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and archaeologists, among others, and about the utilizationof Navajo weavings by Hopi, Zuni, Apache, and Plainsconsumers prior to their acquisition by Anglos.

It is difficult to overpraise this project, especially to ananthropological audience. The exhibition and catalogprovide a rare opportunity to better understand the socialdynamics of Navajo weaving, including the relations andideologies of production, the lives of weavers and theirfamilies, and socioeconomic relations between producersand consumers. The book conveys Navajo perspectives rarelyavailable to outsiders. Selected essays, such as Thomas'sand Hedlund's chapters, would make excellent readingsfor courses in anthropology and American Indian studies.

Complaints about the volume are minimal, all having todo with the placement and labeling of the figures. Wheat'schapter is difficult to follow because the reader is forced tojump around the book to locate photographs of the pieceshe discusses. The textile photographs at the beginning ofeach chapter are unlabeled on the page, even though theirfigure numbers are cited in the text. This requires somecreative extrapolation by the reader. (A list of these figureswas eventually discovered on the reverse side of the title

page.) The collection catalog in the back of the volumewould have benefited from the inclusion of plate and figurenumbers. These are clearly minor complaints to concernonly the most fastidious of readers.

Anthropologists now recognize that scholarship aboutindigenous cultures has been biased by the lack of a Nativeviewpoint. This broadly conceived and ably delivered pro-ject represents a fruitful attempt to redress this problem bypresenting a "multiplicity of voices" to both a Native andnon-Native audience. The exhibit organizers, especiallyBonar, are to be commended for pulling the exhibit and itsexcellent accompanying volume together. The Navajo par-ticipants are to be acknowledged and thanked for the infor-mation they have chosen to convey. Together they entrustus with a broader way of seeing. In the Navajo world,when things are brought into balance, harmony prevails."The word that we use is hozho," explains Harry Walters,"Hozho means T will walk in the Beauty Way' " (p. 30). Inthe eyes of this non-Native reviewer, the perspectives pre-sented here represent an uncommonly harmonious en-deavor, one bearing lessons for us all.

Drawing Shadows to StoneMOLLY LEE

University of Alaska Museum

Drawing Shadows to Stone: Photographing North Pa-cific Peoples (1897-1902). American Museum of NaturalHistory, New York, New York, November 14, 1997-March 1, 1998.

Drawing Shadows to Stone: The Photography of theJesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902. LaurelKendall, Barbara Mathe, and Thomas Ross Miller, withStanley A. Freed, Ruth S. Freed, and Laila Williamson.New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1997,and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. 112pp., 97 illust.

The aim of this handsomely designed exhibition of pho-tographs and related artifacts is to present to the public forthe first time exhaustive coverage of Franz Boas's JesupNorth Pacific Expedition to Siberia and the NorthwestCoast, surely among the most ambitious projects under-taken under the aegis of a social science then in its infancy.

Drawing Shadows to Stone, which takes its name from aYukaghir's description of the glass-plate photographicprocess, is organized conceptually rather than geographi-cally. Thus photos from the widely separated areas underinvestigation are often used together if they illustrate the

points that curators Thomas Ross Miller and BarbaraMathe (Miller's forte was interpretation of the artifacts,Mathe was responsible for interpreting the photographs)wanted to get across. According to Miller, this choice wasalso made to blur the impression that so-called culture ar-eas are discrete entities.

The exhibition's design, which works well despite theregrettably low light level required by contemporary con-servation practice, is by Larry Langham of AMNH's Exhi-bition Department. Installed in the Museum's Gallery 77,the design subtly pulls together over 200 of the Jesup pho-tographs (selected from over 3,000 on hand in the Mu-seum's photographic archives) and a diverse array of eth-nographic and historical artifacts. Drawing Shadows toStone turns standard museum practice on its head, usingphotographs to contextualize objects rather than the re-verse. The curators wanted to avoid the common pitfall ofaestheticizing historic photographs, which can diminishtheir importance as social documents. Langham has cho-sen to convey this approach by leaving the prints un-cropped and unmatted. They are sandwiched between twosheets of clear plexiglass and enclosed in wooden framesevocative of the period, conveying the impression that thephotographs float in space. The deep rich green of thewalls shows through the area between the images and

1006 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 4 • DECEMBER 1998

frames, drawing together the design throughout the nar-row, cave-like floor plan of the Museum's Gallery 77.

