The Hearst Museum’s Africa Collection was formed through the efforts of two pioneering Africanist scholars: the anthropologist William Bascom (1957-1979) and the archaeologist J. Desmond Clark (1961-1986).

Yoruba mask from Nigeria. Cat. No. 5-1739

The William Bascom African Collection

A Museum director who served for two decades, William Bascom greatly contributed to the Museum’s ethnographic holdings with hundreds of objects he collected himself during his research in Africa. The collection possesses an unusually rich amount of documentation about objects’ contexts and uses. Of particular importance are the collections from Nigeria and other areas of West and Central Africa. They include wood sculpture, basketry and pottery, musical instruments, brass castings and other metalwork, and textiles. The largest single cultural collection comes from the Yoruba of Nigeria – numbering about 1,400 items – making it one of the largest and most comprehensive in North America. Visit this link to search the William Bascom Finding Aid.

The J.Desmond Clark Archaeological Collection

The archaeological collections include more than 8000 catalog records, the majority of which were acquired by J. Desmond Clark and his doctoral students. During his career at Berkeley, Clark was instrumental in making the campus one of the world centers for African research.

A cleaver from Kalambo Falls. 5-5270

 As a result, today the Hearst Museum curates the assemblages from the Acheulean site at Kalambo Falls (Zambia), the Neolithic sites of Shabona and Jebel Tomat (Sudan), a sizable sample of Olduvai choppers, and smaller samples of objects from more than 50 sites across the continent. Among the collections deposited here by Clark’s students, the most notable are from the Neolithic site of Karkarichinkat in Mali and from the Montagu Paleolithic Cave in the Republic of South Africa. Other archaeological assemblages from Senegal, Angola and Zambia have important research value.

The Hearst Museum also curates the ethnographic and archaeological objects collected by the University of California African Expedition (1947-1948).

Ancient Egypt

The Museum has an extensive collection from Ancient Egypt, most of which was collected by the archaeologist George Reisner. Visit the Phoebe Hearst Collections to learn more about the Reisner collection.

The North American Collection is the Hearst Museum’s largest collection, consisting of more than 500,000 catalogue records, almost 400,000 of which are archaeological. California alone includes almost 350,000 catalog records.

California

Cradle from Alexander Valley. Cat. No. 1-1

The ethnographic collections arise from three main sources. The first, the California Survey (ca. 1899–1908), represents the most extensive period of systematic collecting of California ethnology in the Museum’s history. Alfred Kroeber was assisted by faculty and students such as Pliny Goddard, Thomas T. Waterman, and Samuel A. Barrett. In most cases, the cultural context of each object was documented in notes, maps, photographs, film, and sound recordings. This survey is an example of what we now call salvage ethnography, which attempted to preserve Native objects and knowledge in museums because white scholars perceived those cultures to be destined for extinction. The population of Native Californians declined precipitously with Spanish, Mexican, Russian, and later American colonization, particularly after statehood due to campaigns of genocide waged by settler colonists. It was in this historical context that the Museum initiated its study of California tribes primarily in non-urban areas of northern, eastern, and southern California. Recently Native Californians from these and other tribes have used California Survey materials for their own cultural revitalization projects.

A second, much smaller collection was produced by Ishi, a Yahi Indian, during his life at the Museum between 1911 and 1916.

A third collection originated from a smaller second California survey (ca. 1925–1935), and a cluster of private collections, composed mostly of baskets made as tourist items and sold on the market. This includes the collections of Edwin L. McLeod (1915) and Grace Blair du Pue (1944).

The Museum is especially well known for its collection of more than 8,000 California baskets. One of the largest collections in the world, the collection is especially comprehensive and well-documented. Particularly significant collections come from the Klamath River region (Yurok, Karuk, and Hupa) and the Pomo, as well as an early signed presentation basket by Ventureño Chumash weaver Maria Marta Zaputimeu, ca. 1825.

