A History of the Museum of Anthropology The Regents of the University of Michigan, during their first meeting in Ann Arbor in 1837, appointed a committee to create a library and a "Cabinet of Natural History," which within four years was referred to in the Proceedings of the Board of Regents as the Museum. The intent of the Regents' action was to emphasize natural history education; it did not include anthropology. However, a university situated in Michigan with Henry Rowe Schoolcraft as one of its first Regents could not ignore the Indians or prehistoric artifacts. Douglass Houghton, who was the State Geologist before he became a University of Michigan professor, collected a Chippewa canoe for the Museum in 1840. It was the first recorded ethnographic artifact. By 1850, the University Museum had a division that was first called "Relics and Archaeology." A decade later it included ethnology. After the Civil War, the relics consisted mainly of war artifacts from various battles, prisons, or Union army uniform parts. (Years later, what remained of the relic division of the museum was transferred to the Henry Ford Museum.) The archaeology collection consisted of donations and of prehistoric artifacts from farm fields in Michigan. Well-documented anthropology collections were received in the final three decades of the nineteenth century. The Smithsonian Institution became a major contributor to the University of Michigan Museum with significant ethnographic specimens from Alaska, the Pacific, and the Southwest. Joseph Beal-Steere assembled the first true systematic anthropological research collection from 1870-1875 during his famous journey up the Amazon, across the Andes, and then by boat to Southeast Asia, all the while sending crates of plant and animal specimens and cultural artifacts to the Museum.  In 1885, the Chinese government rewarded President Angell for his judicial efforts related to Chinese immigration with the material that formed the Chinese exhibition at the New Orleans Cotton Exposition in 1884-1885. This collection began a long association of museum collections with Asia that continues to this day. Beal-Steere, 1887, Bentley Historical Library In 1892, formal archaeological training began at Michigan. Harlan I. Smith, a freshman student from Saginaw, arranged for Professor Francis Kelsey to offer the first archaeology course taught with museum artifacts. Smith was an enterprising student who raised funds to purchase the large Depue collection of archaeological artifacts from Ann Arbor and he organized the first permanent museum exhibit of anthropological artifacts. He initiated a student survey of the prehistoric garden beds in the Kalamazoo area. Smith appealed for an anthropology faculty position at Michigan, but this desire would not be fulfilled for another 30 years. At the turn of the twentieth century, the University Museum passed through some troubling years. The natural history faculty regarded the museum as a storeroom of goodies for pillaging. Artifacts were not reported to the Regents, they went uncataloged, and the condition of the collections was ignored. This practice changed abruptly in 1906 when Alexander Ruthven was appointed director. In 1913, Ruthven created a separate Museum of Zoology, which included the anthropology collections. He introduced the highest standards of museum practice to the management of all collections in the museum. At the same time, he recognized that museum collections should form the basis for exceptional research. He also acknowledged that he and his staff of curators were ill prepared to handle the anthropology collections and it was finally time to hire an anthropologist for the museum.     Carl Guthe, 1922 In 1922, the foundation was prepared for a separate Museum of Anthropology when Ruthven hired Dr. Carl E. Guthe, who received his Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard, as Associate Director of the Museum of Zoology in charge of Anthropology. Guthe was promised that when a new museum was built, it would include an independent Museum of Anthropology. Before that would happen, however, Guthe would spend three consecutive years in the Philippines conducting archaeological research supported by Horace H. Rackham. In absentia, Guthe worked with Ruthven to establish a functioning research-based Museum of Anthropology. The emphasis was immediately on archaeology. Two divisions were established to accomplish this. First, an archaeology division with Guthe as its curator; and second, a Great Lakes division with the recently retired dean of the Homeopathic Hospital, Wilbert B. Hinsdale, as Custodian in Charge. The large and growing collection of Michigan archaeological artifacts were systematized and a site survey in Wexford and Ogemaw counties was initiated with student assistance. Guthe returned to Michigan in 1925 and immediately made plans for a four-field museum of anthropology. His concept, however, had an interesting twist that would be impossible to achieve today. He wanted research conducted in specific geographical areas: Great Lakes, Orient (Asia), North America, and Europe. But, in addition, he expected each curator to be knowledgeable in the four anthropological fields—archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology—of those geographic areas. The reality of this proposal soon caught him short and he had to find specialists in the non-archaeological subdisciplines. Undaunted, Guthe filled some of the positions by borrowing specialists from neighboring institutions. His physical anthropologist came from Eastern Michigan, then Michigan Normal College, and his Orient (Asia) specialist from the Detroit Institute of Art (Benjamin Marsh). In 1928, he hired an ethnologist and ethnobotanical specialist, Melvin Gilmore. Guthe