Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Carnegie Magazine

by

Where the Heck Did That Come From?

By Amy L. Covell-Murthy

Accession Number 6395 is a large and unusual effigy pipe that was found in a field in Washington County, Pennsylvania. It was discovered first by the blade of a farmer’s plow. This pipe appears to be Adena, which refers to the mound building cultural group who occupied much of Ohio from approximately 1000-200 BC. Though there are a few Adena archaeological sites in Western Pennsylvania, the exact origin of this pipe is unknown.

effigy pipe

Many archaeological sites in Pennsylvania are located under what we call, “plow zones.” As much of Pennsylvania was used as farmland, many archaeological sites have been disrupted vertically by the act of plowing. Native American cultural material close to the surface is often broken and scattered across the distance of the former fields. In the case of this object, it was found decades ago in an active plow zone. In the photographs below, you can see the “plow scar” on the cheek of the effigy where the plow gouged a large chunk out of the surface of the stone.

The Society for American Archaeology explains context as, “referring to the relationship that artifacts have to each other and the situation in which they are found. Every artifact found on an archaeological site has a precisely defined location. The exact spot where an artifact is found is recorded before it is removed from that location. When people remove an artifact without recording its precise location the context is lost forever and the artifact has little or no scientific value.” Since this pipewas found in a field and not in the context of an excavated site, we cannot say for sure where it originated. It may have been traded, or it may have been part of a larger site that was destroyed. There is no way of knowing how long it had been in the field. It could have been there for a hundred years or someone could have put it there a month before it was found.

effigy pipe

This pipe is just one of the multitude of pieces in our massive Upper Ohio River Valley collection. Being able to provide space for academics to research things like this is one of the many highlights of my job. It is important to be able to provide scholars with the necessary material to finish their manuscripts, theses, and dissertations. These projects bring us closer to understanding how people lived in this region long before our time.

effigy pipe

This artifact is featured in William Mayer-Oakes’s 1955 Carnegie Annals publication, Prehistory of the Upper Ohio Valley and has been photographed for Carnegie Magazine. It is also featured on the website for the Ohio History Connection. To learn more about the Society for American Archaeology visit www.saa.org.

Amy L. Covell-Murthy is the Archaeology Collection Manager at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

by

Giant Sable Antelope

By Lisa Miriello

Carnegie magazine cover with giant sable antelope

In 1930, New York publisher Ralph Pulitzer recruited Rudyerd Boulton, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s ornithologist, to accompany him to the Portuguese colony of Angola in search of the Giant Sable Antelope. Few American zoologists had explored this region of Africa but Boulton had traveled there in 1925 with the American Museum of Natural History and his knowledge of the territory was invaluable to the Pulitzer party.

Hippotragus niger variani was named as a new subspecies less than fifteen years before the Pulitzer expedition and interest in the scientific community, as well as with big game hunters, grew rapidly. Portuguese authorities soon created new game laws to help protect this rare and impressive animal. Never numerous, today the Giant Sable is critically endangered, threatened by habitat loss, civil war, and poachers. Active conservation efforts continue, but population estimates indicate there are less than a hundred mature individuals, found only in Angola’s Cangandala National Park and the Luando Nature Reserve.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is one of only a handful of museums in the country where specimens of the Giant Sable have been preserved. The male collected by Pulitzer was expertly prepared by renowned taxidermy artist R. H. Santens and is exhibited on the museum’s second floor.

Lisa Miriello is the scientific preparator in the Section of Mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.