Hey everyone! We're participating in Ask a Curator Day tomorrow, and I've gathered together five of our anthropolgists who are ready to be questioned! They will each be available for about an hour, see times below. They are each specialists in various areas of Anthropology; we've got all four fields represented, including linguistics, physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology. We also have anthropologist, Bill Billeck, who will be available to answer questions about museum anthropology and the process of Native North American repatriation.
To ask a question, tag us "@archaeologylab" and include the hashtag #AskACurator in your question.
9:30-10:30 am: Ives Goddard - Senior Linguist Emeritus
Ives Goddard is a Linguist, who is a specialist in Algonquian languages. Ives has also worked on endangered languages and language revitalization. He serves as the linguistic editor and technical editor of the Handbook of North American Indians. He has researched the origins of now perjorative terms referring to Native Americans, including "red-skin" and "squaw", as well as the types of knowledge lost when a language dies out.
Don't miss his reading of his translation of a Meskwaki story by Alfred Kiyana: "The Married Couple: the Man Whose Wife Was Wooed By a Bear,"
10:30-11:30 am: Sabrina Sholts – Curator in Physical Anthropology
Sabrina Sholts is a Curator in the Department of Anthropology at NMNH. She is a physical anthropologist with a special interest in the potential effects of environmental pollutants on skeletal growth, development, and health. She has also worked with Dr. Dennis Stanford (see our 3pm slot below) on the manufacture of Clovis stone points.
Dr. Sholts is our newest Curator in the Department; be sure to ask her about all of the cool things she's done since arriving here (hint: it involves great apes).
2:00-3:00 pm: Igor Krupnik - Curator of Arctic Ethnology
Igor Krupnik is a cultural anthropologist and has studied the impacts of climate change, preservation of cultural heritage, and ecological knowledge of Arctic indigenous people, such as in the book “SIKU: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use: Documenting Inuit Knowledge of Sea Ice.” He is interested in bringing socio-cultural and humanities issues, ecological knowledge, and environmental observations of polar indigenous people to the forefront as we discuss climate change.
He has done extensive fieldwork in Alaska, the Bering Sea region, and along the Russian Arctic coast. Dr. Krupnik has published and edited several books and collections, including three volumes on indigenous observations of Arctic environmental change, and served as the lead curator for the Smithsonian exhibit “Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely” (2006).
3:00-4:00 pm: Dennis Stanford – Curator of Paleo-Indian Archaeology
Dennis Stanford is an archaeologist and world renowned expert on Paleo-Indian stone tools, especially Clovis and Folsom tools. He is well-known as one of the leading proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis, which suggests that Europeans may have been among the first settlers of North America.
He is interested in the origins and development of New World Paleo-Indian cultures in relation to changing climate and ecosystems during the terminal Pleistocene, interdisciplinary Quaternary studies, stone tool technology, and experimental and public archaeology. He has conducted field work in Siberia, China, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, Plains and Southeastern States; he has also worked in Central and South America as well as Southwestern Europe.
Dennis conducts fieldwork and research on Paleoindian archaeology throughout the Americas with special attention to human-environmental interactions and material culture. He enjoys producing exhibitions and public programs, as well as preparing scholarly and popular publications, and films.
4:00-5:00 pm: William Billeck - Program Manager, Repatriation Office and Case Officer for the Plains
Bill Billeck works for the Repatriation Office at the National Museum of Natural History, which works with Native American communities to repatriate human remains and objects to the tribes. This is a very complicated process that involves deep anthropological and museum collections research, to identify remains, burial goods, and objects of cultural patrimony. You can learn more about what the Repatriation Office does here.
He is interested in the study of the technology, manufacture, variation, and temporal distribution of glass trade beads in North America