Collections – The Peabody

September 15, 2026

Dig This 2026: New Discoveries at the Samuel Phillips Jr. Mansion House

Contributed by Katie Lincoln, Andover Summer Session Archaeologist

If you were to ask an archaeologist what the hardest part of the job is, you might expect them to answer with something physically demanding, like digging holes or spending late nights cleaning and classifying artifacts.

For many archaeologists, however, the hardest part of our jobs is translating tiny fragments of material culture into stories about people from the past – and finding ourselves in those stories along the way.

For example, how can one small ceramic fragment say something about those who made and used it? What can the presence or absence of certain objects change how we think about people? How do we know that our conclusions are correct and culturally sensitive?

Phillips Academy Summer Session students grappled with these questions as they embarked on their own archaeological dig this past July. Tasked with excavating a Revolutionary War-era mansion belonging to Phillips Academy’s founder, Samuel Phillips Jr., students took on the responsibility of collecting artifact data and interpreting it – both in their final written assignments and in their final exhibition. At every step, they were asked not just to identify what they found, but to imagine the students, staff, and community members who came before them and left these things behind.

*Katie Lincoln close-looking at excavated objects with students*

Over the course of their four-week-long excavation on Phillips Academy’s West Quad, students uncovered a wide variety of artifacts. As part of an assignment new to the Dig This! course this year, students were asked to use an artifact to make a broad interpretation about past life in Andover, at Phillips Academy, or at the Mansion House – and, in doing so, to draw a line between their own experience as students and the experience of the students whose lives they were piecing back together.

Their presentations exceeded expectations, revealing just how closely these summer session students came to identify with nineteenth and twentieth century Andover residents.

Pencil ends and early twentieth-century print type, for instance, became evidence of a shared reality: students worked hard, even in their dorms, whether in 1926 or 2026. Looking at the worn-down pencils, our students recognized their own late nights in someone else’s.

A ceramic sherd with “HILL” transfer-printed on it told a similar story. Interpreted as nineteenth-century refined earthenware, likely part of a mug decorated with the Phillips Academy school seal, it was paired with a Worcestershire sauce bottle cap and various other glass artifacts. Students read this cluster of objects as evidence of meals shared at the Mansion House when it functioned as an inn and tavern – and imagined nineteenth-century Phillips students gathered there with friends and neighbors. Students identified that this experience was not so different from how they themselves might share a meal at Paresky Commons after a long day.

Overall, this summer’s excavation was a success. Students learned and mastered archaeological field methods including site mapping, artifact identification, and field paperwork. Most importantly, however, students learned how to use artifacts to speak to past peoples and experiences. More than that, they learned how to pull apart historical narratives and find themselves inside them – recognizing a fellow student’s hard work, worry, and routine across a gap of one or two hundred years.

We thank the students of the 2026 Mansion House Field Crew, and we look forward to incorporating more interpretive analysis in future iterations of the Dig This! Course.

September 14, 2026

The ICC Guide is now available!

For the last few years, any time someone would ask me “How is work going?” my answer was some variation of “So busy!” Of course, two huge building projects, a collections move, and transitioning to a new database – all in the past 5 years – has certainly kept me on my toes. However, I have also been working as a co-facilitator to create the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide.

The ICC Guide is the culmination of five years of collaboration to develop a resource for museums and other institutions to implement culturally appropriate care of Native and Indigenous collections.

I developed the concept for the Guide with my colleague Laura Bryant (Director of Repatriation at Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK). We then created a working group of about twenty Indigenous and non-Indigenous museum professionals and academic, Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, and NAGPRA practitioners to discuss all aspects of collections stewardship. Together, we identified the need to establish a framework to help museums and other institutions engage in collections stewardship while prioritizing Indigenous needs and knowledge.

