Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

Wow, my last lab hour post...this has been a great semester, and a fantastic class. I really had a wonderful time!

Any ways, here's how I spent my last week:

5/5 - 1 hour reading through the books I got from the Davis library, researching my objects.
5/7 - 1.5 hours at the museum going through Dr. C's books and asking questions
5/11- 6.5 hours total, 3 spent at the museum making sure I had everything and writing rough drafts of the inventory sheets and 3.5 at my work finishing up where I could save the pdf's.

Total: 9 hours

Phew! It's nice to be done (with one class anyways!) See y'all tomorrow =)

Well, this week has been crazy! I spent most of last week getting ready for SWAA and my presentation, and then we spent Thursday night-Sunday up in Reno. I had a blast, and I hope I get to go again! Paul (my fiance) had a good time too, he even seemed to enjoy the few presentation that he was able to see! =)

Anyways, I was finally able to spend some time working on my objects last night. I spent about 2.5 hours filling out what I could on the inventory worksheet. I also started my research. It looks like finding information for the Pomo baby cradle will be relatively simple, but I ran into trouble with the padded Pomo headdress and the household basket from Eel River.

I know from Mr. Shanks that the basket was made for the art market, so maybe I'll have some luck finding a match in an art catalog. I discovered that the Athapaskan groups lived along Eel River and include the Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, Sinkyone (thanks wikipedia). Page 112 of the Shanks book says that the Wailaki were known for their twined baskets so I thought I would start my research there and see what I can find. I fear I may be going on a wild goose chase though.

As for the padded Pomo headdress, I haven't found anything yet. I am hoping that maybe if I can find a book on Pomo rituals and dances that I will be able to find something. The SSC card says it could be used in a Sqaw (Squaw?) dance. It was certainly new or nearly new when Cotton bought it in 1924, since it uses so many non-native materials (cotton, steel wire, plastic buttons).

Since we aren't holding class today, I've decided to visit the Yolo county library here in Davis so I don't have to travel all the way to campus this morning. I have leads on three books/catalogs that I will go pick up this morning. I anticipate that taking 3o minutes, but I will verify that later.

I also spent about 30 minutes reading blogs and writing this blog post.

Total hours: 3, with potential 30 minutes more.

I spent about 1.5 hours working on the repatriation assignment and so far I've spent about an half hour reading over others blogs (I hope to finish reading them today).

2 hours total =(

I spent about 1.5 hours catching up on my blog reading. I really enjoyed everyone's museum job posts. I also spent about 3o minutes finding my catalog for this weeks assignment, and about an hour reading over it. I found a really interesting one on Barry Goldwater's collection of Kachinas--I had no idea he was a collector.

3 hours

p.s. the lecture last week was fantastic, I really enjoyed the detailed history.

I spent 3 hours (10:00-1) helping get everything ready the morning of the opening reception, and other than that, i kinda took the week off a bit. Hopefully more hours next week as I start researching my objects

1 hour making final edits/finishing touches to the flier...and that's it! But I will be at the museum today a 10:00 to help out ^_^

P.S. I think everyone did a fantastic job, the exhibit is going to be a big hit I think!

I spent 7 hours helping with installation last Thursday and about 6 hours creating a "Basketry and Native Plant Conservation" flier that has the dual purpose of informing my co-workers (who are mostly plant ecologists) and museum visitors on the cultural importance of native plants. I'll have copies of it next week.

Total: 13 hours

OK, back to Spring Break ^_^

This week was pretty slow for me as far as lab hours go. I spent 3.5 hours today helping with fabrication and I've spent about 2 hours creating a flier for work that focuses on plant materials used in baskets. Hopefully it will get some more people interested in the exhibit.

Total: 5.5 hours

Wowzers, this was a busy week! Here's what I've been spending my time on:

W 3/10

• 2 hours working on ancentry.com, trying to fill in holes in my research
• 30 minutes meeting with team 2
  

F 3/12

• 1 hour scanning and altering photos, getting them ready to add to the kinship chart
• 3 hours searching CDNC for Cotton related primary documents (and oh my, did I find good stuff!)
  

Sat 3/13

• 2 hours visiting the Slough House Pioneer Cemetery
• 2 hours writing/reading blog posts, writing a draft of the inventory list, and organizing a "plan of attack" for the huge project that is the genealogy chart

Sun 3/14

• 12 hours writing 8 Didactic Texts, 30 labels, organizing 18 photos/documents for Group 2's genealogy chart, emailing my wonderful group what must have been 50 emails and reading all their responses, and researching newly found holes in my understanding of the Cotton Family History.
  