Philip Mills Jones standing on an ancient mound, 1901

The University’s strength in California archaeology began before the Museum’s founding. In 1899, Phoebe Hearst, who would later found the Museum, sent Philip M. Jones to excavate in the Channel Islands and the Central Valley (1899–1902). During the following years, the San Francisco Bay shellmounds were studied, first by Max Uhle (1902), and then Nels Nelson (1906–1911), Llewellyn L. Loud (1911-1913) and Edward Gifford and W. Egbert Schenck (1924–1925). In 1942, the Sacramento Junior College transferred Jeremiah B. Lillard’s collection consisting of his excavations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region of Central California.

The Museum’s collection of California archaeology was enlarged by Berkeley professor Robert F. Heizer and his students during the 1940s and 1950s. Working in what we now call a “salvage” archaeology model to quickly excavate before mid-twentieth century dams and road projects destroyed archaeological sites, they formulated a complete regional and temporal reconstruction of the region’s earliest inhabitants. The University of California Archaeological Survey collection, numbering 178,000 catalog entries, represents about two-thirds of the California collection.

The end of the California Survey and the rise of cultural resource management archaeology in the 1970s marked the end of the Museum’s active involvement in field archaeology and acquisition of archaeological materials. A few collections undertaken by archaeologists not affiliated with the Museum have been accessioned in recent years, but these undergo rigorous assessment and scrutiny concerning sensitive cultural remains before they are brought into the Museum.

Doll fragment. Cat. No. 1-245515

One example is the 13,000 object collection from the San Francisco historic waterfront that were salvaged when the city expanded its sewer lines in 1978. The collection likely represents the most comprehensive “type collection” of historic artifacts from nineteenth century San Francisco. Another example of a recent accession is a collection from the final 1999 excavation of the Emeryville Shellmound, one of the largest and oldest archaeological sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. This accession makes the Museum the sole repository of all the artifacts excavated from this important site for over a century.

Nevada

The archaeological collection from Nevada includes more than 40,000 catalog records totaling more than 200,000 individual objects. Alfred Kroeber showed an early interest in the region, which resulted in the exploration of important prehistoric sites such as Lovelock Cave and the Humboldt Lake Basin. In the 1950s and 1960s, Heizer and his students followed Llewellyn L. Loud’s steps and expanded the Museum’s collections to encompass the entire chronological span of the state, from very ancient caves and sites like the Leonard Rockshelter in Churchill County, to contemporary native villages used until the beginning of the 20th century in Lander County.

Cottonwood pole from Nevada. Cat. No. 1-50607

Arctic & Pacific Northwest Coast

This area is largely represented by a collection made by the Alaska Commercial Company in the late nineteenth century. In 1897, the University of California was given 2,400 artifacts collected from all three culture areas represented in Alaska: the Eskimo of the Arctic, the Athapaskan of the Subarctic, and the Tlingit and Haida of the Northwest Coast. The company traders were quite eclectic in their collecting strategy, acquiring trade novelties as well as more traditional items. This accession is complemented by the related collection amassed by Charles L. Hall, an Alaska Commercial Company employee. Faculty curator Nelson Graburn also donated his well-documented collection of Canadian Inuit soapstone sculpture.

While relatively small, the Northwest Coast collection includes some important Tlingit and Haida objects. Among them are a monumental Haida totem pole and a pair of Kwakwaka’wakw house posts collected by Charles F. Newcombe; Haida argillite sculpture, including a decorative plate attributed to famed Haida carver Charles Edenshaw; and Tlingit artifacts from early geographer George Davidson.

The Midwest and Southwest United States

The Museum has important holdings from the Southwest United States, with Phoebe Hearst’s own donations, especially Pueblo and Navajo textiles, the George Pepper Pueblo pottery collection (1903), Kroeber’s well-documented collection from Zuni (1918), and representative 1930s collections from geology professor Norman E. A. Hinds. From the Plains, there are some important early collections such as the Osage and Omaha objects collected by Native anthropologist Francis LaFlesche and Apache and Kiowa objects collected by Army General Hugh L. Scott. Additional objects from this region were collected during Samuel Barrett’s filming of the Blackfoot and Sioux Tribes in the 1960s.

