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What’s that in the back of the closet…

Contributed by Nick Andrusin

Sometimes you find a neat thing while cleaning. Everyone has experienced this in one form or another. A missing phone charger, an old book, a hat you haven’t seen in months, etc. This happens at Phillips Academy too, but instead of an old DVD or a lost sweater…it’s an entire archeological collection.

In early 2023 Peabody Institute became the caretaker for an old collection know as the PA Classical Collection, formerly stored by the campus facilities office along with paintings, furniture, and china. It includes art and antiquities from in and around the Mediterranean region, dating from the late Bronze Age to the modern day, including items like ancient Greek pottery, Roman glassware, Late Egyptian masks, and coins from the Islamic Caliphate. Phillips Academy asked the Peabody Institute if we could house and look after the collection.

(They all arrived in boxes like this one)

We believe the collection came to the Academy sometime in the early 1940s, as there were some photographs and labels from that time, and indications there had been an exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art. It also seems like the collection went into storage sometime in the 1980s. Meaning this material had not seen the light of day in around 40 years. These are all best guesses, as there was a very short paper trail associated with the collection. Parts of its provenance are unknown.

With the help of a few volunteers and students, we spent time in 2023 working with the material. Unpacking items one at a time, photographing each item, and assigning catalog numbers. Each item was originally wrapped in bubble wrap and tissue paper(!) so we upgraded storage to modern museum standards (well, as best we could do while the building was under construction).

(Much better than bubble wrap and duct tape older than me!)

Once the collection was better documented and houses, we wanted to know exactly what we had. While the staff here is very knowledgeable, ancient antiquities are a bit outside our wheelhouse   an expert classic world art and antiquities, was invited to provide basic identification and dates for each item. Most of the collection was authentic to our surprise, with only a few reproductions.

So, we had all these items roughly identified, and properly stored, now what? Well, naturally we threw a party. The building had recently reopened after construction had (mostly) finished and we used the Hornblower Galley to host an open house. Mediterranean food, and exhibit labels, and the campus community helped us have a grand old evening showing off the new/old collection.

(that’s me in the gray!)

The Peabody Institute is now making the PA Classical Collection available for use in classes. While the Peabody has no specific lessons plans associated with this collection, our hope is for teachers to incorporate items they are interested in into their existing classes, be it art, language, history, etc. We have already had some success in bringing items to Latin classes! It’s nice that a collection once shown at PA is about to rejoin the community, adding historical context and facilitating learning for a whole new generation of students. This whole blog isn’t just about the collection though, it’s really a cautionary tale about the importance of deep cleaning, you never know what might be back there!

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Marching into Spring: Peabody Updates

Contributed by Emma Lavoie

It’s been a few months since we shared our last building update and so much has transpired since staff have been back in the Peabody. These last few months have been busy for the Peabody staff, as they worked on moving the collections, moving furniture back into the building from offsite storage, and organizing/cleaning the building to welcome Phillips Academy classes in the spring term.

The largest and most involved of these projects, is moving the collections from temporary spaces around the building to our newly renovated, sustainable, and secure collections space, putting all holdings in one place! This project is ongoing and requires a great deal of care as the collections team transport items to their new housing and mapping out how items’ locations are organized and tracked. We also are extremely grateful for our Peabody volunteers and work duty students who have helped with this project!

Creating new housing for collection items
Tracking locations in the new collection space

In addition to moving the collections, the Peabody is organizing our classroom spaces to welcome back students this term. With our furniture back onsite and in place, we are ready to have students back through our doors (just in time!) with classes starting this week!

The Peabody library – now fully accessible – received a deep clean and is ready to serve as classroom and meeting space for students and out colleagues across campus.

Peabody staff returning books to shelves on the second floor landing.

With things returning to normal, we are only opening our doors at this time for Phillips Academy classes and events. This is a “soft opening” as we continue organizing our new collection spaces and preparing for our next round of building renovation. We will continue to keep the updates coming as we enter the warmer months of spring. Stay tuned for some exciting content from the Peabody to be shared on our social channels this PA Giving Day – Wednesday, March 27th!

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SAVE THE DATE! #PAGivingDay is March 27, 2024

Contributed by Emma Lavoie

Human Origins students learn about the history of the atlatl, an ancient hunting and warfare device.

