Anthropology Collection Highlights

Collection Highlights


CAS Photo	Allen Collection of Lamps: More than 300 lighting devices from around the world and across the centuries, including lamps from over 30 cultures ranging in age from 100 to 3500 years old.
CAS Photo	Elgueta Collection (Mayan): Over 1000 objects from Chalchitan and Pichikil, archaeological sites in Highland Guatemala. Predominately jade and pottery, this collection survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, and many of the pieces bear scars from those events.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Elkus Collection (Native American): More than 1700 Native American objects, including textiles, jewelry, baskets, pottery, works of art on paper, kachina carvings, and beadwork. The primary focus is the U.S. Southwest, but California, Alaska, the Northwest Coast, and the Plains regions are also represented. Read the Elkus Indian Papers from the Academy Archives.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Liebes Collection (Native Alaskan): Approximately 1000 Native Alaskan objects, primarily bone and ivory tools, ivory craft items, two full-sized kayaks, and two baleen baskets.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Ostheimer Collection (Hawai'ian): Nearly 500 Hawai'ian objects, including stone tools, wooden bowls, fishing equipment, feather leis, and a fragmentary warrior's helmet.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Owings Collection (Hopi Kachinas): 100+ Hopi kachina carvings, including many identified by artist.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Rietz Collection of Food Technology: Approximately 1400 items from around the world, but primarily of European or American manufacture. The objects relate to the role of food in various cultures, including processing, storage, preparation, and serving. Visit our online exhibits, many of which feature objects from the Rietz Collection.
CAS Photo	Rietz Collection of Textiles (Coptic Egypt and pre-Columbian Peru): Over 75 fragmentary Coptic textiles from the first millennium CE and nearly 30 complete or nearly complete pre-Columbian Inca clothing items. See our online exhibit Coptic Textiles from Egypt.
CAS Photo/Dong Lin	Rollo Beck Collection (South Pacific): Over 400 objects from at least 14 distinct island groups, including the Solomon, Fiji, and Santa Cruz Islands. The items were collected independently in the late 1920s by members of the American Museum of Natural History-sponsored Whitney Expedition. See our online exhibit The Pacific Voyages of Rollo Beck.
CAS Photo	Torry Collection (Gabra, Kenya): More than 500 objects, mostly household and utilitarian objects, collected in the 1970s among the Gabra people of Kenya.