Trip to Harvard Peabody Museam!!!!

Today was a an awesome day we took a trip to Harvard Peabody Museum. First thing we did was a small activity, we learned a little about measuring the stuff given to us . We had pipes and old pottery found at Harvard square. Second we stoped to learn about Lewis and  Clark. Something that I learned was that they were not like other english men, they found Natives interesting and fascinating! Third we took a small tour of the differnt kind of Natives. The last floor was based on south America and how It was like the others. South americans had many believes. Something they believed in was ”Dias De los muertos”. It was basically honoring the dead and what great they did when they were alive. Finally we arrived at the gift shop, where some of us took some memories home to keep in mind the Harvard Peabody museum!!!!

The wonderful treasury-The Harvard Peabody Museum

July 16th 2008
The Harvard Peabody Museum
I have a fantastic time in the Harvard Peabody Museum. It was a really grand and nice building. Also, it was the oldest museum in North America. I was really excited to explore the treasure in this wonderful museum.
We have a group activity in a secret room. I have learned how to use information and tools to help me dating a particular artifact. I also realized that information is really important to an archeologist. For example, if I didn’t know the characteristics of each period bottle. I won’t be able to date them easily.
After, we went to the Harvard yard. Teacher told me that most of the artifacts were related to foods, such as bowls and animals bones. In contrast, there were not so many things about Academic. The only thing they found was lab pencil. I think it was really interesting, because Harvard was a well-known great college. How come it has such a different life style in 17th century?
As soon as we finished lunch, we went back to the Harvard Peabody Museum. There were so much amazing and cool materials inside. Through the tour in the Museum, I have learned more about the Fur trade. For example, Indians used animals’ hides to trade for metal tools, firearms, clothing, tobacco and glass beads. In addition, traders recognized the business of hide trading, so traders created a market for buffalo hides.
There were also lots of cute and valuable artifacts, which I like, in the museum. For example, the Ceramic Owl (Zuni), founded 70 years earlier (1953-1959). It was made for tourist trade; also represent the highest point in the development of such owl to trade. The second one was the Saliko Mana, Salako Maiden. It was founded in 1892 by Thomas V. Keam prior. This doll was wearing a wool dress with a sash. Its shawl was made of white cotton with wool at the end.
We also went to learn about the Latin American. The Main Group, Copan in 8th century. They built large plaza with enormous stone monuments. They also built up zone, Acropolis, included numerous buildings with very complicated sculpt in the front of the buildings. Also, the Altar Q was the new monument of the last great ruler of Copan.
Lastly, we went to a nature museum. Although it was not our main purpose of visiting the Harvard Peabody Museum, but I really have lots of fun there. The ancient animals bones and those amazing creatures were my favorite. I really like to explore and learn more about them, but reluctantly, time was not available. Even though I just browsed through quickly, those mysterious creatures were still in my mind, I hope I will have chance to visit them again.
Gift shop was our last stop. I have bought some souvenirs and post card for my families. I really enjoyed the time in Harvard Peabody museum, next time if my parents came to visit me; I am going to bring them to this amazing treasury.

Harvard Peabody Museum

Today we were given the privilege to go to Harvard University to visit the Peabody museum there. The Peabody museum in Harvard is built by the uncle of Robert Peabody who built the Peabody in Andover. We arrived at Harvard square around 9:15 this morning in our two minivans full of excited people. We had a long walk from the parking place to the Peabody museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the second we stepped into the building, we were revived from our grumpiness that developed from the hot weather and the long walk. After a break with some information, we climbed three flights of stairs to a room where we are grouped into two groups. First our group received a card board box with bags of pipes that were dug up from the Harvard Yard along with many other things like beer bottles and food waste. Then, we learned how to date the pipes by how wide the hole in the pipe is, the wider the hole, the older the pipe. After we all had a turn with the pipe exercise, we were given beer bottle shards and pictures of whole beer bottles. After identifying all the shards into the three groups-oldest, middle, and youngest we went outside to take a tour inside Harvard Yard.

After the long walk we had in Harvard Yard, we found a shady spot in a park and had our “delicious” lunch (turkey sandwich, water, orange, chips, etc.). When we finished both our lunch and our long talk about our favorite food (which made the packed lunch seem nasty), we set out for the Peabody museum for a real tour. We went to the Lewis and Clark exhibit first. It was mainly about the affect of European-especially Lewis and Clark-on the Native Americans and vise versa. The main tradition that was performed between the Europeans and the Native Americans is the costume of gift giving. The gift most often given to others by Native Americans are robes made of animal skin. One of the most interesting artifacts I found in this exhibit is a huge robe made out of bison pelt with a picture of warfare going on on the pelt. Because of the time limit, we were soon forced to go to the next exhibit.

The next exhibit was on the North America Indians in general but I think its theme is the change of the Americans and how the modern culture and the Indian culture are mixed together. The main logo for this exhibit is a picture of an Indian in their traditional clothes and tools but with an I-pod in one hand and earphones in his ears. It’s a very interesting logo that shows how well the cultures have mixed together but it also means that we need to focus more on the Indian culture so it does not disappear over time. There were miniature models of Indian villages along the exhibit. The first one was more like the original village with the holes in the roof for smoke and the palisade around some areas of the village. Then when you walk more into the exhibit, the houses seems more European like. Even though it did not say it was later in the history, I think it was showing that the houses of the Indians are being affected by the European designs. We did not have much time before we had to go to the third floor to learn about the Latin Americans (Mesoamerican).