Drawing Shadows to Stone consists of 13 sections. Con-ceptually, the most engaging part of the exhibition is howfluidly it moves through time and space. Some panels con-sider the Native people who were the focus of the JesupExpedition; others have indigenous cultures sharing thelimelight with expedition personnel; others are more re-flexive still, considering the Jesup material after its returnto the museum, even taking up matters (e.g., conservation)that bring us up to today.

"A Century of Survival," the first and second sections,introduces the viewer to the Jesup Expedition and its per-sonnel and takes up the important role that field photogra-phy played in the enterprise. To draw the viewer in, a com-puterized module presents a continuous, silent montage offaces of indigenous people photographed during the expe-dition. Next, the Jesup Expedition itself is introduced in apanel that includes a facsimile of the first two pages of theinaugural volume of the Jesup publications. It sets outBoas's overarching mission of investigating historical andcultural relationships among the Native peoples on bothsides of Bering Strait. An expedition map with both out-dated and recent nomenclature intentionally blurs ethnicboundaries to combat the widely held but artificial impres-sion that boundaries were absolute in the modern, pass-port-requiring sense of the term. Expedition photographsdocument various effects of Western influence such as aSakha woman and daughter in Russian overcoats and felthats.

In the opening section the audience also is introduced toexpedition personnel. In addition to Boas, who headed theNorthwest Coast investigations, the most important ofthese were Waldemar Bogoras and Waldemar Jochelson,who, along with their wives, were in charge of research innortheastern Siberia. (The Alaskan side of Bering Straitwas not included in the expedition because of the recent re-search of Edward W. Nelson and John P. Murdoch in thatregion.) Bogoras and Jochelson were young dissidentstrained in ethnology in St. Petersburg and banished to Si-beria for their radical politics by the increasingly repres-sive Russian government.

"Photography and Anthropology" (Sections 3 and 4) ex-plores the main theme of the exhibition, the central rolethat field photography was to play in anthropological re-search. Boas was one of the first ethnologists to recognizethe value of such photographs to later analysis of data, forreconstructing accurate dioramas, and for reconstructingthe evolutionary ladder of humanity then in fashion. Thushe required his various expedition leaders to take along thecumbersome tripods, heavy view cameras, glass negatives,and other photographic paraphernalia. The trials and tribu-lations of exhibition photography at that time are detailed.Clear and concise labels, diagrams, and an entire vintagefield-camera setup explain the glass-plate negative process

and consider the constraints of early field photographysuch as the need for subjects to hold a pose for most of a m-inute and the limitations of photographic venues due to theneed for strong light. Cases in this section also ask visitorsto imagine the photographic process from the other end ofthe camera lens.

Drawing Shadows to Stone is a feast for the ears as wellas the eyes. "Sound and the Journey," the fifth segment ofthe exhibit, was the brainchild of Miller, a trained eth-nomusicologist with long experience as a sound technicianin New York theatrical productions. The main features ofthis module are cases furnishing background on the equip-ment and techniques of field recording. An old Victrolawith a crank and examples of the wax cylinders used by theJesup investigators are installed alongside photographs ofthis equipment in use. The hit of this component, however,is the interactive audiovisual sound station. Here, Jesupphotographs on videodisk are enhanced by the field re-cordings of songs, stories, and ceremonies made at thesame time. A photograph of a shamanic performance, forexample, springs to life as the eerie, animal-like cries of theshaman going into trance state are heard. Animated com-puter graphics explain the wax-cylinder recording. Alsoincluded in this section are images and biographical infor-mation about the expedition photographers and a discus-sion of their contributions. The curators sidestepped thetemptation of falling into the timeless, ethnographic pre-sent—an obvious pitfall—by including recordings andphotographs made during more recent research in Siberiaby Miller and others. Tactile senses are engaged byroughed-edge facsimile scrapbooks with photographs anddiary entries replicating originals by expedition membersnow on deposit in the Museum's archives. The long linesin front of the sound station components both times I at-tended the exhibition attest to its popularity and to thepopularity of interactive units in museum exhibitions ingeneral.