Mark your calendars! PA Giving Day is Wednesday, March 27, 2024! Last year the Peabody Institute garnered 60 gifts and $25,000 in match funds!

For those inspired to give early, please complete the PA Giving Day form here! Please be sure to select the “Peabody Institute of Archaeology” under the “designation” section. Any gift made in advance of the event will count toward PA Giving Day totals.

This year we hope to have more challenges, more social media posts, and even more support!

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Peabody Volunteer Spotlight: Meet Richard

Contributed by Richard Davis

Almost five years ago, I began volunteering at the Peabody Institute. I remember speaking with Peabody Curator of Collections, Marla Taylor, one evening after an evening presentation there and, as they say, the rest is history. In my time there, I think I’ve seen every possible iteration of projectile point imaginable – and there have been many – but what resonates most for me are the stories behind almost every object I’ve handled.

The museum has an important collection of approximately 600,000 objects essentially from North, Central, and South America. It is unlikely that I’ll get to see or work with every one. So far, I have helped catalog 12,000 year old bones from a cave in Peru where South American agriculture is believed to have started, reshelved a couple of dozen hominid skull casts, been taught the rudiments of differentiating mere stones from artifacts that were used for a myriad of tasks, and more.

How I ended up there is a longer story, but on one of several tours, a tomahawk that was found after the Battle of Little Big Horn was shown to me. It was made from a table leg and a piece of metal from another object that was pounded into its newer, more lethal form. My son thought that was pretty compelling and asked for a photo of me with that object – the museum and I willingly complied.

Peabody Volunteer, Richard, with a tomahawk from the Battle of Little Big Horn.

I recently was examining an object that I couldn’t identify – as with many things my neophyte status should suggest – and I asked my ‘boss’ what it might be. You need to understand that the folks at the museum have seen and handled many such objects, so when they get excited by one, I figure it has some particular traction. Marla said – “Oh – that’s really cool,” so I paid close attention.

She said that it was made of flint – it was both very fine grained and smooth, except for some obvious flakes that had seemed to have been worked by somebody – something. Further, she said she knew that it came from a particular region in France and proceeded to pull up a Google search that clearly matched the object I held – a stone hand axe. So far, so good.

Next to the photo and a map were the characters ‘1MYA’ – which, I had to ask about. They, of course, meant 1 Million Years Ago. So – in my hand, I held a hand axe from France that was picked up, engineered, and used by somebody, something about one million years ago!

A stone hand axe from France, circa 1 Million Years Ago.

I went home and found myself puzzling over the object and its age. I can’t keep straight Homo sapiens, Australopithecus, Neanderthal, or any of those beings and ages, but I felt pretty sure that Homo sapiens didn’t go back that far. And after e-mailing Marla the next day, I was assured that indeed, it wasn’t of Homo sapiens origin – it was Home erectus – dating back to that 1MYA descriptor.

So – in short, I’ve had the privilege – for it is that – of holding an object, made by an ancient being for whatever purpose he or she felt necessary. I’m assuming that they weren’t thinking that it would be cool if it ended up in museum someday. They were using it to be sure they ate that night and survived long enough, so that we H. sapiens would have a go in their future.

So – long story short – it’s pretty much not only educational and worthwhile, but lots of fun volunteering at the Peabody.

After five years, I continue to enjoy and feel productive with my time at the Peabody – enmeshed with interesting objects with compelling stories, but more importantly with an amazing group of staff, colleagues, and friends. To a one, they are intelligent, patient (no job need be done in haste or unsafely), generous in both time and knowledge, and tolerant of my quirky humor and often bad puns. It doesn’t get any better.

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NAGPRA’s Duty of Care

Contributed by Marla Taylor

 Revised regulations for the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) went into effect January 2024. NAGPRA was passed in 1990 and requires museums to repatriate Native American ancestral remains, funerary belongings, sacred items and items of cultural patrimony back to Tribal communities. The Peabody has shared how we think about the law and the associated labor (emotionally and intellectually) in past blog posts.

The revised regulations streamline the requirements and process for repatriation, require updates from museums, eliminate the category of “culturally unidentifiable human remains,” and establishes a Duty of Care for museums holding materials subject to repatriation. It is that last change that is having the biggest ripple effect throughout the museum world.

