Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life is an exhibit that outlines the ways in which anthropologists have utilized changing technology to record various aspects of human life. The exhibit is organized into four sections: film, photography, paper, and sound. It includes the equipment used for documentation such as rolls of film, video cameras of various ages, wax cylinders, phonographs, and multiple notebooks. The objects shown in the exhibit come from the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) and the Human Studies Film Archive (HSFA), respectively. The NAA is a product of a 1965 merger between the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology (1879-1965) and the Department of Anthropology (1883-present). The collection holds anthropological material produced by anthropologists including fieldnotes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps and more [1]. The NAA contains one of the largest archival collections related to North American archaeology, ethnography, indigenous artwork, and historical photographs in the world. The HSFA, a sister repository to the NAA, was founded in 1975. The HSFA possesses an audiovisual collection that documents the history of filmmaking worldwide, as it relates to anthropology. The documents and equipment included in this exhibit are a key part of tracking the evolution of the study of anthropology through time. One might even say that the documents are a more accurate representation of the attitudes of the researchers rather than the people they are attempting to record. In the following sections, we will explore two examples in which these attitudes are apparent.
Garson & Read’s Color Swatch
Underneath the exhibit’s “Documenting on Paper” section, a sample color swatch is displayed prominently across two pages from the 1899 work Notes and Queries on Anthropology by John George Garson (1854-1932) and Charles Hercules Read (1857-1929) [2, 3]. The exhibit designates the color swatch as “a practice borrowed from geology to describe skin, hair, and eye colors” [2]. Similar to the techniques used to classify geological typology, soil compositions, or categorical distinctions based on shared general characteristics, late 19th century anthropologists erroneously figured a scientific typology of humanity could similarly be created, based on variation in color. Both Garson and Read were affiliated with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, with Read being appointed as the RAI’s President in both 1899 and 1917 [3]. Given anthropology’s complicated history with ascribing meaning to differences in human physical characteristics in the late 19th century (and prior), it’s certainly no surprise that anthropologists who replicated such rhetoric found themselves in positions of intellectual authority.
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| Garson & Read’s color swatch, as depicted in Notes and Queries on Anthropology, Smithsonian Libraries & Archives. |
Critiques of Garson and Read’s color swatch were generally limited to its inability to provide universal descriptors. In the September 1913 edition of a journal titled Folklore, reviewer John H. Weeks even provided suggestions on how to improve the color swatch through “standardise[d]” colors, as “scarcely two men will call an intermediate shade by the same name” [5]. Despite institutionally affiliated anthropologists such as Garson and Read perceiving the color swatch as an intellectual innovation, this exhibit vehemently rejects such attempts to seek meaning in physical differences, declaring “such techniques falsely assumed skin color as a meaningful marker of difference” [7]. The color swatch’s inclusion within the exhibit addresses troubling legacies in anthropology in a compelling manner: the exhibit distances our contemporary understanding of anthropology from harmful conclusions drawn during anthropology of the past, while simultaneously acknowledging that such conclusions are inextricably linked to the field.
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There are many examples of non-Western forms of music that do not have a system for written notation. Instead, these songs are passed down orally, generation by generation, with each adding slight changes to a particular piece [7].
From a musicological standpoint, there is the question of whether it is even possible to accurately notate Non-Western forms of music using classical Western notation. And perhaps whether one even should. Western musical notation is limited in what it can and cannot represent. It was designed with western instruments in mind and thus lacks the ability to fully accommodate the nuances of other instruments. On top of that, Western music relies largely on major and minor scales while non-Western music utilizes more diatonic and chromatic scales, differs greatly between the two groups [8]. As one composer aptly describes, “The Western system of notation is governed by rigid elementary mathematics inherited from the ancient past,” meaning that the Western system of notation is only ever able to create an imperfect outline, and the nuances of pitch and rhythm must be added in by the performer. Imposing the limiting Western system of notation on other forms of music creates a document that cannot fully capture the intricacies of the original piece [9].
In summary, though the document has its flaws, that does not mean it is without value. On the contrary, it is more constructive to view this document as a type of translation which is inherently transformative and results in an end-product that cannot be identical to the source material. Documents such as this are valuable in that they offer a glimpse at what music was like at a specific point in time. In addition to that, present-day members of the Menominee Tribe could potentially use this manuscript to recover songs that may have been lost, suppressed, or erased from public consciousness and, more importantly, the community itself. It is the reader’s responsibility to read critically and remember that culture, and music, are dynamic and ever-changing.
