Building a Bridge to Cross a Thousand Years

The practice of archaeology includes of a series of events in which a group of objects is transformed from their initial identities as household goods, religious objects, or detritus of everyday life into artifacts, or as the 1906 Antiquities Act describes them, "objects of antiquity." Frequently, artifacts are further re-identified as part of a museum's "collections." Archaeological artifacts are defined primarily through the process of the relationship that an archaeologist enters into with them. In this article, the author states, that any object that was created by a human being may become an artifact, but it is the interaction between an archaeologist and that object that creates it as such. In addition, she states that many Indigenous archaeologists are unable to view objects from Indigenous cultures without recognizing that a multitude of contexts exist. The recognition of multiple identities and contexts for objects in museum collections need not result in conflict as long as the parties involved do not try to deny the existence of the alternate identities. In fact, acknowledging the multiple identities should lead to a richer appreciation for the objects. Furthermore, in this article, the author would like to examine the nature of museum collections of objects that have been defined by archaeologists as artifacts but that to Indigenous people maintain their cultural context. She argues that archaeologists must work to reestablish connections between Indigenous people and Indigenous objects from their past, in part because if they don't, they ignore the full cultural biography of the object and see only a small part of that object's life. (Contains 14 notes.)