Dear friends and donors,
Greetings from the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA), where the summer is over, and a new academic year, filled with exciting archaeological research, collections work, and teaching and learning about the human past, is well underway. The museum's curators, students, and staff are active on multiple fronts: our temporary space in the School of Education Building has been upgraded, including new Asian, Mediterranean, and Archaeological Science ranges and a big beautiful commons room; the UMMAA Press recently published Gheo-Shih: An Archaic Macroband Camp in the Valley of Oaxaca, by Kent Flannery and Frank Hole, Volume 19 (!) in the long-running Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca series; and we welcomed three new anthropological-archaeology graduate students. Thanks to the generosity of alumni and donors like you, UMMAA continues to be a global leader in archaeological research and teaching. Thank you!
But today, there is a new and growing need that goes beyond research and teaching and is stretching the museum's resources. It stems from our giant, complicated collection of 3.5 million archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnobiological artifacts and ecofacts acquired over the course of 102 years from 150+ countries, every state in the union, and every county in Michigan. In addition to its value for research and teaching, our collection is also of immeasurable value and interest to the myriad descendant communities from which it derives.
More than ever, these communities are engaging directly with UMMAA. We receive inquiries about the collection from around the world on an almost daily basis. Artists and culture-bearers visit the museum; they come away stunned, and eager to work with us. In response to these exciting developments, we are raising money to facilitate engagement with descendant communities.
Your gift, directed to our Strategic Fund, will be used to support ongoing efforts to bring members of descendant communities into the UMMAA collections. We have an obligation to descendants, whose ancestors made the objects we curate, but as importantly, more and more we are aware that doing good anthropological-archaeological research requires meaningful collaboration. Your support helps make such collaboration possible.
Sincerely,
Michael L. Galaty, Director
Curator of European Archaeology
