Southwest Archaeology and “The Time of Vietnam”: Part One

This post is the third in a series of blog posts written by George Washington University students in Dr. Joshua A. Bell's anthropology graduate seminar Visual Anthropology: The Social Lives of Images (Anthro 3521/6591), Fall 2016 graduate course. Dr. Bell is the Curator of Globalization in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's Department of Anthropology.  Students in this course chose a collection that features visual materials (drawings, film, photographs, or paintings) from the National Anthropological Archives, and researched its material, thinking through the scale and scope of the collection and situating it within the wider discipline of anthropology.  These collections are available for research at the National Anthropological Archives.

Detail of an aerial photo of the American Southwest, Image 8 “Ildefonso,” Photo Lot 2010-13: Ezra Zubrow aerial photographs of the Rio Grande Pueblos, circa 1967, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

When I first picked up Ezra Zubrow’s aerial photographs of pueblo settlements in the Rio Grande Valley, I had trouble knowing what I was looking at. The landscape of the American Southwest mark the aerial photos with its mountains, hills, rivers, and desert. Roads, farms, and small communities show the ways that people have transformed the terrain. But none of this looked like the desert I had seen growing up in the area. Shot from high above, some of the black-and-white photos look like moonscapes; others look like roots creeping through soil, or capillaries through a body. Some are washed out and light, while others are a chiaroscuro of black rivers and foliage and white deserts and mountains. Clouds seep into one photo, obscuring the landscape below. Photographed across eastern Arizona and western and central New Mexico in the late 1960s, the collection of sixty-four images vary in specific subject matter and contrast, but the series of black and white aerial photos give one a sense of the expanse in the land that is the West.

Aerial photo of a Laguna pueblo in the American Southwest, Image 17 “Laguna,” Photo Lot 2010-13: Ezra Zubrow aerial photographs of the Rio Grande Pueblos, circa 1967, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The photos also evoke a story of chance encounters, military exercises, and an archaeological expedition. The photographs date back to 1967 or 1968, when Ezra Zubrow was a graduate student at the University of Arizona working on an expedition in the Southwest. One day planes—Zubrow guessed B-52s—flew low over the expedition’s dig site. “I remember looking up and I would swear that the bomb doors were open,” he wrote in correspondence with an archivist at the National Anthropological Archives. “When my ears stopped ringing, I thought to myself those planes must have cameras to record the dropping of the bombs and if they happen to come by again maybe I could ask them to take pictures of our excavations” (Zubrow 2010). Zubrow wrote to the Air Force requesting photographs, but had no name, base, or contact information to go off of. So he mailed the letter to “Commanding General US Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, DC” and quickly forgot about the request.

Aerial photo of a Tesque pueblo in the American Southwest, Image 57 “Tesque,”Photo Lot 2010-13: Ezra Zubrow aerial photographs of the Rio Grande Pueblos, circa 1967, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Many scholars have written about the “social biography” of objects such as photographs (Edwards 2012). Just as a biography of a person looks beyond just their appearance, the social biography of a photograph does more than just analyze the image for its aesthetics and content, but also looks at who made it, how it was circulated, why it was made in the first place. It’s very easy to get lost looking through the Zubrow photographs as you trace rivers and try to identify tiny farms; it’s also very easy to get lost in the photos’ social biography—the story behind how they came to be. That’s because, two and a half months after sending the letter to the Pentagon, Zubrow suddenly received a package from the reconnaissance department of the Air Force with photographs of the excavation site and a letter acknowledging his request. Wanting to thank the individuals involved, Zubrow made several calls before finally connecting with an Air Force base in southern Arizona and making an appointment with the colonel who had sent the letter and photos. When he went to the base to meet with the staff, he received a tour that included catching a glimpse of a chalkboard listing “missions, plane numbers, and pilots. There were a range of missions scheduled for several weeks and when I realized that several of them were over Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Russia I stopped in my tracks.” Stunned, Zubrow asked what types of planes the base housed. “They said it was a U2. I was speechless” (Zubrow 2010). He would even see a U2 plane land at the base while he made his way back to his car. Zubrow went on to become friends with one of the Air Force lieutenants, and the following semester requested that they photograph the pueblos. He even helped map out the flight plan. The result is the sixty-four 10” x 20” prints that are now a part of the National Anthropological Archives.

