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MEETING
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REOPENS

ISRAEL IN
EGYPT:
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DINOSAURS

CHINA
BETWEEN |
REVOLUTIONS |

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Bettmann Archive

The Bulletin of the Field Museum of Natural History

Two new exhibits:
Photos of China
between its revolu-
tions; modern works
by Maori artists

The Museum has
received $1 million
to support new
approaches to
exhibit development.

MAORI MEETING

ith a ceremony at dawn on
March 9 to consecrate the
only outpost of Maori culture
in the New World, more than
30 Maori elders and dignitaries from New
Zealand will begin five days of events culmi-
nating in the public reopening on March 13 of
“Ruatepupuke: A Maori Meeting House.”

The elaborately carved and decorated 19th-
century meeting house has been renovated and
moved to the Museum’s second floor west
wing, adjacent to the exhibits on Pacific island
habitats and cultures. Aotearoa, the Maori

ISRAEL
IN EGYPT

By Frank J. Yurco
Consultant in Egyptology
Field Museum

0 one disputes the power of the Exo-
dus story as an inspiration to the
Jews and other peoples, especially
African Americans, in their histori-
cal struggles for freedom and self-determina-
tion. But as Jews around the world discuss the
familiar story at their Passover seder tables in
April — viewpoints range from the downright
skeptical to the strictly fundamentalist — it
may be of interest to consider what Egyptian
history and Syro-Palestinian archaeology can
tell us about the actual events of that period.
The Old Testament books of Exodus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and
Samuel recount the progress of the Hebrews
from being guests and then slaves in Egypt,
through a period of wandering and nation-
building in the wilderness, and finally to the
conquest of the Promised Land and establish-
ment of the Kingdom of Israel. The non-Bibli-

The 16th annual
Margaret Mead Film
Festival: recent
ethnographic films
from many lands.

March and April
events — lectures,
performances,
exhibit openings,
meetings & more

name for what is now New
Zealand, was settled by their Poly-
nesian ancestors around 900
A.D.

Maori scholars and
artists have been working
with Field Museum staff for
the past year and a half to restore
the 55-foot-long house. New wall
panels have been woven
and some new carvings
have been done to

(Continued on page 9)

cal record is sketchy, but we can confidently
place the Israelites in the hill country of
Canaan, poised to attack the Canaanites and
Philistines on the coast below, at a time that
accords with the Biblical account. And while
there is no specific hieroglyphic record of the
Hebrews living in or leaving Egypt, the facts of
Egyptian history at least preserve the plausibili-
ty of the Exodus story.

Israel in Canaan

The earliest known mention of Israel other
than the Biblical texts occurs on the stela of
Pharaoh Merenptah (1212-1202 B.C.) of
Dynasty XIX, Catalog No. 34025 in the Cairo
Museum, the so-called “Israel Stela.” In the
closing two lines, the pharaoh recounts his vic-
tories: “Now that Libya is ruined, the Hittites
remain at peace; plundered is Canaan with
every woe; Ashkelon was overcome, Gezer
was captured; Yeno’am was made non-exis-
tent, Israel is laid waste, his seed is not. Kharu
[Syria] is become a widow because of Egypt.
All lands have united in peace.”
In the 1970s, while

working in the temple of

Amun at Karnak, I identi-

fied a set of battle reliefs
on the transverse axis of
the outer western wall of a
court named the Cour de la
Cachette. These were long
thought to have been
carved by Ramesses II, but
in fact they are reliefs of
his successor, Merenptah.
Merenptah’s identifying
cartouches on the reliefs
were usurped by the
squabbling pharaohs of
later Dynasty XIX, leading
scholars astray. Further
complicating matters, the
text of the great Peace

e Field

March/April 1993

WHO WAS
THAT MASKED MAN?

A man and a woman in a cage . . . a strange
agglomeration of “primitive” and high-tech
paraphernalia. . . . Many visitors were
amused, but others were outraged when
they learned the truth .

— Story, Page 3

DINOSAUR
POSES

Story on page 10

Albertosaurus lunges at a
victim. In its new pose,
your favorite dinosaur
teaches new lessons about §
dinosaur anatomy and
physiology.

Diane Alexander White / GN86458.11

Treaty of Ramesses II with the Hittites is situ-
ated between the battle scenes, and in one bat-
tle scene, the figure of a prince named Kha-
emwast appears, seemingly the famous son of
Ramesses II.

But once I had demonstrated that the car-
touches were originally those of Merenptah,
my mind sped back to the “Israel Stela.” Could
that inscription and the battle reliefs of
Merenptah represent the same events? The bat-
tle reliefs include four scenes, three against
fortified cities and one against a people
dwelling in open, hilly country, with no forti-
fied town. The first battle scene, reading from
right to left, showed pharaoh attacking the town
of Ashkelon.

And with that came an epiphany:
Merenptah’s reliefs matched exactly the Israel
Stela’s retrospective final two-line passage.
These reliefs thus depict Merenptah’s Canaan-
ite campaign! Some seeming obstacles now
melted away. Newly published data showed
that Merenptah had married Isis-nofret, the
daughter of Kha-emwast, who was the son of
Ramesses IJ. What could be more logical than
their naming one male child Kha-emwast, after
his maternal grandfather? Moreover, the Kha-
emwast in Merenptah’s battle reliefs was a
military man, shown tending pharaoh’s chariot
horse team; Kha-emwast the son of Ramesses
II was high priest of Ptah in Memphis.

Other references flooded in — Merenptah

(Continued on page 10)

Te Papa Tongarewa — Museum of New Zealand

SERVICE TO OUR VARIED PUBLICS

By Willard L. Boyd
President, Field Museum

ublic service is the key operational
premise underlying our current strate-
gic planning process. Even though we
are a private non-profit organization,
we exist for a public purpose, and our success
is judged on how well we serve our varied
publics. All institutions have a natural tendency
to look inward. Our challenge is constantly to
look outward to determine how we can be even
more effective in serving our many publics.

Our new mission statement repeatedly
emphasizes our public responsibility. The
preamble is entitled “Serving the Public as
Educator.” Additional sections are devoted to
“Reaching Out,” “Working With Others,” “Lis-
tening to Each Other,” and, finally, “Our Com-
mitment to Public Service.”

Historically, museums are seen as con-
cerned primarily with the preservation of col-
lections. Yet the social value of preservation is
not made clear. Museum exhibits often are per-
ceived to exist for the benefit of the already
educated rather than as the means for expand-
ing public learning. Moreover, research muse-
ums, like universities, do not emphasize the
significance of their basic
Y research. Simply put, our chal-
lenge is to relate more effectively

he Field Museum has received a $1
million grant from the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s
Fund for Cultural Innovation to sup-
port new approaches to exhibit development.
The Museum, which is is the first institution in
the city to receive a grant under the newly
established fund, has been trying to devise
ways to engage diverse audiences on vital
issues of environmental and cultural change.

“We are grateful that the MacArthur Foun-
dation has endorsed in this very tangible way
our efforts to orient Museum programming to
meet the challenges of a changing world,” said
Willard L. Boyd, president of the Museum.

Most immediately, the funds will enable
the Museum to complete “Africa,” a new per-
manent exhibit that will be unique in the world
for its multidisciplinary presentation of the con-
tinent’s human and ecological diversity and the
role its people have played in world history and
culture, including the African diaspora in the
Americas. The exhibit will open in November
1993.

Michael Spock, the Museum’s vice presi-
dent for public programs, noted that European
and American museums have traditionally pre-
sented exhibits about non-Western regions and
cultures in ways that reflect “the decidedly
European biases of their developers.” The
Field Museum deliberately set out to involve
Africans and people of African descent in plan-
ning its new exhibit, and to develop coopera-
tive relationships with African and African-
American museums.

Nick Rabkin, the MacArthur Foundation’s

senior program officer for arts and culture and
designer of the Fund for Cultural Innovation,

March/April 1993 ?

MACARTHUR GRANT
FOR CULTURAL INNOVATION

to our diverse publics.

We define our publics as ranging from
school children, families, and adults, to the
national and international research community.
We have a special responsibility to serve the
people of Chicago, neighboring communities,
and the state of Illinois. We are making con-
certed efforts to reach out to the people of the
inner city who are not our traditional audience.
At the same time, we must also continue to
reach out to our traditional audiences.

Our section on “Working with Others” is
essential. The Museum cannot do its education-
al work alone. We must work closely with
neighboring schools, colleges, universities and
research institutions to strengthen the quality
and effectiveness of our collection-based
research and public learning. Because the sub-
ject matter of the Museum involves the great
issues of environmental and cultural diversity,
we must be a marketplace where people can
trade divergent views in a spirit of understand-
ing and mutual respect.

