Museum Collections Research Articles

Acknowledging the Colonial Bias in Early Museum Collection Records

As a Māori museum professional, the writer has encountered inaccuracies in the descriptions of Māori material within museum collection records. These inaccuracies not only hinder access but may also perpetuate misconceptions about indigenous communities. Inaccurate records render artefacts less accessible to researchers and community members. In addition to factual accuracy, cultural context is paramount. The writer advocates for museums to actively engage with indigenous cultural knowledge holders to improve collection records and in doing so ensure that indigenous communities can reconnect with their material culture.

A SCALABLE APPROACH FOR AUTOMATING SCAN-TO-BIM PROCESSES IN THE HERITAGE FIELD

Abstract. In recent years, the demand for flexible and sustainable strategies in digitization processes has represented a significant challenge for the heritage documentation research community. In particular, the tasks of parametric modelling and AI-based semantic enrichment operations, necessary but traditionally time-consuming, is extremely onerous from a user-oriented perspective. Many efforts of the research community have been dedicated to enhancing efficiency through automation, and one of the possible solutions is represented by the employment of machine learning strategies. This study introduces an innovative methodology that integrates Visual Programming Language platforms and 3D Python libraries, thereby implementing the Scan-to-BIM approach. Two case studies - characterized by varying scales, resolutions, and accuracies - have been analysed to validate the proposed pipeline, demonstrating its flexibility and scalability across architectural objects and archaeological assets belonging to museum collections. The workflow involves several steps, starting from classified 3D and 2D data segmented using machine learning techniques with the aim of managing semantically enriched reality-based data in BIM/HBIM environment without scarifying accuracy criteria. Results highlight the methodology's efficiency and adaptability in diverse contexts, offering a compelling alternative to labour-intensive Scan-to-BIM processes. Ultimately, this methodology contributes to the automation in cultural heritage digitisation, underlining the need for comprehensive standards and protocols in this dynamic domain.

The terrestrial gastropods in three Dodecanese islands, Rhodes, Symi, Chalki (Aegean Sea, Greece)

Rhodes, Symi and Chalki are three islands with different characteristics in the southeastern part of the Aegean Sea. In this work, we present their complete land snail fauna based on recent survey, samples from the collections of the Natural History Museum of Crete and a thorough bibliographic review. We report 67 land snail species from Rhodes, 34 species from Symi, and 32 from Chalki, with 4, 20 and 9 new records for each island, respectively. Also, one species has been added to the malacofauna of Greece, while many names, which were mentioned mainly in the 19th century, have been clarified, synonymised or abolished from the lists of the islands. Our results once again demonstrate the importance of the reproductive system as a tool for reliable assessment of the taxonomy of Aegean land snails, and that sampling during the rainy season should be the preferred methodological approach for collecting land snails in the Greek islands.

Fauna of some families of Coleoptera (Insecta) in the Republic of Mordovia (Russia).

Biodiversity conservation is an important goal of most ecosystem management efforts. Therefore, proper monitoring of biodiversity requires constant attention. Coleoptera should be monitored as an essential part of the overall biodiversity. Special monitoring is needed for families that are active as predators (e.g. Coccinellidae) or are saproxylic species (e.g. Elateridae and Cerambycidae). The aim of the research is to describe the fauna of seven families of Coleoptera (Elateridae, Drilidae, Lycidae, Lampyridae, Cantharidae, Coccinellidae and Cerambycidae) of the Republic of Mordovia (the centre of the European part of Russia). The results are based on faunistic research, the main part of which was carried out in April-October 2007-2023 and on material from museum collections. The collecting was made using several different methods (by hand, light trapping, on different lures, into pitfall traps etc.). GPS coordinates are given for each faunistic record. The dataset contains information on seven species new to the region: Malthodesflavoguttatus Kiesenwetter, 1852, Malthodesminimus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Cantharidae); Scymnusrubromaculatus (Goeze, 1777) (Coccinellidae); Anoploderarufipesventralis Heyden, 1886, Tragosomadepsarium (Linnaeus, 1767), Xylotrechusarvicola (Olivier, 1795) and Xylotrechusibex (Gebler, 1825) (Cerambycidae).