became the North American archaeologist. Guthe wanted the Museum to be a research museum above all else. To develop the collections in the Museum of Anthropology, Guthe championed obtaining them by scientific excavation methods. This required complete documentation in the field. Similarly, he discouraged donations that were not accompanied by provenience information to enable them to be used for comparative purposes. As a result of Guthe's guidance, the Museum of Anthropology has one of the best-documented research collections of any in American university museums. Guthe had pedagogical ideas about the role of museums in teaching anthropology. He believed that students should learn about culture by studying museum collections. He taught the first formal anthropology course at Michigan—Museum Techniques. Further, he advocated student use of the collections for hands-on research. At the same time, he did not want the Museum used for introductory or service teaching in anthropology. Courses of this sort, he believed, were best handled by a separate department of anthropology, which, in 1928, with a functioning anthropology museum in place, the University should now have. In 1929, Guthe founded the Department of Anthropology and became the first chair. It was Guthe's desire to have research conducted in the Museum and general anthropology taught in a teaching department. He did not anticipate that immediately the anthropology faculty would engage in research independent of the Museum. All archaeology continued to be centered in the Museum but soon most ethnology and physical anthropology research was conducted in the Department. Guthe developed an exceptionally strong archaeology program in the Museum. He had geographical area collections from North America, the Great Lakes, Asia, and Europe. He had special laboratories for the analyses of archaeological material and they became a national archaeological resource. The Ethnobotanical Laboratory (started in 1929) and the Ceramic Repository (started in 1931) issued invitations for archaeologists to send material for identification. Even with the Great Depression crippling Michigan's economy, Guthe's entrepreneurial talents came to the fore. He sought support from the National Resource Council, the University, and Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical magnate with a personal interest in archaeology, to fund specialized collection research by graduate students. Under Guthe's direction, Michigan became a national leader in archaeology, supported pioneering research with its collections, and had analytical laboratories unavailable elsewhere. Despite this activity, Guthe never forgot the students. He received grants to support graduate students and annual federal relief funds to provide employment for numerous undergraduate students to work with collections in the Museum.          James B. Griffin,    1939 LMVS  project After Guthe left the University in 1944, James B. Griffin became interim director of the Museum of Anthropology and director in 1946. He continued Guthe's commitment to fieldwork, to research with well-documented collections, and to student research in the Museum. His agenda, however, included two other important new directions. First, he worked to improve the status of Museum curators. The positions were ranked to parallel academic positions and salaries were improved. When the museums were transferred in 1954 from the Provost's Office to the College, LSA Dean Odegaard accepted them enthusiastically because of the quality of the collections and the reputations of the curators. Griffin supported the "Odegaard Plan" and assisted its immediate implementation in the Museum of Anthropology. According to this plan, curators received tenure in an academic department, not in a museum. The museum and academic department would search open museum positions cooperatively. Curators would teach half the total courses of academic faculty and spend the remaining time curating collections and researching scholarly problems. The salaries would be split equally during the academic year by a department and a museum. The success of this plan led to its acceptance by other university museums across the country. Basically, Odegaard created the "academic-curator" in LSA. Unlike other curators on campus with positions only in a museum, he arranged faculty positions for LSA curators that assured a teaching obligation by the curators, gave the employment security enjoyed by tenure track faculty members, and provided the status of a professorial appointment. The second important contribution of Griffin was to expand the Museum's curator positions to areas outside the United States and to hire a physical anthropologist. He added positions in Latin America and the Middle East. Griffin joined other anthropologists to have the National Science Foundation include anthropology as a separate program. This effort was very successful and without substantial university support, Griffin encouraged curators to apply there to fund major field research projects. Under Griffin, the Museum of Anthropology maintained its national reputation and gained international recognition.    Carl Hutterer, Kent Flannery, Henry Wright, Chris Pebbles, Jeff Parsons, Bob Whallon, Richard Ford, Kamer Aga-Ogla, Jimmy Griffin, Volney Jones, C. Loring Brace - 1975. After Griffin retired, subsequent directors added additional positions in Highland Latin America, West Africa, and Geoarchaeology. The Museum sponsors a specialized Latin America Ethnohistory Library, cooperates with other University departments for research opportunities to analyze collections and develop exhibits highlighting research on the collections, and continues to strengthen its collections through archaeological field work.   Back to top