To support the Museum’s efforts in these
directions, the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation has recently made a
generous grant of $1 million from its new Fund
for Cultural Innovation, for which we are enor-
mously grateful and of which we are very
proud.

“Reaching Out,” “Working with Others,”

said the Africa Project is “a superb example of
the ways in which major ‘mainstream’ cultural
institutions can become inclusive of the world’s
diversity. By including within the museum peo-
ple from a wide range of cultural traditions —
in this case Africans and people of African-
American descent — the story that is told will
be more accurate and interesting. It will be the
people’s own story, not someone else’s inter-
pretation. This is a key objective of the Fund
for Cultural Innovation.”

Deborah Mack, senior exhibit developer,
said: “What’s particularly pleasing to me is that
we’ ve been able to incorporate a broader range
of scholarship than is traditional in museum
presentations, drawing not only on experts from
Europe, North America, and Africa, but from
the Caribbean and Latin America as well.
Those perspectives have been too often over-
looked, even though the slave trade and the dif-
fusion of African culture have had major
impacts in those areas of the world.”

“Africa” is not the only Museum project to
have benefited from this approach. Maori
scholars and the Maori community at Toko-
maru Bay, New Zealand, have been intimately
involved in the Museum’s restoration of
Ruatepupuke II, the ceremonial meeting house
that was originally built by their ancestors in
the mid-19th Century, and in preparing the pro-
gramming and educational materials associated
with it. “Ruatepupuke: A Maori Meeting
House,” opens to the public March 13.

“Africa” and “Ruatepupuke” are the latest
manifestations of an ethos that has been devel-
oping at Field Museum in recent decades,
according to Jonathan Haas, the Museum’s vice
president for cultural understanding and
change. Native American groups, in particular,
worked with Museum curators and exhibit
developers on the design and content of such
familiar displays as the Pawnee Earth Lodge

and “Listening to Each Other” are exemplified
in many ways. A case in point is our Africa
exhibit which will open in November 1993.
The exhibit draws on one of the world’s finest
collections of African cultural objects. The
Museum holds these objects to increase public
knowledge about the great cultures of the
African continent.

A multi-cultural team with a special charge
to convey an understanding of Africa from the
point of view of Africans and African-Ameri-
cans is putting the exhibit together. Scholars
from the U.S. and Africa are working with this
team. The Museum also has a special partner-
ship with several African museums and the
DuSable Museum of African-American History
in Chicago in this effort. Finally the Museum
has enlisted community participation. The
exhibit is designed to reach out to all Ameri-
cans so that everyone will gain greater insight
and knowledge about Africa, both past and pre-
sent. It also will focus on the major influence of
African culture in America. In conjunction with
this exhibit, there will be programming about
Africa in particular and also on how we learn
from one another.

The Africa exhibit and programming take a
significant step forward in our journey of
reaching out, working together, listening to
each other and serving the public through col-
lection-based research and learning.

and “Maritime Peoples of the Arctic and North-
west Coast,” and Pacific islanders had input on
the final shape and content of “Traveling the
Pacific” and “Pacific Spirits.”

“The idea is that we should enable people
whose cultural patrimony is represented in our
collections to tell those of us who come from
different traditions what they think is important
about their history, beliefs, and institutions,”
Haas said. “The Museum’s role as a scientific
institution is to care for the collections and to
maintain the scientific and historical accuracy
of such exhibits.”

“Africa” will include segments on contem-
porary African urban and rural life; the signifi-
cance of art in a variety of social contexts —
drawing examples from the art of the
Cameroon grassland kingdom of Bamum, the
BaKongo in Zaire, the palace art of Benin City
(in present-day Nigeria), and a continent-wide
survey of metallurgy; the ecology and animals
of the savannah and the environments of the
African Rift; the nomadic peoples of the Sahara
and the relationship between cultural diffusion
and economics in the market city of Kano,
Nigeria; and the world-wide dispersal of
African peoples, with a focus on the African
presence in the Americas,

The $3.85-million Africa Project was
begun in 1988 with a $150,000 planning grant
from the Rockefeller Foundation to create a
radically different process of exhibit develop-
ment. The Museum committed an additional
$258,000 toward this initial planning effort.

The exhibit “has the potential to touch the
lives of 15 million people over a possible 20-
year life span,” Spock said. “If we succeed, we
hope to change the nature of dialogue between
people of all races. We want to overcome
stereotypes, change attitudes, and plant the
seeds of new ways of thinking and feeling. In
short, we want this exhibit to make a difference.”

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

WHO WAS

THAT MASKED MAN?

By Jessica Clark

n the weekend of January 16-17, vis-
itors to the Field Museum found
themselves confronted by a bizarre
spectacle in Stanley Field Hall — a
locked golden cage, guarded by yellow-jacket-
ed “docents,” and housing two outrageously
colorful human inhabitants with an array of
artifacts nearly as diverse and eclectic as those
displayed in the surrounding halls. For a small
donation, visitors could have a Polaroid taken
with the couple, have the woman dance or the
man tell a story in an incomprehensible language.

The two “human specimens” in the cage
were billed as recently discovered aborigines
from a Caribbean island, Guatinau, overlooked
during the European conquest of the Americas.
Now, at the time of the 500th anniversary cele-
bration of Columbus’s arrival in North Ameri-
ca, the natives of Guatinau had supposedly
emerged from isolation to demand that they be
officially “discovered.”

These “Guatinaui” were actually perfor-
mance artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo
Gomez-Pejia; their performance as caged
natives was meant both as a commentary on the
500-year-old European and American practice
of putting people from Africa, Asia, and the
Americas on display, and as a reflection on still-
extant colonial and racist attitudes.

Fusco’s and Gomez-Pefia’s performances
in the cage are part of their multi-faceted trav-
eling exhibition called “The Year of the White
Bear.” The title alludes to an early South
American Indian description of the first Euro-
peans and their white, hirsute skin. “The Year
of the White Bear” included a number of com-
ponents, all meant to explore ways in which the
image of the “discovery” has been adapted to
the perspectives of subsequent historical peri-
ods: a visual arts installation exhibit at the
Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, an experi-
mental program aired on public radio, theater
performances at the Randolph Street Gallery,
and the performance at the Field Museum.

Although the entire “Year of the White
Bear” project has been installed and performed
only once before, at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis, Fusco’s and Gomez-Pefia’s per-
formances as Guatinaui natives began early in
1992, the year of the Columbus Quincentenni-
al. Their appearances in Columbus Plaza in
Madrid, in Covent Garden in London, and in
the Smithsonian in Washington revealed an
aspect of the project that the artists had never
anticipated — audiences thought the pair were
really the natives they claimed to be.

“Tt was never a part of the original plan
that we would fool people,” said Fusco. “We
just wanted to create a sustainable fiction, like
any theater group would. But, somehow or
other, we tapped into some desire, or fantasy
that people have . . . to see us as real natives.
Now the piece has become a piece about the
audience reactions.”

The possibility of strongly negative audi-
ence reactions made the staging of the piece
controversial among Field Museum staff mem-
bers. Some worried that the exhibition might
cause bad publicity, and others protested that
the piece belonged in an art gallery rather than
a natural history museum. Nonetheless, it was
decided to take the risk of letting the controver-
sial piece comment on the Museum’s own his-
tory of ethnographic displays.

“We were very thankful to the Field Muse-
um for opening its doors to this kind of explo-
ration,” said Mary Jo Schnell of the Randolph
Street Gallery. “I think the educative ramifica-
tions will go on for a long time for the people
who saw and participated in it.”

The performance drew constant crowds
made up of both visitors who knew about the

project and those who came upon it unawares.
The docents, or “zookeepers” as they were
called internally (local performance artists
Paula Killen, Claire deCoster, and Pablo
Helguera), Museum staff members, and people
assigned to interview visitors were told to tell
the story of the Gautinaui as if it were com-
pletely true, and to encourage visitors to read
the accompanying plaques and examine the
contents of the cage, both of which contained
clues to the actual nature of the performance.

One plaque, which detailed “The Other
History of Intercultural Performance,” listed
and described more than 35 historical instances
of the display of native peoples and ended with
the claim: “The contemporary tourist industries
and cultural ministries of several countries
around the world still perpetrate the illusion of
authenticity to cater to the Western fascination
with otherness. So do many artists.”