After many months of initial writing, we were fortunate to partner with the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM. With their partnership, the ICC was awarded an IMLS National Leadership in Museums grant to support the development of the Guide and conduct nine content review sessions throughout the process. Those reviews brought over 120 additional voices into the process, including Tribal representatives and citizens, representing both federally and non-federally recognized Native Nations, as well as museum professionals.

The culmination of all this work can be found HERE. The ICC Guide centered Indigenous perspectives, cultural beliefs, and priorities while considering the realities of collections care across institutions with different resources, staffing, and capacity. While the Guide does not contain specific instructions, it does include case studies, sample resources, and tools that institutions can adapt to their own collections and scenarios.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the incredible artwork that became part of the final project! Many thanks to Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) for their efforts as designer and illustrator. I love the illustrations and am sure that you will too.

While I am really proud to have facilitated this incredible project, I also need to thank everyone who was involved and supported the ICC Guide over the past five years. This project was a real lesson in collaboration and I appreciate everyone who shared their time, knowledge, and expertise.

May 19, 2026May 19, 2026

From Stone Tools to Spreadsheets at the Peabody

Contributed by Sophia Lazar ‘26

Who knew that a statistics class could lead you to timing the cataloging of artifacts? That is exactly what happened to our group this spring, and we are so glad it did.

We are a group of Phillips Academy upperclassmen and seniors: Meara Wang, Jay Jung, Ayush Gupta, Tasnia Begum, and I, Sophia Lazar. We are enrolled in Mr. Noureddine El Alam’s Project-Based Statistics class, where students apply statistical methods to solve real-world problems for real partners. Rather than solely working through textbook exercises, we take on actual projects with organizations and institutions, gathering data, running analyses, and presenting findings that can make a tangible difference. Past classes have partnered with places like the Addison Gallery of American Art and the PA Admissions Office, and when Mr. El Alam introduced the Peabody as an option, our team knew right away that it was the one for us. We wanted to work on something that genuinely inspired us, and the Peabody fit perfectly.

Our project centers on a question the Peabody has been grappling with: how long would it actually take to bring the museum’s artifact catalog up to an excellent standard, and what would better staffing make possible? To answer that, we needed data on the cataloging process itself, specifically how long it takes to catalog different types of artifacts. That meant a visit to the Peabody’s temporary location, where John Bergman-McCool and Marla Taylor walked us through a hands-on mock session. Because working directly with the real collection is not always feasible, John and Marla guided us through a range of representative mock artifacts so we could time the process across different object types and gather enough data points for a meaningful analysis. It was hands-on, eye-opening, and honestly a lot of fun.

With that data in hand, we are now building a statistical model to estimate how long a full cataloging effort would take under different staffing scenarios. The idea is to take our timing measurements, account for the variety of artifact types in the collection, and project out what various levels of staffing could realistically accomplish over time. The final report will go directly to the Peabody, and we hope it gives them something genuinely useful as they plan for the future.

What surprised me most was how much I came to care about the outcome. When you walk through a collection and realize just how much history is sitting there, waiting to be properly documented and shared with the world, the stakes feel very real. We came into this wanting to do meaningful work, and we are leaving with a much deeper appreciation for everything that goes into preserving and making accessible our shared cultural heritage. We hope our work makes a real difference!

a group of five people sitting around a large table covered in objects, typing on computers — *The team together at the Peabody’s temporary location during our data collection session.*

a woman sitting at a table with objects in front of her, typing on her laptop and talking to another woman standing behind her and looking over her shoulder — *Marla Taylor walking Meara through the steps of cataloging a mock artifact.*

May 19, 2026May 19, 2026

A Dove, an Omphalos, and a Mystery: What’s on This Hydria?

Contributed by Selene Xu ‘27

In the fall of 2024, I reached out to Dr. Ryan Wheeler to learn more about the collection of Ancient Mediterranean artifacts that I knew were housed at the Peabody. I didn’t yet know the extent of what the collection contained, or what sort of project I might want to take on, but I knew I wanted to learn more, and that I wanted to help the Peabody learn more, too, by enhancing its catalog records. Dr. Wheeler shared with me a catalog of the objects that the Peabody houses, including a folder with all their photographs. After taking a quick look, I found myself drawn to this hydria:

Hydria (jug) housed at the Peabody Institute, 1989.984.4.2.

