My name is Katie Fleming. I'm a staff
member at the Hearst Museum of
Anthropology and the host of today's
show. Ask an Archaeologist is a series of
live streamed interviews co-hosted by
the Archaeological Research Facility and
the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of
Anthropology, both located at the
University of California, Berkeley. During
each program we interview a UC Berkeley
affiliated archeologist and answer
audience questions. Today I'm
speaking with archaeologist, and also my
colleague at the Hearst Museum, Paolo
Pellegatti. Hi Paolo! How are you? Hi Katie, nice to see you today. Yeah good to see you too! But before we get
started I wanted to let you know how you
can submit your questions online during
today's program. So if you have a
question that you want to ask, you can go
to a website called sli.do. So you type
in SLI dot DO slash askarf or ASKARF
or you can just type in askarf
to the sli.do website and click on
join and type in your question there and
we'll be receiving those questions
throughout the course of the show and
answering them as we can. And the link is
also in the description for this video
if you just look down below you can
click on that link to ask questions and
we'll remind you again of the link part
way through the interview. So Paolo, who
I'm speaking with today, is a research
archeologist at the Hearst Museum of
Anthropology, and after graduating with a
degree in archaeology from the
University of Venice, he came to Berkeley
to join the PhD program in Anthropology.
In 2007 he was hired by the Hearst
Museum, moving from one side of Kroeber
Plaza to the other, to Kroeber Hall where
we work together today. And Paolo worked
in archeological excavations in northern
Italy and Croatia but hasn't been in the
field since starting work at the Hearst
Museum as a researcher. So firstly I want
to say thank you so much for being with
us today Paolo. Thank you for the invitation, Katie.  So I
thought you could start off by telling
us a little bit about your work. What do
you do? And how did you get into the
field of archaeology and museum research
that you're in now? Well I got into the field
of archaeology quite accidentally, I
would have to say. I was already an
undergrad in college in Venice, and I
always had an interest in in history,
and archeology, but I was aiming for for
the degree in art history. But one day, as I
was walking around the department I just
spotted a new a new class that just
opened that day, and I went inside and
that class was prehistoric archaeology.
And that gave me a sense of archaeology
that I didn't have before because I was
associating archaeology to the Classical
period, when I was an undergrad, and I
didn't really have a strong interest in
the Classical period. But when I saw this
class about archaeology, a prehistoric
archaeology, it opened up a universe. I was
like - oh I would like to do this! And there it 
started, and then I finished my classes
in Venice, and then after I moved here I
started to develop the sense that I
would like to work in the museum and
curate archaeological collections. This
is in part from my historical interest
from before, and part also because when I
was in the field I was known to be the
slow excavator. That thing kind of followed me
over the years, especially in my latest
excavations, my Croatian friends were
really always telling me like, "Paolo
could you please speed up," and I was,
according to them, I was fiddling a
little too much. And so I started to
think okay maybe the pace of a real
field excavation is too much for me.
Then I started to develop the idea
that I would really enjoy working in
a museum were you curate all the
collection. I think by the time I came to
to Berkeley, I already submitted in one
of my proposals, but this dream of mine
to be working in a museum. Of course back
in days I didn't think
that that museum would be the Hearst Museum.
So when when I came to the Hearst Museum,
I faced the the large number of
archaeological collections that we have
and I sort of had to start a little
retraining myself to a new
reality. Having to deal with
collections from all over the planet,
rather than a geographically more defined
area as I was used to. That therefore meant
studying a lot of archaeology from from
different places in order to
be better able to curate the collection
that we have at the Hearst Museum. So in
conjunction, in collaboration with
our colleagues from from the Collections
Department, we curate this large
collection at the Hearst Museum.
Our colleagues, the
Collections Managers,  curate the
objects more from a physical perspective,
from a physical point of view. They curate
that they are in good shape,
they are protected, that they are
conserved. And I look at the same
objects from a slightly different angle.
From their provenience, the associated documentation
that we have in our archives.
And you know, all together our colleagues
at the Museum are trying to curate
these collections and preserve them the
best we can for the next generation to
come, which is one of our goals.
Working in a museum, you make sure that the next
generation will enjoy the same access to
this archaeological collection that we
enjoy today. Mm-hmm, thanks for sharing
that and just for our viewers who are
more at an introductory level to
archaeology, can you define for them... You
mentioned that the Collection staff at
the Museum protect the physical nature
of the objects. Want to make sure that
they are well protected
from the elements, from people from
whatever else. But you're working on kind
of the the data and the information
around these, and you mentioned a word
"provenience." Could you define for our
viewers what that means?