The cage contained a number of modern
appliances, including a TV showing Westerns
and parodies of explorers’ landings; a laptop
computer, on which Fusco periodically typed;
and a large radio/cassette player that blasted
rap music, Spanish rock ’n’ roll, and even
Hebrew melodies. Gomez-Pefia’s and Fusco’s
outfits consisted of motley objects selected to
conjure up conflicting impressions. The acces-
sories were meant both to confront audience
assumptions that native people perpetually lead
a timeless and technology-free existence, and
to allow visitors to question the authenticity of
the performance, thereby confronting their own
stereotypes about other cultures.

Despite these clues, more than half the vis-
itors seemed initially to believe that the two
“natives” were authentic, and many protested
their imprisonment. “I think people tended to
allow the authority of the institution to create
the idea that what was said was the truth,” said
Fusco. “In the U.S., I think there’s a much
stronger tendency to read things literally, and a
much larger concern for authenticity. In Latin
America, political satire and street theater are
much more prevalent, so the performance
would be immediately understood in a different
way. Here, people are totally [angered] that
we’re not authentic. To be condemning is also
a really common response; people are embar-
rassed that they believe it at first.” Indeed,
patrons called after the exhibition to complain
that it was a hoax, was misleadingly advertised,
or was merely a money-making gimmick.

Visitors’ opinions of the exhibit seemed to
drift from belief to disbelief and vice versa as
they circled the cage.

“At this point, I find this very bizarre,”
said a long-time Museum member whose wife

Jessica Clark

was observing Fusco in her cape drinking
Kaopectate. “I wonder whether it’s not a put-
on. I look at the girl and she’s very modern.
She’s got shaved legs and armpits. I'd like to
look more into the history of this. At this point,
I don’t believe it.”

Some spectators obviously experienced the
sort of dynamic self-questioning that Fusco and
Gomez-Pefia had hoped the exhibition would
provoke. The responses of a woman who had
brought her children to the Museum to work on
a school project changed from amazement to
indignation as she learned more and more
about the “natives.” When Fusco was taken out
of the cage on a leash, the woman asked her
daughter, “What would you think if someone
put a dog leash around your neck? Would you
like that? Do you think that’s right?”

“J have mixed feelings about their being in
a cage,” said an older African-American
woman, who had been observing the two for
more than an hour. “And I have feelings, really,
about understanding more about their lives. . . .
Their way of life used to be so different from
our way of life, but who’s to say our way of life
is better? Apparently, they survive, they like
music, they seem to be interested in television,
and they seem to enjoy, really, having all of
these people watch them. I think I’d be fright-
ened to death! But this is the way we learn
about other people from other cultures around
the world.”

Other spectators displayed a dismaying tol-
erance for what they thought was the imprison-
ment of real natives. “I haven’t been to the
Field Museum in 30 years,” said a man who
was accompanied by his grandson. “It’s some-
thing different. I’m quite impressed by it.”

“It’s weird,” said his ten-year old grand-
son. “They seem nice. I don’t really know,
*cause they can’t speak English. They could be
thinking bad thoughts about you.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever been out of
Oregon. It’s only about the third time I’ve been
off base,” said a young sailor who had come to
Chicago to accompany a friend to church. “I’d
like to have my folks see this, ’cause it’s pretty
interesting. I can’t wait to go overseas and see
some of this kind of stuff.” He had been
assigned to duty in Italy.

Again and again the spectacle created by
the two artists called into question the complex
balance between Field Museum’s mission of
preservation and display, and the dignity of
those peoples whose heritage is being dis-
played. Hone Ngata, a member of the Ngati
Porou tribe in New Zealand, and a cultural
advisor and artist for the reconstruction of the
Maori meeting house in the Museum, had not
been told in advance about Fusco and Gomez-
Pefia’s project, and found it a bit disturbing:

“IT couldn’t tell if they were real or not,”
said Ngata. “The zookeepers kept telling me
that they were real, and I was like, “What kind
of right do they have to put them in the cage?’ I
can understand that they wanted to show how
people had been displayed, but no one would
tell me the truth. I was disappointed, I could
see parallels between that and the way my peo-
ple were treated because of their facial tattoo-
ing. The British would display them, cut their
heads off and take them away for souvenirs. If

(Continued on page 4)

=
5
oO
Ss
3
nan
D
s

Above, Guillermo
Gomez-Peiia takes a
rubber snake from
his leather briefcase
and tells a story in an
incomprehensible
language — fora fee
dropped into the
donation box affixed
to the front of the
cage — as Coco
Fusco, in faux-leop-
ard cloak and Con-
verse high-tops,
scans the audience.

Below left, Gomez-
Pefia is fed an apple
by “zookeeper”
Paula Killen.

3 March/April 1993

JouN FLYNN, curator of geology, has been
named chairman of the Department of Geolo-
gy. He replaces PETER CRANE, who now serves
as Vice President for Environmental and Eyo-
lutionary Biology.

Flynn has provided leadership in several
areas of the Museum since his arrival in Chica-
go five years ago. He has been heavily
involved with the recent renovation of the
research facilities in the Department of Geolo-
gy; recently served as chair of the Science
Advisory Council; currently represents the
Field Museum on several national committees,
and is the scientific content specialist for “Life
Over Time,” a major permanent exhibit on evo-
lution scheduled to open in 1994.

Flynn also heads up an exceptionally
active research program, funded by four sepa-
rate grants. In February, he and WILLIAM Simp-
son, chief preparator of fossil vertebrates,
returned from a three-week expedition to Chile,
which uncovered new Eocene fossil mammal
localities on top of Miocene and Oligocene fos-
sil mammals, in rocks originally mapped as
Cretaceous. The discovery underscores the
complexity of Andean geology.

ms
&

Field Museum Press has just published a book
on the Medicinal Plants of Baluchistan
Province, Pakistan, by Steve Goopman, field
biologist in Zoology, and Abdul Ghafoor, pro-
fessor of botany at the University of Pakistan,
Karachi. The authors spent four months travel-
ing on foot and by four-wheel-drive vehicles
through the desert and mountainous terrain of
Baluchistan, interviewing nomads, village
dwellers, and herbal doctors and recording pre-
cise methods of plant preparation and treatment
applications. Traditional healing practices in
this region date back to ancient Greco-Arabic
medicine systems and continue strong in the
face of the introduction of Western medicine.
Field work of this sort has anthropological,
pharmacological, and botanical components: it
provides basic data needed by drug companies
to develop new drugs from raw natural materi-
als; and conveys the health and cultural con-
cerns of peoples living in a harsh climate who
must often heal themselves and their livestock.
Copies may be ordered from Roger Buelow of
the Field Museum Press for $20; call (312)
922-9410, ext. 402.
i

RipIGER Bieter (Zoology) has been awarded
funding for his 1993 field research at the
Smithsonian Marine Station (SMS) in Fort
Pierce, Florida. The Smithsonian Visiting Sci-
entist Award will cover travel and research

_In the Field

"March/April 1993
Vol, 64, No2

Editor:
Ron Dorfman

Art Director:
~ Shi Yung

Editorial Assistant:
ea Gak

POS
paid at Cee, Illinois.

March/April 1993 1

John Flynn doing
field work in the
Chilean Andes.

expenses, including access
to SMS research vessels,
laboratories, and SCUBA
diving facilities.

In addition to his
ongoing research on ver-
metids (worm-like snails
that cement their shells to
rocks), Bieler will also
continue his joint work
with zoology associate
Paula Mikkelsen, curator
at Harbor Beach Oceano-
graphic Institution, with
whom he recently pub-
lished several articles on
previously unknown
species of clams. These
clams live in shrimp bur-
rows and have extremely
unusual anatomical fea-
tures, including internal
shells.

=~

e

In January, AL NEwTon
and MARGARET THAYER
(Zoology) left to spend
two months in Australia.
Most of their time was to

be devoted to field work, collecting beetles and
associated ecological information as part of
their continuing research on evolution and bio-
diversity of rove beetles (Staphylinidae) and
related groups found in Australia and other
temperate areas of the southern hemisphere.
During their visit, they also planned to attend
an international conference on Southern Tem-
perate Ecosystems Origin and Diversification
at the University of Tasmania to present a joint
paper entitled Southern Connections in
Staphylinoid Beetles.

ELIZABETH Ping, a high school Field Museum
intern in Botany, is scheduled to travel to
Washington D.C. in March to present her
research and compete with 39 other finalists for
a $40,000 scholarship in this year’s Westing-
house Science Talent Search. Pine, the only
competitor selected from Illinois, has been
working with GreG MUELLER for the past two
years, generating rDNA sequence data as part
of Mueller’s project studying evolutionary rela-
tionships among several genera of mushrooms
and false truffles. Pine also was recently award-

e ed early admission to Harvard University.

