñupiat and Yup’ik cultures
write compellingly about it. But one of the most
understand human relationships with the
challenging things about this class, for me, was
natural world as filled with transformation –
our distance from the Arctic – my students have
people becoming animals, animals becoming
no direct experience with the peoples, places,
people, and other shifts in shape – seeing how
and species that make the region distinct. While
these same concepts are expressed in artwork
we read a wide range of academic works and
was a highlight of the semester.
watched documentaries, the physical realities
and cultural contexts of the Arctic remain far Using the collection also let students expand
away. Working with the Haffenreffer collections beyond the usual history paper format. Each
offered a local bridge to the north, giving our student wrote a “biography” of one of the objects,
seminar a tactile, intimate encounter with describing its physical details, materials, and
artifacts and artwork. visual impact, while also putting it in cultural
and historical context – what the etchings of a
After a visit to the Haffenreffer collections in
sailing ship on a piece of walrus ivory referred to,
Bristol, RI to see the larger collection, curator
for example. It was a chance to make historical
Thierry Gentis selected an array of objects
arguments with different kinds of evidence – and
to bring to the Haffenreffer’s exhibit space
to practice descriptive, narrative writing. In
on Brown’s Main Green. There, students saw
short, thanks to the accommodating, generous
several Inuit woodblock prints; tools made from
staff and their support throughout the course,
whalebone, caribou antler, and metal; soapstone
the Haffenreffer expanded the horizons of our
carvings and etched walrus ivories. They even
class beyond Brown.
had the chance to handle whale baleen. Over
the course of several visits with the objects,

13
 Reading Object Biographies
Teaching
Dr. Lauren Yapp, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities,
Brown University
What can an object teach us – about
the people who made it, the cultures in
which it held meaning and function, and
the histories of empire, exchange, and
encounter that propelled its journeys
across land and sea? Equally so, what
can an object teach us about our own
institutions (museums, universities,
academic disciplines…) and the
particular ways of looking and labeling,
displaying, and knowing on which they
are founded and sustained? These are
the questions my students grapple with
in ARCH 1494: Southeast Asia’s Entangled
Pasts: Excavated, Curated, and Contested,
a course that explores the politics of
archaeology, museums, and heritage
preservation in Southeast Asia over the
last two centuries.
In March, my class had the unique
opportunity to ask “what can this object
teach us” through direct engagement
with the Haffenreffer Museum’s own
Southeast Asian collections. Over
several visits to CultureLab generously
facilitated by the curator, Thierry
Gentis, students were able to examine
and handle a diverse selection of
objects from the region. Each student
ultimately chose one object and
conducted research into its complex
origins, travels, uses, and contexts. The
following are excerpts from three of
these “object biographies,” inspired by
the student’s encounters with an Ifugao
hat from the Philippines, a Javanese
keris (ceremonial dagger), and a Thai
Buddha statue.

Aliosha Bielenberg, Archaeology, Class of 2020

“Say you were to breathe life back into this hat. Pick it up (it’s so light!), turn it upside down, feel the
contours along the bottom, drag your thumb across the tightly woven rattan brim, note the light
glistening off the polished shell. Then, try moving your head closer and breathe in.
The smell of the wood can’t help but evoke a past life. What has the hat seen?
What has it heard, touched, smelled?

As in any biography, we will never know many of the answers;

but there are a few things we do know: the hat’s beginnings in
Ifugao, a region of the northern Philippines; its “collection” by an
American official in 1912–14; its acquisition by the Haffenreffer
at an auction in 1988. We know, too, something about the hat’s
collector, a medical inspector with the Philippine Constabulary.
Perhaps he visited a local market one day, stifled by the hospital in
Bayombong, and saw this striking face peering up at him. Maybe, like us, he
caressed its brim, smelled its wood, and noted the glistening light. Perhaps he
haggled over the price – or perhaps this fiction belies a more violent acquisition.”

14
 Audrey Therese Buhain, Comparative Literature, Class of 2022
Teaching
“Despite all of the secularizing work enacted upon your image, there are visible
signs of worship on your body that persist – tangible reminders of religiosity in its
purest form, uncorrupted by a shift to the sheer aesthetic. When believers would
come to venerate you at the altar, they would’ve broken the artificial sanctity of
the exhibition. Thierry recalled that sometimes, their incense would literally seep
into the pores of your stone renderings, forever marking your image with the
offerings of worshippers.

Your current form, however, has sustained much more stubborn marks. The
turrets of your headpiece and armor are blackened, sharp testaments of
human use on the otherwise gleaming surface of your figure. And even
along these planes of your body, gold leaf has come undone in chunks,
testimonies of the centuries-past reverence of worshippers’ forceful
application of even more gold onto you – as if they wanted to literally
embalm you in richness. They respected you so much that the strength
of their golden touch could even distort your lean form into a lump
of gold: a “corruptive” gesture so unconcerned with devaluing your
aestheticism, yet so pure in the desire to worship you.”

Isaac Leong, History, Class of 2020

“Inscribed in white ink on an
inconspicuous corner of its sheath is
the object ID ‘1999-41-9.’ According to
the Haffenreffer’s accession system,
this is an ethnological object associated
with the Javanese culture. It is made of
iron and wood, and when sheathed, the
keris measures 43cm by 15cm.

There appear to be at least three different

ways of writing a biography of keris
‘1999-41-9’. The first is the secular and
profane way characterized by a museum
catalogue – useful physical details
recorded with little sense to what they
mean. The second, characterized by the
art-historical paradigm, attempts to find
meaning by reading the physical features
of the object as symbols to be decoded
– the undulating curve of the blade
perhaps mirrors the naga (serpent) of
local mythology. But while attempting
to read the keris as a cultural artifact
by putting the secularized object back
into its sacred context, culture here is
still treated as timeless and fixed. The third
approach attempts to understand the keris
as an object enlivened by its social relations
and its meaning for a person’s identity – a
connection so significant that the act
of acquiring a keris was sometimes
seen as the ‘marriage’ between
the object and its owner.”