Microarchitecture of the penis bone (baculum) of a seal: A 3D morphometric examination using synchrotron and laboratory micro-computed tomography.

We examined the ultrastructure of the mammalian os penis at the high-resolution synchrotron level. Previously, bacular microanatomy had only been investigated histologically. We studied the baculum of the harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), in which the baculum varies more in size and shape than does a mechanically constrained bone (humerus). We (1) investigated the microarchitecture of bacula and humeri from the same seal specimens, and (2) described changes in bone micro- and macro-morphology associated with age (n = 15, age range = 1-35 years) and bone type. We analyzed cross-sectional geometry non-destructively through laboratory micro-computed tomography. We suggest that the midshaft may resist axial compression while the proximal region may resist torsion, based on measurements of cross-sectional and cortical areas, perimeter, ratio of maximum and minimum moments of inertia, and polar moment of inertia. In addition, midshaft bacula may be less mechanosensitive than humeri, based on microstructural variables (e.g., volume, surface area, diameter associated with lacunae and cortical porosity) analyzed across age groupings. Our findings related to the microarchitecture of the pinniped baculum provide a basis for further studies on development, mechanical properties, functions, and adaptations in this and other pinniped species. Our use of a multi-modal imaging approach was minimally destructive for reproducible and accurate comparison of three-dimensional bone ultrastructure. Such methods, coupled with multidisciplinary analyses, enable diverse studies of bone biology, life history, and evolution using museum collections.

New Contributions Regarding the Barniz de Pasto Collection at the Museo de América, Madrid

This article describes the objects in the barniz de Pasto collection at the Museo de América, Madrid. The barniz de Pasto technique will be described, as well as the historical documentary sources that have previously discussed this varnish. The article will also mention the historical reasons why Spain is the European country in which the greatest number of objects decorated with varnish have been found, in both religious and private collections. The main body of the article discusses all the barniz de Pasto objects held in the Museum collection, focuses on the history of their arrival at the Museum, and investigates their possible origin, with the help of ample photographs. The final section examines the Museum’s three most recent acquisitions, completed in the second half of 2022, in detail.

PIXE analysis of Late Bronze Age situlae from the eponymous Hajdúböszörmény-Csege-halom I hoard and Sényő-Dajkahegy, Northeastern Hungary

The paper introduces the particle-induced X-ray emission analysis (PIXE) of two Hajdúböszörmény-type situlae from the eponymous Hajdúböszörmény I hoard (collection of the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest) and Sényő (collection of the Jósa András Museum, Nyíregyháza). Both situlae are representative types of the period between 1080 and 960 BC, Ha B1, or the ‘Hajdúböszörmény hoard horizon’ of the Hungarian Late Bronze Age. The obtained results are significant in that they are the very first to characterise the classic Hajdúböszörmény-type situla from their core distribution area, i.e., the region where this metal vessel type was presumably produced. The paper is focused on a description of the elemental composition of these tin bronze vessels, with particular attention on the grouping of their accompanying elements and the ratio of tin. The PIXE results suggest that a rather homogenous raw material was used to produce and repair these objects, which can be correlated with the CG16 Copper Group. The ratio of tin was relatively high, mostly around 9–10 wt%; low values were only identified on one of the repaired parts of the Sényő situla and a secondarily attached copper rivet.

