Preventative Conservation Measures for an Ethographic Collection.

The article focuses on the C. Hart Merriam Ethnographic Collection at the Department of Anthropology, University of California in Davis. After presenting an overview of the collection's history, the author declares that the basket documentation made the collection unique because it serves as a reference for baskets with no provenience, and an invaluable source of data on other aspects of native American ethnography. However, he reveals that the poor storage conditions and the lack of controlled environment accelerated the aging of the specimens. Due to this, a renovation project that costs $54,459 was funded by National Science Foundation. The author concludes that the preventive conservation measures of the project stabilized the factors which had caused deterioration of the collection.