To hear the rest of the story of these photographs, check back for part two on Friday! 

Scott Ross, Ph.D. Student, Anthropology
George Washington University


Bibliography
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 221-234.

Pinney, Christopher. 2012. “Seven Theses on Photography.” Thesis Eleven, 113 (1), 141-156.

Photo Lot 2010-13. “Ezra Zubrow aerial photographs of the Rio Grande Pueblos.” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Price, David H. 2016. Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press.

Zubrow, Ezra B.W. 2007. “Remote Sensing, Fractals, and Cultural Landscapes: An Ethnographic Prolegomenon Using U2 Imagery.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz. New York: Springer, 219-235.

Zubrow, Ezra. 2010. E-mail to NAA archivist Gina Rappaport, April 22. Included in finding aid to Photo Lot 2010-13, “Ezra Zubrow aerial photographs of the Rio Grande Pueblos.” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Robert T. Smith "Smitty" at the National Anthropological Archives: Part Two

This post is the second in a series of blog posts written by George Washington University students in Dr. Joshua A. Bell's anthropology graduate seminar Visual Anthropology: The Social Lives of Images (Anthro 3521/6591), Fall 2016 graduate course. Dr. Bell is the Curator of Globalization in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's Department of Anthropology. Students in this course chose a collection that features visual materials (drawings, film, photographs, or paintings) from the National Anthropological Archives, and researched its material, thinking through the scale and scope of the collection and situating it within the wider discipline of anthropology. These collections are available for research at the National Anthropological Archives.

For part one of this blog post, please click here. 

Photo of loose colored sketch of “Bush Pandanus,” MS 2014-06: Papers and Artwork of Robert T. Smith, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Smitty was not a proclaimed ethnographer, but his collection of typed and written notes (see example, image 2) provide rich ethnographic detail of his daily life, opinions, and interactions with local people in Bougainville and New Guinea. The materials point to the kinds of work Smitty engaged in, and how he spent his time and thoughts during this unique situation in New Guinea—but we cannot know for certain why he engaged in this work. Perhaps he was bored. Or, more likely, he had a deep interest for natural history, and by extension anthropology, which continued to manifest throughout his life in different ways—for example, in bird watching. As much information and meaning we can gather from this collection, it is also worthwhile to acknowledge the information that is simply not available. In this way, we can see how those who engage with these materials become integral to their interpretation, significance, and continued social life in new milieus over time (including me as I write this post).

The collection contains a lot of written text. In addition to Smitty’s personal notes, the collection contains vast collections of folk tales—this includes correspondence with anthropologists such as Dr. C. A. Schmitz in the early 1960s about obtaining copies of these tales, and letters indicating their eventual (partial) publication. These folk tales greatly influenced Smitty’s own work—but based on his extensive sketchbook, so did the physical environment around him. Written text, particularly for ethnographers, represents the dominant methodology and way of seeing, telling, and sharing of field research (Geismar 2014). Drawing has not been developed fully as a method for anthropologists, but scholars of visual culture emphasize the ability of drawings to provide a “counter-narrative for fieldwork and dominant paradigms of visual representation” (Gesimar 2014:98).

 Photo of page in sketchbook, “One of my first air raids, March 43, ” MS 2014-06: Papers and Artwork of Robert T. Smith, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 

Typically, sketches are hidden components of notebooks, filling spaces between text and never finding a public life of their own. By making Smith’s personal collection visible, how may we “recuperate lost stories of personal experience and alternative histories of ideas” (Geismar 2014:97)? Smith’s sketches depict images we would not typically associate with military activity, indicating his sensitivity to the nuances of his surrounding environment (see images 3 and 4). Note the micro-view of flora in image 3 and the care Smith takes to detail its shapes and colors. Rather than knowing whether or not this “bush pandanus” is a precise copy of what is in front of Smith, the bright colors and particular perspective may “undermine the naturalism of the sketch” (Geismar 2014: 98)—perhaps giving us insight into the illustrator’s subjectivity, methodology, and emotional/ sensual/ visual proximity to the object in addition to the object itself.

