Alabaster jar, with final wax polish. Cat. No. 5-11383.

One of the most interesting of the ethnographic collections at the Hearst Museum was gathered in Egypt by a group of campus archaeologists. In early 1972, under the direction of Berkeley professor Robert F. Heizer, professor John A. Graham and graduate student Thomas R. Hester (PhD, 1972) collected a set of about 30 items documenting the construction of alabaster containers: a whole set of metal tools as well as unfinished and completed vessels.

Inspired by his earlier collaboration with Graham studying the transport of Olmec colossal sculpture, Heizer was then investigating how the ancient Egyptians might have moved their monumental stone sculptures. At the plain of Thebes near Luxor, in Southern (Upper) Egypt, the team came upon an alabaster workshop in the village of Sheik Abd el Gurna and decided to make a thorough investigation of their production.

The team regarded their work as an example of the then relatively new field of ethno-archaeology. Using ethnographic methods to study contemporary material culture, ethno-archaeology attempts to answer archaeological questions, largely by means of a disciplined use of analogy. In fact, Berkeley was something of a center for this kind of work, encouraged by J. Desmond Clark.

Drill bits, hand-forged iron, used for drilling centers out of alabaster vessels. Cat. No. 5-11365a,b.

Heizer, Graham, and Hester explored the quarrying of the alabaster, the complete manufacturing sequence, and the nature and organization of the workshops.  They employed direct-observation, interviews, and recorded the process in hundreds of photos and 16 mm. film footage. But in attempting to make their collection, they did encounter some skepticism from the workshop leader: “The sheik thought that we were aiming to set up a rival vase-making operation.  ‘Why else,’ he asked, ‘would anyone want to buy a set of tools?’ ”

Upon their return, the archaeologists examined the museum’s collection of ancient specimens, collected by George Reisner in the early 20th century. From marks on the vessels they were able to estimate how they had been made and which kinds of tools had been used. With their intimate knowledge of process, they concluded that many were poorly made, and thus were probably made as tomb offerings.

Worker using small pieces of sandstone to give a final smoothing to a vessel in 1972

The team was also able to estimate how the contemporary industry might have differed from that in ancient times. After a decline of about 2,000 years, they estimated that alabaster production had been revived relatively recently, perhaps in the early 19th century. They feared that the craft would disappear or at least be mechanized, but alabaster carving is still a thriving art in Egypt, produced mostly for the tourist trade. As the team noted, there were many such continuities in other Middle Eastern crafts.  Since the 1980s, former faculty curator Carol Redmount has carried out a similar study of Egyptian pottery-production.

The alabaster workshop collection is relatively small, but it was the subject of a Hearst Museum exhibit (1974) and a relatively substantial monograph (1981). Beyond its documentation of contemporary craft traditions, the set remains as a critical source of knowledge and understanding for our world-class collection from Ancient Egypt.

Former Museum Director William Bascom first saw a version of the District Officer sculpture during his first fieldwork in Nigeria in 1937–38. This complex set shows the Officer in the front, four paddlers, and the steerer at the rear. In addition to the boat and six figures, there are many separate pieces: an umbrella (a symbol of status and authority in West Africa) and its handle, four paddles, pole, flag, pipe, and helmet.

Wherever they may travel, tourists invariably search for small, portable objects that they can bring home as souvenirs. One popular variety illustrates the visitor rather than the native. Africa has had an especially long history of representing foreigners, going back at least to the bronze depictions of visiting Portuguese in the 16th century. Given the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology’s great Yoruba collection, amassed mostly by former director William R. Bascom, it is not surprising that the Museum would have a substantial representation of early Yoruba examples. Here, we focus on the work of two great innovative carvers of the early to mid-20th century.

Sculpture of Queen Victoria. Collected by William R. Bascom, Lagos, Nigeria; possibly 1943. Cat. No. 5-16238a,b.

Through his personal friendship with the artist, William Bascom was able to acquire twelve figures carved by Thomas Ona Odulate (ca. 1900–52). Born and raised in Ijebu Ode, Nigeria, Ona later moved to Lagos, where he produced great quantities of novel woodcarvings depicting both colonials and Yoruba. Among the former were administrators, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, butchers, missionaries, polo players, married couples, even Queen Victoria. The Yoruba included both traditional roles and new, colonial occupations: mothers and children, masked dancers, kings and messengers, hunters, policemen, and postmen. Almost all were sold to the British; while some were commissioned, most were made in advance and then marketed.