15
 Decolonizing the Museum
Teaching
Robert W. Preucel, Director
On March 6, the Museum co-sponsored and
participated in the “Decolonizing the Museum
Teach In” organized by Ariella Azoulay, Yannis
Hamilakis, and Vazira Zamindar. The Teach In
was a response to the recent report by Felwine
Sarr and Benedicte Savoy commissioned by
the French government for the temporary
or permanent restitution of African cultural
heritage held by French museums. Kevin Smith
and I both gave remarks. Here is some of what
I presented:
Courtesy of Emily Teng at the Brown Daily Herald
“The Sarr-Savoy report is a landmark in the
history of museums and cultural heritage. To
my knowledge, it is the first time that that a
European colonial power has systematically
addressed the material culture consequences
of its colonial legacy. In this case, France is
acknowledging the rights of former African
colonies and is seeking to develop mutually
agreeable decolonization practices that go
beyond political self-determination and extend
to the effects of colonialism upon their peoples
and cultures.
The report highlights the agency and power of
objects – how they mediate social relationships
across temporalities – in the present, about the
past, and for the future. At the core of the Sarr-
Savoy report is the idea of ‘relational ethics.’
This is the view that ethical action is explicitly
rooted in relationships. If ethics is about how we
16
should live, then it is essential that we consider
how we should live together with one another.
Sarr and Savoy hold that it is possible to repair
colonial ruptures by rebuilding ties and renewing
them around ‘reinvented relational modalities.’
Sarr and Savoy argue that restitution is about
meeting specific African needs by preserving
their own heritage for their own purposes and
for the benefit of world’s cultures. This report,
and other efforts to decolonize the museum,
suggest that we can anticipate and, indeed,
should welcome challenging conversations
about heritage, patrimony, ownership,
colonialism, and sovereignty long into the
future. We should expect that these issues will
play out in different ways in different parts of
Europe, in specific African countries, and in
other parts of the world. We should also be
open to the idea that restitution of objects is
part of a broader project of decolonization and
that this project will take its shape and form
in relationship to conversations about land
rights, language revitalization, and control over
natural resources.
The Sarr-Savoy report reminds us that all people
have the right of self-representation – what we
might call semiotic sovereignty. As we know, the
histories of museums are deeply entangled
with those of colonialism. However, museums
can be powerful tools of decolonization – they
can provide compelling contexts for people
to present stories about themselves and their
cultures as evidenced by the National Museum
of the American Indian and National Museum
of African American History and Culture in
Washington D.C.
But with this right comes a responsibility. It is
the responsibility to learn from each other and
tell each other’s stories, which we might call a
commitment to semiotic generosity. There are, of
course, some stories that are closely held within
communities and are not meant to be widely
distributed. Nonetheless, there are others
that can be shared and, as it turns out, this act
is essential for building mutual respect and
understanding. It is only in offering something
of ourselves that we can forge meaningful
connections with one another and, in the
process, establish an ethical community.”
 Museum Collaborations: Repair and Design
Futures at the RISD Museum
Kate Irvin, Curator of Costumes & Textiles, RISD Museum
Exhibitions
In early summer 2017, I had the pleasure of
mining the Haffenreffer’s collections in Bristol
alongside Assemblages Mellon Fellow Professor
Steve Lubar. Guided by the knowledge and
expertise of curator Thierry Gentis and the
museum’s registrar Dawn Kimbrel, we were
in search of visibly and expressively repaired
objects, in particular textiles or items mended
using textile techniques. Many of the pieces that
Thierry unearthed that day and on successive
visits are now prominently displayed in the RISD
Museum exhibition Repair and Design Futures,
a show that investigates mending as material
intervention, metaphor, and call to action.
In their making and maintenance, the featured
Haffenreffer collection objects reflect the
emotional value and labor of repair. They range
from an intensively patched ensemble made
and worn by Malian hunter and historian/
storyteller Fodé Keita; Kenyan gourd containers
with celebratory beaded and leather mends;
a Nigerian Ogoni puppet with a broken arm
enmeshed in a fiber cast; a pair of beaded
and appliquéd Cree Métis leggings; a Kiowa
cradleboard made by Hoy-Koy-Hoodle and
repaired by Kiowa artist Vanessa Jennings;
toddler-sized Converse sneakers beaded
by Kiowa artist Teri Greeves; and appliqué
arpilleras made by Chilean women as banners
protesting abuses perpetrated by General
Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
Spanning the globe and more than a century,
the objects generously lent by the Haffenreffer
reveal darns, patches, and stabilized areas that
have prompted socially and environmentally
engaged thinking in a range of departments
and disciplines across the RISD and Brown
campuses. Several Brown classes have
intersected with the exhibition this academic
year: Steve Lubar’s Skills: From the Medieval
Workshop to the Maker Movement, Wendy
Edwards’s Accessorizing Painting, Elizabeth
Lord’s Political Ecology: Power, Difference and
Knowledge, and Ariella Azoulay’s What are
Human Rights? Imperial Origins, Curatorial
Practices and Non-Imperial Grounds.
As part of the course Repair: Museum, Material,
and Metaphor that I taught with Steve Lubar in
Spring 2018, a group of students individually
curated study drawer groupings in the RISD
Museum’s Donghia Costume and Textile
Gallery to connect with the exhibition. Now
on view, these displays illustrate a variety of
interpretations of the theme of repair: “Tools
of Repair: Objects Used for Sewing” by Weezie
Haley (Brown ‘19); “Forensics of Repair:
Looking for Motives in Repaired and Mended
Garments” by Kenna Libes (Brown MA‘19);
“Can Textiles Repair a Broken Heart?: Apparel
and Accessories Used for Mourning” by Robin
Wheelright Ness (Brown MA’18) and Marjorie
O’Toole (Brown MA’18), and “On Darning:
Examples of Repair, Reinforcement, and
Adornment” by Jeremy Wolin (Brown/RISD’19).
17
 Mending the Break
Exhibitions
Steven Lubar, Professor of American Studies,
History of Art and Architecture, and History
Last fall, as students in the class Repair:
Museum, Material, and Metaphor wrapped up
their semester, they put into action some of
the concepts they had considered in the class
by creating two exhibitions. (Repair was jointly
taught by Kate Irwin and Steven Lubar, as
part of the Mellon Foundation-funded fellowship
Assemblages project, a joint program of the
RISD Museum and the Haffenreffer Museum.)
We had talked about many dimensions of repair:
practical, moral, political, metaphorical, and
religious. We had discussed the ways that
objects can be repaired, and also the ways that
they can accomplish repair: they can reconnect
families, fix broken hearts, mend breaks in
culture. We considered how they might, as the
Kabbalistic phrase tikkun olam has it, “repair
the world.”
The class’s final challenge was to pick objects
from the collections of the two museums that
they might use to better understand these
concepts. But these are not the usual categories
for museum collection databases. You can’t
search for “broken heart, mending of” and find
art works or artifacts to tell that story. As is so
often the case, the collections database was only
a start. The deep expertise of curators Kate Irvin,
Theirry Gentis, and Kevin Smith was essential to
shaping their excavation of the collection.
18
Students created two exhibitions. At the RISD
Museum’s Donghia Costume and Textile Study
Center, they considered the material culture of
mourning, darning, sewing accessories, and
what might be learned from close examinations
of repair. (See Kate Irvin’s essay, on page 17,
for more on that project.) For the Haffenreffer
Museum’s display case in the Stephen Robert
’62 Campus Center, students took a more
metaphorical approach. Mending the Break:
Repair, Reconnection, and Representation,
examined rupture and repair in families,
community, and political systems. Nigerian
Ibeji dolls represented a Yoruba tradition for
mourning the death of a twin. A Mexican Day
of the Dead ensemble reconnected living and
dead, past and present. A Bangwa carved
mask, rediscovered at Brown by the son of the
carver, offered the possibility of restoring a lost
tradition by training a new generation of carvers
in Cameroon. Matroyoshka dolls featuring
images of Russian leaders told an ironic story
of a broken political system. An Akan sword
with a Sankofa bird symbolized the importance
of reconnecting with the past to create a better
future by repairing ruptures between the past
and present.
In their exhibitions, students used objects to
think through the complexities of brokenness
and repair. We hope that visitors to the exhibits
took the opportunity to do the same.
 Connecting People, Places, and Spaces:
Exhibitions
Visitor Engagement in the Gallery and Online
Isabella Robbins, Public Humanities (MA), Fellow in the Native American and
Indigenous Studies Initiative, citizen of the Navajo Nation
Uniting the Haffenreffer Museum’s two current
exhibitions, Drone Warriors and Sacred is Sacred,
is a map of the world that asks museum visitors
to respond to a question: “What’s a place you
want to protect?” Visitors can write their special
places on pieces of tape and place them on the
map. Based on the types of responses we have
received, participants chose to interpret the
question in different ways. Out of more than
1,500 responses, some identified places like
Puerto Rico, Mauna Kea, Mount Hope, and the
Arctic; others chose animals like polar bears,
rhinos, and pandas; and still others wrote calls
to action like “protect women’s rights,” “protect
clean water,” and “stop gentrification.”
Revisiting #CrowdCurated
Emily Jackson, Museum Operations and Communications Coordinator
#CrowdCurated was an experimental crowd-
sourced project connecting physical objects
and virtual engagement by inviting the audience
to play an active role in exhibit curation. The
project began as a question about the circulation
of digital images of museum collections: does
sharing images of these objects actually
translate into real-world museum interactions?
Ultimately, the goal of #CrowdCurated was
to research the connection between digital
media and materiality, and to engage with
the Haffenreffer Museum’s online and real-
world audiences.
In September 2018, the Haffenreffer Museum
began the online campaign by posting 15
object images to the museum’s social media
platforms – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Each social media post included an object’s
image, a brief description, an interesting fact
about it, and a few carefully-selected hashtags.
Every comment, share, and like were counted as
a vote towards that object being on display, but
every vote also helped to bolster social media
engagement overall.
During the course of the #CrowdCurated
project, the Haffenreffer Museum’s profiles
saw increased traffic and following across all
platforms. Each #CrowdCurated post reached
hundreds of people, in some cases more than
a thousand on Facebook. By the end of the
This semester, I worked with Emily Jackson and
Leah Burgin to interpret the responses and put
them on a digital platform, highlighting the most
common responses as well as those we thought
were compelling and interesting. This interactive
aspect of the exhibitions allows us, and the
broader public, to see what our visitors consider
important and worth protecting, just as Standing
Rock and Bears Ears are to us. We hope this
online component will help us to expand the
exhibitions’ conversations about protecting
sacred spaces into the digital sphere.
first stage of #CrowdCurated, the posts had
a combined 925 points of engagement (likes,
comments, and shares), and had reached
thousands of people.
The three objects with the most engagement
were a 19 th century Tlingit Frog Dish (with 79
votes), an Acheulean Handaxe (77 votes), and
a Zuñi Beaded Owl (92 votes). Haffenreffer
Museum staff were pleasantly surprised to
find that the objects picked by the audience
serendipitously represented the three main
branches of the museum’s holdings: its
ethnographic, archaeological, and non-western
art collections. All three of these objects
were put on exhibit in Manning Hall Gallery on
October 20th, 2018, with an opening reception on
International Archaeology Day.
As a museum of material culture, the virtual
world of social media poses interesting
questions. How can we bridge the online and in-
gallery experience? How can virtual engagement
enrich in-person interactions? Social media is
a revolutionary tool for building connections
across geographical, cultural, and even
linguistic boundaries, offering new opportunities
for participation in museum practices. With
projects like #CrowdCurated, the Haffenreffer
Museum is excited to explore these online-
offline opportunities.
19
 The Continuous Path: Pueblo Movement
Research
and the Archaeology of Becoming
Robert Preucel, Director and
Samuel Duwe, Assistant Professor of
Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
Sam Duwe and I are thrilled that our edited
volume The Continuous Path: Pueblo Movement
and the Archaeology of Becoming has now been
published by the University of Arizona Press.
This project was a collaborative endeavor
embracing fundamental Pueblo concepts of
“being and becoming” as expressed through
movement and what this means for the
interpretation of archaeological data. While
we are proud of the finished volume, we are
most excited by the unfinished and ongoing
discussions between the archaeologists,
anthropologists, and tribal scholars and
community members brought together over the
course of this project.