The Mesoamericans-also called Latin Americans-is a very interesting tribe. They lived mainly in the Central and Southern Americans in an area full of gold. The size of their civilization is also much larger than the ones in Northern America. With their huge mines, trading is a very big part of their economy. However, the big parts of their trading business is not metals but stone for tools, fine stones, shell and feather for costumes. With their rich land and plentiful resources, the Mesoamericans throve well during their times.

Passing the climate change exhibit, we arrived at the glass flowers. As we walked into the room, we were astounded by the many “flowers” that were sealed into the glass cabinets. All of the flowers in this room are made of glass, but they looked very real. After spending 10 minutes in this room, we were lead into the gift shop and before we noticed, we were on our car ride home.

What I Saw at Harvard

What I Saw at Harvard

Today, July 16, 2008, I went to see the Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Harvard. I had a great time, but I learned many non archaeological answers when I while I was there. One of them was the Harvard is the oldest college in the United States. It was also the fist college the housed Native Americans. Harvard was founded in the year 1636. It started to accept Native Americans in the 1650’s. Harvard University was named after John Harvard, who when he died, donated his library to the school. The school was named after him in his honor. Many more things is that the first printing press in the US was used at Harvard and the printing press printed the first bible in Algonquian language. I learned all of these things in the duration of 5-10 minutes.

At the beginning of the trip, when we first got there, we didn’t take a tour. Instead we did a little activity. This activity involved pieces of wine bottles and pieces of tobacco pipes. We got to date the wine bottles and thee pipes. The latest pipe I got was from the 1800’s. The earliest pipe stem was from the early 1600’s. It was awesome to get to date the objects. I had a blast!

Then we took a tour of Harvard Yard, where some students excavated to see if they could find the Indian College. They did not find it, but it must have been fun to do it. The oldest building there was from 1720. Some Revolutionary War Soldiers even camped out there! The trip was very informative.

We then ate lunch. Then we did take a tour of the museum and it was awesome. The first room I visited was the Lewis and Clark room. There were a lot of interesting facts about there journey. They made some weird things, but they even made a necklace, out a bear’s claws. It was scary. They also made a quiver out of ravens, four to be exact. They used signs to mark there way, too.

Then we visited the Native American Room. It rocked! They had an exhibit where they talked about modern Indians. Indians have designed skateboards and shoes, and some are DJ’s and even rappers. Native Americans can have any jobs that they want. The older Native Americans made many things, and one of the things that they were exceptionally good at was making canoes. They made many canoes, but they also made totem poles. The totem poles that they made were all hand carved and that is pretty amazing.

Lastly, we visited the room associated with Latin America. It was awesome. One group of people from Latin America was the Copan people. They were around in the 8^th century and they had a very nice city. Another thing is that some of the projectile points are longer than I am used to. They also believed in deities, like the Maize Deity. They often made statues of these deities. They exhibits were great.

The last exhibit was the Glass Flowers, and that exhibit I can only describe in a picture:

Trip to Harvard

Harvard is a very fun and educational environment where you can learn many new things. During our trip we learned about and visited a variety of places. We learned a bout the Indian College, where it might be, the Harvard yard dig, and we visited the Harvard Peabody Museum. All of these activities were very fun and throughout the day I learned numerous facts.

Trip To HARVARD PEABODY MUSEUM

My trip to the Harvard Peabody Museum was… ( I am not going to say awesome again), utterly fantastic!!! I saw lots of things. In the morning, we had sort of a class with the museum curators, learning about how to date pipes and alcohol bottles. I learned that thicker the diameter of the pipe, the older it was dated to. And for the wine bottles, the thicker and shorter they were, the older they were. Then the curator toured us around the Harvard campus, showing us the units that were excavated during the Harvard Yard dig couple of years ago.

Journey to the Peabody Museum

As I climbed the steps to the fourth story of the Harvard Peabody Museum, I was wondering what our agenda was for that day. When we reached the top floor, I saw two tables in front of me. On those tables, we analyzed and carefully dated artifacts that were excavated at Harvard Yard such as wine bottles and pipes. This exercise was something that really intrigued me, for I have never learned how to date artifacts by just looking at them.

HARVARD PEABODY!!!! (George, not Robert)

P7160196

Originally uploaded by sameersangal

Today, we went to Harvard University! I think it’s our nations first university, and the first one to educate Native Americans. But that’s not important. Anyway, the place in particular we went was the Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. Not that impressive from the outside, but super-cool on the inside.

Peabody Museum @ Harvard

Today we went to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The museum is owned by Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although I live in Massachusetts, I have never visited Harvard before. I kinda liked it, but I felt that this visit wasn’t as interactive as our other field trips. Another downside to the trip was all the walking we did. Honestly, this trip wasn’t the greatest, but at least I got to go to Harvard.

My Trip to Harvard and the Peabody Museum

My Trip to Harvard and the Peabody Museum

My trip to Harvard and the Peabody Museum located on their campus was great! I learned many things about Old Harvard and many new topics about history. We began at the Peabody Museum and started out with an activity about wine bottles and pipe stems fond at an excavation site on Harvard Campus. We learned how to date the pipes and wine bottles with periods of time. For example, one pipe stem could have been a certain period of time based on the diameter of its inside, the wider the inside, the younger it was. Wine bottles changed overtime at Harvard, when we were given our worksheet it had 3 drawings of different wine bottles from 3 different periods of time. We learned a lot about Harvard.