While Ona’s figures are pioneering in subject matter, they are traditional in style. They follow usual Yoruba proportions, with a large head equal in size to the torso and legs. Ona used the traditional Yoruba carving tools of adze and knife. He painted the figures in red and black ink, white shoe polish, leaving the natural tan of the wood. However, unlike traditional Yoruba sculpture, which is usually carved out of single piece of wood, many of Ona’s carvings have separate parts, such as hats, guns, books, mallets, or umbrellas. And like most tourist arts, Ona’s sculpture often exists in multiple, similar versions. While they seem to be satirical or caricatures, and have been so identified, Ona told Bascom that his works simply showed how he viewed the world around him.

Collected by William R. Bascom, Nigeria; before 1953.

A related, and more or less contemporary, form are the so-called “thorn carvings,” of which the Museum has about seventy-five. This genre was invented by Justus D. Akeredolu (1915–83). In the mid-1930s, while working as a crafts teacher in government schools in Nigeria, he started experimenting when carving the handles of name-stamps made from the large thorns of the silk-cotton tree. After studying museum work in Britain on a scholarship, Akeredolu returned to Nigeria in the 1950s, where he worked as an assistant for the Antiquities Service, mainly restoring sculptures of wood, bronze, and stone. Even after losing an eye in 1963, he continued to carve.

Akeredolu taught this art form to his apprentices and to other craft schools. His works are especially fine: they tend to be made of a single block of light wood, very detailed, and are usually signed. Later carvers often made the figures from separate pieces, combining light and dark woods, and were slightly larger and somewhat cruder. Because they were made of separate pieces, they could be more easily mass-produced. But just because of their larger size, they could be more elaborate, often containing two or more figures set on a wooden base. These miniatures illustrate a wide range of everyday Yoruba customs: hoeing, herding cattle, climbing palms, pounding food, making pots, smithing, dressing hair, playing games, drumming, dancing, and studying the Koran.

These inventive figurines are compelling examples of Yoruba artistry, and the Museum is fortunate to have such a large collection made by the creators of this genre.

The Polynesian archipelago of Hawaii is renowned for its finely carved wooden bowls, platters, and trays.  While most were used for eating, some larger examples served as storage.

Carvers preferred the wood of the koa (or kou) tree because its grain was relatively soft and easy to cut.  Food bowls were carefully carved from hardwoods with stone and later metal tools; some were also hollowed out with fire.  Next, the bitterness in the wood was removed by soaking in sea water; the wood was further sweetened by an application of fermented taro or sweet potato.  Finally, the bowl was polished with pumice or shark skin, and rubbed to a high gloss with nut oil.  This coating helped waterproof the wood, extending its life.

Most of the round wooden bowls were used for serving poi, the traditional Hawaiian staple food.  Poi is made from taro root that has been steamed or boiled.  Pounded to a paste, it is served in a fairly liquid state, often slightly fermented.

Most people ate their poi from gourd bowls and cups, and it is clear that wooden poi bowls–more often used by chiefs–were modeled on these gourd containers.  Poi bowls were stabilized by a thicker bottom, and some had gourd covers.  Larger examples, used for feasts, were transported with fiber nets.  To repair a damaged bowl was a mark of respect.  Cracks were sewn with fine cordage and holes were filled with custom-made wooden pegs.  Any imperfections were filled with a breadfruit-gum compound and smoothed away with pumice.

In addition to serving poi, wooden bowls were used for storing poi, salting and serving meat (pork, dog, and large fish), and storing tapa cloth and feathers.  Other forms included elongated trays and platters, dishes, plates, cups, finger bowls, and bowls for food scraps.  In addition to these plain food and storage bowls, Hawaiians made more elaborate figurative bowls for chiefs and royalty.

The Museum has almost thirty wooden poi bowls and related platters.  About half of them were collected by Jackson R. Myers, who acquired them, along with other items, in Hawaii between 1900 and 1905.  Little is known about him, but he seems to have worked as a manager on a sugar plantation in Kilauea, Kauai.

In 1908 Phoebe Hearst donated the poi bowl illustrated here; seven Hawaiian bowls were included in two South Seas accessions.  These items strengthened the museum’s regional holdings from Oceania, dating back to the earliest University collections in 1873. For a museum located in a coastal community with strong ties to Hawaii, Mrs. Hearst thought it important to represent Pacific cultures with these fine examples of the woodworker’s art.