One of the strengths of AMNH's Jesup collection (thelargest single holding of early Siberian material in theworld) is the impressive number of indigenous house mod-els, which were commissioned from Native artists for lateruse in museum dioramas. "Dwelling Places," the sixth ofthe exhibition's sections, uses these models to documentthe diversity of house forms at the turn of the century. Alarge number of these, from underground house to tent, areon view along with expedition photographs of their inte-riors and exteriors. Here as elsewhere, the activities of theJesup Expedition share top billing with the ethnic groupsunder investigation. When Miller turned over some of themodels in the collection he discovered that they had beenmounted on recycled expedition crates, still with theiroriginal address labels in place. One of these is displayedon a mirror so that viewers can see the original label.

Among the Koryak of northeastern Siberia, the cele-bration of the capture of a whale was the most important

MUM UM ANIHKOI-OI OGY 1007

religious ceremony. The whaling ceremony of 1900 wasalso one of the high points of Jochelson's research on be-half of the Jesup Expedition. "Whales and Spirits," the sev-enth section of the exhibit, documents these events—nota-bly the eerie image of participants shrouded in dry grass toprotect themselves from the power of the whale's spirit asit returned to the sea—through photographs, artifacts, andexcerpts from Jochelson's field notes.

"The Search for Physical Types" takes up one of themost widely disparaged fields of nineteenth-century socialscience, the use of anthropometry in the misguided attemptto determine an ethnic group's place on the evolutionaryladder. Especially ridiculed was the assumption that cra-nial measurements denoted brain size (and therefore intel-ligence). Boas instructed his investigators to take suchmeasurements, including making casts of human heads.Indeed, Dina Brodskaya-Jochelson, Jochelson's wife, wholater went on to obtain an M.D. based on her research in Si-beria, focused mainly on the anthropometric research forthe Siberian groups she and her husband encountered."The Search for Physical Types" investigates the anthro-pometrical research of the expedition by means of a por-trait gallery of photographs collected as part of this re-

search and by exhibiting some of the original plaster lifecasts of Siberians and Northwest Coast Indians. The place-ment of both photographs and busts so that their gazemeets the viewers' comments more loudly than any labelcould on the wrongheadedness of this point of view. La-bels are based on original catalogue entries and also con-textualize these entries with explanations of how mis-guided these assumptions were. The section makes theoverall point that surface resemblance is not coterminuswith biological connection. It also suggests that the anthro-pometric research of the Jesup Expedition was a watershedmoment for Boas, documenting his move away from theclassification that supports the evolutionary perspective to-ward the historical particularism for which he is bestknown and that, as Miller points out, implicitly celebratesthe diversity of human culture and the coexistence of dif-ferent types of social organization, from simple to com-plex.

In "Representing the Past/Reproducing Cultures" (Sec-tions 9 and 10), the reflexivity that sets Drawing Shadowsto Stone apart from the straight ethnographic repre-sentation of most museum shows is evident. Once photo-graph and artifact were returned to AMNI I, the process of

Figure 1. The exhibition included a life group borrowed from the Museum s permanent Hall of Northwest Coast Indians. Photograph by JackieBeckett. Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.

1008 AMERICAN ANIHKOPOLOGISI • VOL 100, No. 4 • DECEMBER 1998

Figure 2. The woman in the photograph was weanng western-style clothing and the life group shows her in traditional deerskin. Photograph byHarlan Smith. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History.

working the research into the exhibition program began.Here, the curators compare the original field photographswith those from in-process exhibits to document the work-ings of what James Clifford has aptly called 'salvage para-digm ethnography." A product of his times, Boas sub-scribed to the idea that indigenous cultures were fastdisappearing. Thus his installations in the museum weresteeped in the reproduction of a static ethnographic pre-sent. Comparing field and in-house photographs, the cura-tors show us, for example, how Native people attired inmodem dress in the field photographs were re-attired inanimals skins or buckskins for the dioramas (see Figures 1and 2). Modern artifacts, such as Victorian house fronts ap-pearing in original photographs, were bracketed out in thefinal, museum version of the original.

Toward the conclusion of the exhibition, Sections 11and 12, "Shamans and Ceremonies,"' furnish the viewerwith the contextual information needed to appreciate the

importance of ritual among the indigenous cultures of theNorth Pacific. The photographs in these sections areamong the most important in the exhibition as they docu-ment religious practices, many of which are no longer inexistence. A case devoted to contemporary Sakha ritualbrings the information up to date. In a panel featuring aspectacular Yukaghir shaman's coat, investigators' fieldnotes on the iconography and symbolism of the piece sharethe spotlight with a consideration of the elaborate measuresthe Museum's conservation department undertook to re-store the coat for the exhibition. Once again the them/us,past/present distinctions framing most ethnographic exhi-bitions are blurred in this one.