Mexico

Mexico was a personal collecting interest of both Phoebe Hearst and her friend, the anthropologist Zelia Nuttall. Beginning with their efforts, the Hearst Museum possesses the largest museum collection of the finely-woven Saltillo serape blankets in the world. Nuttall also donated some important lacquered items, carved gourds, and textiles. These objects were studied by Katherine D. Jenkins, a student in Berkeley’s Decorative Art Department. Jenkins went on to amass her own extensive collection of Mexican folk art, especially lacquer, during the 1960s and 1970s.

Decorated bowl from Teotihuacán. Cat. No. 3-2351

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Anthropology professor George M. Foster collected pottery from his principal fieldwork site of Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan. He made a comprehensive representation of Mexican folk art, along with pottery and other crafts from Jalisco contributed by his graduate students. The Museum’s strength in Mexican folk art has recently been expanded upon by the acquisition of two large collections, by Steve Vietti and John Paul, with more than 1,400 objects, mostly ceramic figurines representing many aspects of life and beliefs of contemporary rural communities.

Mexican archaeology is represented by almost 30,000 catalog records. Isabel T. Kelly used a large sample of ceramic vessel fragments  (9,500 objects) to create her comprehensive pottery typology in 1935. Important collections were donated by William Massey and the geographer Carl O. Sauer (Baja California), Richard Brooks (Chihuahua and Durango), and Edward W. Gifford (Sonora and Nayarit).

Decorative & Folk Arts

The Museum also has a significant North American collection from non-Native American peoples. The collection that the Museum inherited from Berkeley’s former Decorative Art & Design Department is especially strong in textiles, and also contains media. The collection includes 19th-century quilts and coverlets and part of the studio collection of textile designer Dorothy Liebes (ca. 1950–1960s). Highlights from the relatively small but important collection of American folk art include carving and textiles from African-Americans and New Mexican Hispanics.

Woman’s blouse. Cat. No. 3-22

The Central American Collection is small but significant. One of the great treasures of the Hearst Museum are the Guatemalan textiles, representing over a century of acquisitions. After the comprehensive and well-documented collection (the largest from the 19th century) gathered by Gustavus A. Eisen in 1902, came textile scholar Lila O’Neale’s study collection of 1936. With the addition of smaller donations, the Hearst Museum now curates more than 1000 textiles from this small Central American nation.

Ancient pot from Guatemala. Cat. No. 3-319

In addition to the collecting of textiles and other contemporary objects, Gustav Eisen returned from his 1902 expedition in Guatemala with a small number (about 200) of archaeological objects. Among them, the stone idols from a cave near San Juan Ixtan and the pottery appliques from the site at Zaculeu are of particular interest given their common provenience. An additional, also small, archaeological collection from Guatemala was acquired by the museum through the work of Robert Heizer and John Graham near the Temple of Montezuma in the Jutiapa district. This collection includes multiple obsidian cores and blades that, in a later paper, Heizer argued they represented the remains of a small workshop specialized in obsidian procurement that was established along the southernmost border of the Maya territory.

Three-legged bowl. Cat. No. 3-759

The Hearst Museum is one of the institutions that curate different parts of a vast collection accumulated by Mr. J. A. McNiel in over two decades of explorations in the Chiriqui region of Panama. Nearly 1200 objects collected by him in 1882 were accessioned in 1904 and had been exhibited to the public multiple times. This collection and one of ancient pottery from Costa Rica donated by M. Rivera in 1971 offer a great overview of the pre-contact material culture of the Central American western coast.

