Robert Schlader
Project Summary
The Idaho Museum of Natural History (IMNH) has a set of teaching collections containing thousands of items. These collections are known as the Crandall Collection, Carl Ivan Smith Collection, and Hudson Collection. These collections have never been fully catalogued nor have they been fully explored in systematically. Most objects are missing clear documentation, or provenance, that would document their source and ownership history.
Small portions of the collections have been sampled to produce a set of “teaching kits” that are available to educators. The Department of Anthropology at Idaho State University has made frequent use of the kits.
Crandall Collection
The Crandall Collection consists of two major donations. The first donation occurred in either the 1950s or 1960s and the second occurred in 1991. The collection consists of approximately 50,000 to 80,000 individual items ranging from projectile points, which make up a majority of the collection, to a random assortment of larger items like an Aztec Celt (a ceremonial axe-like object). A few pieces of pottery are included in the collection as well as game pieces from the US Midwest.
The pieces in this collection were collected throughout North America; however, most of the items originated from either Idaho or Oregon. A majority of the items in the Crandall Collection arrived at the IMNH in cigar boxes or were affixed for display to 24” by 36” sheets of cardboard. The collection contains eight or nine archival boxes of items. These boxes contain items that were removed from their original cigar boxes or from the cardboard sheets and were individually bagged.
About 3,500 to 4,000 items from this collection have been individually labeled and 780 of them were at one point assembled into a Great Basin Typology example set. Due to unregulated access to this collection in the past, the few labeled items have been mixed together and their overall organization has been lost. Very little to no documentation has been maintained about past use of the teaching kits created from the Crandall materials.
Carl Ivan Smith Collection
The Carl Ivan Smith Collection was donated in either the 1950s or 1960s and consists of a broad range of items with very close provenience, or point of origin. Part of this collection was recovered from known rock shelters in Idaho and as a result this collection was formally accessioned into the IMNH Anthropology Collections. Unfortunately, no catalog was generated and the total item count is unknown and none of the objects from the collection have been labeled. However, it is known that the collection also contains non-stone items including a saddle and cordage.
Hudson Collection
The Hudson Collection was donated in either the 1950s or 1960s and currently is stored in fifteen sealed cartons in the IMNH warehouse. Originally accessioned into the IMNH Anthropology Collections, the Hudson Collection was eventually deaccessioned due to lack of clear provenance documentation. Some of the collection includes pottery. Unfortunately, the collection as a whole has never been catalogued and historical records indicate that part of the original collection was stolen.
Cultural Significance
The significance of the Crandall, Carl Ivan Smith and Hudson collections lies with the unique and outstanding quality of a majority of their items. A significant number are complete and a majority of those are examples of the finest flint knapping skills of prehistoric people. The ability of the IMNH to provide access for educators in and out of Idaho to these high quality objects can only increase the educational experience of students of all ages studying Native American history and culture.
In the past, only formal educators associated with an educational institution had access to the few teaching kits that had been created from these collections. We propose to formally process these collections, generating not only a database of information about the items but also a photographic library. We also intend to produce a series of virtual, 3d teaching kits online that are utilize high quality items from the collections. The online teaching kits will be available to the general public and would come with associated teaching curricula for formal and informal/free choice educators.
Stages of the Anthropology teaching kits project:
- Catalog each specimen into the IMNH Archaeological Collections database
- Photograph each specimen
- Review the collections and select outstanding specimens
- Digitally scan the selected specimens
- Map the photographs onto the scans and produce skinned meshes (i.e. a photographic surface image, or skin, is rendered onto the digitally scanned object)
- Archive the skinned meshes
- Produce web-accessible versions of the final objects and post them on the IVL website