MASKED MAN ...

(Continued from page 3)

they had taken the exhibit to New Zealand, I wonder how people would
respond. We don’t make jokes about slavery, about cages. We talk about
it, but we don’t make fun of it.”

Asked how he felt about his own role in creating a display about
Maori culture, Ngata replied, “I respect the Museum for what it is doing
with the house. But for people to come and try to understand the culture
just by looking at it . . . it’s like aliens coming from outer space. It takes
a long time to understand. If I had my say, I’d take it back with me, to
where it rightfully belongs. But I’m guided by my elders, and they say
that the house should stay here, so there’s not much I can do.”

Fusco and Gomez-Pefia’s project is next scheduled to move on to
the Whitney Museum in New York. “Obviously, the response to the
piece will be very different in an art museum than it would in a natural
history museum,” said Fusco. “The Field Museum was a wonderful
place to do it. The setting was really spectacular, and we really appreciat-
ed all of the help from the people who work there.”

TE WAKA TOL; CONTEMPORARY MAORI
ART FROM‘NEW ZEALAND

Tradition& fave to evolve.

Torlimitforti'iédo put it to sléep,
_ Manos Nathah, member of the
Ngati Whatiaand Nga Puhi, tribes

athan igea Maoriepotter.and, carver

Whose Work represeritsidn attempt to

infusevhontraditional materials with a
kaupapa (reason for being) inspired by tradi-
tional Maori forms, beliefs, and needs. He is
one of the 22 Maori artists, recognized as lead-
ers in their various artistic fields, whose works
make up “Te Waka Toi: Contempory Maori Art
From New Zealand,” on display in the Special
Exhibition Gallery March 9 to May 9.

“Te Waka Toi” (which means “the carrier
of excellence”) is presented as a complement to
the opening of “Ruatepupuke: A Maori Meet-
ing House” on March 13. Many of these artists’
works revolve around a relationship to the arts
associated with the building of such marae, or
gathering places; they speak to the need to pass
on traditional forms, or to discover new ways to
express the values central to the Maori people.

The more than 50 works exhibited repre-
sent a wide range of media, scale, and tech-
niques, including wood carving, weaving,

CHINA BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS

hina Between Revolutions: Photographs by Sidney D. Gamble 1917-1927” will be on
display in the Museum’s South Exhibit Gallery from March 27 through June 20. The
exhibit comprises 81 black-and-white prints from an archive of photographs by Sidney

D. Gamble (1890-1968), the first
Western sociologist to fully document Chinese
urban and rural life between the fall of the
Qing (Manchu) Dynasty in 1911 and the Com-
munist revolution of 1949.

The exhibi photographs were drawn from
somet 4,000 negatives, 600 hand-colored
slides, and 30 reels of film discovered in the
early 1980s by Gamble’s daughter in his
Riverdale, New York home.

A video of historical footage, shot by
Gamble on 16mm film in the 1920s, accompa-
nies the exhibit and is itself an important visual
record of one of the most turbulent periods in
Chinese history, an exploration of a culture few
Westerners had personally experienced at that
time.

The exhibit was organized by the China
Institue of America and the Sidney D. Gamble
Foundation for China Studies, under the direc-
tion of Gamble’s daughter, Catherine G. Cur-
ran, with the collaboration of the Smithsonian
Institution Traveling Exhibition Services
(SITES). Major funding was provided by the
Henry Luce Foundation.

painting, video, sculptural construction, and
bone and greenstone carving. Nathan’s Waka
Taurahere Tangata (“Vessel for Afterbirth”) is
displayed alongside works as diverse as_ tradi-
tional korowai cloaks, handwoven by Erenore
Puketapu Hetet (of the Te Atiawa tribe); large,
colorful, geometric paintings by Robyn
Kahukiwa (Ngati Porou) that draw inspiration
from Maori carvings,; the public commissions
of Selwyn Muru (Ngati Kuri, Te Aupouri),
Robert Jahnke (Te Whanau A Rakairo of Ngati
Porou), and Shona Rapira Davis (Ngati Wai),
whose large-scale installations examine both
the conflicts and combinations created by the
intersection of Maori and pakeha (non-Maori)
cultures; and beautiful and elaborate presenta-
tions of “old stories, new symbols, new materi-
als [and] new explanations,” carved and painted
by Cliff Whiting (Wanau A Apanui). The exhi-
bition will be accompanied by a video of the
artists discussing their works.

“Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Maori Art
from New Zealand” was organized by Te Waka
Toi, the Maori and South Pacific Arts Council;
works for the exhibit were selected by well-
known Maori artists Sandy Adsett and Cliff
Whiting.

MARCH/APRIL EVENTS

3 T Monday

Mycology Meeting

Topic of this month’s meeting will be a
demonstration/workshop on “Microscopic
Features of Mushrooms,” led by Greg
Mueller, Botany Department. Bring your
own microscope if possible; some will be
available. Anyone with an interest in mush-
rooms at any level is welcome. Lecture
Hall 2 at 7:45 p.m.; park in the West Lot.
Next meeting is April 5.

3 3 Monday

Camera Club

Images, Impressions, Emotions, a multi-
projector audio-visual presentation by
Albert Brown, will feature slides of our arid
western plains and mountains. 7:30 pm. in
Lecture Hall 2; park in the West Lot. Every-
one welcome. Next meeting is April 12.

3 9 Tuesday

Exhibit opening

“Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Maori Art
From New Zealand” opens in the Special
Exhibit Gallery. The exhibition features 50
objects that exemplify the best of contem-
porary Maori art in a wide range of media.

3/11 ni

Members’ Preview:
Ruatepupuke

Take an advance look at the stunning reno-
vation of this 19th-century Maori meeting
house. 5 p.m. — 9 p.m.

RUATEPUPUKE
A Maori Mecting House

3/19.

Family Evening:
Passport to the Pacific

A chance to experience some of the cul-
tures and the natural beauty of the Pacific
without leaving Chicago. Join us for an
evening of tours and activities in “Traveling
the Pacific” and the newly reinstalled Maori
meeting house. Try your hand at some
island musical instruments and string
games, then visit the meeting house and
hear the story of Ruatepupuke. 7-9 p.m. $9
per participant ($7 members). Call (312)
322-8854 for more information.

March/April 1993 6

3/20:

Performance

Kahurangi, New
Zealand's interna-
tionally renowned
Maori troupe, pre-
sents a dazzling
performance of
Maori music and
dance to celebrate
the reopening of
“Ruatepupuke: A
Maori Meeting
House.” 2 p.m. in
Stanley Field Hall.

3/27 sci

Exhibit Opening ,

“China Between Revolutions: Photographs
by Sidney D: Gamble 1917-1927” compris-
es 81 black-and-white prints from an
archive of photographs by Sidney D. Gam-
ble (1890-1968). In the South Exhibit
Gallery through June 20.

3/27-28:se

Urban
Gardening Fair |

“Green and Growing. . . .An Urban Gar-

dening Fair” offers gardeners the opportuni-
ty to hear local and national gardening

experts. The theme of the expanded, two-

day fair is “Diversity in the City: Plants,
People, and Projects.” Participants may
attend lectures and presentaions; visit
exhibits and 30 demonstration gardens;
learn about garden how-to’s during quick
demos; and much more. Registration is $5
per day or $8 for both days, and includes a
copy of Gardening Resource Guide. The
exhibits and demonstration gardens in Stan-
ley Field Hall are open to the public with
regular Museum admission. Call (312) 553-
2000 to register.

3/3 Vacs

Herpetologists

The Chicago Herpetological Society’s
meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m., and is
open to everyone interested in amphibians
and reptiles. Speaker to be announced.
Please use the Museum’s west entrance.
Call (312) 281-1800 for updated informa-
tion on the monthly speaker.

Elephant Conservation

Cynthia Moss, Director of the Aboseli Ele-
phant Research Project in Kenya and one
of the foremost names in elephant conser-
vation, visits Field Museum in conjunction
with the release of her new book and PBS
documentary, Echo of the Elephants. Moss
will share her insights on the elephants’
environment and their close-knit family
units. Copies of Echo of the Elephants will
be available for purchase and signing after
the lecture. 2:00 p.m. $7 ($5 members).
Call (312) 322-8854 for ticket information.