The volume presents a series of collaborative

papers that span the Pueblo world of the
American Southwest. Each weaves multiple
perspectives together to write partial histories of
particular Pueblo peoples. Within these histories
are stories of movements of people, materials, The cover is based upon a photograph by the noted Hopi
and ideas and the interconnectedness of all as photographer, Victor Masayesva, Jr. published in his
the Pueblo people find, leave, and return to their book Husk of Time: The Photographs of Victor Masayesva
middle places. (University of Arizona Press, 2006). He describes his
photograph, Green Mobile, as follows:
These include chapters by Damian Garcia
and Kurt Anschuetz (Acoma); Paul Tosa, Matt
“Placing the green automobile (and the
Liebmann, T. J. Ferguson, and John Welch
(Jemez); Maren Hopkins, Octavius Seowtewa, wreck in the yard) below the ancestral
Graydon Berlin, Jacob Campbell, Chip Colwell,
and T. J. Ferguson (Zuni), Sam Duwe and Patrick ruins at Kawestima asserts that we
Cruz (Ohkay Owingeh and Pojoaque); Samantha still live at Kawestima. The seemingly
Fladd, Claire Barker, Chuck Adams, Dwight
Honyouti and Saul Hedquist (Hopi); Joseph empty, uninhabited ruins are in fact
Aguilar and Bob Preucel (San Ildefonso); Sev
anticipating our return. They are
Fowles and Sunday Eiselt (Taos, Picuris and
Jicarilla Apache); Bruce Bernstein, Erik Fender, waiting for us when we return by foot,
and Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso); Sam
Villarreal Catanach and Mark Agostini (Pojoaque),
car, wind, cloud, rain or memory. This
and Joseph Suina (Cochiti). It concludes with is my tribute to the ancestors who have
a commentary by Paul Tosa and Octavius
Seowtewa, from Jemez and Zuni, respectively. gone before and who await us, looking
for the swirling dust that signifies our
transport-time.”

20
 Tracing Viking Voyages in North America
Kevin P. Smith, Deputy Director and Chief Curator
Did the Vikings explore North America? If so,
where did they make first contact with the
Research
peoples of the Americas? Medieval Icelandic
sagas describe three or more voyages around
1000 AD by Norse explorers from Iceland and
Greenland to lands on the west side of the
Atlantic Ocean that they called Helluland (Flat
Stone Land), Markland (Forest Land), and
Vínland (the Land of Vines or Wine).
In 1960, a Norwegian explorer, Helge Ingstad,
and his archaeologist wife, Anne Stine Ingstad,
located a Viking site at L’Anse aux Meadows, on
the northern tip of Newfoundland. Excavations
there during the 1960s and 1970s revealed
three large turf-walled halls and five smaller
outbuildings, all built in Icelandic styles and
dating to around 1000 AD. Three butternuts
(Juglans cinerea)—a type of walnut that grows
no further north than the area of Québec City
and the northern border of Maine—suggested
voyages further south. On this basis, L’Anse
aux Meadows has been interpreted as a base
for exploring farther into North America. The
site was designated the first UNESCO World
Heritage site in 1978, with the justification that
“L’Anse aux Meadows is the first and only known
site established by Vikings in North America and
the earliest evidence of European settlement in
the New World. As such, it is a unique milestone
in the history of human migration and discovery.”
However, many questions remain about L’Anse
aux Meadows. Although it has been assumed that
all of the buildings are contemporaneous, some
investigators have recently suggested that the
three halls were built during separate expeditions
perhaps decades or generations apart. And
although the butternuts suggest voyages to the
south, we still don’t know how widely the Norse
traveled from this base or even how well they
knew the area immediately around it.
Fragments of the stones the Vikings used to
start their fires hold clues to their travels. These
fire-starter fragments are like matches from
the pockets of the Vikings – their trace element
signatures provide information on where these
stones were picked up and, therefore, where
these Viking Age explorers traveled. Previous
analyses of red jasper fire-starter fragments
from the site suggested that its occupants had
come from Iceland and Greenland, but in July,
2018 I reviewed the archaeological collections
from L’Anse aux Meadows with Christopher Wolff
(Museum Research Associate and Associate
Professor of Anthropology, University at Albany).
Together, we doubled the number of fire-starters
known from the site by identifying ones made
from North American cherts. To our surprise,
we were able to put the pieces of two separate
fire-starters back together, linking all three of
the large halls together with material evidence
that demonstrates they were occupied at the
same time.
We are now using a non-destructive technique
called X-Ray Fluorescence to compare the
chemical signatures of these fire-starters to
geological samples of chert from around the
coasts of Newfoundland and beyond. Our initial
results suggest that these Viking Age explorers
not only knew the resources of the region around
the site quite well but also explored more than
two days’ sail down the west and east coasts
of Newfoundland, and on their travels picked
up new raw materials to start their fires and
carried them back to their base at L’Anse aux
Meadows. Two other fire-starters—the ones that
we fit back together—present puzzles. So far,
they don’t match any known raw materials from
Newfoundland, suggesting that they hold the
keys to identifying additional voyages outwards
from this European beach-head in the Americas,
and perhaps identifying the areas where the
people of the Old World met Native Americans
for the first time.
This project was crowd-funded through
the generosity of 36 donors through
Experiment.com.
21
 Strontium Isotope Analysis of North Atlantic
Research
Cloth and Woolen Products
Michèle Hayeur Smith, Haffenreffer Museum Research Associate
In my new NSF-funded project, “Archaeological
Investigations of the Eastern North Atlantic
Textile Trade and Globalizing Economic Systems”,
we will be carrying out strontium isotope
analyses on wool, using an innovative method
developed by Karin M. Frei from the National
Museum of Denmark to track the movement
of cloth and shed new light on North Atlantic
trade networks. Historical sources suggest
that medieval Icelanders and other residents
of the North Atlantic Islands traded cloth they
produced with merchants from Norway and
other parts of Northern Europe for goods that
they needed. My research has documented
that the textiles that women wove on these
islands showed changes through time, and
the research identified imports they received
from abroad. Initial work on textiles from the
medieval Norwegian port of Bergen suggested
that many pieces there came from the North
Atlantic islands but could not demonstrate that
definitively. Strontium isotope analysis may hold
the key.