This is where I chose to focus my independent research. Initial identification of the Ancient Mediterranean collections at the Peabody was provided by Dr. Laure Marest, then a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She described 1989.984.4.2 as a “hydria (jug) with a man and a woman holding a dove above an omphalos”, made from red-figure ceramics, dating to the late 4^th century BCE, and attributed to the Hellenistic period in the Campanian region. This served as my starting point, and the direction for my research: to learn more about this type of pottery, and to identify who this man and woman might be.

I began by researching the history and evolution of Hellenistic vessels (ceramic containers produced during the Hellenistic period, roughly from the late 4^th to the 1^st centuries B.C.E., used for practical, ritual, or decorative purposes), from proto-geometric and geometric techniques to black-figure and, finally, red-figure, the technique used for this artifact. Red-figure pottery eventually took precedence over black-figure because it allowed artists to leave figures in the clay’s natural red while painting the background black. Instead of laboriously incising details, artists could draw them more freely, making the technique better suited to naturalistic depictions of anatomy, garments, and emotion. I also researched the different types of Attic pottery, or pottery produced in the region of Attica, Greece, especially in Athens, which became a major center of Greek vase production. These forms included hydriai, lekythoi, amphorae, kraters, and many more. In doing so, I learned that a hydria is a three-handled water jar, typically with two horizontal handles for lifting and one vertical handle for pouring.

Understanding the broader historical and artistic context of the pot assisted my hypotheses of the figures’ identities. Since the woman on the right is holding a dove, I predicted that she was Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, whose sacred animal is the dove. After finding more vessels online with Aphrodite depicted and comparing them with the illustration on this pot, I was confident that the well-decorated lady with her hair tied in a bunch, open beaded cap, earrings, necklace, and bracelets was Aphrodite.

close up image of a painting on a greek vessel, showing a woman holding a dove out toward a man wearing a laurel wreath — A closer view of the front of the hydria’s shoulder, with the now-identified Aphrodite.

Then came the most challenging part: identifying the man on the left of the hydria. At first glance, there was nothing symbolic about the figure, except that he stood casually beside Aphrodite, showing no sign of reverence typically expected toward a goddess, therefore implying that he may be a god himself. I searched online databases and museum collections for depictions of various gods on Attic pottery and for their characteristics. Then, I remembered, too, that Dr. Marest had described the large object in between Aphrodite and this man as an “omphalos.” Originating from the Ancient Greek word “ὀμφαλός,” meaning “navel,” an omphalos symbolizes the center of the world, glory, and birth and death in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. I later learned that the omphalos was also a marble monument discovered at Delphi, Greece, a religious sanctuary dedicated to Apollo.

close up image of a painting on a greek vessel, showing an omphalos — *Close up on the omphalos.*

Thinking about the relationship between the omphalos and Apollo, the fact that fillets (decorative bands of cloth often used as religious offerings), which adorn the omphalos, were often offered by worshippers consulting Apollo’s oracle, and the laurel wreath commonly worn by the nude Apollo, I suspected that this man could be Apollo. After researching more vessels online with depictions of Apollo, I found various similarities in the iconography, such as Apollo holding a staff in a print at the British Museum.

close up image of a painting on an ancient greek vessel, showing a man wearing a laurel wreath and leaning on a staff — A laurel wreath, a staff, and an omphalos with fillets.