4 6 Tuesday

Library Friends

Friends of the Field Museum Library pre-
sents Dr. Charles Jarvis of the Natural His-
tory Museum, London, in a presentation on
“Collections of John Clayton (1683-1773):
Early Botanical Exploration of North Ameri-
ca.” The talk will be illustrated with slides,
specimens, and relevant literature from the
Rare Book Room. Open to Museum mem-

..bers. Refreshments at 5:30. p.m.; lecture at

6 p.m. Space is limited. For reservations,
call Julie Sass at (312) 322-8874.

4/18 sn

The sexes in Asia

Bennet Bronson, chairman of the Depart-
ment of Anthropology, speaks on “Women
Versus Men in East Asian Cultures” in the
first lecture of a new series for Museum
members only. Bronson’s talk will explore
gender identity and conflict as revealed in
traditional objects from the Museum’s col-
lection. 1:30 p.m. in Simpson Theatre. $3.

4/24 seu

Stone Age Tools

Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, the
world’s foremost researchers in the field of
Stone Age tools, will discuss their latest
findings in a slide-illustrated lecture on their
new book, Making Silent Stones Speak:
Human Evolution and the Dawn of Tech-
nology, which describes changes in the
lives of our earliest ancestors.

2 p.m. $7 ($5 members).

Call (312) 322-8854 for ticket information.

4/24 coun

Earth Day

Recycle old paper and scraps into hand-
made paper, create and fly a kite, and find
out what Field Museum is doing about the
environment. 11:00 a.m.—3:00 p.m.

MARGARET MEAD FILM FEST

or the first time, selections from the

Margaret Mead Film and Video Festi-

val sponsored by the American Muse-

um of Natural History in New York
are touring nationally. It is named in honor of
Margaret Mead, one of the first anthropolo-
gists to recognize the value of documenting
cultures on film.

Since Mead’s first experiments in ethno-
graphic film, the discipline has flourished.
Anthropologists have continued to use the
camera in the field. Western and non-western
communities have also used film and video to
document aspects of their own cultures. Ethno-
graphic filmmaking has helped promote issues
of cultural identity, continuity, and change,
looking at these issues through individual and
family portraits as well as community stories.

This compendium of films from the
American Museum’s 16th annual series cele-
brates cross-cultural difference by presenting
works from around the world with similar
themes: art and society, children and the
future, community portraits, sports and culture,
and women’s stories. Film topics include
Korean shamanism, reindeer herding in Alas-
ka, and Egyptian marriage traditions. A mod-
erator will provide background information on
the films and comment on current issues in
ethnographic filmmaking. Register for Friday
or Saturday, or for both days at a discount.

Friday, May 14
5:30 -10:30 p.m.
$9 ($8 members)

Saturday, May 15
9 a.m. — 4 p.m.
$9 ($8 members)

Both shows
$15 ($13 members)

Call (312) 322-8854 for
a brochure listing all the
films and registration information. Tickets will
also be available at the door. The Film and
Video Festival will take place in James Simp-
son Theatre.

Fr,
M AQUARIUM PLANETARIUM

ORLDS
TOUR’ 93

Above: A scene from
Piemulc (1997) by
Jana Sevcikova.

Right: In and Out of
Africa (1992) by Ilisa
Barbash and Lucien
Taylor.

ased on an overwhelming response

to the first Summer Worlds Tour

camp in 1992, this unique collabora-

tive camp with Field Museum, Shedd
Aquarium, and ‘Adler Planetarium is expanding
to four weeks for Summer ’93. Dates are July
19-23, July 26-30, August 9-13, and August 16-
20. Camp sessions will be available for children
and young adults in grades K-12.

This year’s camp, filled with all-new learn-
ing adventures, will take campers to the top and
bottom of the world with many stops in
between! From the icy Arctic to the diverse
geography and cultures of Africa, youngsters
will travel the world without leaving Chicago.
Registration for Summer Worlds Tour Camp
*93 begins March 15 and will take place
through the Shedd Aquarium. For a brochure
complete with camp descriptions and registra-
tion information, call (312) 322-8854.

7 March/April 1993

Free admission

Free coat checking and strollers
Invitation to Members’ Night

Priority invitations to special exhibits
Free subscription to In the Field
13-month wall calendar featuring exhibit
photographs

Reduced subscription prices on selected
magazines

Opportunity to receive the Museum’s
annual report

10% discount at all Museum stores
Use of our 250,000-volume

natural history library

Discount on classes, field trips, and seminars
for adults and children

Members-only tour program
Opportunity to attend the annual
children’s Holiday Tea

Privileges at Chicago’s largest furniture
wholesaler

Children’s “dinosaur” birthday card

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MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

New Members only. This is not a renewal form.

>) lease enroll me as a Member of the
ield Museum of Natural History

Name
Address

City
State__. Zip
Home phone

Business phone

GIFT APPLICATION FOR
Name

Address

City
State=— Zip
Home phone

Business phone

GIFT FROM
Name
Address
City
State Zip

Home phone

Business phone
MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES —

i indadual —one year $35 / two years $65

(@ ane — one year $45 / two years $85
(Includes two adults, children and grand-
children 18 and under.)
tudent/Senior — one year $25
(Individual only. Copy of I.D. required.)

O}rield Contributor — $100 - $249

O}ricld Adventurer — $250 - $499

( Jrield Naturalist — $500 - $999

(Field Explorer — $1,000 - $1,499

All benefits of a family membership
— and more

(founders Council — $1,500

Send form to:
Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Rd.
at Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL 60605

Saturday, March 6
12:30—2:30pm Egyptian Hiero-
glyps Have your name written
in this ancient alphabet
11am—3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

Sunday, March 7
1lam—3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

Thursday, March 11
10am -1pm Weaving Demon-
stration by the North Shore
Weaver's Guild.

Thursday, March 12
4pm Educators' Preview: Maori
Meeting House for more infor-
mation and to register, call
(312) 922-9410, ext. 351.

Saturday, March 13
1-4pm Weaving Demonstration
by the North Shore Weaver's
Guild.
2—4pm Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Have your name written in this
ancient alphabet.

Sunday, March 14
11am—3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.
11am Into the Wild Highlight
Tour Visit the birds and mam-
mals of the world during this
special tour.
2pm Around the Field Tour in
the German Language See pre-
historic animals, a pacific
island, a Egyptian mastaba, and
more during this highlight tour
of the museum.

Thursday, March 18
10am -1pm Weaving Demon-
stration by the North Shore
Weaver's Guild.

Saturday, March 20
12:30-2:30pm Egyptian Hiero-
glyphs Have your name written
in this ancient alphabet.
1-4pm Weaving Demonstration
by the North Shore Weaver's
Guild.

2 pm Kahurangi The Maori
Dance Theater of New
Zealand will perform in cele-
bration of the re-opening of
Ruatepupuke with tribal music
and dance. Co-sponsored by
Field Museum and Acorn Fami-
ly Entertainment , Inc.

Sunday, March 21
11am—3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.
1-4pm Weaving Demonstration
by the North Shore Weaver's
Guild.

Tuesday, March 23

11am Kahurangi The Maori
Dance Theater of New Zealand
will perform in celebration of
the re-opening of Ruatepupuke
with tribal music and dance.
Co-sponsored by Field Museum
and Acorn Family Entertain-
ment, Inc.

March/April 1993

Saturday, March 27
9am-5pm Green and Grow-
ing... An Urban Gardening Fair
The theme of this extended two
day fair is "Diversity in the City:
Plants, People and Projects"
$5.00 one day registration;
$8.00 two day registration. Call
(312) 553-2000 for a brochure
and registration information.
1-4pm Weaving Demonstration
by the North Shore Weaver's
Guild.
24pm Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Have your name written in this
ancient alphabet.

Sunday, March 28
Jam-5pm Green and Grow-
ing... An Urban Gardening Fair
The theme of this extended two
day fair is "Diversity in the City:
Plants, People and Projects"
$5.00 one day registration;
$8.00 two day registration. Call
(312) 553-2000 for a brochure
and registration information.
9am-5pm Demonstration Gar-
dens and Exhibit Booths Free
with regular Museum admission
or Garden Fair registration.
11am -1:30pm Quick Demon-
strations on Gardening Topics
presented on the hour and half
hour. Free with regular Museum
admission or Garden Fair regis-
tration.
11am Into the Wild Highlight
Tour Visit the birds and mam-
mals of the world during this
special tour.
2pm Around the Field in the
French Language See prehis-
toric animals, a pacific island, a
Egyptian mastaba, and more
during this highlight tour of the
museum.
2pm Green & Growing Public
Lecture " Rescuing Traditional
Vegetable Varieties in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet
Union" by Kent Whealy, Direc-
tor of the Seed Savers Exchange
in Decorah, lowa. Green &
Growing registration ticket or
$2.00 at the door with regular
Museum admission.
Mr. Whealy will share the
grassroots genetic preservation
efforts in the U.S. which served
as a model in 36 foreign coun-
tries. He recently developed
projects with grassroots organi-
zations to save traditional vari-
eties in Austria, Poland, Roma-
nia, Azerbaijan and Russia.
3:30pm China Before the Revo-
lution: Introductory Slide Pro-
gram This brief presentation
provides background to Sidney
Gamble's travels and pho-
tographs highlighted in the spe-
cial exhibit of the same name
on display at Field Museum
through June 20, 1993.
4pm Lecture by Jonathan
Spence, one of the foremost
authorities on Chinese history
and culture .