As sheep graze, they incorporate elemental

signatures from their surroundings into their
wool. In part, these signatures are developed
from elements and isotopes uptaken into the
vegetation they graze on and from the water
In the fall of 2018, I teamed up with Alberto
they drink, but more comes from soil ingested
Saal, Professor of Earth, Environmental and
during the feeding process. Consequently, the
Planetary Sciences at Brown, and Soumen
elemental and isotopic signatures of sheep’s
Mallick, Research Scientist in the Department of
wool, and other animals’ hair, vary from place
Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences,
to place around the world, and from region
to apply Dr Frei’s methodology to Norwegian
to region within larger, geologically complex
cloth samples in order to determine the origins
zones. While skeletal elements and teeth
of cloth that circulated in three of Norway’s
provide isotopic signatures of the places where
largest medieval harbor sites – Bergen, Borgund
an individual human or animal lived when that
Kaupang, and Trondheim. We recently received
tooth or bone completed its growth, wool and
an UTRA award from Brown University to allow
hair is produced continuously through the
two students, Aliosha Bielenberg (Joukowsky
animal’s lifetime and, in agricultural settings,
Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World)
wool is shorn annually and then regrown. Thus,
and Charles Steinman (Medieval History) to
an animal’s teeth or bones provide an isotopic
work with me and Dr Mallick on fine-tuning this
record of the location where it grazed as a
technique over the course of the summer of 2019
sub-adult, but its hair or wool will provide a
and to help with the interpretation of results
continuous record of grazing locations on an
from the study.
annual basis. Wool and hair are, therefore,
potentially incredibly useful sources for
isotopic signatures that can help to identify
the provenance of wool and shed important
information on trade and trade routes.

22
 Shedding Light on Cape Krusenstern’s
Research
Enigmatic Etched Pebbles
Annalisa Heppner, Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project Coordinator
One of the true benefits of having an active
Circumpolar Lab is the opportunity it affords
for research and collaborations on campus. In
Spring 2019, the university’s Multimedia Lab and
Center for Digital Scholarship hosted a series of
workshops called “3D for Everyone.” I attended
to learn more about the 3D technologies on
campus and struck up a conversation with
Patrick Rasleigh from the Center for Digital
Scholarship and Lindsay Elgin, a photographer
for the Center for Digital Scholarship. Through
conversations with Patrick and Lindsay, we
decided to conduct a small pilot project to
explore a suite of ancient etched pebbles
from the Ipiutak settlements on Alaska’s
Cape Krusenstern.

“Ipiutak” is the name given to an archaeological

complex first described by Helge Larsen and
Froelich Rainey from archaeological remains
they excavated at Tikigaq (Point Hope), Alaska,
in 1939. The people archaeologists call
Ipiutak lived in Northwest Alaska during the
first millennium AD, but the nature of the
relationships that existed between Ipiutak and
the cultures that came before, during, and after
it in the archaeological record of the western
Arctic remains a bit of a mystery. Decorative
elements, weaponry, tool forms, and house
Lindsay suggested using reflectance
structures are as unique and consistent across
transformation imaging (RTI) to capture better
Ipiutak sites as they are distinct from other
images of these objects. RTI uses multiple
archaeological cultures present in the western
photos with angled light, combined together
Arctic at that time. At Cape Krusenstern, the
to create a composite image that can be
Ipiutak occupation is likely the largest and
manipulated with software to reveal hard-to-see
most extensive occupation at the site. At least
elements on an object. So far, we have only just
eight compact settlements of five to fourteen
begun this process. We have photographed three
structures, and thirty-five isolated houses
stones and are working on a research design to
were identified as Ipiutak by the museum’s
analyze the rest of the collection – nearly two
first director, J. Louis Giddings, and by
hundred pebbles.
Professor Douglas Anderson (Director of the
Circumpolar Laboratory). However, the initial results, as seen in the
image above, are compelling. Hard-to-see
Amongst the most enigmatic artifact types
imagery is coming into view for the first time
attributed to the Ipiutak archaeological complex
with amazing clarity, making us anxious to see
are a suite of small etched pebbles. These are
more and to how diverse – or how uniform –
highly polished, faintly etched river pebbles.
these enigmatic polished pebbles’ faint designs
Giddings and Anderson interpreted the etchings
really are. Using this new technique to capture
as stylized faces with tattooed lines, but because
the images non-destructively could give us a
of the faintness of the etchings it has been
better understanding of this type of Ipiutak art,
difficult to study this art systematically. The
and hopefully lead to new interpretations of
images can only be viewed under specially
the stones!
angled light and many could barely be seen at all.

23
 Lessons from the Sewing Circle
Collections
Dawn K. Kimbrel, Registrar
The Sewing Circle, a group of Brown
undergraduates, met every Sunday during
the Spring 2019 semester to attach accession
number labels to Guatemalan textiles acquired
in 2017 and 2018. These four students came
to the Haffenreffer with hand skills and an
interest in direct care of collections. Charlotte
Senders began making her own clothes at age
5 using a stapler, at Brown she refined her
Sewing Circle, from left, clockwise, Elsabet Jones, Charlotte Senders, Olivia Maliszewski, Kelly O’Brien
Student Summary – Elsabet Jones, Charlotte Senders, Olivia Maliszewski,
Kelly O’Brien
We are grateful to the many people connected
with this project: the indigenous weavers of
Guatemala for sharing their work, time, and
stories with Kathleen and Margot; Kathleen and
Margot for their dedication to preserving and
respecting that work and storytelling, and Dawn
for forming the Sewing Circle and opening a
dialogue between the collectors and students.
On March 3, 2019 the Sewing Circle interviewed
the collectors, Margot Blum Schevill and
Kathleen Klare, to hear firsthand what inspired
their collecting practices.
Margot Schevill traveled through Guatemala as
a Brown graduate student, completing her thesis
fieldwork, “The perseverance of backstrap
weaving in the highlands of Guatemala in the
1970s.” Visiting during the Guatemalan civil war,
when the political situation was disastrous for
many indigenous cultures, Margot saw collecting
as a method of preserving regional differences
in techniques, styles, designs and various pieces
of clothing. “My writing,” Margot said, “has
always been about the women, about the family
structure, about the weaving and what it means
to them. I’ve always been interested in change
over time, and the patterns slowly change. At the
time I started my work I thought that each town
24
sewing skills by making costumes in the Theatre
Arts Department; Olivia Maliszewski creates
beadwork; Kelly O’Brien sews traditional Yup’ik
garments; and Elsabet Jones brings collection
inventory skills that keep the project on track.
Through their combined efforts, in one semester,
the group sewed 326 labels onto the textiles,
preparing the items for the next phases of
collection care – photography and rehousing.
had its own style that everyone had to adhere to,
but I realized that everyone had their own twist
and way of doing things.” During her fieldwork,
Margot met with families to observe and learn
techniques of backstrap-weaving and created a
collection that highlights the skill and artistry of
those indigenous weavers.
Kathleen Klare traveled around Guatemala by
bus as an independent collector in the 1980s.
Her collection focuses on women’s traditional
dress. Kathleen said, “From the very onset, I set
a collecting goal for myself, and it was to collect
as many pieces from as many communities
that still wore them, especially the woman’s
huipil, because I felt the woman’s costume, by
far, gave the most ethnographic information
about the village.”  In building this collection,
Kathleen paid special attention to the exchange
and development of different motifs and styles
between distinct villages and communities,
noting how these patterns of Mayan community
aesthetic and exchange interplayed with the
political tensions of the Guatemalan civil war.
Kathleen traveled with both Polaroid and 35mm
cameras in hand to engage with weavers and
document her interactions.
Collections
Weavers de San Martin Sacatepequez, Courtesy of Kathleen Klare
Individual Student Statements:
Kelly: Working with the textiles collected by
Margot and Kathleen has been a wonderful
educational experience. I have much respect
for them and the way they went about collecting.
They did not do it for selfish reasons and did it
purely out of love and appreciation for the art of
backstrap weaving. As an indigenous woman, the
knowledge I had gained from speaking with them
about their experiences collecting the textiles
made the work that much more fulfilling. Quyana
cakneq (Thank you very much)  
Courtesy of Kathleen Klare
Elsabet: From learning about Guatemala’s
history through conversations with Margot and
Kathleen, to seeing different methods of weaving
in the collection, participating in the Sewing
Circle has taught me more than how to attach
labels to textiles. It is a privilege to look at the
variety of beautifully woven pieces made by
indigenous people.
Charlotte: I have greatly enjoyed working with the
Sewing Circle this semester––women’s work and
sewing circles have acted for centuries as conduits
for the passage of information and value between
generations, and I have been humbled to be a part
of this particular ongoing chain of storytelling.
It’s been a total pleasure to get to work with the
individual artifacts themselves––they represent
a range of technique, utility, and artistry.
Olivia: Working as a member of the Sewing
Circle has been a very fulfilling experience. As
an indigenous woman, I really appreciate being
able to interact with objects made by other
indigenous people across the world. I especially
enjoy working with the huipils, colorful belts, and
headdresses. Hearing personal accounts about
the families the collectors worked with and the
great love they had for the people of Central
America made me feel truly grateful to the
indigenous weavers of Guatemala, for keeping
their vibrant traditions alive, taking pride in their
indigeneity as I do in mine, and making my work
possible. Kena (Thank you)
25
 Bowl
Nazca­—Peru, 200–600AD Miniature Water jar
Walter Feldman Collection Acoma Pueblo—Acoma,
New Mexico, 20th century
Walter Feldman Collection

