Treasures of Clay - page 5

 “It was really fun,” she remembers with a laugh. But more importantly, “We were the only collection in the state of Arizona to become an official project.” (The other Arizona designees, including the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, are buildings.)

The Treasures designation helped trigger some federal cash through a separate grant. Not to be outdone, last year Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano visited the museum, and declared the entire Southwest Whole Vessel Pottery Collection an “Arizona Treasure.”

Odegaard is naturally delighted by the new facilities (“it’s a win-win for the museum”) but perhaps even more important is the hard work yet to come in the lab.

“We’re going through every one of the 20,000 pots in the collection,” she says.  “Every one will be assessed. The treatment of the pottery is not done yet. We’ll work on that for several years.”

Contemporary Hopi Design

The museum is the official state repository for archaeological materials dug up on Arizona’s public lands, so new pieces come in continuously. And conversely, in accordance with the law, the museum is repatriating numerous artifacts back to the Indian communities they came from. Even though the collection is partly in flux, every piece will be thoroughly documented and evaluated, and repaired when possible.

“We always do photo-documentation of any change and write it up,” Odegaard says. And the condition of the pots varies widely.

“Three-quarters of the material (in the collection) is old, from archaeological digs, and spent hundreds of years underground.”