KNOWLEDGE
Research at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
Spring 2006
Knowledge features news briefs on research at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The texts can be used integrally, or can be expanded upon by adding information gathered through interviews with the researchers.
Subscribe now! Knowledge — Research at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
mailto:sylvain.raymond@civilization.ca
Digitizing wax-cylinder recordings saves priceless cultural knowledge
Before digital media, Mini and Compact Discs, cassettes or 8-track recorders, it was common to record audio on wax — or wax cylinders, to be more precise. During the first half of the 1900s, an entrepreneurial anthropologist travelled the nation to record and archive the many voices of Canada on the then state-of-the-art cylinders. During a period spanning 38 years, Charles Marius Barbeau, employed by the Canadian Museum of Civilization, recorded some 3,300 cylinders to capture a staggering amount of songs, traditional stories and languages. These fragile recordings (wax cylinders deteriorate with each listen and break easily when dropped) helped many aboriginal and French Canadian traditions from disappearing altogether.
In 2003, the Museum started digitizing this brittle ethnological collection with an archeophone (a modern cylinder-playback machine), thanks to funding from Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online program. Digitizing the recordings, often one-of-a-kinds, is a great way to preserve invaluable sound documents. Now, this ethnological material will not only survive the test of time, it will also be easily accessible to and shareable with generations to come. The catalogue of sound clips and the Museum's collection is searchable online at http://geoweb.civilization.ca:8001/
Charles Marius Barbeau dedicated his life to preserving, disseminating and studying Canadian folklore. In doing so, he became one of Canada's earliest ethnologists, and quite possibly its first ethnomusicologist.
Contact: Benoit Thériault, Team Leader, Library, Archives and Documentation Services, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Canadian carbon dating web-database unlike any in the world
It may be hard to believe, but until recently, using outdated punch cards was the standard method of chronicling archaeology. Fortunately, in the late 1990s, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) finally started to compile radiocarbon dates in one, useful web-accessible database. The Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database (CARD) is now the most popular web-based radiocarbon dating resource in North America. It's mostly used by archaeological and paleontological researchers, students and other curious minds.
While the website features primarily Canadian and U.S. dates, it also includes dates from Russia and Asia and is constantly growing. Matthew Betts, Research Associate and CARD project leader, cannot praise the database enough: "I would say, without hesitation, that it really is the premier database of its kind in the world." Closing in on 30,000 dates, CARD's appeal isn't just sheer volume. It's also an invaluable research tool; with lots of search options, general carbon dating information and interactive applications for correcting or submitting data, it's definitely handier than the old punch card system. CARD can be accessed at http://www.canadianarchaeology.ca
Contact: Matthew Betts, Research Associate, Archaeology and History, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Northern group recaptures lost century-old skills and knowledge with caribou hide clothing
Clothes make the man, as the saying goes, but what kind of clothes made the nineteenth-century Gwich'in man? Modern day Gwich'in, the northernmost Athapascan-speaking group in the Northwest Territories, recently found the answer through a three-year collaboration with Judy Thompson, Curator of Western Subarctic Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC), and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (PWNHC).
With Thomson's research data and pattern drawings by another CMC expert to guide them, Gwich'in seamstresses successfully replicated five nineteenth-century caribou hide outfits in the Museum's collection. For Thompson, who is working on a broader clothing study of all subarctic groups, this Gwich'in-initiated project is very special. "Rather than just trying to borrow or repatriate an early artifact from a collection, the groups involved decided they were going to repatriate the skills and the knowledge that were involved. It was a very proactive way to look at it," she says. This project reintroduced more than materials and techniques that are more than a century old; it gave the communities much-needed examples of old-style caribou hide clothing and helped rekindle a little area of Gwich'in culture and creative spirit long thought lost.
A book detailing the project (co-authored by Thompson) has been published and an exhibition will open at the PWNHC in August 2006.
Contact: Judy Thompson, Curator of Western Subarctic Ethnology, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
History delivered: the story of Canada's mailboxes
Mailboxes are so common in the urban landscape that we often forget their importance. And, despite their unassuming appearance, their history deserves to be told. For Bianca Gendreau, historian and curator at the Canadian Postal Museum, this is very true given that some of her research is dedicated to their history. Mailboxes, she says, were introduced into Canada's major cities in the late 1850s. They were immediately successful and their use spread with the urbanization of the country. During the same period, the Province of Canada started overseeing its mailing system; It issued its first postage stamp, and designed its first mailboxes. In time, Gendreau explains, mailbox design becomes a serious matter. "They had to be both durable and secure," she says. "In addition, they had to be functional for both the user sending mail and the letter carrier collecting it." The quest for the perfect mailbox led to some less than successful experiments, such as the fiberglass box. According to the Gendreau, the next major trend will be adapting the design of boxes to the architecture of their district. The saga continues...
Mailboxes: Urban Street Furniture in Canada. Bianca Gendreau, Mercury Collection, Canadian Postal Museum. 2004.
Contact: Bianca Gendreau, Curator, Canadian Museum of Civilization
To interview CMC researchers, media can contact:
Rachael Duplisea
rachael.duplisea@civilization.ca
(819) 776-7167
|
|