Jar
Collections

Nazca—Peru, 200–600AD
Walter Feldman Collection

Amulet, crouching figure

Taino—Dominican Republic; San Juan
de la Maguana; Las Matas de Farfán,
late 15th century
Gift of Lauren Butler Fay (Brown ‘99)

Vomitivo
Taino—Dominican Republic,
13th–15th century
Gift of Vincent and Margaret Fay

Wampum Alliance Collar

Elizabeth James Perry
Gay Head Wampanoag—Dartmouth,
Massachusetts, 2018
Haffenreffer Special Fund purchase

New Acquisitions The varied nature of their two collections reflects

Thierry Gentis, Curator
This year the Haffenreffer Museum was the
recipient of two major bequests, one from
the collection of Barnet Fain and the other
from the collection of Walter Feldman. Both
Barnet and Walter were generous, longtime
supporters of the Museum. Their bequests
will continue to enrich teaching, research and
exhibitions at Brown University for generations
to come.
Standing male statue
Senufo—Ivory Coast, early 20th century
26 Gift of Cesare Decredico
the passion these artists and collectors had for
for the arts of non-Western cultures, ancient and
recent. It was their aesthetic qualities that moved
Walter Feldman and Barnet Fain to collect these
pieces – whether it was the abstract minimalism
of a Taino petaloid celt, the surreal aspects of a
sangggori – a Toraja coiled snake from a headdress
worn on Sulawesi, or a delicate Austral Island paddle
whose surface was covered by a network of precise
geometric carving.
Walter Feldman found and purchased the Austral
Islands paddle and other items in shops on
Providence’s Wickenden Street during the 1960’s and
used them for inspiration in his art. He was appointed
 Ceremonial adze
Cook Islander—Cook Islands,
19th century
Walter Feldman Collection
Trunk
Rukai—Budai village, Taiwan, late 19th or early 20th century
Colonel George L. Shelley and Family Collection, Gift of the
Shelley Family

Canoe prow ornament

Melanesian—Papua New Guinea,
early 20th century
Walter Feldman Collection

Commemorative male
figure (detail)
Konso—Ethiopia, early
Architectural panel 20th century
India, late 19th or early Gift of Timothy Phillips
20th century
Walter Feldman Collection

Crocodile sculpture
Melanesian—Papua New Guinea,
Dance paddle
20th century Collected, 1941-1945
Austral Islander—French Polynesia,
Gift of Gail Caddell
early 19th century
Walter Feldman Collection

to the arts faculty at Brown in 1953 and taught until
his retirement in 2007. It is unlikely that Walter knew
the full history of his Austral Islands paddle when he
purchased it. These beautiful paddles are among the
best-known examples of Polynesian art. Although their
original purpose is unclear, they were likely used as
dance paddles but may have also been produced to fill
early demands for exotic souvenirs.
The Feldmans’ Austral Island paddle is part of a
small group of objects within the Feldman bequest
that are of great significance to Brown University for
having originally being part of the Jenks Museum
collections – Brown University’s “Lost” Museum. The
paddle retains its original Jenks catalog number, 774,
written in yellow ink on the top of its pommel. This
also allows us to confirm that it was collected by the
United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842,
which surveyed and explored the islands of the
Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands for the
United States government. This paddle and a few
other survivors now in the Haffenreffer Museum
are part of a rare collection of circum-Pacific
objects from the Exploring Expedition that were
presented by the Smithsonian to the Brown
University in the 19th century.
Among the 481 objects donated by 22 donors
this past year, some highlights include: a group
of Taino amulets from Lauren B. Fay; and a
trigonolith, a zemi and a manatee bone vomitivo
from Vincent and Margaret Fay that enrich the
Fay’s extensive pre-Columbian Taino collection
housed at the Haffenreffer. The gift by Timothy
27

Cloth
Kuba—Congo, mid-20th century
Gift of Cesare Decredico
Sickles
Swiss Lake Dwellings, Lake Neuchatel,
Bronze Age, 2000–1500 BC
Walter Feldman Collection (ex Jenks
Museum, Brown University)
Head ornament Sanggori
Toraja people; Indonesia (Sulawesi)
19th century
Bequest of Barnet Fain
Three-cornered stone Triginolito
(anthropomorphic head)
Taino—Dominican Republic,
13th–15th century
Gift of Vincent and Margaret Fay
Phillips of an impressive Konso figure
from Southern Ethiopia and a Kwese
mask from the Democratic Republic
of Congo are important additions to our
African collection. Another major addition is
a Nayarit pre-Columbian figure from Alan
and Jill Rappaport. A magnificent gift
of architectural panels, clothing, and
material culture from indigenous
Paiwan, Rukai and Yami communities
in Taiwan from the family of the late
George Shelley, collected during his
doctoral research in anthropology
Pre-Columbian Male Ceramic Figure
Nayarit —Nayarit State,
late 15th century
28 28 Gift of Alan and Jill Rappaport
Skirt
Micronesian—Ifalik atoll
Field collected by Catherine Lutz, 1977–1978
Gift of Catherine Lutz
Mask
Kwese—Democratic Republic of the
Congo, early 20th century
Gift of Timothy Phillips
Three-cornered stone Triginolito
Taino—Dominican Republic,
13th–15th century
Gift of Vincent and Margaret Fay
during the late 1960s, adds important materials
from an area previously not represented in the
collection. A delicate necklace of wampum, created
by contemporary Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James
Perry on the basis of 17th century examples bridges
centuries and cultures, while extending our efforts to
support and acknowledge the work of contemporary
Native American artists.
Finally, Professor Catherine Lutz donated her
field collection of basketry and other items from
Ifalik Atoll made during her 1977-78 field work
in Micronesia. These and the many other objects
donated by generous donors continue to enrich the
museum’s collections. Each object has stories to
tell, and each can be the subject of research and a
springboard for teaching.
Ruth Riverview Returns to Port
Dawn Kimbrel, Registrar
The Haffenreffer Museum formally
deaccessioned and transferred a model
schooner, the Ruth Riverview, to the Indian and
Colonial Research Center (ICRC) in Old Mystic,
Connecticut. The deaccession proposal involved
research and an open process consistent with
Brown’s collections policies.
This year, Brown University’s Campus Collection
Committee, chaired by Joseph Meisel, voted
to approve the deaccession and transfer the
Ruth Riverview to the ICRC without delay. When
informed about the proposal, the Haffenreffer
family took pleasure in hearing that the schooner
“would gain public visibility after almost 120
years, at an institution that celebrates local New
England History”. The Haffenreffer Museum
staff expresses gratitude to Robert Mohr (Brown
Class of ’66), ICRC board member, for managing
the ICRC review and approval process, and for
transporting the oversize model on a custom-
built carrier to the banks of the Mystic River. So,
with this, the Ruth returns home.

Postcard, Courtesy of Mystic River Historical Society

The schooner, made by Charles Q. Eldredge in

1900, now forms the focal point of an exhibition
at the ICRC about Eldredge’s collection of
curiosities. An early Eldredge Museum inventory
describes the collection as “containing items of
tragedy, romance, war, murder, comedy, love,
rum, and prohibition.” Individual entries include
the skeleton of a whale, a flax wheel, grass
twine, a candlestick from China, two violin
boxes, a splinter from a Maine post office that
had been hit by lightning, and, finally, the Ruth
Riverview. The inventory notes, “she is named
Ruth but the name was selected because it has
few letters and has no special significance.” The
ICRC is located down the road from “Riverview,”
once the estate of Eldredge and the site of
his museum.