"Symbols for the Future," the final section of DrawingShadows to Stone, considers the relevance of the Jesupproiect today. We learn that the photographs, letters, mem-oirs, and diaries of expedition personnel, as well as thou-sands of artifacts collected from the Northwest Coast and

MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY 1009

Siberia during the expedition, are consulted regularly, notonly by Euroamerican researchers such as the growing co-terie of Boas scholars, but also by Native peoples them-selves looking to develop a sense of their pasts, for repa-triation consultations, and for the information necessary tobuttress the revival of indigenous religious practice. Labeltext for a spectacular Northwest Coast bentwood ravenbox, taken from one of Boas's letters, refers to the con-tainer as a "box of traditions." The co-curators point outthat the box may also be seen as a metaphor for the Jesupcollection and, beyond that, for the museum itself, a reposi-tory for the traditions of the Kwakiutl and numerous otherethnic groups contacted by pioneer ethnographers such asthe Jesup Expedition personnel. An interactive computercenter in the final section allows visitors to explore the re-lationships among photograph, artifact, documentation,Native artist, and collector in greater depth.

In sum, the most innovative aspect of Drawing Shadowsto Stone was the decision of the curators (and Project Di-rector Laurel Kendall) to have the expedition and its mem-bers and the American Museum itself share the limelightwith the Native people they investigated. This is reflexivityat its best and elevates the exhibition above the climate ofsanctimony that so often permeates contemporary critiques

of tum-of-the century social science research. That the ex-traordinary photographs turn out to be manipulationsrather than realistic portrayals of Native cultures in a pris-tine state—a point the curators emphasize—is hardlynovel. Nonetheless, the impressions the photographs con-vey of a little-known part of the world at an early date andof the hardships of fieldwork at that time are both movingand informative.

The handsome catalogue, authored by Miller and Mathewith an introduction by Laurel Kendall, the Curator of theMuseum's Asian Ethnographic Collections and ProjectDirector of the Museum's larger Jesup Centenary celebra-tion, will stand as a permanent record of the exhibition. Anessay by Stanley Freed, curator of the North AmericanEthnographic collections (assisted by Laila Williamsonand Ruth Freed), provides more depth for the context of theJesup Expedition, the interrelationships of its personnel,and details their professional biographies. The main essay,by Miller and Mathe, reiterates the main themes of the ex-hibition and provides additional information on the team'sapproach to the material. About two-thirds of the cata-logue's length is devoted to the magnificent photographicimages themselves, and more exhaustive documentationfor these is provided here than in the exhibition.

Conference Report

Constructing Cultures Then and Now1

NELSON H. H. GRABURNUniversity of California, Berkeley

Constructing Cultures Then and Now: A Centenary Con-ference Celebrating Franz Boas and the Jesup NorthPacific Expedition 1897-1997. American Museum ofNatural History, New York, New York, November 13-171997.

The name "Jesup" has come to stand for cooperative re-search by Russian and American anthropologists in theNorth Pacific region, among the peoples of Alaska, theNorthwest Coast, and Siberia. This meaning comes fromthe Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1903), directedby Franz Boas as assistant curator of anthropology at theAmerican Museum of Natural History. Boas persuaded themuseum's director Morris K. Jesup to fund the expeditionthat bears his name. With considerable research alreadycarried out in the Northwest Coast of North America andAlaska by Boas himself, his colleagues, and predecessors,

the question of the relation of Native Americans to peoplesof the Old World could hardly progress without compara-ble evidence from the peoples of Chukotka, Kamchatka,the Amur basin and Sakhalin, and, generally, Siberia.

The "expedition" so named consisted not of one team ofmen traveling together, such as the Harriman Expedition toAlaska (1899) or the Canadian Expedition to the WesternCanadian Arctic (1912-14), but of a number of separate re-search trips undertaken during the few years at the turn ofthe century. This fieldwork was carried out in a not quitecontiguous area west of the Bering Strait among the mari-time and interior peoples, then called Chukchi, Koryak,Kamchadal, Yukagir, Yakuts, and the Gilyak and Ainu ofSakhalin, and the Goldi of the lower Amur River.2 The re-searchers included Laufer, a German orientalist, and Bo-goras and Jochelsen, social activists who were already living