The Central American archaeological collections include the objects excavated by James Bennyhoff and Clement Meighan from multiple sites on the northern coast of Belize (then British Honduras) in 1950 with the purpose of locating post-classic Maya settlements. This assemblage is one of the few systematically excavated that are curated outside of Belize and it is accompanied by multiple notebooks and field notes that make it an invaluable resource for Central America scholars.

The Bennyhoff-Meighan collection has interesting connections with a small (about 300 objects), mostly ceramic, assemblage salvaged by David K. Evans on the Roatan Island in Honduras, in 1961 during his post-graduate studies at Berkeley. The collection is important because during the 20th century the archaeological record of the Bay Islands has been seriously depleted by looting and by selling artifacts to tourists and there is little left of the material culture used by the original population, which was completely eradicated from the Islands by 1650 and that, by historic accounts, had links to the mainland Maya population.

Visit the North American Collections for information about the Museum’s Mexico collections.

Tapestry fragment from Chancay. Cat. No. 16-976

The Hearst Museum curates nearly 40,000 objects from South America. Max Uhle’s expeditions to the continent that were sponsored by the Museum’s founder, Phoebe Hearst, form the bulk of the South American collection. Visit the Phoebe Hearst Collections to learn more about Uhle’s work.

Smaller but significant collections were later made by Berkeley professor John Rowe and his students, such as Dorothy Menzel, Larry Dawson, and Jane Dwyer. Indeed, starting with Alfred Kroeber’s work during the 1920s, and followed by Rowe’s teaching, generations of scholars have used the Uhle collection to develop the basic chronological sequence of Peruvian Nasca pottery.

Bag from Paraguay. Cat. No. 16-17

A few highlights of the South American collections include those assembled by Michael Harner from the Shuar (Jivaro) and related peoples of rain-forest Bolivia and Peru, the Peruvian textiles collected by George Miller in 1974, and the recent acquisition of Ecuador textiles donated by Rachel G. Mossman.

The single largest archaeological collection is the thousands of potsherds and other objects collected by Edward P. Lanning during his dissertation research between 1956 and 1960, mainly from the sites of Jahuay and Curayaco in Peru. This is followed by J. O. Nomland collections from coastal shellmounds in Colombia and Venezuela.

Among the smaller collections are projectile points from archaeological sites in Chile, the materials collected by Alice Francisco at Carchi, Ecuador, and a sample of potsherds from various Brazilian sites collected by the Lower Amazonia Expedition.

The museum’s holdings from Asia began with Phoebe Hearst’s own interests in the continent, especially of Kashmiri shawls and other textiles, and of objets d’art such as Japanese netsuke belt-toggles.

Silk robe from China. Cat. No. 9-5453

The Museum’s Asian collections were stimulated by the rise of anthropologists interests in peasant communities in the 1950s and 60s. Objects from India represent the Museum’s best documented and most comprehensive collections from the continent, coming primarily from several graduate students in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Ronald Maduro in Rajasthan, Niloufer Ichaporia collecting among her own Parsi community in Bombay and Gujarat, and Richard Lerner’s collection of domestic crafts from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. In 2001, the Museum received part of pioneering religious scholar Theos Bernard’s collection, consisting of domestic and ritual objects, and still photographs, collected in 1937.

The Hearst Museum’s Asian collections greatly expanded over the decades due to the transfer of collections from Berkeley’s University Library, the Art Gallery, and the now-closed Decorative Art Department to the Hearst Museum. The latter transfer consists of collections largely built by the San Francisco Bay Area arts patron, Albert M. Bender.

Hat from the Philippines. Cat. No. 10-44

The Museum has one of the country’s largest Philippines collections, including accessions from noted scholars such as David Barrows, Roy Barton, and Harold Conklin. Other notable Southeast Asia collections include the Minangkabau of Sumatra (Nancy Tanner), the Chin of western Burma (Herbert Wehrly), and Vietnamese textiles (Eric Crystal).