Well the provenience of an
archaeological object is, in short,
basically the the the location from
where this object was first excavated
and found. And especially the
relationship of this particular object
with all the other objects within an
archeological site. That creates the
context. Now of course the context is of
paramount importance for archaeology
because, well you know, a rock sometimes
it's just a rock. A rock that is in the
context of a fireplace, for example, is no
longer just a rock, but it's a rock that
was placed there on purpose by someone
in order to create a structure, and
things of the sort. And as as Jordan
kindly recalled the other day last week,
archaeology is a destructive enterprise.
Therefore you as a
archaeologist, at the very moment you
excavate an object or a site, you are
the first and last person to see this
object in the original context the
site before you actually destroy it.
Therefore it is important, as again
Jordan very kindly reminded the other
day, it is important to write down and
record and register everything you do
before you remove this this object from
its original location. Now 20 years later
sometimes, you know, the the information
about the object, the relationship
with the between the objects and the
documentation,
can be a little more tenuous. And
therefore one of the aspects of my job
is to make sure that we save and curate
the documentation in order to be able to
tell, for every object that we have - 
where it's from from, who collected it,
why it was collected, and how it was
collected, and why is it now at the
Museum of Anthropology at University of
California, Berkeley.
Yeah and I'm so glad you bring up those
questions of what is this, where did it
come from, how did it get from where it
was from to here, because I feel like
these are really important questions in
terms of an archeological collection at
a museum, but also for any kind of data
that we're encountering. These objects
are information, and for us to make sure
that we know what is this information?
How did I get it? Who brought it here?
What is its place in the
context of other things? It's a really
important lesson to learn
in many different fields. So we have an
audience question that I was wondering
if you could answer, which I think you've
kind of touched on already, but they're
asking how important is context in
regards to curating at the Hearst Museum
and how do you work to maintain this
information when you have such a diverse
collection? The relationship between
documentation and the objects, as we said,
is very important. The collection of the
Hearst Museum had been collected
since the since its founding
and archaeologists had been central to the
history of the Hearst Museum and its
development over the last more than
hundred years. If you think about the
what we consider to be the
original Hearst Museum collections, the ones
that were sponsored and made by Phoebe
Hearst at the beginning of the last
century, archaeology was the core of (with
the Uhle expedition in Peru, with the
Reisner expedition in Egypt,
with the Emerson expedition in
Europe) archeology was at the core of the
foundation of the Hearst Museum. And all
these early explorers did leave
manuscripts and maps and notes, in
addition to the publications that they
eventually produced over the years. So this this creates the context within
the museum that
I am trying, with with the help of all my
colleagues of course, we're trying to
preserve. The reality of
archaeological museums in archaeological
collections and museums is that
sometimes they are divided between
different institutions, between different
places. And therefore every museum needs
to find a way to make known their
collection so
they can be related to other
collections from other museums.
So what we're trying to do in order to
be able to safely maintain the
documentation in association with the
objects for the future is that
been digitizing a lot of our archives
over the years. Therefore we've been able
to save, for future generations, the
the original manuscripts that are now
just as important as the objects, from
an historical and anthropological
perspective. Mm-hmm and we're getting a
question from one of our viewers,
hopefully many people know that the
Hearst Museum's collections are
available online and searchable via our
website, but we're getting a question as
to whether some of the old maps and
notes or this archival, this background
information giving context to the
objects is also available online
currently? Yes, and you know thank you for
the questions. In order to answer I would like to give
a lot of credit to one of our colleagues
Dr. Michael Black, who more than 10 years
ago told me that his goal was to be able
to make the entire collections of the
Hearst Museum available to the public and
now we can safely say that our
public can browse our entire collections
through the use of our portal. I
will be showing maybe one portal URL
later. When it comes to documentation, the
original documentation, it is available
to a number of our constituents, to a
number of our stakeholders. I'm talking
about tribal entities, for example, they
are very interested when it comes
to the California and North American
archaeological records. They're very
interested in associated documentation.
But especially for for research
these resources are
available, but they're not available
online. They are available by appointment.
Cool, thanks for sharing that. And I think
you had some images and some other
information that you were hoping to
share with our viewers for today. Yes, I
know since today at chat from trying to open up to a
larger audience our collections, I was
just trying to find a few examples of
the many things you can find through our
portal. Just giving a sense to our
audience about the
the breadth of the collections at the Hearst
Museum. So let me just briefly share
a few images and I will just say a few
things about the images they are gonna
be on the monitor.
Here's a picture from
probably 1919.
Of the original storage space for the museum
when it was still located in San
Francisco. As you can see, it's already
full of archeological material. You can
recognize some manos and metates,
probably from Souther California. You can
see some Egyptian mummies and figurines
and statues in the background, and two
researchers working on the collections.