An overview of ethnographic sources for the study of agriculture in medieval Novgorod

The subject of this article is a set of ethnographic sources related to agricultural activities. This complex includes items from the expositions of ethnographic museums, photographs from the collections of local historians and the Internet, as well as the autobiography of the peasant I.S. Karpov. The use of ethnographic sources for the study of agricultural activities in the Middle Ages is extremely important due to the fact that archaeological material does not always reach our days in complete preservation. For example, such complex devices as ploughing implements in archaeological collections only have iron tips of their working parts, therefore, it is necessary to refer to ethnographic materials to restore their appearance. The same can be said about the technology of cultivating the land. To select the necessary material for this study, the works of Russian ethnographers and archaeologists devoted to the history of agriculture and folklore were studied. A selection of photographic materials from the collections of local historians and publicly available photographs from the Internet was also carried out. The article presents an overview of various types of ethnographic materials and the experience of their application for the reconstruction of agricultural activities of the inhabitants of medieval Novgorod according to archaeological data. The main contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the expansion of the range of ethnographic sources, which are most often involved in this kind of research. In this work, the experience of using not only physical material and photographs from the collections of ethnographic museums, but also folklore, was demonstrated for the reconstruction of agricultural processes that cannot be interpreted according to archaeological data. Traditional economic activities such as farming, hunting or various crafts are rooted in the deep past and retain their characteristics for a long time. This feature allows researchers to fully reconstruct certain processes about which only archaeological evidence has been preserved, which do not always reach our days in full.

Manuscripts on the Warfare from the Collection of the Asiatic Museum

In the article a short survey of ϐive works on warfare from the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences is given. Those manuscripts were received by the Asiatic Museum (AM) from AD 1825 to AD 1934 and originate in such well-known collections, as that of J.-B. L. J. Rousseau, the Library of the Institute of Oriental Languages of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lake Van gathering. The latest receipt took place from the Archaeographic Mission of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the Volga region. The copy known ubder shelf-mark C 686 was a donation of the Russian diplomat Apollinaire P. Bouteneff (AD 1834). The main goal of the article consists in formulating the most complete idea of time and circumstances of entering the above-mentioned works into the collection of the AM, of the history of their occurrence and in creating the codicological description of every manuscript on the basis of materials and documents from the Archives of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and St. Petersburg Branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, including those which have not been published yet.

In-situ Artefact Documentation of Underwater Cultural Heritage Using Third-Party Data

Abstract Large underwater construction projects generate hundreds of potential cultural heritage objects requiring archaeological assessment and – potentially – mitigation. Some can easily be avoided in planning, whereas others cannot. Singular objects tend to present a dilemma in heritage management: their archaeological significance tends to lie in their association to an – at the time of finding – unknown context rather than in the object itself. Though these objects may be protected by heritage legislation, they are often undesired in museum collections, and even if destined for disposal, they can only be salvaged and documented at significant cost. Their cultural heritage ‘value’ is often, though mostly tacitly, considered low or at least undecided. We argue that in-situ preservation by record can be a viable solution for such objects, provided that appropriate documentation methods are employed. Fortunately, these objects are often targeted by other types of pre-construction surveys and inspections, usually conducted using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), making hours of third-party video footage available to the archaeologist. This article examines if existing third-party video inspection data can be used towards acceptable archaeological recording without compromising the cost-efficiency so crucial to the industry. Hence, the focus of this article is the typical industry-standard inspection-, work class-, or even low-end hobby-ROV (from where the jump to legacy data or, indeed, crowdsourcing is obvious), suggesting a few simple amendments to data acquisition specifications which may potentially save the cost of a dedicated archaeological inspection campaign.

Pentingnya Konservasi Preventif Pada Benda-Benda Koleksi di Museum Kasunanan Keraton Surakarta

Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum is a private museum which contains the Palace's private collections. Many of them are now damaged, dusty, and even destroyed by age. Preventive conservation is used to prevent and minimize damage to museum collections. This research aims to discuss damage to museum collections and preventive conservation management that has been taking place at the Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum. Method used in this research is descriptive with kualitatif aproach method with interviews, observation and literature studies to collect data and use simple analysis. The results found that many collections in the Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum were unkempt and dusty. The preventive conservation carried out so far has only been less than optimal in terms of cleaning. The lack of available resources is also a factor in preventing preventive conservation efforts from running well.