Densmore was able to mitigate weaknesses in her work of the types explored in this section through inclusion of audio recordings in her research. Densmore’s use of both aural and written mediums is an apt example of the ways anthropologists have adapted to emerging technologies so that methodologies are improving as well as the capacity to accurately record human life.
Anthropology as an Advancing Field
The thematic structure of the exhibit based on medium—along with its more general focus on technological advancements aiding anthropological fieldwork—presents anthropology to the general public as a constantly transforming field. The selection of objects within the exhibit is particularly effective in conveying this: for instance, in the “Documenting on Film” section, the description for Object 11, a diagram on synchronized sound from 1955, is placed strategically next to object 12, a 1995 Sony camera [4]. Visitors are able to easily envision advancements in recording tools used for fieldwork merely through the two descriptions’ adjacent positions. What’s particularly interesting about the position of these two descriptions is that objects 11 and 12 were used by the same individual, anthropologist John Marshall, exactly forty years apart. This choice allows for the exhibit to portray individual anthropologists and anthropology more broadly as advancing in the wake of major shifts in technology.
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| Photo of Exhibit Description, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. |
Overall, the exhibit addresses anthropological discoveries in four mediums: photography, paper, sound, and film. Additionally, on the left side of the hallway, photography, paper, and sound are in one display case, while on the right side, an entire display case is solely dedicated to anthropological film. Given the heightened importance of ethnographic film in anthropological fieldwork, the exhibit’s choice to have film presented separately from the other mediums is certainly advantageous. The choice to separate film from the other anthropological mediums is also indicative of the two repositories mentioned in the exhibit: the National Anthropological Archives and the Human Studies Film Archives. Although the two repositories are closely related to one another, they operate separately. Visitors can envision the physical constraints in having the exhibit spread across two sides of a wide hallway in the context of the separate nature of the two repositories, ultimately complicating the expression of these four mediums as a coherent whole. Regardless of its physical limitations, the exhibit is successful in highlighting changing attitudes and technologies throughout anthropology’s history.
Acknowledgements
Documenting Diversity was co-curated by Diana Marsh, a former NMNH postdoctoral fellow who partook in a three-year long NSF-funded project on NAA collections, and Joshua A. Bell, who serves as NMNH’s Curator of Globalization, Director of the Recovering Voices Program and Acting Director of the National Anthropological Archives. The exhibit was made possible by close collaboration between the NAA, HSFA, Smithsonian Libraries, and Smithsonian Exhibits.
By Muna Ali and Ashley Ray
Sources:
[1] “Documenting Diversity,” Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, accessed June 20, 2022, https://library.si.edu/exhibition/documenting-diversity.
[2] Erdöl, Das " “Dr. J. G. Garson.” Nature 129 (1932): 931. https://doi.org/10.1038/129931a0
[3] Balfour, Henry. “Sir Charles Hercules Read, July 6, 1857-February 11, 1929,” Obituaries. Accessed June 2, 2022. https://www.therai.org.uk/archives-and-manuscripts/obituaries/charles-hercules-read
[4] Bell, Josh and Marsh, Diana. Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life. Washington: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 2020. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/documenting-diversity-how-anthropologists-record-human-life
[5] Weeks, John H. Folklore 24, no. 3 (1913): 392–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1255441.
[6] “Frances Densmore (1867-1957).” Smithsonian Institution Archives. 2005. https://siarchives.si.edu/research/sciservwomendensmore.html
[7] Pasler, Jann. “Sonic Anthropology in 1900: The Challenge of Transcribing Non-Western Music and Language.” Twentieth-Century Music 11, no. 1 (2014): 7–36. doi:10.1017/S1478572213000157.
[8] Robertson-Wilson, Marian. “The Challenges of Notating Music in General and Coptic Music in Particular: Observations of a Professional Cellist, Composer, and Linguist.” Library of Congress Web. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156229/
[9] Zon, Bennett. “Music in the Literature of Anthropology from the 1780s to the 1860s.” In Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, NED-New edition., 48–68. Boydell & Brewer, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brrwv.9.
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