The Institute for American Indian Studies

Yesterday Laurie and I traveled to the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut, to see the museum and hear a lecture given by Dr. Nicholas F. Bellantoni, who is retiring this fall after 27 years as Connecticut's state archaeologist. The lecture was hosted by the Litchfield Hills Archaeology Club, which conducts its own excavation every spring and summer. Dr. Lucianne Lavin is the founder of the LHAC as well as the Director of Research and Collections at the IAIS. We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Lavin and other members of the LHAC at the lecture.


Both the lecture and the museum exceeded our expectations. The quality and diversity of the collections are astounding, and the exhibits are informative and very well designed. Artifacts are displayed in various ways depending on their form, size, and function. Here you can see a large mortar and pestle, one of many on display (yet we never get tired of looking at them!). I liked how the mortar was placed on the ground, as it would have been used, but also slightly elevated so that it's easy to see.


I also liked how these artifacts, which are laid out in a standard typological fashion, are contextualized by the rope and the reconstructed fishing hook.

I should mention that all of the artifacts in the first room in the museum, including these clay pots, are from the American Northeast, including many local sites, and span a range of time periods from prehistory up to the modern age. The arrival of European settlers and the corresponding influx of European goods - particularly those made of iron and copper - are not presented as a major disjuncture in the history of this area but as one in a sequence of developments that shaped American Indian life. Also, the sequence of displays proceeding all the way up to the present combats the widely held belief (though less widely held than it used to be) that the post- Columbian Era has been one of steady decline and decay of Native peoples and their cultures. While it is true that American Indians have suffered great losses, the model of cultural decline is not only too simple to account for the complex ways that the numerous different American Indian societies have adapted over the past few hundred years, in most cases it is simply wrong. Indian cultures continue to grow and change into the present day.


I liked the incorporation of images and text in these hanging displays. Of course I had to get a picture of the mortar and pestle in action.

Other rooms in the museum contain American Indian artifacts from other areas of the present United States, including these ceramic pieces with bold graphic designs from the American Southwest. The vessel in the photograph above - an Olla dating from 1100-1250 C.E. - reminded me of a crossword puzzle, but apparently it is thought to represent corn kernels.

This incredible cradle board was featured in a room dedicated to Indian reservations. It is actually a family tree - the petals of the flowers and the berries on the vine represent the female and male members of the artist's family.

These vessels are inscribed with the Cherokee alphabet, invented by Sequoyah in the 1810s and 1820s.

These are some examples of beadwork that I greatly admired. The beads in the middle photo are impossibly small, making for an incredibly intricate and beautiful design.

As for the lecture, Dr. Bellantoni described some of the highlights of his 27-year career, including:

• The Walton Family Burying Ground, where Dr. Bellantoni and his team discovered the first and only archaeological evidence of early New England superstitions surrounding vampirism (specifically, they found a skeleton that had been rearranged in order to prevent it from preying on victims of tuberculosis).
• His examination of a skull fragment thought to have belonged to Adolph Hitler.
• An excavation of human remains unearthed by the felling of the Lincoln Oak in New Haven, CT, by Superstorm Sandy, along with the discovery of a time capsule dated to the oak's planting in 1909.
• The investigation of a disintegrating mortuary structure in East Hartford, which turned out to be the family tomb of Elisha Pitkin, a manufacturer and state representative who hosted General Rochambeau during the Revolutionary War. By cross-referencing biological data culled from the skeletons and historical records, Dr. Bellantoni and his team were able to identify every person buried in the tomb.
• The exhumation of Broteer Furro "Venture Smith," a slave-turned-entrepreneur and author of a well-known autobiography who achieved an almost folkloric status in his hometown of East Haddam, Connecticut. The exhumation was done at the request of his descendants, who wanted to test their ancestor's DNA.
• The search for the 1941 crash site of Eugene M. Bradley at Bradley International Airport.
• The investigation of the family tomb of Samuel Huntington, 18th governor of Connecticut and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
• The excavation of a synagogue in Chesterfield, Connecticut, built by a Hebrew farming community in the 1890s, which uncovered a miqveh (ritual pool) with ties to the Old World.
• The exhumation and reburial of the Leather Man, who was buried in an unmarked grave in Sparta Cemetery, New York, following his death from cancer in 1889.
• The exhumations of Henry Opukahaia and Albert Afraid of Hawk, who with the cooperation of their respective families were each reburied in their native homelands.