I wrote up my findings for the Peabody Institute and created slides of my research to present my findings to others. After coordinating with Dr. Lainie Schultz (Peabody Institute), Dr. Elizabeth Meyer (Instructor, Phillips Academy Classics Department), and Dr. Paige Roberts (Director, Phillips Academy Archives and Special Collections), I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to present my findings in person at the “History Up Close” event on April 30^th, open to the Phillips Academy campus. The excitement of this experience also came from learning from the audience, many of whom asked very thoughtful questions about not only the iconography on the hydria but also the iconology, which gave me clearer next steps for my research.

three people standing around an ancient greek pot, looking and discussing — *Selene presenting her research at the “History Up Close” event. Photo by Jessie Wallner.*

Never would I have thought that I would have this amazing opportunity as a high schooler. I am also extremely grateful that this experience sparked my interest in archaeology, inspiring me to expand my research on Attic pottery even beyond the Peabody.

March 30, 2026

Creating an Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide

Contributed by Marla Taylor

For the past 5 years I have been co-facilitating the development of the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide. The ICC Guide is now nearly complete and I wanted to share some updates.

The inspiration for the ICC Guide grew out of email exchanges I had with ICC co-facilitator Laura Byrant (Director of Repatriation for the Gilcrease Museum) about how to best to steward collections that were awaiting physical repatriation. We realized there was often a tension between museum practices and tribal priorities for cultural collections. Conversations with colleagues revealed that there was little or no established guidance on how to incorporate Indigenous cultural care needs into collections stewardship practices. We created a working group to discuss the issue and the seeds of the ICC Guide were sewn.

With an IMLS National Leadership Grant for Museums in 2023 and a strategic partnership with the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, the ICC Guide was collaboratively written and covers every aspect of collections stewardship. It provides frameworks to recenter collections stewardship practices in ways that respect the needs and knowledge of Indigenous community members. It serves as a bridge between Indigenous community perspectives and traditional museum collections management—on the individual, community, and institutional level—helping those involved in all aspects of collections to engage in a meaningful conversation about culturally appropriate care.

The approach outlined in the ICC Guide is grounded in meaningful consultation with communities whose cultural materials can be found in institutional collections. In fact, the guide has been reviewed by approximately 120 individuals, including over 70 Tribal representatives.

My co-facilitator and I regularly speak about the development and content of the ICC Guide – at conferences, to classes, and as part of a speaker series we developed. The Rethinking Collections Stewardship Speaker Series is hosted by the Gilcrease Museum in collaboration with SAR. We planned for four panels that center on the key content areas within the guide – Intellectual Care of collections, Physical Care of collections, Relationship Building and Consultation, Use and Access of collections.

So far, registration and attendance at these webinars has been fantastic. The panelists have done a tremendous job of sharing their expertise and engaging the audience. We are so grateful for their time and efforts.

Of course, the culmination of all of this will be when the ICC Guide is ready to be shared with the museum field and the public. When will that be? We are in the final editing stages and soliciting one more round of feedback. We don’t have a date set quite yet but I can say that it will be in the Fall of 2026. You can sign-up on our website to be notified when the ICC Guide is available.

Please email me (mtaylor@andover.edu) with any questions you may have. I am so excited to share this work with the broader museum/repatriation/tribal community!

November 18, 2025

Who Are These People?

Contributed by Ryan Wheeler

As we prepare updated Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) summaries and the required notices following claims and decisions about affiliation we are frequently confronted with the names of collectors. Some of these are quite familiar to us, Warren K. Moorehead, for example, who was our first curator and then our director. We recognize that the names of collectors often hold significant clues that may help make connections between now widely distributed holdings—what we refer to as “split and shared collections,” or aid in understanding localities or other entanglements. I’ve started developing short biographies of some of the collectors, with the hope that knowing when and where they were active might inform some of these other considerations. To develop the biographies, I usually rely on genealogical information to fill in birth and death dates, geography, personal and professional connections, and other details. Many of these collectors were in contact with Warren Moorehead and their names appear in his correspondence files or in his books, especially those volumes that highlight collectors and collections. In other cases, the collectors have some connection to our parent organization, Phillips Academy—either as students, alumni, or faculty. Here are a few recent biographies:

Byington’s advertisement in *The Philatelic West*, 1928.

