Samantha Annette Bonser and Dr. Marti L. Allen, Anthropology

Rise Up from Fragments features the largest collection of Virgin Anasazi artifacts from one site. Until recently, this prehistoric group had remained in the shadow of more visible branches of the Anasazi such as Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. Now, it is fast becoming the focus for archaeologist researching in the southwest. Located at a natural crossroads near Kanab, Utah, the artifacts from the Talbot site offer new insights to the Virgin branch of the Anasazi and their interactions with the groups around them.

My research for this project began in May of 2003 when I participated in a research grant awarded to Dr. Marti Allen. As a part of this mentoring grant, I learned how to look at pottery from an art historical perspective, catalog and photograph pottery and other artifacts for a peer-reviewed publication. As I studied and cataloged the pottery in the Talbot collection, I began to notice the great variety in quality and use among the pieces. Some exhibited worn edges and soot caked bodies, while others were carefully painted and some were even repaired to extend the life of the bowl. The other students participating in the grant and I studied and cataloged artifacts, and we learned to recognize common motifs and designs in the painted pottery. While two bowls might exhibit similar patterns, the quality of the draftsmanship was not always the same. Even within the collection as a whole, some pieces were exquisitely made and others were down right sloppy. This led us to question why there was such a difference. The more I learned the more questions emerged about the life ways of this ancient culture.

During the proceeding fall term, many questions were answered and many more were asked. As a part of a series of museum classes, my fellow student researcher and I attended lectures given by archaeologists, art historians, and other scholars who study the region where the Virgin Anasazi lived. In addition to this, I read several publications on the same subject. During this same period, we continued with our cataloging, but with each lecture, we gained a better understanding of what life was like for these people.

Under the direction of the museum staff and with my fellow student curator, we began planning the exhibition starting with developing the major themes, laying out the floor plan of the gallery, and creating a budget. In our weekly brainstorming and planning meetings, we discussed possible themes for the entire exhibition as well as sub-themes. Occasionally major and minor themes would switch places for a week, only to change back the next. Because of the small size of the gallery and the limited number of cases, the gallery was a factor in deciding which themes were more important than others. When we finally decided on themes for each of the cases, we then had to plan how we wanted the themes to flow and in turn how we wanted the floor plan to work. While brainstorming, we came up with many great ideas on how to improve the layout and use of space and materials in the gallery and foyer. However, with our limited budget, we had to decide on what was more important to us and what would be the most useful.

During the early planning stages of the exhibition, we also created and proctored a survey to assess the prior knowledge and the interests of our focus group (BYU students and professors). We learned from this “front-end evaluation” that few people had any knowledge of the Anasazi and their life ways, but there was a definite interest among the student body to learn more. We used the results of this survey to further shape the basic themes and concepts of the exhibition.

Winter semester of 2004 found us continuing to refine themes and concepts as well as putting much more time into designing the artifact cases. At the beginning of this project, I expected to put together an entire exhibition that would be on display for one year and my co-student curator would do the next. However, as we planned and arranged artifacts, we discovered that we worked better as a team designing the artifact cases together, rather than separately. We combined and condensed and the work went a lot smoother. I was responsible for designing about half of the artifact cases and drawers. One of the cases that I designed is entitled “Fathers to Sons” and features artifacts that would have been used on a regular basis by the men in the culture. Even though little is known about gender roles in this culture, I used ethnographic analogies from modern Pueblo societies to decide what to display in the case. I also researched and designed the display for the warped vessels in the collection. Working closely with my faculty mentor, I analyzed tens of painted warped bowls from several museums. We found a strong correlation between the painted design and the contours of the bowl, which implied the odd shaping of the bowls was done intentionally.

Because of some of the irregular contours of the pottery and special needs of other objects, it was necessary to design and build special mounts. As we designed each case, we also designed the needed special mounts. Several weeks later we took the basic materials we would need to the carpenter shop in the basement of the Museum of Art where John Adams, Head of Exhibit Design, taught us how to work with materials used in museums for exhibition in addition to creating our special mounts, and we then made our special mounts under his supervision

Once we designed the layout of the exhibition and the cases, the next step was to write labels for individual objects and whole cases, design the signage, and select photo didactics. To design the signage we worked with an experienced graphic design artist, Scott Ure, who helped us arrange the elements we wanted in the sign, digitally design it, and prepare the file for BYU’s sign shop, which created the final sign. We selected many of the photo didactics from ethnographic books portraying modern Pueblo Indian groups, as they are the descendents of the Anasazi. We also purchased some photographs from other museums with photo archive collections.

As a part of the exhibition we integrated an educational program which consisted of a hands-on station, worksheets for the scouting program as well as a case of pottery that patrons could test themselves on the different designs they found in the pottery in the previous cases.

Two weeks before the public reception we took down and packed the old exhibition and installed Rise Up from Fragments: Life and Arts of the Western Anasazi. We arranged the cases and the artifacts, put up the signage and photo didactics, and put the hands-on-station together. We planned the public reception in conjunction with Utah’s Prehistory Day. We gave guided tours and had live demonstrations of ancient technology (e.g. flint knapping) and Native American dancing. It was wonderful to see the whole project come together at the opening and to see so many people enjoy and learn from it. This exhibition constitutes the publication of the work and research I did under ORCA sponsorship, and it will be on view until at least April 2006.