Understanding and Interpretation of Indonesian Museum Collections on Culture And People in The Archipelago

Museum Indonesia is one of the many museums in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. This Indonesian Museum is an anthropology museum where in this museum there is knowledge about culture and humans, especially humans in the archipelago. Cultural tourism is part of tourism as a whole. Cultural tourism deals with a region's culture, lifestyle, history, art, architecture, religion and other elements that makeup residents' way of life in a geographical area. This article will discuss the understanding and interpretation of culture and humans in Nusantara, Indonesia.

Collecting whales: processes and biases in Nordic museum collections.

Whales are unique museum objects that have entered collections in many ways and for different reasons. This work studies three Nordic natural history museum collections in Norway and Denmark with more than 2,500 whale specimens in total, and gathers the available biological and collection data on the specimens, which include skeletal elements, foetuses and organs preserved in ethanol or formalin, and a few dry-preserved organs. It finds that influx of specimens, which were mainly locally common species that were hunted, to the collections, mainly happened in the latest 1800s and earliest 1900s, fuelled by research trends, nation building, local whaling, and colonial mechanisms. Norway was a major whaling nation, but the largest hunt for whales in the Southern Ocean in the mid-1900s is not reflected in the Norwegian museum collections, probably because of the commercial focus of the whaling industry and logistical challenges, combined with limited research interest in zoological specimens at that time. The results demonstrate that it is important to understand these processes and the resulting biases for future research, outreach, and conservation.

Original, Fake, or a Little of Both? On the Question of the Authenticity of a Pandurina by Giovanni Smorsone

The Museum collection of the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung in Berlin houses a pandurina built by Giovanni Smorsone. However, this instrument came to the museum from within the circle of a violin forger. Investigations have proved that it is not a forgery. Nevertheless, alterations were found that do not match the original state of the instrument.

Craniometric variation and taxonomic boundaries in the Madras Treeshrew (Scandentia, Tupaiidae: Anathana ellioti [Waterhouse, 1850]) from India

The Madras Treeshrew, Anathana ellioti (Waterhouse, 1850), is a small, poorly studied mammal from South Asia. It is the only treeshrew found across the southern half of the Indian subcontinent and is the westernmost member of its order (Scandentia). The phylogenetic relationship between Anathana and its putative sister genus, Tupaia, remains unresolved, and the morphological differences between these two genera have yet to be analyzed with craniometric data. Here we describe some features that distinguish Anathana from other treeshrews. However, our comparative morphometric analyses reveal that Anathana overlaps with Tupaia in morphospace; it is smaller than most species (including the only other species found on the Indian mainland, T. belangeri) but larger than T. minor, Dendrogale melanura, and Ptilocercus lowii. At the infraspecific level, there is some separation between eastern and western populations, but this requires further investigation with larger sample sizes. Unfortunately, Anathana is disproportionately scarce in museum collections relative to other scandentians, and additional biological surveys across South India will be critical for future research on the taxonomy, distribution, and conservation of this elusive taxon.

Problems of digitalisation of monuments and electronic records of museum collections

The article is devoted to the current problems of domestic museums regarding the preservation, research, and popularization of national cultural heritage under the conditions of globalization, informatization, and digital transformation of society. The author considers the advantages and problems associated with digitizing monuments and electronic accounting of museum collections. The main goal of digital accounting and digitization of exhibits is to increase accessibility and popularization of museums, to safely storage the collections, to promote their scientific analysis and to interpret and expand opportunities for educational and cultural activities, as well as to solve problems of technical, ethical, social, legal and methodological nature that arise in the process of using digital technologies in museum business. The author offers recommendations for their solution based on the analysis of world and domestic experience, scientific sources and normative documents, as well as on his own observations. The author justifies the expediency of using an electronic accounting system for museum funds, which contributes to time economy and data protection, preservation of exhibits, and facilitates filling in and access to scientific documentation. Special attention is paid to the digitization of museum collections in the conditions of martial law and the increased threat of physical destruction of museum exhibits. In this regard, the author substantiated the priority criteria for selecting fund items for digitization, formed in the form of a graphical logical sequence. The peculiarities of the human resources aspect of digitalisation are taken into account.