Edward Spencer Byington (often styled as E.S. Byington) was a civil engineer in DeQueen, Sevier County, Arkansas (1866-1941). He worked for several railroad companies, including DeQueen & Eastern. Byington often bought and sold artifacts, and his ads can be found in several publications—see for example, The Philatelic West (1926), and Hobbies, the Magazine (1931). One of Byington’s ancestors was Cyrus Byington, an early settler and missionary to the region, who had traveled to the area with Choctaw people being forced from their homes in Mississippi. E.S. Byington was an affiliate of Warren K. Moorehead and advocated for establishment of an “Association of Indian Relic Collectors & Dealers.” Correspondence with Moorehead indicates he was collecting artifacts during railroad construction and maintenance. Byington is listed as the source of at least 131 items in the Peabody Institute holdings.

McWhorter (far right) with interpreter Thomas Hart (far left) and Yellow Wolf, October 1908–from McWhorter’s book Yellow Wolf: His Own Story (1940)

Lucullus Virgil McWhorter (often styled as L.V. McWhorter) was an American farmer and rancher, frontiersman, and writer who was a regular source of Native American material heritage for Warren K. Moorehead at the Peabody Institute (1860-1944). McWhorter compiled information on Indigenous communities and history of the Pacific Northwest, and is generally regarded as an advocate and ally of the Native American individuals and tribes that he worked with, including Yellow Wolf and the Nez Perce. See Washington State University for the McWhorter papers and finding aid, which frequently mention Moorehead: https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv98497. McWhorter is listed as the source of at least 507 items in the Peabody Institute holdings.

Diné silverwork illustrated in *Enduring Visions*, the exhibit catalog co-authored by Donnelley Erdman.

Donnelley Erdman (1938-2024) was a graduate of Phillips Academy (Class of 1956), an architect and instructor at Rice University. In 1978-79 he was involved in an exhibition of Southwestern material culture at the Aspen Center for the Visual Arts, Aspen, Colorado. See Philip M. Holstein and Donnelley Erdman (1979) Enduring Visions: One Thousand Years of Southwestern Indian Art, Aspen Art Museum (exhibit catalog). Erdman is listed as the source of at least 195 items in the Peabody Institute holdings.

Lucien White Stilwell (often styled as L.W. Stilwell) was born in New York and grew up in Wisconsin (1843-1932). Following graduation from Ripon College, Stilwell moved to Cairo, Illinois and engaged in the grocery business. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he was engaged in the grocery business via several partnerships, briefly worked for the Elgin Watch Company before relocating to Deadwood, South Dakota in 1879. In Deadwood, Stilwell was involved in banking, but it was here that he began to develop and expand his business in buying and selling Native American and natural history items. Throughout the 1880s he frequently advertised in collecting magazines, including Young Oologist, Mason’s Coin Collectors Magazine, The Agassiz Association Journal, The Museum, Hoosier Naturalist, The Philatelic West, and others, as well as short publications on geology. In the early 1900s he published catalogs advertising his “Indian Relic and Curio” establishment. He sold his business to Kenneth J. Crawford Company in 1928. Condensed from a longer biography by John N. Lupia III: https://www.numismaticmall.com/encyclopedic-dictionary-of-numismatic-philatelic-biographies/stilwell-lucien-white Stilwell is listed as the source of at least 18 items in the Peabody Institute holdings.

November 18, 2025

Welcome to the NEMA Conference!

Contributed by Marla Taylor

The New England Museum Association (NEMA) held their annual meeting in November in Manchester, New Hampshire. Billed as a Wellness Check: A Holistic View of Museums in the First Quarter Century, topics ranged from how climate change can affect collections to telling LGBTQ stories to supporting mental health for museum staff. It was illuminating and validating to hear so many colleagues exploring how to make their museums as welcoming, financially sustainable, and diverse as possible.