China and Japan are among the best-represented areas of Asia in the Museum. Most of the extensive Chinese collection comprises decorative art from the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Most notable from Japan are the collection of folk art made by artist Brian Shekeloff, and Berkeley’s Design Department collections of lacquer and folk pottery. Two important regional collections recently donated are rural Japanese baskets collected by Dai Williams and Karin Nelson, and Chinese porcelains from the Cultural Revolution period collected by Alfreda Murck.

From the Middle East, the principal collection consists of about 1,000 ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets—most containing cuneiform inscriptions—gathered around 1930 by Professor Henry F. Lutz who was also the Museum’s Egyptology curator. Lutz also collected bronzes and pottery from Iran and neighboring regions. More information about these tablets can be found at the Museum’s page on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) website.

clay plaque from the ancient city of Larsa. Cat. No. 9-1784

Other archaeological collections from Asia include Peter Cornwall’s excavations in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia in the early 1940s. Other notable assemblages include thousands of lithics from the Narmada Valley in India collected by George Shukurkin in 1968 and a large sample of stone tools excavated by Dorothy Garrod in 1938 at Tabun Cave, in what is now Israel. Smaller collections came from archaeological sites in Syria, Malaysia, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Figurine from Easter Island. Cat. No. 11-1156

The Australia and Pacific Oceania Collection contains a  diverse representation of materials from across the region. Phoebe Hearst contributed a number of fine pieces, such as finely carved wooden bowls from Hawaii and a ceremonial headpiece from New Ireland. In the late 1920s, Berkeley graduate W. Lloyd Warner returned with an early Australian collection. Between 1928 and 1930 the Museum obtained over 100 Maori objects on exchange from the Otago University Museum in New Zealand.

Splashboard from the Trobriand Islands. Cat. No. 11-39240

In 1965, the museum purchased a Trobriand Islands collection from the widow of the renowned anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. At 1,519 pieces, it is the largest of the three made by the pioneering Polish-British anthropologist during his innovative fieldwork from 1914 to 1920. From the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea, there are several hundred brilliantly painted ancestor figures. From the Highlands of Irian Jaya, there are collections from the Grand Valley Dani and a well-documented one from the Jalémo, gathered as part of field research by graduate student Klaus-Friedrich Koch in 1965.

Fishing tackle from New Zealand. Cat. No. 11-2206

Graduate research in the Pacific continued during the 1970s and 1980s: Nancy M. Williams in Australia (Arnhem Land) in 1970, Karen Nero in Micronesia (Caroline Islands, Yap) in 1978, and Maria Lepowsky in the Trobriands area in 1979. In addition to a large set of Aboriginal bark paintings, there is also a large collection of tapa cloth.

The Hearst Museum’s Australia and Pacific Oceania Collection also contains archaeological materials, including those that Edward W. Gifford excavated during his three pioneering expeditions between 1947-1956. Gifford’s careful excavations at Viti Levu, Fiji, New Caledonia, and Yap, Micronesia reinvigorated Pacific prehistory. His work at Lapita at Koné, among other places, revealed the earliest human societies to populate the Pacific Islands. The Gifford Collections from Oceania amount to more than 32,000 catalog records.

Russian Icon. Cat. No. 7-802

Throughout its history, the Hearst Museum has had a distinctive collecting strength in Western civilizations which resulted in significant collections from Europe and Russia. This emphasis clearly was begun by the many donations from Phoebe Hearst and, in turn, they became a foundation for later collecting, especially with the parallel collection of the University’s Decorative Art/Design Department, which came to the Hearst Museum after the department was closed in 1974.

One of the most important European collection is the Swedish folk art collected for Phoebe Hearst by Swedish-American physician Axel O. Lindstrom in 1902. Textiles are another strength of the European collections, including Paisley shawls collected by Phoebe Hearst, Aegean embroideries collected by Henrietta Brewer in the 1940s, and clothing collected by several anthropologists in the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s and 1970s. Also well-represented are ceramics from most European countries, especially from late-18th century England. The European collections also include French miniature paintings, Italian watercolors and etchings, and Russian icons.