In February 1972, Professor J. Desmond Clark and his student, Andrew Smith, were visiting the Republic of Mali where Smith had started the excavation of some prehistoric villages and workshops in the Tilemsi Valley. The results of those excavations were to be included in Smith’s 1974 doctoral dissertation. During that winter they worked at the prehistoric site at Lagraich and collected this bead-making set. It includes 47 objects from a workshop where agate was worked into small circular beads that were then polished and perforated. In addition to the beads, Clark and Smith collected the artisan’s tools: drills, scrapers, burins and cores all made with high quality flint.

Agate beads and flint tools. Cat. No. 5-10674

The Tilemsi Valley and its archaeological record are significant because it is one of the earliest places in sub-Saharan West Africa where a pastoral economy is recorded. In Africa, domestic cattle are dated to about 8000 BP in southern Egypt but domesticated millet and grains are dated much later. How pastoralism and farming spread across Africa appear to be a more complex process than in Europe and the Tilemsi Valley is a key place for our understanding of it.

Lagraich is located about 20 miles east of Karkarinchinkat, another prehistoric village dated at 2200-1360 B.C. A larger excavation allowed the collection of thousands of diverse artifacts; pots, stone tools, seeds, figurines, faunal remains, soil samples, pendants, charcoals, awls, shells and beads. In this collection it is noticeable that semi-precious stones were not the only medium for crafting items of personal adornment and, likely, trade. Beads, pendants and necklaces were also made with shells, bones and clay. According to some authors, characteristic pottery decoration at Karkarinchinkat was determined to be a type on its own. In 2006, a team from Cambridge University undertook excavations at the site of Karkarinchinkat. Similarly to Smith, they came across a few human burials, analyzed them and published their results in 2008. They found the earliest evidence of teeth filing for aesthetic purposes, in Africa and possibly worldwide. More specifically, the people who lived at Karkarinchinkat in the third millennium B.C. intentionally modified their canines and incisors to a pointed shape. This type of dental modification is not documented in historic or modern groups in the region but is present in the south (Angola and South African groups).

The material culture and biological record indicate that the Tilemsi Valley must have been an  interesting place to travel to 4000 years ago. The nature of the sites and the objects collected indicate a high degree of sedentism and domestication was a major component of the local economy, supplemented by limited hunting and the exploitation of river resources. The landscape was much greener than today. Possibly as a result of this situation, these tribes developed specific crafts and a sense of aesthetic that was reflected in items for personal adornment such as beads and pendants, high quality stone tools and blanks, a characteristic ceramic style and most likely textiles and basketry. People who traveled to the valley in the Late Stone Age could probably recognize that they had arrived by looking at the inhabitants clothing and couture. Anyone approaching the Tilemsians would see their pointed teeth and know with certainty that they are in the right place. It is likely they also displayed tattoos and piercing.

On May 19, 1904, Joseph Peterson started to dig a trench through the West Berkeley mound, one of the oldest and largest prehistoric shell mounds in Central California. Paid with funding from Phoebe Hearst, he was following the steps of P. M. Jones, E. Furlong and Max Uhle to become one of the earliest field archaeologist to work on behalf of the recently established museum of anthropology. In addition to the excavation at the West Berkeley mound, he was dispatched to an handful of places in the San Francisco Bay area to salvage archaeological materials disturbed by building or road constructions. All these efforts resulted in over 250 catalog records.

Bone awl. Joseph Peterson, 1907

It was a busy spring semester, perhaps unexpectedly so, for a 27-year old schoolteacher from Snowflake, Arizona, who had arrived at UC Berkeley just a few months earlier to pursue a degree in Anthropology. Peterson ended up spending only one or two full semesters at Berkeley and by the fall of 1904, he and his family had gone back to Snowflake where his old job was waiting. Leaving Berkeley behind, however, did not sever his ties with archaeology and his academic mentor Alfred Kroeber. In January 1905, Peterson responded to a letter from Kroeber and a plan to begin an exploration of the many ancient ruins around Snowflake began to take shape:

In reply will say that I’ll furnish you the information required as soon as possible. I can give you a rough map of the ruins in this vicinity from memory. It will be useless to visit any of the ruins at present as snow covers the ground to a depth of about 6 inches with no prospects of disappearing for some time.