Investigating Pre-Columbian Gold and Copper in Costa Rica – Ores, Mines and Artefact Production

The wealth of pre-Columbian gold, copper and guanín (an alloy consisting mainly of gold and copper; also tumbaga) artwork of Costa Rica suggests that exploitation of its abundant ore deposits goes back way before the Spanish conquest. The name of Costa Rica itself in fact alludes to the large numbers of golden metal objects worn by the indigenous peoples upon arrival of the conquistadors. Up to now, however, very little is known about pre-Columbian mining in the country or the raw material provenance of these artefacts.In a transdisciplinary project, we aim to reconstruct the metallurgical process chain by combining (mining) archaeological research with geochemical analysis of local ores and metal artefacts using a combination of different techniques. We identified four major gold and copper districts with different mineralisation types, which are the focus of our fieldwork-based research. They are surveyed for potential signs of pre-Columbian metal production and sampled for ores and their processing remains. On the other side of the process chain, we focus on the metal artefacts in museum collections. They are systematically registered in a database, which serves as a basis to identify correlations with the geochemical signatures of the artefacts, and to retrace potential links to possible areas of origin or different workshops. Once the necessary basic data have been collected, we will focus on economic and socio-cultural aspects of metal production and circulation. The results from Costa Rica will be put into perspective of New World early metallurgy and can provide a starting point for future research between Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian region.

Striped Ichthyophis Fitzinger, 1826 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Ichthyophiidae) from the Western Ghats of peninsular India in the collection of London's Natural History Museum and their implications for taxonomy and distribution

Striped Ichthyophis Fitzinger, 1826 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Ichthyophiidae) from the Western Ghats of peninsular India in the collection of London's Natural History Museum and their implications for taxonomy and distribution

Reptiles and their conservation in south-west Ukraine

AbstractKnowledge of the spatial distribution of reptiles is essential for decision-making in conservation under future climate change scenarios. We present a new compilation of reptile records for Odesa Oblast (i.e. province), south-west Ukraine. We compiled 662 records: 200 from our own research during 2012–2022, 362 from the published literature, 73 from public databases and 27 from museum collections. Fourteen native species of reptile (one species of Emydidae, four of Lacertidae, one of Anguidae, six of Colubridae and two of Viperidae) have been recorded in Odesa Oblast but the distribution of several are poorly known and/or records have rarely been published. We also report four introduced reptile species (one each of Emydidae, Gekkonidae, Lacertidae and Anguidae). We present the data in a grid of 462 10 × 10 km cells covering the oblast. In this compilation we did not record any new species, but our records include previously unreported localities for some species. Species richness was highest in the areas along the Black Sea, in protected areas. The main threats to the reptiles in Odesa Oblast are the alteration and degradation of habitats, military action, uncontrolled pressure from infrastructure projects and the presence of invasive species.

Subtle Sound Design: Designing for Experience Blend in a Historic House Museum

In this article, we present and discuss a user-study prototype, developed for the Bakkehuset historic house museum in Copenhagen. We examine how the prototype—a digital sound installation—can expand visitors’ experiences of the house and offer encounters with immaterial cultural heritage. Historic house museums often hold back on utilizing digital communication tools inside the houses, since a central purpose of this type of museum is to preserve an original environment. Digital communication tools, however, hold great potential for facilitating rich encounters with cultural heritage and in particular with the immaterial aspects of museum collections and their histories. In this article, we present our design steps and choices, aiming at subtly and seamlessly adding a digital dimension to a historic house. Based on qualitative interviews, we evaluate how the sound installation at Bakkehuset is sensed, interpreted, and used by visitors as part of their museum experience. In turn, we shed light on the historic house museum as a distinct design context for designing hybrid visitor experiences and point to the potentials of digital communication tools in this context.