Bowl

4485

On the Table: Last week we learned a lesson: “How not to discover a new tribe, or, contextual reading is fundamental.” Object 4485 is a small bowl decorated with a repeating, stepped geometric design. What do *you* see when you read the first line of its old Object ID Tag, the one that starts: “Object…”? Is it “Onéhandlea Bowl”? After deciphering this mysterious identification, would you then carefully write a new, archival label that reads “4485 / Onéhandlea Tribe”? Because somebody did. Being experienced inventory professionals, however, we quickly spotted 1) the damage to the key area of the card; 2) the fact that there was one handle on the bowl; and (the clincher) 3) the fact there is no such tribe or archaeological culture. It is simply a “One handled Bowl.” After checking other museum records, we also discovered that this is an Ancestral Puebloan bowl from the American Southwest believed to date to the Basketmaker III period (500–750 CE) (true, this terminology is equally made up, but at least it's used by a lot of people to mean generally the same thing). If something seems weird during inventory, it probably is. Sometimes a little cross–check is in order. Put another way, polysemy, multivocality, and research are always a good idea.

Ceramic/Pigment

North America; Southwest; Pueblo

Basketmaker III

Part of original collections of Leland Stanford Junior Museum; entered collection before 1939.

Archaeology; North America; Southwest