Week 3: DPAL and Choctaw

Tuesday 6/18
The project I am taking on is inputting information about human remains specimens from a physical anthropology ledger book from 1915 - 1930. Here is some information about the ledger:

In the early days of the Museum of the American Indian, the founder and main collector, George Gustav Heye, created the Department of Physical Anthropology (DPAL) to hold human remain specimens. The specimens were given to the museum from prominent anthropological scholars for research. At that time many physical anthropologists and archaeologists excavated Native American mounds and burial sites and took the remains for "scholarly research." The remains given to the museum were recorded into a catalog ledger. Eventually the DPAL was closed from lack of use and the remains were transferred to other museums and universities. The majority of them went to the NYU School of Dentistry.

The records that were written in the ledger were photocopied and put into a notebook. The notebook is what I am now using to input the information into the NMAI collections database.

Last Friday I went through the notebook and tried to decipher what I would call the "bone code." I call it the bone code because for each specimen the name of the bone(s) are abbreviated with a number or the part of the bone (if in a series) proceeding the abbreviation.

On Tuesday, I organized the notes that I wrote down to make a key for the ledger bone code. For the rest of the day I worked on entering more South American collection measurements into the database. The objects were more textiles such as bark cloths, women's skirts, and dance outfits. Near the end of the day, I finally got the instructions for entering the project into the database. The instructions consisted mostly of the fields I would be using and the specific information to enter into those fields.

Wednesday 6/19
I went to the Choctaw Days event at NMAI. I had a good time. At the even I was able to get a small glimpse into the Choctaw culture. They had information tables on food, native tools, flutes, pottery, basket making, beadwork, the Choctaw school of language, stick ball, and so much more. The main theme of the event was to celebrate the Choctaw code talkers of World War I. I was also able to talk to a few people about how they made baskets! In the activity center, there were stations to make Choctaw crafts such as corn husk dolls and beaded choker or bracelet. I chose to make a bracelet. I also got a cute airbrushed turtle tattoo!

Above is a picture of some of the baskets at the event. The diamond pattern is important and prominent pattern in Choctaw crafts and clothing. They use this pattern to show respect to the rattlesnake.

In the afternoon, there were performances by a Choctaw flute player and dancers. Below is one of social dances they performed call the "Raccoon Dance."

Thursday and Friday 6/20-6/21
For the rest of the week I started working on ledger entries, testing the instructions, and making changes where necessary by noting any problems or concerns. I also numbered the copied ledger pages. I did about the first 20 specimens in the notebook because about 10 or so were crossed out and replaced, which is another problem we have to tackle later.

Afterwards, I cleaned up the records with the approved revisions from Kara and the revisions were added to the main entry instructions as well. For most of the day on Friday I went back to inputting those darn measurements again because I didn't have any records to enter information. (There is someone else who creates the record and I just put in the information. There were also only 20 records made for the week and the record maker was out of the office.) So more measurements!
Some of the textiles were from the Quechua peoples of Cuzco, Peru.
Link for more info on Quechua.