One of the things about the Hearst Museum
is that we do have actual collections
from around the world and some of their
and some of these collections
are incredibly beautifu and incredibly
important. Here's an example from an
archaeological site in Mali dated
back to about 4000 years ago.  And this is
a beautiful workshop that
includes beautiful burins and
beautiful little drills that were used
to work on those agate beads that you
see, and as you can see one the corner
one of the agate beads was turned into a
little teeny tiny arrowhead. Another site
is in Sudan, more or less at the
same age 4,000-4,500 years ago. These
are gaming pieces and pottery from
gaming pieces, from a game we don't know
how it was played, of course.
Another one of my favorite collections is
the University of California African
Expedition that was done in 1948 and 1949.
A team of researchers from the
University of California went across the
continent from North to South,
and these are lithic flakes and tools
that were found in in a cave in South
Africa. You can tell that I love stone
tools and lithics. Closer to home this
is a beautiful example of one of the few
excavations that we have from Italy. We
have a number of objects from Italy but
they were mostly bought at the
antiquarian market. But we do have one
spectacular example of an Etruscan site
that was excavated in 1911. This is a
beautiful example of one of those
excavations. Going back in
time but staying Europe, this is a very
nice, incredibly nice, incised bone from a
cave in southern France, in the
same region where all those famous painted
caves were found. One of the
important pieces, as an example of what
I mentioned before, one of the
situation's I mentioned before, sometimes
excavations were divided by different
institutions and now there are multiple
museums around the world that have
samples from the same excavation. This is,
for example, a beautiful scraper from
Tabun Cave, which is in Israel. It
was excavated in 1935 by Dorothy Garrod
who was the first female
Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Cambridge.She was helped by one
of our own, Theodore McCown.
This site is about 120,000 years
old and one of the first examples of a
Neanderthal site. Theodore McCown went
in 1969 in India, for example, where he
excavated these beautiful quartzite microliths. All these little tools, by the way,
for members of our audience that
are less accustomed to archaeological
material, all of these little flakes here
were made this way. They're not little flakes
that have broken, broken
quartzite pieces. All these are retouched
to be the way that they are right now,
that we found them. One of the
examples of our archives at the Museum,
this is a photo from 1902. The person
that you see in the background is
Dr. Jones. This is Dr. Philip Jones
and this is one of the original
excavations from 1901 in the Tulare
Valley down in the
California Central Valley. You can
see the extent of the old archeological
site and the trench that they excavated
in 1902. Of course the museum is also the
repository for the beautiful
archeological material that comes from
the Bay Area Shell Mounds, and this is an
incredibly nice scapula bone saw, as you
can see all the dents that were created.
For example, this tool if you
can see closely you can probably see,
some glossy patina that is along
the worked edge which is
normally a sign that a tool like this
was used to reap grasses that could be
used and collected for making baskets,
the famous basketry from California
native populations. This is another beautiful example.
Just like the African, these are microliths that were used in the Channel
Islands down in California for the specialized
production of shell beads.
Thank you for showing us all these
images. I wanted to take a moment to
pause here too, to just let our viewers know about some nice
connections to some of the images that
you've shown in the other episodes of
this YouTube series. So I really
appreciate, Paolo, you showing us the
breadth of the collections that the
Hearst Museum houses. And if you were
interested in any of the things that
you've seen so far and curious about
finding out more, for example, we had an
episode in this series about
collaborative archaeology in Sudan which
speaks to some of the Sudanese material.
An episode about Etruscan material if
that's something you're interested in.
And we have an episode coming up next
week that's going to be about some work
related to the cave sites with paintings
in them that Paolo mentioned as being
related to some of the collections that
were shown. And then also about some
contemporary collaborative
archaeological projects in California
which might have parallels with some of
the collections that you've seen here,
too. So this is kind of like the the tips
of many icebergs Paolo is showing us right now.
Absolutely, it would be impossible in a very short
period of time to be able to show so
many of the beautiful archaeological
objects that we have. We're trying very
hard, and we actually succeeded in many
aspects. You know all the images
I'm showing today can be found through
our portal, but
I wanted to show this one because this
one is probably the northernmost
object that we have in our collection.
This is from Alaska from Point Barrow.
Going south in South
America, a beautiful collection from
Venezuela, an island off the northern coast of Venezuela. There
was excavating in the 60s. Thank you
for sharing all those, those were great
and I can tell that our viewers are
excited and we have  a few more
questions, not necessarily specifically
related to the
pieces that you've shown but hopefully
those questions will come in. I want to
remind our viewers that if you want to
ask a question you can head to sli.do
slash askarf. So that's SLI dot DO slash
ASKARF. But in the short term we have a
question here from one of our audience
members - you' were talking a lot about the
museum curation that you've done and I
can tell that you've just gained a
wealth of information over the years
that you've been at the Hearst Museum
about all these collections. And one of
our viewers is asking what do you miss
about fieldwork if anything and what do
you like or dislike about curating at
the museum versus fieldwork. What I miss
of fieldwork? What I miss the fieldwork
is the community, that is one
hundred percent. I went to excavation
places when I was an undergrad and for
more than 15 years, and I have really
good memories of all the people that I
met over the years in different places
in Turkey in Croatia in Italy and in
other places. So I do miss the community.