The Duty of Care clause of the regulations (43 CFR 10.1(d)) state that a museum must [highlights are mine for emphasis]:

  • Consult with lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations on the appropriate storage, treatment, or handling of human remains or cultural items;
  • Make a reasonable and good-faith effort to incorporate and accommodate the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations in the storage, treatment, or handling of human remains or cultural items; and
  • Obtain free, prior, and informed consent from lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations prior to allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items. Research includes, but is not limited to, any study, analysis, examination, or other means of acquiring or preserving information about human remains or cultural items. Research of any kind on human remains or cultural items is not required by the Act or these regulations.

These words are incredibly powerful and are resonating, with mixed reaction, across the museum field. Many news outlets have covered the reaction of several large museums to these regulations:

While covering exhibitions can feel drastic and extreme, I would argue that it is a direct result of insufficient consultation efforts and a false dichotomy between NAGPRA and non-NAGPRA collections. Because museums only need consent to display materials subject to NAGPRA (ancestral remains, funerary belongings, sacred items, or items of cultural patrimony), covering displays is an acknowledgement that those institutions have not done their due diligence to identify items subject to the law in their collections. They thought they understood what was covered by NAGPRA and utilized the rest of the collection to suit their own goals. This approach has fed into the underlying tension between Tribes and museums for decades.

I strongly recommend this podcast from Today Explained for an introduction to the topic and an honest conversation: Fight at the Museum (2/22/2024)

On the flip side, several museums have been doing this work for years. Places like the Museum of Us in San Diego and the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) in Santa Fe have established policies deferring to Tribal preferences in stewardship and exhibition decisions. There are new industry standards for museums seeking accreditation. And I am helping to create a Guide for museum practitioners to center Indigenous perspectives when establishing collections care.

What does all of this mean for the Peabody Institute? Honestly, not much will change.

About six years ago, Peabody staff decided to remove all exhibitions from display. We recognized that our staff (all non-Native) were not the right people to determine what stories could be told through the collection. We understood that Native voices were essential to the process and that it would be irresponsible to move forward with exhibitions that lacked those voices.

The Peabody also has an established research policy that requires consultation and support before access is provided to any portion of the collection. This approach actually goes beyond the Duty of Care clause within NAGPRA and applies to all areas of the collection. In the nearly three years we have had this policy, I have not seen a meaningful decrease in research activity.

In my opinion, these changes are long overdue and I am happy to see a tangible shift in the power dynamics back to Tribes around their cultural material. I am proud of the work that that Peabody Institute has done and I am confident that we will continue to move in a positive direction.

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Work Duty is Back!

Contributed by John Bergman-McCool

Work duty students are back assisting with collections projects.

We are excited to announce that after a year-and-a-half hiatus, work duty resumed at the Peabody two weeks ago! Preparations in the months leading up to building renovations, scheduled for the winter of 2023, meant that Peabody staff couldn’t devote resources to overseeing work duty students. Once the renovations began, the building would be unsafe for students and staff.

The most daunting pre-construction project was moving thousands of collection boxes from the basement into temporary housing on the first floor. Help from work duty students would have been welcomed, but had we taken on students in the fall they would be looking for new assignments that winter, which didn’t seem fair to the students. We decided that work duty should be cancelled at the Peabody for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Collections boxes are moving into their new housing! This image was intentionally blurred to obscure the details of our new collections housing until the move has been completed.

Last fall, as construction began winding down, we were eager to bring work duty back. Organizing the collection in the newly renovated basement would be a larger undertaking than any of the pre-construction preparations. Generally, we knew students would be allowed back in the building this academic year, but we didn’t know an exact date. The Dean of Student’s office generously offered to take on students who were interested in working at the Peabody until we could safely bring them back.

Ultimate week is the perfect time to relax while working on a collections project.

Now that the students have returned, they have been assisting us with preparing the basement to receive collections from throughout the building. They have added foam to shelving, helped sort items by geographic region, and solved inevitable mysteries that crop up in the wake of a large move. Their help has made it possible for staff to focus on moving our collection into the basement.

We are very happy to have students back and look forward to the spring term when we can welcome the wider Phillips community into the building.

