SPRING 2006 IssuE A PUBLICATION OF THE PEABODY MUSEUM AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY • 11 DIVINITY AVENUE CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 DIGGING HARVARD YARD No smoking, drinking, glass-break­ the course, which was ing-what? Far from being a puritani­ taught by William Fash, cal haven, early Harvard College was a Howells director of the colorful and lively place. The first Peabody Museum, and Harvard students did more than wor­ Patricia Capone and Diana ship and study: they smoked, drank, Loren, Peabody Museum and broke a lot of windows. None of associate curators. They which was allowed, except on rare were assisted by Molly occasion. In the early days, Native Fierer-Donaldson, graduate American and English youth also stud­ student in Archaeology, ied, side by side. Archaeological and and Christina Hodge, historical records of early Harvard Peabody Museum senior Students excavating outside Matthews Hall. Photo by Patricia bring to life the experiences of our curatorial assistant and Capor1e. predecessors, teaching us that not only graduate student in is there an untold story to be Archaeology at Boston unearthed, but also, that we may learn University. ALEXANDER MARSHACK new perspectives by reflecting on our Archaeological data recovered from ARCHIVE DONATED TO THE shared history: a history that reaches Harvard Yard enriches our view of the PEABODY MUSEUM beyond the university walls to local seventeenth- through nineteenth-cen­ Native American communities. tury lives of students and faculty Jiving The Peabody Museum has received the The Fall 2005 course Anthropology in Harvard Yard. In the seventeenth generous donation of the photographs 1130: The Archaeology of Harvard Yard century, Harvard Yard included among and papers of Alexander Marshack brought today's Harvard students liter­ its four buildings the Old College, the from his widow, Elaine. ally in touch with the fragments of first university building in the country, Alexander Marshack, a self-taught their shared past by providing hands­ and the Harvard Indian College. The anthropological researcher, pioneered on experience in the historical archae­ University recently commemorated the the analysis of the earliest calendars ology of Harvard Yard. Twenty-four and notation systems dating back more Harvard College students enrolled in continued on p. 2 than 30,000 years. His lifelong research on Paleolithic cave art also provided Featured in this issue: evidence that early humans communi­ cated using highly complex intellectual Tumbaga-Metal Figures from Panama: A Conservation Initiative to processes in the form of small inci­ Save a Fragile Collection sions on plaques of bone dating to the SCOTT FULTON AND SYLVIA KEOCHAKIAN page 3 Upper Paleolithic period, the latter Kingdoms of Gold part of the last Ice Age. Marshack's research also pointed toward the emer­ JEFFREY QUILTER page 5 gence of recording systems almost The Transition from Late Foragers to Early Farmers 20,000 years prior to the rise of OFER BAR-YOSEF page 9 co ntinued on p. 1 I ( 350th anniversary of the Indian The course Harvard Yard: Western Area College, which was constructed in emphasized pub­ 1655 to train Native students at lic archaeology, Harvard. Though short-lived as an especially given institution, the legacy of the Indian the course's rela­ College persisted, like its bricks­ tionship to the appropriated, fragmented, partial, and commemoration largely unrecognized, but integral to of the 350th Harvard's past, present, and future. anniversary of This field season, the class focused the Indian on two excavation areas: one at the College. An exca­ foot of Massachusetts Hall and one vation opening near present-day Matthews Hall. Both ceremony took areas are located in the oldest parts of place on October Harvard Yard. Matthews Hall is the 3, 2005 in part­ conjectured site of the Indian College nership with the and is near the site of the Old College. Harvard Course participants were hopeful of University Native finding some artifacts associated with American the original Indian College. Numerous Program and the historical artifacts were recovered at Wampanoag 17th-Century Structures CD Excavation area outside A. Goffe College Massachusetts Hall (F) both sites, including ceramic plates, Tribe of Gay B. President's House animal bone, glass, and smoking Head C. Old Stoughton Hall <1) Excavation area outside pipes. Objects found near (Aquinnah), and D. Old College Matthews Hall (G ) E. Indian Coll ege (conjectured) Massachusetts Hall dated from the cited the project's seventeenth through the nineteenth intentions to pro- Drawing by Christina Hodge. century, while the majority of objects ceed in recogni- recovered near Matthews Hall dated to tion of its many