And what are we to make of Smith’s depiction of one of his first air raids (see image 4)? The blues and contrasts of light suggest to me beauty more than the notion of fear a first military “raid” might be assumed to entail. These sketches (what and how Smith sketched) not only portray the aesthetics of local and military life in these regions, but also hint to how Smith interpreted what he saw—they shine light on his own subject position in the field that complicates his fixed role as military personnel/ethnographer. In “What do Drawings Want,” Michael Taussig romanticizes the potential of drawing in contrast to photographs, and perhaps rightfully so. He writes, discussing John Berger (2007), “a photograph stops time, while a drawing encompasses it” (Taussig 2009:265). Creating images through drawings inevitably takes a greater amount of time then capturing that image in a photograph. Drawings also indicate a more intimate connection between creator and object, inevitably exposing the subject position and viewpoint of creator in a different way than photography. And, in the case of Smith’s collection, in a way that complements the text and gives it deeper nuance of life and meaning.

Portrait, MS 2014-06: Papers and Artwork of Robert T. Smith, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.  According to donors of collection, “The enclosed portrait was the individual who was Smitty’s guide of many years.” 

According to his friends, Donna and Sue, Smitty was “an intensely private person, he revealed very little about family or his past life, except stories he loved to tell about New Guinea or Greece, two of his favorite places to travel” (Ewing and Minahan n.d.). Smith may have kept his drawings private, feeling more inclined to publish written text—but the drawings and text together continue to tell vivid stories, and are further imbued with meaning as they live on in the NAA. One of the most fascinating pieces of Smith’s collection is a large framed portrait of “Smitty’s guide of many years” (image 5). But the collection does not explicitly say: who was this guide, and how did he and Smitty meet? Where did this fabulous portrait live before coming to NAA? Did it reside among the other artifacts of Smith’s life? What kind of history and network of relationships does this material subsume? What story does this—can this— portrait and collection continue to tell? Rather than strictly telling one particular story, the Robert T. Smith collection—mixed like all mixed boxes (Edwards and Hart 2004)—is “syncretic” of life. The materials live on at NAA where they continue to garner life history.

Evy Vourlides, Ph.D. Student, Anthropology
George Washington University

*Please be aware that the Robert T. Smith Papers at the National Anthropological Archives are currently unprocessed; please contact the Reference Archivist for access information.

References:
Berger, John. 2007. Berger on Drawing, Edited by Jim Savage. London: Occasional Press.

Edwards, Elizabeth and Janice Hart. 2004. “Mixed Box: The Cultural Biography of a Box of
'Ethnographic' Photographs.” In Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, eds. Photographic Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, 47-61. London: Routledge.

Ewing, Donna and Sue Minahan to Robert T. Smith. n.d. “Robert T. Smith Papers (Unprocessed)” The National Anthropological Archives. Smithsonian Institution.

Geismar, Haidy. 2014. “Drawing It Out.” Visual Anthropology Review 30: 97-113.

Taussig, Michael. 2009. “What Do Drawings Want?” Culture, Theory & Critique 50(2-3): 263-274.

Robert T. Smith “Smitty” at the National Anthropological Archives: Part One

This post is the first in a series of blog posts written by George Washington University students in Dr. Joshua A. Bell's anthropology graduate seminar Visual Anthropology: The Social Lives of Images (Anthro 3521/6591), Fall 2016 graduate course. Dr. Bell is the Curator of Globalization in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's Department of Anthropology. Students in this course chose a collection that features visual materials (drawings, film, photographs, or paintings) from the National Anthropological Archives, and researched its material, thinking through the scale and scope of the collection and situating it within the wider discipline of anthropology. These collections are available for research at the National Anthropological Archives.

Photo of Robert T. Smith (middle figure), MS 2014-06: Papers and Artwork of Robert T. Smith, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. The location of the photograph is not indicated on the physical copy, but according to Dr. Joshua Bell, Curator of Globalization at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, it “appears to be West Papua or Southeast Asia from the boat.”

