Museum Anthropology

Essay # 99262

Anthropology > Modern
Computer and Technology > Technology

Museum Anthropology

This paper discuses the impact of new technologies on the practice of museum anthropology.

1,610 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that new technologies are impacting the practice of museum anthropology by making possible a more accurate interpretation of what ancient objects are really saying, by removing long-held misconceptions, and by enabling museum anthropologists to get much closer to the real story told by these silent artifacts. The author points out that the invention of photography has made possible different kinds of exhibitions, while the invention of x-rays, combined with sophisticated computer analysis of these x-rays, has made possible a more informed understanding of what exhibit artifacts really mean. The paper relates that archaeologists, anthropologists, engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists are working together at the ancient site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia, to develop a large, subsurface surveying project that will attempt to identify artifacts before they are actually collected.

From the Paper:

"Yet this was just the beginning of the ways in which technology would shape and frame the discourses engaged in by museum anthropologists. While the possibility of collections of photographs made possible a particular kind of exhibition, more recent advances have made possible a deeper insight into what the exhibitions actually mean. For example, the Krapina Neanderthal fossil bone collection was found in August, 1899, in caves in Croatia. It has long been thought that the collection was a relic of an ancient group of hominids that died out because they were weaker than other groups."

Sample of Sources Used:

Chapman, William Ryan. "Arranging Ethnology: A.H.L.F. Pitt Rivers and the Typological Tradition." In George W. Stocking Jr., (Editor) Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. University of Wisconsin Press, 1985: 15-46.
Edwards, Elizabeth. Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford: Berg, 2001.
Thomas, Nickolas. "The European Appropriation of Indigenous Things." In Thomas, Nickolas, Entangled Objects, Harvard University Press, 1991: 125-184.
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "First Comprehensive Radiographic Study of Famous Krapina Neandertal Fossil Collection Reveals Health of Early Hominid (of 130,000 years ago)." Summer, 1999. Retrieved from web site: http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/research/Exp_Rese_Disc/PhysicalAnthro/neanderthalsxrayed.shtml
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Penn Museum's Tiwanaku Archaeological Project Begins Groundbreaking New Effort To Collect Detailed Subsurface Data On This Enigmatic World Heritage Site With 1.05 Million Dollar National Science Foundation Collaborative Grant. Penn School of Engineering Joins Forces with Penn Museum, External Collaborators to Develop New Prototype Data Retrieval Systems for Archaeological Sites." 6th January 2005. Retrieved from web site: http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/news/fullrelease.php?which=149