Saturday, April 3

11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

Sunday, April 4
11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

3

VISITOR PROGRAMS

Saturday, April 10
11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.
1:30pm Tibet Today and
Bhutan, Land of the Thunder
Dragon slide program.
24pm Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Have your name written in this
ancient alphabet.

Saturday, April 17
11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

Sunday, April 18
11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.

Saturday, April 24
11am-3pm Field Museum Cele-
brates "Earth Day" with a variety
of activities including: Bottle
Ecology, Paper Making, Kite
Making & Flying, the "Three R's:
Reduce, Reuse & Recycle," and
much more. Please call (312)
922-9410, ext. 395 for complete
details.
11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection.
12noon-3pm Giant octopus,
squid, and micro-shells display.
24pm Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Have your name written in this
ancient alphabet.

Sunday, April 25

11am-3pm Specimen Prepara-
tion Watch as museum scien-
tists prepare animal specimens
for the research collection

Field Museum Welcomes Vol-

unteers for Centennial Tours
Volunteers are needed to lead
tours celebrating the 100th
anniversary of the Field Muse-
um and the Columbian Exposi-
tion. Positions are available for
weekday and weekend facilita-
tors to give programs for visi-
tors, highlighting centennial
objects, cases, and the people
who helped found Field Muse-
um collections. A training pro-
gram begins in April 1993. A
$5.00 registration fee is

required. Scholarships are avail-
able. To participate, please con-

tact the Museum Volunteer
Coordinator, (312) 922-9410,
extension 360.

Webber Resource Center

Native Cultures of the Americas
Books, videotapes, educator
resources, tribal newspapers
and activity boxes about native
peoples of the Americas are
available.
Daily 10am—4:30pm

Daniel F. & Ada L.. Rice Wildlife
Research Station
Videotapes, computer pro-
grams, educator resources,
books and activity boxes about
the Animal Kingdom are avail-
able,
Daily 9am-5pm

Harris Educational Loan Center
Chicago area educators may
borrow activity boxes and small
dioramas from Harris Center.
For more information call: (312)
322-8853,

Open House Hours:
Tuesdays 2:30-7pm
Thursdays 2:30-5pm
Saturdays 9am—5pm

Pawnee Earth Lodge

Walk into a traditional home of
the Pawnee Indians of the Great
Plains and learn about their
daily life during the mid-19th
century. Free program tickets
available from the Information
Desk in Stanley Field Hall.
Weekdays: 1pm program
Saturdays: 10am—4:30pm; Free
ticketed programs at 11,12, 2 &
3. Sundays: 10am—4:30pm

Place For Wonder

A special room of touchable
objects where you can discover
daily life in Mexico, in addition
to an array of fossils, shells,
rocks, plants, and live insects.
Weekdays: 12:30-4:30pm
Weekends: 10am—4:30pm

A Place for Wonder

Ruatepupuke:

A Maori Meeting House
Discover the culture of the
Maori of New Zealand inside
the treasured and sacred
Ruatepupuke: A Maori Meeting
House Opens Saturday, March
13, 1993. Open daily for view-
ing 9am-5pm; 1:30pm free
public program daily. A new
school program exploring the
relationship of geography, envi-
ronments, art, and genealogy of
the Maori of New Zealand and
the Meeting House for grades
1 -12 is available . Written
reservations for the school pro-
gram are required. To register,
contact the Group Booking
Office, Field Museum, Roo-
sevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, IL 60605.

(Continued from page 1)

replace missing architectural elements. A com-
panion exhibit of modern works, “Te Waka
Toi: Contemporary Maori Art from New
Zealand,” opens on March 9. (See page 5.)
Renovation and reinstallation of the house were
made possible with financial support from the
Ameritech Foundation.

The meeting house was purchased by Field
Museum in Hamburg in 1905 from a dealer in
ethnographic curios. How it got to Germany
remains a mystery. It’s known that the house
was sold in New Zealand, probably in the
1890s, to a man whose last name was Hind-
marsh, by Mokena Romio Babbington, a
prominent Maori leader at Tokomaru Bay. The
sale of the house caused considerable local con-
troversy. Meeting houses are eye-catching
buildings in New Zealand not only because of
their ornately carved wooden timbers. They are
an emblem or hallmark of local community life
linking the Maori people with their ancestors;
they are a tangible expression of Maori values
and aspirations — they are definitely not things
to be sold to others,

Originally opened at Tokomaru Bay in
1881 to replace a meeting house that had been
dismantled and lost during intertribal wars in
the 1820s, Ruatepupuke II was first put on dis-
play at the Field Museum in 1925. Community
elders, or kKaumatua, from Tokomaru Bay came
to Chicago in March 1986 to attend the
openinig of the traveling exhibition “Te Maori:
Maori Art from New Zealand Collections.”
One of these elders, Mrs. Iranui Haig, was
deeply moved when she saw and was able to
touch Ruatepupuke amidst the warmth and
splendor of that traveling exhibition. She said
she felt the rift between people at Tokomaru
Bay created when the house was sold nearly
one hundred years before had at last been
healed. “I don’t feel so sad now,” she said.
“The ancestors feel good and all is well.”

A group of Field Museum members travel-
ing through New Zealand later in 1986 with
John Terrell, curator of Oceanic archaeology
and ethnology, went to Tokomaru Bay at Mrs.
Haig’s invitation to talk with people there
about the house and about whether it should
remain in Chicago. Even though a meeting
house named Te Hono-ki Rarotonga had been
built at Tokomaru Bay in 1934 to replace
Ruatepupuke II, there was still some local feel-
ing that the house should be returned to New
Zealand. But after long hours of discussion, the
decision was reached to leave Ruatepupuke in
Chicago and work with Field Museum to estab-
lish a Maori marae inside the museum’s walls:
a gathering place where people living in, or vis-
iting, Chicago would be able to learn about
Maori values, traditions, arts, and aspirations;
and where Maori visiting the United States
would find a spiritual home away from home.

On their return to Chicago, the Museum
members who had served as the museum’s
ambassadors to Tokomaru Bay brought back
with them more than good news. They also
came home committed to the international
undertaking that they helped launch. They
immediately constituted a Field Museum sup-
port group called the Friends of Ruatepupuke.
They have been steadfast ever since 1986 in
promoting the project now reaching completion.

The house is named Ruatepupuke (pro-

RUATEPUPU

A Maon Meeting House

nounced Roo-ah-teh-PU-pukeh) after a cele-
brated ancestor of the Ngati Porou tribe who
obtained the art of wood carving for the Maori
from Tangaroa, the sea god. The building is
one of the oldest surviving Maori meeting
houses and has an almost complete set of 19th-
century carvings. It is, thus, both an important
historical testament of Maori culture and a
priceless work of art.

International Cooperation

Conservation and structural repairs were
done under the guidance of community leaders
and elders at Tokomaru Bay to ensure that the
house would be properly rebuilt. Two Maori
conservation interns, Hinemoa Hilliard and
Hone Ngata, have worked at Field Museum on
the restoration project with Catherine Sease and
Catherine Anderson of the Museum’s conserva-
tion department. Ngata has created a number of
new wood carvings to replace damaged or
missing pieces. New tukutuku panels to go
between the carvings on the inside of the house
were. woven at Tokomaru Bay and shipped to
Chicago in 1992.

Several original carvings missing from the
house were located during the project in muse-
ums in New Zealand and America; these carv-
ings have been loaned to Field Museum for the
reconstruction by the National Museum of New
Zealand in Wellington, the Auckland Institute
& Museum, and the Peabody Museum of
Salem, Massachusetts.

4

eo!

Te Waka Toi — the New Zealand Council
for Maori and South Pacific Arts — has
worked with the Tokomaru Bay community
and Field Museum to coordinate logistics and
decision-making in New Zealand. Carolyn
Blackmon, chair of the Museum’s department
of education, has served as exhibit developer.

