BiblioVault - Books about Hinsley, Curtis M.

Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past

Elizabeth Hill Boone

Harvard University Press, 2011

The history of Pre-Columbian collecting is a social and aesthetic history—of ideas, people and organizations, and objects. This richly illustrated volume examines these histories by considering the collection and display of Pre-Columbian objects in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Some of the thirteen essays locate the collecting process within its broader cultural setting in order to explain how and why such collections were formed, while others consider how collections have served as documents of culture within the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, and as objects of fine art or aesthetic statements within the art and art historical worlds. Nearly all contemplate how such collections have been used as active signifiers of political, economic, and cultural power.

The thirteen essays were originally presented at a symposium commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Pre-Columbian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks. They continue to be groundbreaking contributions to the histories of collecting and Pre-Columbian art.

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From Site to Sight

Anthropology, Photography, and the Power of Imagery

Melissa Banta and Curtis M. Hinsley

Harvard University Press, 1986

From Site to Sight

Anthropology, Photography, and the Power of Imagery, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition

Melissa Banta and Curtis M. HinsleyWith a New Introduction by Ira Jackins

Harvard University Press

In 1986 the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard mounted From Site to Sight, a groundbreaking traveling exhibition on the historic and contemporary uses of photography in anthropology. Using visual materials from the vast photographic archives of the Peabody Museum and the work of members of Harvard’s anthropology department, the accompanying catalog investigates how anthropologists have employed the camera as a recording and analytic tool and as an aesthetic medium. Photographs ranging from daguerreotypes to satellite images are presented in an examination of the possibilities and limitations of using the camera as a fact-gathering and interpretive tool. The authors also explore the broader implications of the uses—and misuses—of visual imagery within the human sciences.

From Site to Sight has been a foundational text for scholars and students in the developing field of visual anthropology, illustrating the role of photographic imagery in anthropology and archaeology from the disciplines’ formative years to the 1980s. Long out of print, this classic publication is now available in an enhanced thirtieth anniversary edition with a new introductory essay by Ira Jacknis.

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The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing

Curtis M. Hinsley

University of Arizona Press, 2002

In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuñis with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into southwestern prehistory.

This second installment of a multivolume work on the Hemenway Expedition focuses on a report written by Cushing—at the request of the expedition's board of directors—to serve as vindication for the expedition, the worst personal and professional failure of his life. Reconstructed between 1891 and 1893 by Cushing from field notes, diaries, jottings, and memories, it provides an account of the origins and early months of the expedition. Hidden in several archives for a century, the Itinerary is assembled and presented here for the first time.

A vivid account of the first attempt at scientific excavatons in the Southwest, Cushing's Itinerary is both an exciting tale of travel through the region and an intellectual adventure story that sheds important light on the human past at Hohokam sites in Arizona's Salt River Valley, where Cushing sought to prove his hypothesis concerning the ancestral "Lost Ones" of the Zuñis. It initiates the construction of an ethnological approach to archaeology, which drew upon an unprecedented knowledge of a southwestern Pueblo tribe and use of that knowledge in the interpretation of archaeological sites.

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The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing

Curtis M. Hinsley

University of Arizona Press, 2002

In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuñis with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into southwestern prehistory.

This second installment of a multivolume work on the Hemenway Expedition focuses on a report written by Cushing—at the request of the expedition's board of directors—to serve as vindication for the expedition, the worst personal and professional failure of his life. Reconstructed between 1891 and 1893 by Cushing from field notes, diaries, jottings, and memories, it provides an account of the origins and early months of the expedition. Hidden in several archives for a century, the Itinerary is assembled and presented here for the first time.

A vivid account of the first attempt at scientific excavatons in the Southwest, Cushing's Itinerary is both an exciting tale of travel through the region and an intellectual adventure story that sheds important light on the human past at Hohokam sites in Arizona's Salt River Valley, where Cushing sought to prove his hypothesis concerning the ancestral "Lost Ones" of the Zuñis. It initiates the construction of an ethnological approach to archaeology, which drew upon an unprecedented knowledge of a southwestern Pueblo tribe and use of that knowledge in the interpretation of archaeological sites.

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On a Trail of Southwest Discovery

The Expedition Diaries of Frederick W. Hodge and Margaret W. Magill, 1886–1888

Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox

University of Arizona Press, 2024

The Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition (1886–1889), directed by Frank Hamilton Cushing, was the first privately funded expedition to the American Southwest. This volume examines the expedition through the diaries of two participants who fell in love on the expedition: the field secretary, Fred Hodge, and the expedition artist, Margaret Magill—who was also Cushing’s sister-in-law. It also presents the first biographical treatment of Hodge, who became a major figure in early twentieth-century anthropology. The book’s first two sections chronicle the field operations of the expedition, while the third describes the long anthropological career of Hodge after the end of the expedition. Through deep research in primary and secondary sources and archival materials, the book details both the daily operations of the expedition and the growing romantic relationship between Hodge and Magill.

For those interested in settlements in early Arizona and Zuni Pueblo, the book provides rare insights into the lives of both men and women, offering an intimate view of an enterprise that is now considered a foundation of Hohokam archaeology—even as it reveals deep love and persistent personal conflicts.

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Philadelphia and the Development of Americanist Archaeology

Edited by Don Fowler and David R. Wilcox

University of Alabama Press, 2003

For two and a half centuries, Philadelphians have been actively involved in archaeological research. In particular, three vital and venerable cultural institutions—the American Philosophical Society (founded 1743), the Academy of Natural Sciences (founded 1812), and the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (founded 1893)—have nurtured the "systematic study of antiquities."

The ten essays in this volume focus on Philadelphians who were concerned with Americanist archaeology, or the "archaeology of the New World." As Europeans, and later, Euroamericans, spread across North, Central, and South America in the 16th through the 19th centuries, they encountered a bewildering variety of native peoples, customs, and languages, as well as tens of thousands of ancient ruins attesting to a long endemic culture history of obvious complexity.

The essays examine most of the key players in the development of the methods to study these phenomena. Enlightenment scholars such as Benjamin Smith Barton, Peter S. Duponceau, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Garrison Brinton, John Wesley Powell, and Benjamin Rush all contributed to the surge of scientific study of America's prehistoric cultures. So did two pioneering women who have received scant attention to date—Sara Yorke Stevenson and Lucy W. Wilson—but whose work is well treated in this study. Other essays detail the varied contributions of C. C. Abbott, Frank Hamilton Cushing, Clarence B. Moore, Edgar Lee Hewett, and John L. Cotter. This volume should stimulate continued interest in the origins and history of archaeology and the relationship of Philadelphia patrons and institutions to scientific inquiry.

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Zuni, Hopi, Copan

Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890–1893

Curtis M. Hinsley

Harvard University Press

Zuni, Hopi, Copan: Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890–1893 publishes one hundred letters from John Gundy Owens to Deborah Harker Stratton, currently held in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Owens was one of the first graduate students in anthropology at Harvard; his poignant letters to “Miss Debbie” trace a budding relationship of affection in late Victorian America and offer vivid, highly entertaining accounts of his fieldwork at Zuni pueblo in New Mexico, Hopi mesa villages in Arizona, and the Maya site of Copan in Honduras. Tragically, Owens died at age twenty-seven in Copan; Stratton never married and kept the letters until her own death, nearly fifty years later. Introductory essays by Curtis M. Hinsley, Louis A. Hieb, and Barbara W. Fash contextualize the annotated letters and shed new light on early anthropological training in the United States.

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