I do miss the excitement, in a way, of
finding something.
But curating collections
in the Museum presents its own set of
challenges.
I'm not sure how to answer that
question. I love looking at all the
objects. There are people like me that
are really in touch with material
culture, we like physical objects
and being surrounded by all these
objects that I can learn about, was
always one of my my dreams and
it definitely came true at the Hearst Museum. We
have one more question coming in which
is actually directed at both of us and I
think maybe we can speak to different
aspects of it.
The question is, "Could you explain how
the museum's archaeological collections
have been mobilized for education?" And I
think I can probably answer a little bit
of that about our K-12 audiences but
Paolo maybe you have some insight kind
of over the long term, about how these
collections have been leveraged for
University audiences, and then I can
speak to K-12. Well this museum was
founded as as a research institution. For
for a number of years this museum did
not have a public gallery. Even though
the public viewing started very
early, the idea behind the foundation
of the Museum, and Phoebe Hearst's dream, was a museum
for all the people in California to
learn about the history of our state and
the history of anthropology around the
world. So since the very beginning it was
basically mandatory for the museum to open
up some some rooms for for the public to
come in. And I know
in 1911 for example when they opened the
first time, I believe, they only had two
rooms and they did were changing like a
bunch of objects every three weeks or
every every month. And just let the
people go inside and peruse. But the
idea was that this is just for
researchers, ivory tower used to be
said back in the day.
And the reality is that the museum
collected so much material very quickly
after its foundation that it
became basically almost impossible for
the museum to be able to show everything
the Museum had, since the
very beginning. The first time the museum
complains with the University about the
storage space is I believe in 1917. They started saying we need more space.
Something that we can we keep hearing
today.
Yeah. Collections are open to researchers.
They're open to a number of our
audiences and stakeholders. Of course you
don't have to be a PhD student to be
able to come but but the reality is, it's
impossible for us to completely
open the collections to the public the
way we would like to. And probably the online portal is the closest that
we've got gotten to in recent years but
we're constantly working on being accessible
different ways. And like Paolo said, there's many
many levels of educational access
to these collections. So it's not just if
you're a PhD level researcher. But we
also have opportunities for
undergraduate research assistants who
are an integral part of our museums
operations. Those are huge educational
opportunities for them, as well as
undergraduate student staff who assist with
day-to-day operations and research and
education.
And class visits - University
classes are coming all the time into the
Hearst Museums collections when classes
are in session, to come and get in person
experience with the collections at the
kind of direction of their
faculty instructor who might be a
subject area specialist in what we're
looking at. And then for K-12 audiences
we run a professional development
program for teachers to help empower
them to teach with collections and learn
how to use objects as primary sources.
And we have other kinds of educational
resources on our website that people can
use either from home or in the classroom
to bring the things that researchers
like Paolo, and other researchers
coming to the museum are learning about
the collections, into the classroom in a
way that people of different ages can
understand. So thank you that's a great
question. And I think we probably just
have time for for one more kind of broad
takeaway question.
What can people learn from archaeology today and what do they stand to learn from
this type of work?
You were a little bit breaking up.
Could you please repeat the question? Sure! So the question was what
do you hope our listeners take away from
the type of archaeological work that you
do in a museum, what do you hope they
they might learn from from this talk
today? Well I hope that a lot of our
audience will go away knowing the the
Hearst Museum is doing its best to
preserve what was given to
the University of California, for future
generations., especially when it comes to
the archaeology of our own state, we know
California's is one of the richest states in the
Union. It's been developed over many years
and a lot of the archaeological record
has been unfortunately destroyed. And
therefore I hope that people know that
when things are entitled to the Hearst Museum, we will do our best to
preserve them for the next generation
of people that are
interested in archaeology, that have
an interest in history, also, and enjoy
the many stories that these archaeological
collections can tell us. Again,
archaeology doesn't tell one story. It
tells many, many stories and this variety
of stories is one of the things that is
most interesting about the discipline of
archaeology and anthropology. even in
2020. Well thank you, that was a great
takeaway. I want to thank you so much
for being here today, Paolo. And I also
wanted to thank our viewers and those
who submitted such great questions to us
today.
I hope that some of you will be able
to join us for the next episode in the
Ask an Archaeologist series which is
going to be tomorrow, Wednesday May 13th
at noon when John Olsen of Pacific
Legacy will be speaking in a talk
entitled "Job Opportunities in the
Private Sector: Cultural Resource
Management." So thank you again Paolo for
being here today. Thank you for the invitation Katie. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye bye!