Arapata Hakiwai, curator of Maori collec-
tions at the National Museum of New Zealand,
serves with John Terrell as co-curator of the
restoration project. “We hope that visitors [to
Ruatepupuke] will experience not just a ‘win-
dow on the world’,” Hakiwai says, “but instead
will take a cultural and spiritual trip to New
Zealand and the world of the Maori people as
we are today, as we were in the past, and as we
hope to be in the future.”

Diane Alexander White / GN86352.15

Hinemoa Hilliard, a
Maori artist working
as a conservation
intern at Field Muse-
um, freshens up one
of the carved and
painted rafters of
Ruatepupuke.

Diane Alexander White / GN85916.15

The extended family of Ruatepupuke — Maori elders and scholars, Field Museum personnel, members of the Friends of
Ruatepupuke, and a representative of Ameritech Corp. —gathered on the marae in August 1991 after reaching decisions on the

renovation schedule. Mrs. Iranui Haig is seated second from left.

weve ww

Diane Alexander White / GN86475.20

Leg positions reflect
our revised ideas
about the motor abil-
ities of Apatosaurus
(above) and Tricer-
atops (top right).
Both were as agile as
living large animals,
but probably not as
swift,

March/April 1993

POSING DINOSAURS

By Stephen Borysewicz
Exhibit Developer, Life Over Time

hen “Life Over Time,” the

Museum’s new exhibit on pale-

ontology and evolution, opens in

1994, all of our familiar
dinosaurs will be back on display, along with
some new ones. But old favorites Alber-
tosaurus and Apatosaurus will be mounted in
entirely new, much more dynamic poses, poses
that reflect recent findings in dinosaur anatomy
and physiology. And new skeletal casts of Her-
rerasaurus and Triceratops that we’ve acquired
for exhibit also will be mounted
in poses that show that
dinosaurs were active, agile ani-
mals that could move fairly
quickly.

Since the mid-1800s, when
dinosaurs were first reconstruct-
ed from incomplete fossil skele-
tons, disagreement over proper
posture has been the rule. The
earliest British reconstructions
show squat lizard-like beasts
shuffling on all fours, while
American renderings done a few
years later record a break-
through in thought about
dinosaurs: Lithe hadrosaurs
dance on two legs in balletic
poses, battling each other for
turf. Today, argument continues
over claims about top speed and activity levels,
and even actual posture. Why? Without fossils
of internal organs and muscles, we can take
only educated guesses at dinosaur strength and
metabolic needs.

Putting together the hundreds of bones that
make up a 70-ft skeleton is slow work that calls
for lots of decision-making. The position of a
single foot can affect the curve of the spine or
neck, and even the drape of the tail. Prehistoric
Animal Structures
Inc., the Canadian
contractors who
reconstructed our
biggest dinosaurs,
provided much of
the expertise in
dinosaur anatomy
needed to bring the
most lifelike poses
to our ancient
bones. But we also
assembled a Field
Museum posing
team consisting of
Geology Depart-
ment chairman
John Flynn, curator Olivier Rieppel, and
research associates J. Michael Parrish and
Catherine Forster. We also conferred with out-
side colleagues like Jack Horner when neces-
sary. These paleontologists worked “on-call,”
gathering in the new dinosaur hall at key inter-
vals during the reconstruction process to make
final decisions. Without fail during these meet-
ings, someone ended up crouched on all fours,
attempting to act out the role of a walking
dinosaur.

In the case of Apatosaurus, the most per-
plexing question was how to position the tail.
With a few exceptions, most researchers agree
that a 33-ton Apatosaurus probably couldn’t
moye much faster than an elephant, and was
about as agile, so we posed it in a fairly sedate
stroll. But what about that enormous tail? Was
it a powerful weapon, a whip that could be
cracked through the air, slamming a predator to
the ground? Or did it drag limply in the dust?

Preparator puts finishing touches on a flapping
Pteranodon: These reptiles could fly hundreds of miles.

Our
posing
team discussed this
question at great length.
By looking carefully
at the base of the tail ¢
and pelvis, and mak- \
ing comparisons with
living reptiles, they conclud-
ed that Apatosaurus lacked the strength and
leverage needed to sling 30 feet of muscle
and bone over its head. Instead, the tail is
mounted in a graceful trailing curve, draping
itself over the railing that surrounds the
dinosaur.

To pose another dinosaur, our new cast of
Triceratops, we made a trip to Milwaukee to
visit paleontologist Rolf Johnson. He’s built a
full-scale model of Triceratops’s front leg and
spent several years figuring out its joint align-
ments. Why the difficulty? Reptilian joints are
different from those of mammals: Adult mam-
mals have very bony joints whose opposing
surfaces are a close fit; reptile joints are padded
with thick layers of cartilage, which does not
fossilize. The fossil bones of reptiles fit togeth-
er loosely, leaving lots of room for error when
reassembling the skeleton of animal that no one
has ever seen alive. Add to that the rarity of
Triceratops footprints, which would give us
some indication of how this six-ton beast
placed its feet, and you’ve got a problem. We
finally settled on a position between the old-
style sprawl that’s been the standard and the
more extreme, straight-legged rhino-like pose
advocated by radical paleontologist Robert
Bakker.

Albertosaurus has changed most dramati-
cally: Gone is the kangaroo posture of the old
mount in Stanley Field Hall. Now Alber-
tosaurus is crouched with its tail held high,
counterbalancing its huge skull as it rips into a
Lambeosaurus
dinner. This car-
nivore could
probably move at
least as fast as a
human jogger,
and maybe faster.
Its powerful leg
and tail muscles
worked together
as the animal
walked with its
spine held paral-
lel to the ground,
tail swaying to
offset the shifting
balance of a two-
legged walk. Albertosaurus’s upper skeleton,
especially the spine, is very lightly built. The
feet are proportionately quite large, like those
of modern running birds such as the ostrich.
Fossil trackways show that meat-eaters planted
their feet close together, not in a splayed, tail-
dragging waddle. Taken together, these signs
tell us that Albertosaurus was a lively hunter.

Four non-dinosaur skeletons also show the
results of some recent discoveries in fossil
anatomy. Flapping above the dinosaurs are four
Pteranodons, casts of skeletons found in
Kansas. Traditional wisdom has it that these
winged reptiles could only soar, clambering up
cliffs and diving off into uplifting air currents.
But close study of their shoulder joints, and the
application of a little common sense, has
revealed that Pteranodons could beat their
twelve-foot wings as powerfully as any living
bird, taking flight and propelling themselves
over the seas hundreds of miles from land in
search of fish.

Seen together, the seven types of dinosaur

Diane Alexander White / GN86615.30

Diane Alexander White / GN86395.31

and the Pferanodons on exhibit in “Life Over
Time” will appear as the active, mobile animals
they were. Their 160-million-year history is
evidence of their great adaptability, and is the
single most persuasive argument against recon-
structing them as sluggish, clumsy beasts inca-
pable of grace or agility.

EGYPT...

(Continued from page 1)

was called “seizer of Gezer” in his titulary,
echoing the stela. Ashkelon is clearly identi-
fied, so the other fortified cities in the reliefs
could be Gezer and Yano’am — and that
fourth scene, a battle in open, hilly country,
would then have to be Israel. The people
shown in this scene were dressed exactly like
the Canaanites in the three fortified towns.

A fifth scene shows pharaoh binding a
pair of Shasu, a nomadic and pastoral people
familiar from Egyptian texts throughout the
New Kingdom. The Shasu habitually harassed
the Egyptian armies passing through Canaan,
and habitually were punished for this. They
had played a minor role in the campaign, and
so were omitted from the retrospective text in
the Israel Stela. Merenptah, like every other
pharaoh, called them Shasu, which means they
could not be the Israelites encountered in the
campaign. The Israel Stela is dated regnal year
5 [1207 B.C.], and its main text deals with
Merenptah’s great victory over the allied
Libyans and Sea Peoples who had attacked
Egypt in the Memphis region. Thus the retro-
spective passage referring to the Canaanite
campaign must refer to events prior to that
year.