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Human Origins, winter edition

Contributed by Ryan Wheeler

Bigfoot, ancient aliens, Homo naledi, Australopithecines, stone tools, painted pebbles, scientific racism, repatriation. How are these topics connected? Students in the senior science elective Human Origins find out. A lot of it has to do with the history of anthropology–the scientists that studied fossil humans also studied race. The two fields continue to influence one another, not always in the most positive ways. The course is divided into modules that explore science and pseudoscience, human biological evolution and the development of technology and imagery, and the concept of race and scientific racism.

Human Origins students explore some of the Peabody Institute’s fossil human crania casts and models.

Some of my favorite assignments are team projects that involve producing a trailer for a new tv series on pseudoscience, a new comic pages project that focused on specific fossil humans, and Human Origins in the News, where student teams lead class. We just finished midterm, and I was wowed by the new comic pages assignment. I’ve wanted to develop a comics assignment and I’m really pleased with the results–student teams researched particular fossils and then developed a few comic pages in response to a series of prompts. Students are now making their own chipped stone tools and starting to plan their podcasts for the end of the term.

Human Origins students lead class during our “short period” on most Mondays with Human Origins in the News.

A couple of big changes this term include teaching during winter term–usually we’ve offered Human Origins in the fall–and we’ve been meeting the class in the Gelb science building, as Phase 1 of the Peabody Institute renovation wraps up. I’m really grateful to my colleagues in the science division for sharing the Gelb classroom with me. It will be nice to return to the Peabody Institute in the near future. We’ll at least be close-by next week when we explore the atlatl and throw spears on the Chandler-Wormley Vista!

A sample from the comic pages created by Human Origins students this term.
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Peabody Loading…75% Complete…

Contributed by Marla Taylor

The fence around the Peabody is gone and there are no more contractors in the building.  It has been great to be back in the space for the past few days.

But, the work is nowhere near done!  Peabody staff are hard at work moving the collection back into the updated areas.  This is no easy task and won’t be complete for at least a couple months.

The Peabody looks forward to welcoming back the PA students and broader community in the spring term.  We can’t wait to show you what has been accomplished!

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Dominique Toya

Contributed by Ryan J. Wheeler

I’ve sat down several times to write this. It’s hard, for a couple of reasons. Dominique will always remain a remarkable person, funny, talented, generous of spirit, and with a laugh that made everyone around her soar. I think I’ve delayed writing because I feared I wouldn’t find the right words. Also, I was afraid that with the words would come a finality.

Dominique demonstrates the addition of mica to a student’s piece, May 2016.

Last month saw the passing of a truly remarkable individual. We remain shocked and saddened by the loss of Dominique Toya (1971-2023), who we have been fortunate to know since 2013. Dominique was a fifth generation potter, born to the Corn Clan at the Pueblo of Jemez. Dominique’s particular style of pottery saw the fusion of traditional methods and materials with innovative shapes and surface treatments. Collaboration with her family and other artists produced stunning and innovative results.

Dominique shares points out the polished details on her mom’s town crier figure to Phillips Academy ceramics instructor Thayer Zaeder, May 2014.

Dominique and her mom Maxine and sister Mia, often with other friends and family, traveled to Andover every year since 2014 to share Pueblo pottery making with Phillips Academy students, faculty, and friends. These weeklong workshops allowed students to make their own ceramic pieces with clay from New Mexico, finished, decorated, guided, and encouraged by the Toya Family. One year I conducted interviews with students following the finale of the class—an open-air firing. Considering all that Phillips Academy has to offer, I was a bit surprised when many of the students said their time with Dominique and her family was their best Andover experience. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dominique was far more than a gifted artist; she was an ambassador of Indigenous art, and above all, a generous teacher.

Dominique tends the open air pottery firing at the end of May 2022’s weeklong workshop as students look on.