The Robert T. Smith papers comprise an unprocessed collection at the National Anthropological Archives generated by Smith (or “Smitty”) during his military service in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Smith (1918–1998) served in the US Army and upon his retirement in the late 1960s was a Sergeant First Class (Army Service number—20744201). Smith’s papers indicate a unique perspective of military life in the South West Pacific and provide insight into the subjectivity of an individual who interacted intricately with his surroundings through collecting stories and sketching. The items enclosed in this mixed collection include several photographs; one painting; a 100-page sketchbook; an 8x10 notebook containing drawings of people, flora, and fauna (some of incredible color); pages of both written and typed folktales; and a three-inch stack of letters in Tok Pisin (a creole spoke across the South West Pacific).

The papers are also accompanied by a number of descriptive texts, including a biography and details from two of Smith’s friends, Donna Ewing and Sue Minahan who passed on his collection to the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). From these texts, we learn that Smith spent 1943-1944 in Guadalcanal, Bougainville (Piva-Torokina) and New Guinea, where he remained after the end of the war on missions to locate the remains of downed aircraft crews. Smith’s military career afforded him space to express his affinity for sketch and keen eye and interest in his surrounding environments, including flora and fauna of the South Western Pacific. During his stay in Bougainville and New Guinea, Smith became interested in its people and culture—he became fluent in Tok Pisin, spent time sketching local residents and topography (he also served as a cartographer for several years), noted daily events and folktales, and documented his perspective of military life. According to an undated letter from Donna and Sue, New Guinea became one of Smith’s favorite places to visit and he made subsequent trips back throughout his life. Smith retired from the military in the 1960s with the rank of Sergeant First Class and lived out the rest of his life in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he became an avid bird watcher. His friends note that bird watchers from around the world sought him out for “his expertise about the birds of Southeastern Arizona and in particular the Mexican Spotted Owl and the Elegant Trogon” (Ewing and Minahan n.d.).

Manuscript Material, MS 2014-06: Papers and Artwork of Robert T. Smith, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

This contextual information is incredibly helpful, but how can we approach the material items of the collection itself with equal importance and telling power as the text? In such a mixed collection the materiality of enclosed items, both separately and together in conversation, is loaded with meaning—how can we access this complexity and perhaps fluidity of meaning? Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (2004) refer to (mixed) Box 54 in a photographic collection at University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, as a synthetic object of linked but separate parts…that have interacted, and continue to interact, with each other and with the institution in which they are housed, to produce a succession of meanings that are broader and more complex than a simple sum of various parts (47).

With this in mind, Smith’s papers become a rich collection of ethnographic evidence of his own subjectivity as military personnel/researcher; of military experience in the South West Pacific more generally; the military’s interaction with local people and the environment in Bougainville and New Guinea during World War II; and perhaps even evidence of the interests and priorities of NAA and its curators, namely Joshua A. Bell (curator of the Melanesian collection at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History) who was notified of the material and proposed it to the archive. Keeping the “mixed box” in mind, small material details such as rusty paper clip stains on papers become important identifiers of time, order, and belonging. Instead of treating these sketches, photographs, and writings as merely “documents,” the style, coloration, and method of drawing and writing become signifiers of life course and interaction of these papers with their changing environments, with each other, and with their entangled human subjects and subjectivities.

Evy Vourlides, Ph.D. Student, Anthropology

George Washington University

*Please be aware that the Robert T. Smith Papers at the National Anthropological Archives are currently unprocessed; please contact the Reference Archivist for access information.

References:

Berger, John. 2007. Berger on Drawing, Edited by Jim Savage. London: Occasional Press.

Edwards, Elizabeth and Janice Hart. 2004. “Mixed Box: The Cultural Biography of a Box of

'Ethnographic' Photographs.” In Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, eds. Photographic Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, 47-61. London: Routledge.

Ewing, Donna and Sue Minahan to Robert T. Smith. n.d. “Robert T. Smith Papers (Unprocessed)” The National Anthropological Archives. Smithsonian Institution.

Geismar, Haidy. 2014. “Drawing It Out.” Visual Anthropology Review 30: 97-113.

Taussig, Michael. 2009. “What Do Drawings Want?” Culture, Theory & Critique 50(2-3): 263-274.