The battle reliefs, given their location on
the walls of Karnak, support this view.
Merenptah reigned after Ramesses II, a
pharaoh who surpassed all others before and

(Continued on next page)

rar 3

FROM THE FIELD

(Continued from previous page )

after in buildings and decorated reliefs and
inscriptions. Very little blank wall space
remained when Merenptah succeeded to the
throne, and being advanced in age, Merenptah
hadn’t the time to build many new temples, So
he used whatever space remained blank; even
his funerary temple was built cheaply and
swiftly by using an earlier Dynasty XVIII
pharaoh’s temple as a quarry. Likewise, the
Israe] Stela was carved on the back of a stela
recycled from Amenhotep III. For the Canaan-
ite campaign scenes, though, Merenptah had
found enough blank wall space at Karnak, on
either side of Ramesses II’s Peace Treaty text.
On the two battle scenes to the left of the Peace
Treaty text, Merenptah carved his scenes over
an erased, suppressed version of the Battle of
Kadesh, fought earlier by Ramesses II. The
Ashkelon battle scene, the scene of Israel, the
binding-of-the-Shasu scene, and the scenes of
victorious return to Egypt with prisoners, all
were carved on previously unused wall space to
the right of the Peace Treaty text.

After his Year 5 victory over the Libyans
and Sea Peoples, which was a far grander victo-
ry than the Canaan-
ite campaign,
Merenptah had only
interior wall space
in the Cour de la
Cachette remaining
to record his tri-
umph. Inner temple
walls never showed
battle scenes, so
Merenptah carved a
long text recounting
his victory. Also, a
copy of the Israel
Stela was erected in
the vicinity of the Cour de la Cachette. Clearly,
then, the Canaanite campaign had to pre-date
Year 5, and a survey of Merenptah’s reign and
activities shows Year 2 or 3 [1210 or 1209
B.C.) as the optimal time. These texts and
scenes show that by Merenptah’s reign, the
Israelites were in Canaan.

Archaeology has supplied further evidence.
Dr. Lawrence Stager, now at Harvard, found in
the hill country of Canaan what he considers
the remains of the earliest Israelite settlements.
They were farming communities with terraced
fields and houses with cisterns to catch rainfall.
They lived in open, unfortified settlements.
This exactly suits the depiction of Israel in
Merenptah’s battle reliefs and the text referring
to them on the stela. Stager and Dr. Kenneth
Kitchen, the foremost Ramesside scholar, both
have accepted my analysis of the Merenptah
reliefs.

Was Israel in Egypt?

So the record pretty well establishes the
Israelites in the hills above Canaan in the early
13th Century B.C. But what of the captivity in
Egypt itself?

Two of the oldest acknowledged passages
in the Bible are the Song of Deborah [Judges 5]

and the Song of Moses and Miriam and the
Children of Israel [Exodus 15]. Old Testament
scholars have dated them to the 12th and 13th
centuries B.C respectively. If Merenptah was
not the Pharaoh of Exodus, then Ramesses II
might be.

The personal names in the Exodus story —
Moses, Phineas, and Hophni — are Ramesside
Egyptian; moreover, the Exodus story declares
that the Hebrews had labored on the cities of
Ramesses and Pithom, described as “store
cities” of pharaoh. Egyptian records show that
after a start under Horemheb and Sety I (1321-
1279 B.C.), Ramesses II had vastly expanded
the northeastern Nile Delta city of Avaris, and
made it his new capital, renaming it Per-
Ramesses. He ringed his new capital with sup-
port cities, to house his armies and store his
military supplies. Egyptian records thus agree
in these details with the Exodus story. The new
cities were 90 percent mudbrick and 10 percent
stone, with the stone used mainly for temples.
It makes sense that foreigners like the Hebrews
would be set to making mudbricks, which
Ramesses II needed by the millions. Indeed,
administrative texts from Ramesses II’s reign
show that he
exploited cap-
tives and foreign
labor extensive-
ly, and others
show. brick-mak-
ing quotas
assigned to over-
seers, again
echoing the Exo-
dus story. So
Ramesses II's
reign is a very
suitable candi-
date for the Exo-
dus event. Even the pharaoh’s first-born son
died, sometime between the 15th and 25th reg-
nal years of the king. So, with Kitchen, I agree
that Ramesside Egypt suits the Exodus event,
specifically under Ramesses II.

There is more evidence. Only in the
Ramesside era was Egypt’s capital and
pharaoh’s residence in the northeastern Delta,
an area traditionally identified with the Biblical
Land of Goshen. There were shallow, papyrus-
laden lakes in the vicinity of Per-Ramesses, and
it could have been through one such lake that
the fleeing Israelites escaped pharaoh’s pursu-
ing chariots. Exodus 14:25 speaks of the Egyp-
tian chariots bogging down, and we know that
throughout history escaping slaves have headed
for swamps and marshes to outwit their pur-
suers more easily. Indeed, a Late Ramesside
text mentions two escaping slaves and the
Egyptian officials sent to track them down;
these slaves, like the Hebrews of Exodus, had
fled southeast, past Pithom (Per-Atum), which
is now Tell er-Rataba in the Wady Tumulat, a
natural corridor leading to Sinai.

So an Exodus date under Ramesses II
accords well with indirect evidence from Egyp-
tian sources, and dovetails neatly with the earli-
est archaeological evidence of Israel in Canaan,

and also with Merenptah’s reference to Israel.
Another text, a border journal extract of
Merenptah’s reign, mentions an official, sta-
tioned at the “well of Merenptah which is in the
hills.” who had been summoned to Gaza. The
Book of Joshua refers to a place called “the
well of the waters of Nephtoah” [Joshua 15:9
and 18:15]. The Hebrew text, however, clearly
reads “the well of Merenptah,” which suits pre-
cisely the name in the border journal extract.
The well is modern Lifta, in the
hills outside Jerusalem, just
where the Egyptian docu-
ments place it.

Other Egyptian docu-
ments further illuminate
this period. Papyrus
Anastasi I, a literary con-
troversy between two
scribes, pictures Canaan’s
hill country as wild,
forested, with deep
ravines and overgrowth,
and haunted by fierce =
nomadic Shasu, ready to
plunder the unwary travel-
er; the Shasu are described
as speaking a Semitic lan-
guage. The papyrus is
dated in the early to mid-
dle part of the reign of
Ramesses II. Accordingly,
as of then, there were no
settled farmers in the hill
country, but Stager’s exca-
vations have shown that by
the second half of Ramesses II’s long reign,
1279-1212 B.C., such settlement had started.

The Septuagint (Greek) version of Judges
states that Israel was unable to penetrate the
lowland areas and cities, and so agrees with
Merenptah’s account of the Canaanite cam-
paign and Egyptian control of Canaan.

According to the Song of Deborah [Judges
5, dated 1140-1130 B.C.], the Israelites were at
last able to overcome the Canaanites in Megid-
do. By her time, the Egyptians had evacuated
Canaan, and the Canaanites had been weakened
severely by the coming of the Sea Peoples,
including the Philistines. The Sea Peoples had
attacked Ramesses III’s Egypt and were
repulsed but allowed to settle in coastal
Canaan. Deborah, in carrying out her attack,
could not get all the tribes to participate. Some
were pastoral and busy with their flocks, Dan
was busy on ships (either enmeshed with, or
part of, the Sea Peoples), and Asher too was
busy along the coast. Thus, Deborah shows us
farmers, pastoralists, and seafarers among the
early Israelites. The pastoralists might well
have derived from the Shasu; another Egyptian
border journal fragment shows pastoralists,
identified as Shasu of Edom asking permission
to enter Egypt and pasture their flocks in the
Eastern Delta near Pithom. Judges 5:4 states
that Yahweh, the god of Israel, originated from
Se’ir in Edom, a statement confirmed by an
Egyptian document. That was Shasu country.

Thus the ancient Israelites were at least
part of all the major population groups of early
12th-century Canaan — Canaanites, Shasu, and
Sea Peoples. The Exodus group could have
blended into one of these groups and given
them the story of Exodus as a foundation
account. Yet as of Deborah’s time, the
Israelites still lacked unity. They were just
beginning to emerge from the hill country as
the Egyptians evacuated Canaan and the Sea
Peoples’ settlements along the coast prevented
the Canaanites from establishing control. The
unified twelve tribes and the Kingdom of
Solomon still lay in the future.

Above: The last two
lines of the “Israel
Stela” contain the
earliest known refer-
ence to Israel other
than Biblical texts.

Top left, Scene 4 of
Merenptah’s battle
reliefs, which the
author believes to be
a depiction of the
Israelites in the hills
of Canaan.

Left, Merenptah’s
army returns from
the Canaanite cam-
paign with prisoners
of war.

Bottom of page 10,
Merenptah attacks
the town of
Ashkelon.

11 SE

Egypt and the
Nile by Yacht
April 24 to

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May 9, 1993 312/322-8862 Charlotte Islands

Explore the monuments
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