The Museum has small collections from many important caves in the French Pyrenees, like La Ferrassie, Le Moustier, and Puy de Lacan. Additional collections originated from Portugal, England and Italy.

Visit the Phoebe Hearst Collections to learn more about the Museum’s Ancient Mediterranean Collection.

The Hearst Museum has one of the largest and most important art collections held by an anthropology museum, with approximately 800 items. Formed under the initial patronage of Phoebe Hearst, it is second only to the Harvard Peabody Museum’s collection. Although Mrs. Hearst’s interests were partly aesthetic, the collection has since served as documentation of Native peoples, objects, and sites.

Most of the subjects are Native Americans, principally from Southwestern, Plains, and Alaskan groups. Most of the artists are also American, including noted painters such as Carl Oscar Borg, Emily Carr, Henry Wood Elliott, Amédée Joullin, Caroline Mytinger, Henry Raschen, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Jules Tavernier.

Watercolor of Italian landscape. Cat. No. 17-103

Another significant subject is Old World archaeology: about sixty-five 19th century Italian watercolors of Classical sites, about thirty Roman engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and a few but important watercolors of ancient Egyptian sites by Henry Roderick Newman and Joseph Lindon Smith.

Media include oil on canvas, as well as many kinds of works on paper: watercolor and gouache; drawings in pencil, charcoal, ink, and crayon; and prints in the form of lithographs, etchings, silk-screens, and engravings.

The Museum also has an extensive collection of paintings made for sale by a wide range of Native artists; these have been largely cataloged under their appropriate regional categories. Included are Pueblo watercolors and Northwest Coast Indian silk-screen prints from North America, European miniatures, Russian religious icons, and oil paintings from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, and the Philippines. There is also a well-documented collection of traditional paintings from India (principally Rajasthan), about 120 Australian Aboriginal bark paintings (as well as a large set of silk-screen reproductions), and a small but important set of Roman-period mummy portraits from the Fayuum, Egypt.

Explore the collections now.

When Berkeley’s Anthropology Department and Museum of Anthropology were founded in 1901, Phoebe Hearst personally sponsored a number of agents and projects for the sake of of supplying the new institutions with important collections to serve their academic and educational missions. The resulting collections were large and diverse. Historically, however, a handful of them came to be considered as the cornerstone on which the Museum built its reputation. Four of these collections are described here.

Kylix from Greece. Cat. No. 8-3

The Alfred Emerson Classical Mediterranean Collection

The collections of Classical Antiquity – mostly from the Mediterranean region and including Greece, Italy and North Africa – are comprised primarily of the objects brought back by Alfred Emerson, one of Phoebe Hearst’s original collecting agents. Between 1900 and 1904, the former Classics professor assembled about 4,200 pieces, primarily painted ceramics but also marble sculpture, bronzes, glass, mosaics, and coins. Complementing the earlier Egyptian collections are items from the Greco-Roman period in Egypt, notably a group of painted mummy portraits from Fayuum. In addition to the extensive Greek holdings, the Classics collection includes a substantial Etruscan collection. The earliest items were collected by Arthur Frothingham and transferred from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Among the treasures are stone sarcophagi from Musarna, approximately 800 terracotta female votives from Caere, and over 100 examples of bucchero blackware from Chiusi, Orvieto, and Pitigliano. (Click here for a finding aid for this collection)

Figurine from Naga-ed-Der. Cat. No. 6-1156

The George Reisner Egyptian Collection

Phoebe Hearst met George A. Reisner on her first trip to Egypt in early 1899. While the American Egyptologist had no excavation experience at this time, Hearst had faith in his abilities and sent him to work immediately. With several assistants and a large and skilled Egyptian crew, Reisner explored the sites of Coptos and Shurafa (1899-1900), El Ahaiwah (1900), Deir el-Ballas (1900-1901), Naga ed-Deir (1901–1904), and Giza (1903-1905). When his work for Phoebe Hearst was complete, Reisner had collected approximately 17,000 cataloged objects. Almost all of Reisner’s work was impeccably documented in notes, maps, plans, and photographs.