I cherish the Toya Family’s time on campus, Dominique’s laughter and sense of humor, but also watching her help students design and complete pieces, often helping them figure out how to solve problems or challenges (often ones that they had created!). Dominique played a big role in many communities–she was involved in the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, from exhibiting and frequently winning awards at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market, judging and mentoring, to service on the SWAIA board. Dominique also was a drag performer and frequently traveled to participate in the International Court System, including the Imperial Sovereign Court of New Mexico, where she was crowned Empress 10. The International Court System is a venerable and well-known LGBTQ organization, raising funds for social issues, education, and other charitable causes. Dominique and her mom often donated their pieces for those fundraising efforts. During the Jemez and Pecos feast days, Dominique and her family prepared traditional foods, like Jemez enchiladas and oven bread, welcoming friends and visitors into their home to celebrate.

Dominique shares some tips on finishing a piece with an Academy student, May 2023.

I’m grateful that Dominique chose to be part of the Peabody Institute and Phillips Academy communities as well. Dominique, you taught us all a lot about art, Indigenous art, clay, the magic of mica, the business (and politics) of Native American art, but most of all, the art of being yourself. I’ll end with some of the student reflections from the Toya Family workshop in 2017: “Working with the Pueblo potters is really fun—we learned a lot and they have an amazing sense of humor.” “To be able to incorporate these techniques into my pieces gave me a new level of respect for pottery.” “This is one of the best things I’ve done all term, actually all year.” “These artists are so cool and they really care about their art and about your art.” Dominique, thank you for sharing and Godspeed.

The Peabody Institute is fortunate to have several of Dominique’s pieces, including these two swirl vessels that were featured in the spring 2023 show “Women in Abstraction” at the Addison Galley of American Art.

If you’d like to learn a little more about Dominique, this is a great article from New Mexico Magazine: https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/blog/post/dominique-toya/

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2023 ATALM Conference

Submitted by John Bergman-McCool

The 2023 International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries and Museums was held in Oklahoma City at the end of October and hosted by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM). ATALM is an international non-profit organization that maintains a network of support for Indigenous programs, provides culturally relevant programming and services, encourages collaboration among Tribal and non-Tribal cultural institutions, and articulates contemporary issues related to developing and sustaining the cultural sovereignty of Native Nations. The annual conference provides a venue for cultural institutions that seek to protect and advance Indigenous culture and lifeways to share best practices.

The conference included ninety-eight sessions and a host of keynote speakers organized around the theme “Honoring and Elevating Indigenous Culture and Knowledge Systems.” I was fortunate that the Peabody provided me with the opportunity to attend. It was an excellent opportunity to make connections and learn from people in my field who are working at the forefront of decolonizing institutions. The number of relevant conference sessions meant that choosing which to attend was extremely difficult. Luckily, I was there with Peabody curator Marla Taylor and we split-up to attend more sessions.

Within the sessions I experienced many inspirational and emotional moments. Indigenous and non-Indigenous presenters shared their experiences working at reversing centuries of colonial practices within cultural institutions. As an employee of a non-Indigenous research institution that houses Indigenous materials, it was an extremely powerful experience.

View from outside the conference after the first day of sessions.

Chief among my experiences was a day-long preconference workshop entitled “Tools and Strategies to Support Indigenous Intellectual Property.” The workshop was led by a team from Local Context, an organization that is focused on increasing Indigenous involvement in data governance and the integration of Indigenous values into data systems. You can find a much more detailed description of their work on their website.

The workshop introduced the participants to copyright law, how to identify copyrighted materials, and strategies for working with copyrighted Indigenous intellectual property (IP) held in museum collections. The copyright of Indigenous IP is particularly insidious, giving ownership, and control over access and circulation to the person who records, writes, or documents the Indigenous IP, not the creator. Prior to the workshop I didn’t know how copyright was created. I also considered the digitization process, the idea of the digital commons, and the transition of copyrighted material to the public domain as a democratizing force providing equal access to information. However, free use of these materials becomes complicated when they contain culturally sensitive or inaccurate information.

Copyright of Indigenous IP cannot be corrected retroactively and inclusion in the public domain cannot be avoided, but there are workarounds. Institutions can choose not to share Indigenous IP that they house without permission from relevant Tribal communities. Additionally, Local Context has created a series of labels that Indigenous communities can use to add additional context to collections held in non-Indigenous institutions. The labels help foster communication and collaboration between the institutions and Indigenous communities and are a pathway for inserting Tribal authority into institutional data systems.

The conference was a tremendous event and I came away with a renewed vigor for the work that we do at the Peabody.