Kroeber also asked Peterson to gather information on the whereabouts of other expeditions in the area:

With respect to Dr. Palmer’s intentions I can give nothing definite as the last time I saw him I had not received your first letter. I may be able to glean some information from parties who were with him. I was unable to find any of them yesterday. […]. As far as intruding on his ground is concerned, I think there is sufficient material to avoid this, other than in a general way. Especially is this so if the leading idea or object in view differs. Shall need no funds until we can decide on plans.

Frank Palmer was a Californian antiquarian who, despite a lack of training, had been tasked by the Southwest Society (a branch of the American Institute of Archaeology) to organize an expedition in Arizona. The underlying scope of the project was to collect high-quality artifacts to be exhibited in a new public museum in Los Angeles. While arguably competing for the same treasures Kroeber had a more academic attitude about it. Palmer and other collectors of the time were amateurs, with no proper training in field methodology and, in his words, did little to “bring out points new to science”. For the latter to happen amateurs like Palmer should be replaced by trained archaeologists, like Peterson.

Ground decorated potsherd. Joseph Peterson 1907

Kroeber was very interested in the archaeological record of the southwestern United States, more so than he was about California archaeology. One of the reasons was that Ancient Pueblo people were farmers and had domesticated animals, they built permanent villages with large buildings that would indicate a level of social complexity that was not yet recognized for hunter-gatherers. Ancient Pueblo people also had a rich tradition of pottery making, and shapes and decorations could be used to distinguish different cultural traditions and to create chronological sequences. California Indians, with few exceptions, didn’t rely on domesticated species and while they used clay to create figurines, pipes and other objects, they did not make pottery. That was enough evidence to persuade Kroeber that the lifestyle of California Indians had remained substantially unchanged for thousands of years. He expressed this conviction by dismissing Uhle’s interpretation of culture change at Emeryville and, as Heizer recalled years later, effectively limiting archaeological research in Central California by channelling most of the department budget to ethnographic research. But with Peterson in Arizona, Kroeber saw an opportunity to directly acquire valuable archaeological collections for a relatively low cost and with far superior provenience information that those received by exchange with other institutions or those from Phoebe Hearst personal collections.

Corrugated jar. Joseph Peterson 1906

Kroeber had high expectations for the Arizona project but Peterson could only partially fit the image of a professional field archaeologist. This was not for lack of enthusiasm, however. Between 1906 and 1908, Peterson explored and collected objects from about 25 ruins that likely dated between the 9th and 11th century AD. His notes about provenience and the relationship between objects, features, rooms and burials are well written but ultimately lacking in details and it is unknown if he took any photos while at work. He knew, however, Kroeber’s appetite for all things that fit the image of prehistoric farmers and he didn’t fail to please his mentor as these clips about turkeys and corn nicely illustrate:

Turkey bones are found in the ruins lower down the river than this game ever comes at present day, and it is reasonable to assume that turkeys were domesticated. I have now on hand a few specimens including 15 or 20 crocks, as many stone specimens, and about 40 smaller articles. I have the complete skeleton of a turkey evidently buried with rites, and about 8 human skeletons.

I enclose under separate cover a stalk of wheat the history of it as reported to me as follows. A party in the Grand Caňon region found in a small vase a few shrunken kernels. How long they had been there is not known as the vase was taken from a ruin. The people who gave me the stalk stated that they received only five of those shrunken kernels from which after three years time they have produced their patch of a few square rods. As I had never seen wheat similar to the specimen I thought I would try at least to find out if it is a common form or if it is something new. The story of its retaining its fertility throughout centuries seems incredible yet the owners gave me the story as a fact.

Barley stalk. Joseph Peterson, 1907

The letters Peterson wrote to Kroeber tell the story of genuine anthropological fervor not supported by adequate resources and budget as his frequent concerns about shipping charges seem to indicate. The collection includes about 850 catalog records; a substantial number and yet it pales compared to the amount of material amassed by earlier and contemporary expeditions to the Southwest that are now scattered in many museums. The fast-paced spoiling of ancient ruins in many parts of the country led to the Antiquity Act of 1906, something that Peterson acknowledged in a letter as a cause for delays in his plan to explore certain ruins. He never received a permit to work on public land and the project came to an end in July 1908 with Peterson promising to send more maps and reports but the correspondence ends there.

Despite any shortcomings, the Peterson collection was a great achievement and it remains as a testimony of the early days of archaeology as an academic discipline; it was never published but it was exhibited multiple times over the decades. We know that Joseph Peterson traveled to California in 1934: perhaps he had a chance to see his objects in the museum’s old Southwest Hall in San Francisco.