John Bergman-McCool, the Peabody’s Collections Coordinator, and I had the opportunity to share about the collections move that was part of the recent building project. Our session, Barcodes and Graph Paper, was well attended and we hope people were able to take away a nugget of advice or experience that will help them. It was a pleasure to be able to share this information alongside an amazing colleague who was invaluable to the process.

I was also a part of a session that focused on resources for museum professionals who are interested in engaging with best practices for stewarding Indigenous collections. Along with several incredible colleagues, I shared information about the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide and the Northeast NAGPRA Community of Practice (NECP).

Local Contexts was also a part of our panel. If you are in the museum world and don’t know about Local Contexts and their work – you should. “Local Contexts is a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities with tools that can reassert cultural authority in heritage collections and data. By focusing on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Local Contexts helps Indigenous communities repatriate knowledge and gain control over how data is collected, managed, displayed, accessed, and used in the future.” (https://localcontexts.org/)

I am proud to be a part of the ICC Guide and NECP. Both of those communities are valuable resources to museum professionals and NAGPRA practitioners.

It was an honor to be a part of both of these sessions!

October 22, 2025

Building Renovations: The Sequel

Contributed by Marla Taylor

What happens when a project is successful but doesn’t quite resolve the larger storyline or need? A sequel!

I share with you – Peabody Building Renovations: the Sequel.

The first phase of the work, completed in early 2024, focused on improving collections care. This included new shelving, an HVAC system, updated security, and an elevator in the building. To facilitate this, the entire collection had to be moved to temporary storage and back again. Phase I was a huge amount of work for all of the Peabody staff and I can confidently say that the collection is now in a better environment than it was before.

This next phase will largely ignore the collections spaces and instead focus on updating classrooms, creating offices, and modernizing systems. By using the space more efficiently, we will create two additional classrooms for use by Peabody educators or PA faculty. Staff members will have discrete office spaces and there will be room to grow.

One of the biggest improvements will be the addition of an HVAC system to the classrooms and office spaces. As someone who has worked in these spaces for as long as I have, I would have to say that this is the part that I am looking forward to the most. Currently, it can be really hot in the summer (over 80 degrees in the classroom) and quite chilly in the winter. We all have our methods to deal with the discomfort, but I am excited to have air conditioning!

All of this of course comes with some disruption to our regular activities. Staff will once again be moved to a temporary location and access to the collection will be restricted.

As of December 1^st, Peabody collections will be largely unavailable and classroom spaces will be out of commission. Repatriation work and collections inquiries from Tribal communities will be prioritized but other access will be restricted. Please contact me, mtaylor@andover.edu, with any questions or requests.

PA classes may be taught in a modified format with limited collections based on availability. Please contact Lainie Schultz, Curator of Education, to request a class.

The Peabody should be back in commission by September of 2026. I will be able to share periodic updates on the process through the blog and we are so excited to welcome you into our updated space next year. Stay tuned!

If you are interested in supporting Phase 2, please contact Jen Pieroni, Director for Advancement Initiatives, Office of Academy Resources.

August 25, 2025

New Mexico Adventures

Contributed by Marla Taylor

Did you know how beautiful New Mexico is? I had the opportunity to travel to the Albuquerque and Santa Fe areas this July and can definitely recommend making the trip.

The Peabody Institute actually has a long relationship with New Mexico. In the 1920s, Alfred Kidder excavated Pecos Pueblo on behalf of Phillips Academy (what is now the Peabody Institute). The ripple effects of that work included repatriation work with the Pueblo of Jemez, a long-term loan with the Pecos National Historical Park, inter-institutional collaboration, relationships with Jemez artists, and incredible learning opportunities for the students at Phillips Academy.

While I had been to the Pueblo of Jemez before this summer, I had not had the opportunity to see the Pecos archaeological site or Pecos National Historical Park before. It was truly a pleasure to experience the site in-person and get an understanding of how Pecos sits in the landscape. I was also able to view their wonderful exhibit, spend time with the Museum Curator to view the collections on loan from the Peabody, and meet several dedicated park staff members. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend that time with them all.