The Mystic River Historical Society provided

the Haffenreffer Museum with the Eldredge
inventories and an historic postcard that shed
light on the origins of the schooner and led
the museum’s Collection Committee to initiate
discussions for its transfer to the ICRC. After
Eldredge’s death in 1937, his museum closed and
his collections were sold. The Ruth was acquired Bob Mohr (Brown Class of ’66), center, built a custom carrier
by Rudolf Haffenreffer, as part of a collection of to transport the model schooner to the ICRC. Also pictured
model boats that decorated his home and the are Lewis Turley, Haffenreffer Museum Collection Technician,
Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, which he left, and Marcus Maronn, ICRC board member, right.
owned from 1924-1947. In 1955, the Haffenreffer
family donated the Ruth Riverview to the Roger
Williams Park Museum, which transferred it to
the Haffenreffer Museum in 1998 because it no
longer fit their mission.

29
 Studying the Amazon at
Collections
Brown and at the Museum
Violet Cavicchi, Graduate Student, Department of Music
An international group of scholars working
in Amazonian studies visited the Haffenreffer
Museum’s Collections Research Center in
Bristol, RI, as part of a workshop entitled
“The Once and Future Amazon: New Horizons in
Amazonian Studies” that took place on February
21-24, 2019. In their visit to the Center, the
workshop participants met with director
Robert Preucel, deputy director Kevin Smith,
and curator Thierry Gentis. Materials from the
Kaxinawá collection, which was donated to
Brown by Kenneth Kensinger in the 1970s, were
of particular interest to workshop participants.

Kensinger first traveled to Peru’s Amazonian

rainforests in the 1950s as a missionary charged
with bringing Christianity to the Kaxinawá (or
Cashinahua). Soon after arriving and learning
from the Kaxinawá, his views about missionary
efforts changed and he shifted his life’s work to
undertaking anthropological research with their
communities and advocating for them with the
Peruvian and Brazilian governments. Kensinger
continued his work among, with, or about the
Kaxinawá, as a professor of anthropology at
Bennington College, almost until his death in
2010. Over the course of many years, he built
an extensive collection of material culture,
photographs, and recordings that documented
his work and changes in Kaxinawá culture and
community life. Elements of those collections
are now at Temple University and the University
of Pennsylvania, but he donated the largest part
of his collection to the Haffenreffer Museum and
bequeathed his field photographs, recordings,
and field notes to the museum in his will.

The workshop’s visit offered a unique opportunity

to highlight the connections between these
objects from the eastern Amazonian region
in Peru and research being undertaken by
members of the workshop participants, many
of whom work closely with Amazonian material
culture in their positions as museum collectors,
researchers, and scholars. The group was also
able to examine the museum’s Caribbean and
Central American collections, finding special
interest in an extensive and unexpected group
of pre-Columbian Taino culture archaeological
specimens collected by Vincent Fay while
working for the Peace Corps in the Dominican
Republic during the 1960s.
The workshop, co-convened by Neil Safier
(John Carter Brown Library, Brown University),
Camila Dias (University of Campinas), and Mark
Harris (University of Saint Andrews), featured
multidisciplinary approaches from history,
archaeology, literature, and anthropology to
discuss the past and future of scholarship on
Amazonia. It was hosted by the Center for Latin
American and Caribbean Studies and the John
Carter Brown Library through the Sawyer
Seminar Series at Brown University.

30
 Reaching Out: Bringing the Museum to PreK-
Educational Outreach
12 Classrooms and Community Partners
Leah Burgin, Manager of Museum Education and Programs
This year, the museum’s outreach programs Additionally, we returned to the Museum of
brought hands-on activities to more than Natural History and Cormack Planetarium’s
2,100 preK-12 students in Rhode Island, annual STEM week with our “Humankind’s First
Massachusetts, and Connecticut. We offered Toolbox” program. Visitors explored some of
long-standing programs and piloted new humanity’s oldest technologies – stone tools –
experiences, working with campus and with Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project
community partners along the way. Coordinator Annalisa Heppner, and discovered
how to make stone tools through the flint-
For “Think Like an Archaeologist,” the museum
knapping expertise of Pinar Durgun, Curatorial
continued to collaborate with the Joukowsky
Assistant for the Mellon-funded “Engaging the
Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World,
Americas” project.
the RISD Museum, Providence Public Schools,
and the Rhode Island Historical Society. We
returned to Roger Williams, Nathanael Greene,
and Nathan Bishop middle schools, providing
opportunities for sixth graders to dig into the
science of archaeology through four hands-on
classroom sessions and a field trip to the RISD
Museum, Haffenreffer Museum, or John Brown
House Museum.

The museum’s Education Outreach Coordinator,

Kathleen Silvia, and museum staff worked
together this year to refresh two of our most
popular Culture CaraVan programs: “Dig It!
Discovering Archaeology” and “Native People
of Southeastern New England.” For the latter
program, we were thrilled to work with Akomawt
Educational Initiative, a majority indigenous-
owned group that, in their own words, is
“dedicated to furthering knowledge of Native
America through innovative learning approaches
designed to impact how we teach history and
contemporary social issues.” We plan to continue
updating our outreach options this coming
year, including “Culture Connect: Experience
We also piloted a new program with the
the Cultures of the World” and “Sankofa:
Providence Children’s Museum. As a participant
African Americans in Rhode Island,” which we
in their monthly Cultural Connections program,
will undertake in partnership with Brown
the museum developed “Living in the Arctic,”
University’s Center for the Study of Slavery
which invited visitors to build inuksuk rock
and Justice.
sculptures, play Yup’ik and Iñupiaq hunting
The museum expanded outreach partnerships games, decorate their own pair of snow
formed last year. We visited the Brown/Fox goggles, and meet-and-greet with Heppner, an
Point Early Childhood Education Center again arctic archaeologist. This was an inaugural
with the Rhode Island Historical Society and, collaboration between the PCM and the museum,
using our imaginations and objects from our which we look forward to developing further!
institutions’ teaching collections, we facilitated
These programs would not have been possible
two programs for the four-year-old classrooms.
without the support of the museum’s student
Students traveled through time to explore Rhode
employees. You can read more about the
Island 200 years ago, learning about chores,
Museum’s outreach efforts through their eyes on
food, clothes, toys, and games in English colonial,
pages 34 and 35.
Wampanoag, and Narragansett communities.

31
 Bridging Campus and Community Through
Museum Programs: A Year of Conversations,
Presentations, and Hands-On Explorations
Leah Burgin, Manager of Museum Education and Programs
Public Programs

Thanks to the incredible support of student
employees, Museum staff, and Friends of the
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, this year
we reached 600 students, faculty, and members
of the general public through our programming.
Our current exhibitions, Drone Warriors and
Sacred is Sacred, inspired many of our programs.
We partnered with the John Nicholas Brown
Center for Public Humanities and Cultural
Heritage for an installment of their “Public
Humanities Now: New Voices, New Directions”
lunch talk series. Curators Isabella Robbins
(Diné) and Gregory Hitch kicked off the series
with “What We Learned: Curating Bears Ears and
Drone Warriors,” reflecting upon their curatorial
journey and sharing lessons learned with the
campus community.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellow in the Department of Political Science,
-
Mary Tuti Baker (Kanaka Oiwi, Native Hawaiian),
moderated the heartfelt and inspiring discussion.
NAISAB, Native American Brown Alumni (NABA),
and the museum joined together for the “Chante
Tin’sa Kinanzi Po (People Stand with a Strong
Heart): Still Standing Up for Standing Rock”
panel, which featured Christopher Walton, Bobbi
Jean Three Legs (Standing Rock Sioux), and
Philip Sanchez ‘05. Jennifer Weston ‘97 (Standing
Rock Sioux) moderated the discussion, which
was followed by screenings of Sanchez’s 360°
video Black Snake—a virtual reality short film
experience featuring citizens of Standing Rock.
To round out our exhibition-themed

We organized two panels with Indigenous

activists involved in Standing Rock, Bears Ears,
and other Native-led social justice movements.
For Indigenous Peoples’ Day Weekend, we co-
sponsored the “Seventh Generation Rising: A
Discussion with Native Youth Activists” panel
with Native American and Indigenous Studies
at Brown (NAISAB). Byron Shorty, (Tódích’íi’nii,
Bitterwater, born for Hashk’aan Hadzóhí, Yucca-
fruit-strung-out-on-a-line), and Kara Roanhorse
’18 (Diné) shared their experiences organizing
Prayer Runs for Bears Ears and advocating
for Brown University’s acknowledgement of