Today, the Hearst’s Egyptian collection ranges in time from the Predynastic to Coptic Eras, spanning 4,000 years of ancient Egyptian history, with about three-quarters from the Predynastic and Old Kingdom periods. Indeed, the Predynastic Era collection is the largest outside of Egypt.

Jar from the Moche Valley. Cat. No. 4-136

The Max Uhle Ancient Andean Collection

One of the most valuable archaeological collections from the New World is the 9,500 ancient Peruvian objects gathered by Max Uhle between 1899 and 1905. The noted German archaeologist was the first to identify the Nasca style of pottery and to develop chronological sequences for the region. A great part of his collection comes from documented excavations, with many intact tomb groups, supplemented by objects purchased from local dealers. Most date from the Early Intermediate Period (200 BC-500 AD) to the Late Horizon (1430-1534 AD), a period that ended with the Spanish conquest. Given the nature of preservation, ceramics are the main object-type represented, but there also are important specimens of textiles, metals, stone, wood, and other organic materials.

Pomo game sticks. Cat. No. 1-101a-f

The Philip M. Jones Collection

Philip M. Jones was a medical doctor and had no formal training in archaeology. Yet, between 1899 and 1901 Phoebe Hearst appointed him to collect more than 5000 catalog records from his excavations in the Channel Islands, the California Southern Coast and Central Valley. Additionally he collected and purchased contemporary objects from the West Coast, the Great Plains and the Philippines. Philip M. Jones collections, his notes and hundreds of photos greatly contributed to the development of California Archaeology as an academic discipline and they still maintain a high historical and research value today.

The Hearst Museum has a strong Media Collection consisting of still photography, sound recordings, and film. This collection, when combined with the Museum Paintings, Prints and Drawing Collection, make the Hearst Museum an indispensable resource.

Still Photographs

The Museum’s collection of still photographs consists of both original prints and negatives. The original prints include those of Edward Curtis, Paul Louis Hoefler, Timothy O’Sullivan, John Hillers, Carleton Watkins, and Felice Beato, as well as some unique copies of these artists’ works. The Museum’s negatives comprise the largest and most comprehensive collection of ethnographic photographs of California Indians (ca. 3,500). A sample of the collection can be reviewed at the Museum’s Calisphere Archive.

Sound Recordings

The Museum has the largest sound collection in an American anthropology museum. It holds the largest and most comprehensive sound collection for California Indian song and language, and the third largest ethnographic wax-cylinder collection in America produced, between 1901 and 1938. Visit Berkeley’s California Language Archive for a catalog of the Museum’s California Indian sound collection. Richard Keeling’s 1991 A Guide to Early Field Recordings at the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, is another useful guide to some of the Museum’s sound collection.

The Museum also has important holdings from Africa and Asia. Generally well-documented and with excellent sound quality, the African tapes were recorded between 1959 and 1962 from Niger, Cameroons, and Nigeria (Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv, Ijaw, Ibibio, Igbo, Tuareg, Birom, Efik, Kagoro, and others). There are smaller sound collections from Iraq, Iran, India, New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippines.

Film

The Museum holds what is likely the largest collection of research footage on North American Indians in the United States. Samuel A. Barrett, Berkeley’s first anthropology doctorate (1908) collected most of this material during his National Science Foundation funded American Indian Film Project between 1960 and 1965, yielding 362,569 feet of film from many tribes in the American West. The collection also includes important early films from Bali and Siberia dating to the 1920s. A small collection of the Museum’s films can be viewed at the California Light and Sound Archive here.