After my time at Pecos, I went to the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe to facilitate the final review session of the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide. This is a project that I have been working on for awhile and it was excited to be entering the final stages. Although the review session had to be rescheduled due to complications with our IMLS grant, we had a wonderful group of people to discuss the ICC Guide and help us move forward into the final stages of development.

The ICC Guide provides a framework to respect and recenter collections stewardship practices around the needs and knowledge of Indigenous community members. The Guide speaks to individuals engaged in collections stewardship within museums and collecting institutions. It is aimed specifically at museum professionals, emerging and established, and individuals who are seeking clarification, support, and validation to pursue culturally appropriate care.

Next steps are to send the Guide out for copy-editing and graphic design. A final version will be ready to be shared in the summer of 2026.

My time in New Mexico was amazing and I hope you can visit there sometime soon!

April 25, 2025

Pecos Eagle Bone Flutes: Past, present, and future

Contributed by Alberto Agudo (’25)

I stumbled upon the Pecos bone flutes on a bright September afternoon that was supposed to be about beaver pelts and fur trade ledgers. My history class had followed Ms. Doheny to the Robert S. Peabody Institute for a lecture, but after the talk I lingered and asked the speaker, Dr. Lainie Schultz, whether the museum kept any musical instruments. That single question carried me into the archives, where Curator Marla Taylor opened a drawer and revealed two slender bones—one golden eagle, one hawk—pierced and polished, flutes waiting in perfect silence.

Music has framed my life since I was four in Madrid: first as a hobby, then as devotion, from my early passion for Romantic music to the shimmering modernism of Debussy, whose Masques I played at fifteen beneath the stone arches of Dubrovnik’s Rector’s Palace. Yet nothing in my previous musical experience had prepared me for the quiet authority of these flutes. Their accession records were almost empty, their makers unnamed, but the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of Jemez Pueblo had granted permission for their study. Phillips Academy’s Abbot Independent Scholar program let me transform my curiosity into a full-term research project under the supervision of Dr. Schultz and Dr. Elizabeth Aureden from the music department.

The work began with patient looking. The eagle bone flute—just under twenty centimeters—bears four clean finger-holes; the hawk bone flute is shorter, its stops conical and ringed by three tiny oblique grooves. My initial efforts left me frustrated—despite my solid musical background, I couldn’t answer any of my research questions. Guided by Indigenous scholars, I began to understand the silence and endless questions as a wise teacher. By combining archival materials with present-day Indigenous resources, chiefly from Jemez musician Marlon Magdalena, I built a relationship with the eagle bone flute and experienced the music as something much deeper than pure sound.

In his song “Eagle’s Blessings,” which I shared during my presentation to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society in April, Marlon brings the flute to life. When I first heard it, I was nearing the end of my research, which had been mostly historical and archival. I had tried to learn about other Indigenous music, but this performance tied everything together. Throughout the term, I feared profaning the cultural or religious significance of the eagle bone flute. I understood its sacredness, and as a religious person involved in interfaith activities, I recognize the importance of respecting religious artifacts.

Marlon’s explanation before he played brought everything into focus. He explained that eagle bones are sacred, held only by tribal members and used to lift prayers skyward. When he played, I felt how, through his breath, he gave life back to the eagle and honored her. Suddenly, the silence became understandable. Even though I could not draw solid scientific conclusions, I forged a connection I will never forget.

This project has awakened a passion for ethnomusicology that I am now exploring with the music department, under the guidance of Ms. Ángela Varo-Moreno, studying the presence of LGBTQ+ subcultures in techno music. I would like to end by thanking everyone at the Peabody, at Phillips Academy Andover, and at Pecos and Jemez Pueblos—and other Indigenous communities—who have safeguarded the knowledge that reached me and made this project possible. It has been a gift I will always keep in my heart.