32
programming, cultural activist, filmmaker, and
former fellow at the Center for the Study of Race
and Ethnicity in America (CSREA) Angelo Baca
(Navajo) took us behind-the-scenes of his award-
winning documentary, Shash Jaa’: Bears Ears.
Co-sponsorship from CSREA and NAISAB helped
the Museum organize a screening of Shash Jaa’,
which featured the perspectives of an all-Navajo
filmmaking crew regarding the formation of
the inter-tribal coalition that formed to protect
Bears Ears.
The Museum’s endowed public lecture series
continued this year, opening with Mary Miller
(Yale University) delivering the Jane Powell
Dwyer Memorial Lecture. Her talk, “Were They
Enslaved? A New Look at Maya Figurines,”
unpacked the complexity of Maya social life by
examining figurines from Jaina, an island off the
Yucatan mainland known for elite burial sites.
Tom Thornton (University of Oxford) investigated
the intersections between Northwest Coast
Indigenous oral traditions and global climate
change in this year’s Shepard Krech III Lecture,
“Sacred Mountains, Climate Change, Resilience,
and Adaptation among Southeast Alaska
Natives.” We partnered with the Literary Arts
department and its “Writers on Writing” series
to bring Orlando White (above, center; Diné of
the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí and born for the
Naakai Diné’e) for a reading of his newest book
of poetry, LETTERRS, for the Barbara Greenwald
Memorial Arts Program. And the director of
Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, Laura
van Broekhoven, (above, right) critically engaged
with the multiple afterlives of coloniality
materialized in the Pitt Rivers Museum’s spaces,
collections, labels, and cases in her talk for the
Barbara A. and Edward G. Hail Lecture Series,
“Emerging Co-Curatorial Approaches and the Pitt
Rivers Museum.”
We also offered several opportunities throughout
the year for the public and campus communities
to engage creatively with the Museum. In
addition to staying open late for student-led
art activities during Providence Gallery Night
in April and May, we brought back the very
popular Escape the Haffenreffer! escape room
game for two weekends, (above left) celebrated
International Archaeology Day in October with a
hands-on open house and archaeology-themed
photo booth, and piloted a new program with the
Providence Gaming Guild—Global Game Night—
for World Anthropology Day in February.
Thank you to those who joined us throughout the
year! Keep an eye on the Museum’s social media
and monthly e-newsletter for information about
next year’s programming!
33
 Flannery McIntyre
Students and Interns
Undergraduate, Archaeology, Medieval Cultures, and Music, Class of 2019
I feel very grateful However, my work for the past year as an EPC
for the many has had the greatest impact on my conceptions of
opportunities I’ve how museums can and should engage with their
had to work at communities. Going into 6th grade Providence
the Haffenreffer classrooms and introducing middle schoolers
Museum as both to archaeological concepts and methods has
a Visitor Services been an inspiring experience. Witnessing the
Coordinator (VSC) students’ excitement and enthusiasm about
and as an Education archaeology as they ask questions about the
and Programming presentation or try to piece together a broken pot
Coordinator (EPC) helped me realize the importance of museums
during my time as and universities engaging in community outreach
an undergraduate in a very personal way. Devising other types of
at Brown. As a museum programming – such as the Escape
VSC, I have witnessed differences in how people Room and Global Game Night – alongside Leah
approach and interact with the museum, from Burgin and my other EPCs also allowed me to
students examining specific objects for a class explore the different ways museums can engage
project to Providence community members with the public, as well as the affordances and
exploring the museum for the first time and limitations of a museum space for these types
adding labels to the gallery map. My time at the of programs.
Haffenreffer has also increased my knowledge
Flannery McIntyre is a senior working on her
and awareness of museum and cultural
thesis exploring changing perceptions of gender
heritage issues outside the normal scope of
and identity in seventh-century England through
my coursework.
bed burials. She enjoys playing the harp and
visiting all types of museums.

Janie Merrick
Undergraduate, Archaeology and History, Class of 2019
My favorite part discuss their thoughts and experiences about the
of working at the current exhibits with me. Given that the content
Haffenreffer as a of the two current exhibits is largely about
Visitor Services indigenous land, I believe that conversations
Coordinator and discussions about the exhibits are such
has without a important ways to process this topic and to
doubt been the think critically about what’s happened at Bears
conversations I’ve Ears and Standing Rock. Exchanging thoughts
had with visitors. and interpretations of the exhibits with visitors
I’ve loved hearing has allowed me to learn and grow in my own
about people’s understanding of indigenous and sacred land
various experiences at both places. It’s been quite inspiring to see
and what they are so many people who care about the exhibits as
bringing to the much as I do and I love getting to be a part of
way they interact each visitor’s unique experience at the museum.
with the exhibits at the museum. Visitors at the
Janie Merrick is a senior at Brown University
Haffenreffer range anywhere from my student
where she studies Archaeology and History,
peers to Rhode Island tourists, and I love the
with a focus on gender. She is passionate about
opportunity to hear about what brought each
museum education and believes strongly in the
visitor to the museum that day, and what they’re
importance of making museums an accessible
interested in seeing and learning. Visitors are so
and meaningful space for all.
engaged, and I feel honored when they want to

34
 David Cazares
Students and Interns
Master’s student, Public Affairs
Serving as an Education and
Programming Coordinator
(EPC) has been a rewarding
experience as I had the
opportunity to pursue
projects I would have never
imagined embarking on. In
particular, the Think Like
an Archaeologist program
allowed me to apply my knowledge and teach
middle school students in Providence public
schools about archaeology. This was special for
me, as I have a deep passion for education and
ensuring students learn about subjects well
beyond the traditional coursework, something I
believe Think Like an Archaeologist accomplishes.
Each time I was in the classroom I saw it as an
opportunity to engage students by exposing
them to a new interest with the hopes they
would go home and tell their parents/guardians
about everything they learned. As someone
who attended public schools, I found this to be
a gratifying experience as I truly believed fellow
EPCs and I were paying it forward.
Anton Manzano
Master’s student, Sociology
One of my most memorable
moments as an EPC was
when the team and I worked
together one weekend to
host Escape the Haffenreffer.
Nothing made me happier
than working with such a
bright and understanding
group of people, first and
foremost, and it was very fulfilling seeing the
participants enjoy their experience and analyzing
some of the artifacts displayed in the museum.
This is one experience I will never forget, and it
was actually because of Escape the Haffenreffer
that I had the opportunity to get to know my other
fellow EPCs.
We also had an open house for parents’
weekend. I was quite nervous explaining
some of the artifacts in the museum. Being an
Anthropology concentrator during my time as an
undergraduate student in Brown, I was already
exposed to a few archaeological concepts in my
classes. However, I never really had to explain
any of what I had learned to anyone. I was
It was also exciting to be a teaching guest at
the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education
Center, a preschool near Brown, and introduce
preschool students to the lives of children 200
years ago in Rhode Island. I appreciated how our
lesson plan incorporated the lives of Indigenous
children and children of English settlers. In a
matter of an hour we had the chance to “travel
back in time” in order to learn about the toys and
games children from the past played with. By
the end of our adventure, the students quickly
noted that Indigenous children and children of
English settlers from the 18th century were
not so different from themselves. Hearing
this was fulfilling as it was clear the students
were intrigued by learning about different
cultures and time periods. Overall, my time
with the Haffenreffer Museum has exposed me
to different environments, giving me a deeper
appreciation about the work museums do beyond
the display of exhibits.
David Cazares is a graduate student originally from California,
where he earned his bachelor’s degree in urban studies at
the University of California Irvine. His passions include social
justice, poetry writing, and community outreach.
really afraid that I would forget some important
information about the artifacts we were
presenting to the students and their families;
however, I got the hang of it and my confidence
started to build. By the end of the day, I was very
much exhausted, but it was rewarding to have
shared some knowledge about certain artifacts
with the visitors. This was also the first time all
the EPCs came together to make such an event
happen successfully.
I will really miss interacting with the museum
staff and my fellow EPCs. I am so thankful to
have experienced working in a museum and
with such a great group of people. Other than
that, I will also miss teaching the children in the
schools we were assigned to give lessons on
archeological concepts. All in all, this was really
a holistic experience.
Anton Manzano hails originally from the Philippines. After
having lived in three countries, Anton developed an interest
for Anthropology because of the cultural nuances he noticed
in the three places. He also takes interest in other social
sciences, such as Sociology and Economics.
35
Students and Interns
Inventorying Collections, Preparing for
Future Homes
Elsabet Jones, Environmental Studies, Class of 2020
Objects line the walls of the Collections
Research Center and recently I’ve been laying
out labels for woven baskets. As an assistant
to the registrar, completing inventory tasks
has been a focus of my semester’s work at
the museum, especially in anticipation of the
collections’ move to Providence.
The baskets, made by indigenous peoples across
the United States and abroad, are often woven
using thin pieces of bark, grass, or splint; they
are both detailed and fragile. To ensure the
printed label matches the basket it describes, I
look for a finely written object number. Carefully
searching for these object numbers – which are
not meant to be easily seen – has guided me to
36
look closely as I move through the collection.
Primarily, I’ve been taken aback by the skilled
handweaving apparent in each basket.
After finding the correct label, I check the record
in the museum’s collection management system
to make sure the shelf location aligns with the
object record. Nearly done with the labeling and
location updating process, our next step is to
measure each piece. Once these measurements
are added to the object record, along with
some pictures, the basket inventory will be
complete. The accuracy of the inventory process
will allow the museum to maintain intellectual
control over these fragile objects during the
collections’ move.
 This Year with the Haffenreffer Museum
Students and Interns
Student Group
Bella Cavicchi, Education Studies, Class of 2021 and
Melissa Alvarez, History of Art and Architecture, Class of 2021
The two of us have long been interested in As we reflect on our past year and look ahead to
museums, a fascination that led us to join the plan for the next, one sentiment stands clear: we
Haffenreffer Museum Student Group (HMSG) want the HMSG to be an educational platform,
as first-year students last spring. While neither space, and community for students interested in
of us had previous experience working in careers in museums - or who simply enjoy going
museums, we nevertheless shared a strong to museums and want to meet individuals who
passion for museum education, curation, and are similarly enthusiastic!
practice – something that only developed as we
visited local museums, such as the RISD Nature
Lab and the Roger Williams National Memorial
Center, and worked on different projects,
including cataloging the Joukowsky Institute’s
collection. When our first year at Brown came to
a close, we took on the role of co-presidents for
the HMSG, excited to continue and expand the
group’s membership.