Monday 3/15

• 3 hours finishing up one more didactic text and labels, and organizing everything...and of course more emails. Us group 2 folk were very liberal with our email usage this week! <3

Tuesday 3/16

• 5 hours creating an inventory sheet, reading and editing group 2 panels, applying the groups suggestions to my panels, getting the flash drive of our weeks work safely (God, I hope it's safe) on to the flash drive.
  

Making a grand total of: 30 hours, 30 minutes of work. Well, that's insane...If you're wondering...No. I don't have a life. Just a very understanding fiance and a very lonely cat.

GREAT JOB group 2 - You guys are wonderful!

Wow, busy week!

Last Wednesday I spent 2.5 hours searching ancestry.com for genealogy info. I think I need to go back and do some more, I got a lot of great info on Jared Sheldon, but not much on the Cotton's. I would like more primary sources to add to the kinship chart.

2.5 hours were spent on Saturday developing a kinship chart for the Cotton family.

I spent about an hour with group 2 today (Tuesday) going over our story board, sharing research, and discussing each of the areas we're focusing on. We're going to meet tomorrow before class to finish our story board.

Then I spent a whopping 5 hours this evening reading over the incredible copies from a Pioneer Cemetery book that Laura and Stacey got from the Library. It has an awesome amount of information and allowed me to fill in some gaps in the kinship chart. I also spent some of that 5 hours working on my part of the story board, redoing the kinship chart, and figuring out where I still have (gaping) holes in my research.


P.S. Had to share my cat's not so subtle hint that I need to stop studying for the night!

I spent about 1 hour researching and doing a blog post on potential baskets to use as our basket for the exhibit.

about 30 minutes: spent helping people set up an RSS feed and fixing some blogger issues.

30 minutes spent reading blogs.

30 minutes: studying some information given to me by Mary Re: John Hudson. I would like to get together with others from group 2 soon to determine how much information we want to include about him and Carl Purdy. (and of course talk about all the other stuff we need to do as well!)...On a side note, Mary gave me some info for the Grace Hudson Museum. She was John Hudson's wife and an artist. One of the books of hers, "Grace Hudson, Artist of the Pomo Indians" has cover art depicting a Pomo cradle basket just like my object (BAS 156), which I thought was pretty cool.

1 Hour was spent trying to decipher the Sloughhouse land grants. The copies aren't the greatest, and the script is really hard to read. I was able to get dates and I found out that 5 square leagues were bought in 1844. Did you know that one land league equals 4,428 acres? That makes about 22,140 acres (i think), which lines up pretty well with the Sac Bee article I found last week. That makes me feel a bit more confident that I have the right land grant, considering the name from the Sac Bee was Jared Sheldon and State Archives only had a Joaquin Sheldon.

I also spent an 1 hour discussing the deed of gift assignment with Mary, and 30 minutes reading through the auction catalogs.

I think that's it for now, equaling 5 hours for the week. I will be spending some time tomorrow perusing ancentry.com for more genealogy info.

3 hours: reading the accession file, going through smugmug and reading/responding to blog posts, writing my blog posts.

1.5 hours: researching and writing a Cotton genealogy cheat-sheet.

1.5 hours: Doing research on Sloughhouse prior to going to the state archives.

1.5 hours: at the State Archives

30 minutes: Studying the basket exhibit at the California Museum.

Total: 8 hours

I am disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to the Maidu Museum opening on Saturday, but it looks like I'll get to go next week.

Here's the breakdown of my lab hours for this week:

• 2 hours reading blog posts, brainstorming and writing my thoughts on my blog
• 1/2 hour researching RSS feeds and writing an "how-to" post
• 1 hour doing internet research on museums and on the Cotton's.
  

Total: 3.5 hours (boo for not getting 6 this week!)

• 2/4 - Created and customized blog. 2 hours
• 2/6 - Learned about RSS feeds and created a feed for the class. 1 hour.
• 2/8 and 2/9 - tried to help others with blog questions, and tried to figure out why my RSS feed wasn't working (think i got it now), and brainstormed some ideas for our exhibit (see blog post). 1 hour.
• 2/9 - Read classmate's blogs and links, and read museum links from Dr. Castaneda's blog. 2 hours.