stakeholders. The resulting collections have been the eighteenth and nineteenth cen­ Benedict Gross, dean of Harvard accessioned by the Peabody Museum turies. Unfortunately no evidence of College, offered remarks in support of and are available for research and the Indian College came to light this opportunity presented to stu­ teaching. We anticipate future research because of a massive refuse deposit dents, and Carmen Lopez, executive and analysis on this season's archaeo­ dug into this location in the nine­ director of the Harvard University logical findings, as well as on material teenth century. Native American Program, spoke of from previous excavations in Harvard The course's research this fall was "indigenizing Veritas" and imbuing Yard and intend to spotlight archaeo­ guided by the frameworks of historical the Harvard community with the logical and historical research on the archaeology, regional history of Native legacy of the Indian College. Harvard Indian College in the American education, research design, Furthermore, a Results Day and exca­ Peabody's Hall of the North American and involved hands-on practice in vation closing ceremony gave students Indian in late 2006. It is also our hope, surveying, archival research, strati­ an opportunity to share their findings in the fall of 2008, to conduct excava- graphic excavations, artifact analysis, with the public. The closing event also tions on the east side of Matthews and public archaeology. All of these was conducted in partnership with the Hall, to search for the actual founda­ were carried out in the famed Yard, an Harvard University Native American tion walls of the Indian College. area traversed by students and visitors Program, the Wampanoag Tribe, and Through this course and its findings, alike on a daily basis. Thus, students descendants of the Massachusett peo­ the Peabody Museum seeks to make obtained a broad understanding of ple. Ancestors of both these commu­ the Harvard Indian College, in Fash's the nature of archaeology and the nities would have been students at the words, "part of the living history of relationship among archaeology, his­ Indian College and neighbors of the Harvard College." For an illustrated tory, and the public, while contribut­ community. Local officials including glimpse of what this Fall's project ing to our understanding of Harvard representatives of the Cambridge and accomplished, visit the student-gener­ life from its earliest days. Student Massachusetts Historical ated course web site at: projects contributed to envisioning Commissions took part, and the http://www.peabody.harvard .edu/har­ exhibitions of Harvard's material his­ efforts and cooperation of Harvard vardyard/. tory and creating a web site chroni­ Yard Operations and Harvard cling the course's progress. University Archives were gratefully Contributed by Patricia Capone and Diana recognized. Loren, Associate Curators 2 ·Symbols TUMBAGA-METAL FIGURES FROM PANAMA A CoNSERVATION INITIATIVE TO SAvE A FRAGILE CoLLECTION Scott Fulton and Sylvia Keochakian Conservators, Peabody Museum In 2002, the Peabody Museum installed and received a grant from the Institute for placed in plastic Museum and Library Services to sup­ bags. Creating a port an ambitious and much-needed confined air­ conservation project to stabilize and space, accelerated rehouse nearly 1,600 metal artifacts in the corrosion the Central and South American col­ caused by tl1e lections. The affected artifacts were unstable cellulose drawn from general Meso- and South nitrate. American collections that are of The process of archaeological and ethnographic sig­ organizing the nificance, including precious metals collection and from the Sacred Cenote at Chichen stabilizing their Figure 1: Tumbaga figurines. Left to right, PM 50-19-20113294 and PM Itza, and unique early silver-alloy met­ condition began 40-17-20/7554. All photography by PMAE Conservation Department. alwork from Panama and Peru. This in 1996 with article describes a small, but signifi­ efforts to identify the constituent was broken, and the object cleaned. cant part of the larger project: 165 materials and arrest their active dete­ With each result, there was a unique gold-copper alloy ( tumbaga) figures, rioration. Earlier storage methods pre­ and individual casting. of which sixty- five were of primary sented unique problems including A process called depletion-gilding concern and are the subject of this housings made of unsound materials ( mise-en-couleur), a gold surface­ paper. The tumbaga first came to the such as matchboxes, cigarette boxes enrichment technique, modified the museum ca. 1935 as new excavations and peanut cans; dense packing of surface color of the objects. Treatment along the Pan-American highway artifacts with little or no cushioning;