This is a mission we’ve held at the forefront

of our work this year. As co-presidents, we
have worked to establish a new model for the
HMSG that encourages active participation
and hands-on experience through bi-weekly
club workshops, an approach that developed
out of our belief that group collaboration
and discussion is the foundation for inquiry Bella Cavicchi is a sophomore planning to study
and debate. Examples of workshops we held theatre and education, with a particular interest
this academic year include: How to Research in how the fields intersect via arts engagement
and Apply for Museum Internships, How to and community outreach.
be a Critical Museum Visitor, a Q&A with the
Haffenreffer Museum staff about museum
careers, and a Meet-and-Greet with a
neighboring organization, the RISD Museum
Guild. Regardless of the topics, the meetings
have proven to be compelling introductions to
larger discussions that museums face, most
notably their roles as educational institutions
and the importance of prioritizing access and
inclusion in museum spaces.

Additionally, in our role as student leaders,

we wanted to offer our peers opportunities
to engage with the Haffenreffer Museum’s
vast collection of objects. For example, group
members are currently working to develop and
design an informational pamphlet that features
three objects from the museum’s display
collection and details their function and history Melissa Alvarez is a sophomore from Los
within ancient Maya culture. Working on this Angeles, interested in art history and cultural
project has been both a collaborative experience anthropology. She is interested in how museums
and a challenging undertaking, but we hope that preserve cultures through art and how, as
it ultimately will serve as a resource to make the institutions, they can work with the larger public
museum’s collection more accessible to visitors. to encourage community engagement.

37
Acknowledgements

Grants and Awards

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Rhode Island Foundation, Seaconnet Point Fund I
Rhode Island Foundation, Haffenreffer Family Fund
Brown University, Office of the Vice President for Research
National Science Foundation, Arctic Social Sciences
National Park Service

Institutional Partners
National Museum of Scotland
Danish National Museum/Nationalmuseet
Parks Canada, Dartmouth Archaeological Laboratory
Historical Museum of the Faroe Islands/Føroya Fornminnissavn
Greenland National Museum/Nunatta Katersugaasivia/Grønlands Nationalmuseum
Icelandic Institute of Natural History/Náttúrufræðistofnun Íslands
Icelandic Archaeological Institute/Fornleifastofnun Íslands
National Museum of Iceland/Þjóðminjasafn Íslands
University of Iceland/Háskóli Íslands
Akomawt Educational Initiative
School for Advanced Research
Amerind Foundation
Cochiti Pueblo

Rhode Island Partners

Tomaquag Museum
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art
Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, Inc.
Rhode Island Historical Society
Providence Public Schools

Brown University Partners

John Carter Brown Library
Department of Anthropology
Center for the Study of Slavery and Social Justice
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Native American and Indigenous Studies at Brown
Department of Modern Culture and Media
Native Americans at Brown

38
 Friends Board
Jeffrey Schreck, President
Elizabeth Johnson, Secretary
Peter Allen, Rhode Island College
Edith Andrews, Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head
(Aquinnah)
Gina Borromeo, RISD Museum
Kristine M. Bovy, University of Rhode Island
Richard Locke, Provost
David Haffenreffer
Rudolf F. Haffenreffer
Barbara A. Hail, Curator Emerita
Daniel Smith, Chair, Department of Anthropology
Peter Van Dommelen, Director, Joukowsky Institute of
Archaeology and the Ancient World
Robert W. Preucel, (Ex Officio)
Kevin P. Smith, (Ex Officio)
Administration
Robert W. Preucel, Director
Douglas Anderson, Director of the
Circumpolar Laboratory
Kevin P. Smith, Deputy Director/Chief Curator
Thierry Gentis, Curator/NAGPRA Coordinator
Dawn Kimbrel, Registrar
Rip Gerry, Exhibit Preparator/Photo Archivist
Emily Jackson, Museum Operations and
Communications Coordinator
Annalisa Heppner, Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory
Project Coordinator
Pinar Durgun, Curatorial Assistant,
“Engaging the Americas”
Lewis Turley, Haffenreffer Museum
Collection Technician
Research
Michèle Hayeur Smith, Research Associate
Christopher B. Wolff, Research Associate
Wanni Anderson, Research Affiliate
Edward (Ned) Dwyer, Research Affiliate
Nicholas Laluk, Research Affiliate
Kaitlin McCormick, Research Affiliate
Faculty Associates
Elizabeth Hoover, Assistant Professor of American
Studies and Ethnic Studies
Steven D. Lubar, Professor of American Studies, History
of Art and Architecture, and History
Patricia Rubertone, Professor of Anthropology
William S. Simmons, Professor of Anthropology
Predoctoral Fellow (6th Year
Interdisciplinary Opportunity)
Mikhail Skoptsov, Department of Modern Culture
and Media
Programs and Education
Leah Burgin, Manager of Museum Education
and Programs
Kathy Silvia, Outreach Coordinator
David Cazarez, Education & Programming Coordinator
Jasmine Chu, Education & Programming Coordinator
Isaac Leong, Education & Programming Coordinator
Anton Manzano, Education & Programming Coordinator
Flannery McIntyre, Education &
Programming Coordinator
Geralyn Ducady, Education Program Affiliate
Student Employees
Elsabet Jones, Registration Assistant
Nidhi Bhaskar, Membership Assistant
Aaron Cho, Membership Assistant
Charlotte Senders, Sewing Circle Participant
Kelly O’Brien, Sewing Circle Participant
Olivia Maliszewski, Sewing Circle Participant
Alfie Fuertes, Curatorial Assistant (CLIP)
Ariana Wescott, Curatorial Assistant (CLIP)
Christian Casey, Visitor Service Coordinator
Bella Carlos, Visitor Service Coordinator
Rob Kashow, Visitor Service Coordinator
Flannery McIntyre, Visitor Service Coordinator
Janie Merrick, Visitor Service Coordinator
Sara Mohr, Visitor Service Coordinator

Faculty Fellows Haffenreffer Museum

Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History Student Group
Brian Lander, Assistant Professor of History and Melissa Alvarez, Student Group Co-President
Environment and Society Bella Cavicchi, Student Group Co-President
Rebecca Nedostup, Associate Professor of History
Holly Shaffer, Assistant Professor of History of Art
and Architecture

Mellon Teaching Fellows

Duane Slick, RISD Professor of Painting
Martin Smick, RISD Adjunct Lecturer in Painting

39 39
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology Non-Profit
Brown University Organization
Box 1965 US Postage
Providence, RI 02912 PAID
Permit No. 202
brown.edu/Haffenreffer Providence, RI