[Note #5] The Mammoth and the Path of Anthropological Study

A life-like woolly mammoth was on display in the Brooks Museum from 1878 to 1948. At opening day ceremonies the Mammoth was described as a “persuasive invocation into the path of Anthropological study.”[1]

Mammoths were painted by shamans on cave walls 30,000 years ago. They were hunted by humans at the end of the last Ice Age. Myths about mammoths are part of indigenous Siberian and Native American cultures. Mammoth ivory, preserved in tundra, became part of a global market. In popular culture, the animated film franchise Ice Age, featuring mammoths voiced by Ray Romano, Queen Latifah and Keke Palmer, is going strong.

Mammoths are about spectacle. They still occupy center stage in museums and enter into debates over commodification and preservation (cloning?) of animals.[2] In this broad intellectual landscape, the mammoth icon certainly belongs on your Anthropology Society t-shirt.

From Professor Hantman

[1] Southall, James C., “Address on Man’s Age in the World,” Opening of the Lewis Brooks Museum at the University of Virginia, June 27th, 1878. Clemmitt & Jones Printers, Richmond, Va. University of Virginia Special Collections.

[2] See Jim Igoe, The Nature of Spectacle: On Images, Money, and Conserving Capitalism, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2017.