Exchange links Nordenskiolds

Exchange links Nordenskiolds

May 29, 2001

By Janelle Holden
Journal Staff Writer

May is Archaeology and Historic Preservation Month in Colorado. The Journal is publishing weekly articles about the area’s past.

When David Pereira arrived in Cortez from Cocha Bomba, Bolivia, it was snowing, and he hadn’t brought a coat. But snow wasn’t the only surprise for Pereira during his month-long participating exchange with the Anasazi Heritage Center.

While touring Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park, Pereira heard of Gustav Nordenskiold, a Swedish scientist who visited Mesa Verde in 1891 and collected 600 artifacts that remain in Finland. Pereira is the director of the Institute of Anthropology and Museum at the University of San Simon, Bolivia.

"So immediately, I said, ‘Nordenskiold is familiar to me. Who is this Nordenskiold? In Bolivia, we have an archaeologist that came at the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century to visit Bolivia four times and did a lot of ethnological and archaeological work whose name was Nordenskiold.’"

And, oddly enough, Erland Nordenskiold, the Swedish explorer of southeastern Bolivia, turned out to be the younger brother of Gustav Nordenskiold, of Mesa Verde fame.

Pereira said that Erland was the first researcher to work at Incallacta, a large Incan ruin 150 kilometers south of Cocha Bomba. "He was the first to make a map of the site, and also the first to dig test pits at some of the old buildings there, and of course he took many photographs," Pereira explained.

The brothers both recorded their adventures through the lens of a camera. Gustav took many pictures of Mesa Verde when he visited several cliff dwellings with the Wetherills in 1891, as Erland did in his trip to the Andes.

"Gustav applied rigorous scientific record-keeping, documentation and procedures to record what he found," said Michael Williams, an exhibit specialist at the Anasazi Heritage Center who visited Bolivia on an exchange last August.

"Archaeology was really in its infancy at the time, but he came from a scientific family and he was way ahead of his time."

Gustav is somewhat of a controversial figure because his visit to Mesa Verde also resulted in 600 artifacts being shipped from Durango to Finland, where they currently reside at the National Museum in Helsinki.

"It was controversial, but no one was really doing archaeological work here in a professional way, and there was no law against exporting," explained Williams.

"In a way, Gustav did us all a great favor. If he hadn’t ever done that, there would never have been the interest in protecting these things. He incited the local populace in their first concern for protecting these ruins."

Gustav’s collection was returned from Helsinki for a brief display at Mesa Verde a few years ago. It was the first time the collection had returned to the Four Corners since it left.

"That was an important diplomatic and scientific moment," said Williams.

Erland Nordenskiold also gathered artifacts from his travels in Bolivia that are now stored in two large collections in Sweden. Pereira said Erland documented the ethnography of the region and the archaeology during his trips. His ethnographical information resulted in many published works documenting the culture of the living indian tribes, and his archaeological efforts and photographs documented the artifacts and architecture of the Incan ruins in Bolivia.

Although Gustav died of tuberculosis shortly after he returned from Mesa Verde at the age of 26, while Erland lived into his 70s and was a prolific writer.

His work in Bolivia is significant enough for Pereira to deliver the opening speech at an international seminar in San Salvador this August celebrating 100 years following his expeditions.

Pereira and Williams’s month-long exchanges were sponsored by the American Association of Museums, which chose the two museums because of their similar sizes and purposes.

"Particularly we were interested in an exchange of experiences on research in archaeology, the treatment and stabilization and work on archaeological sites and also the exchange of experiences and preparing future plans in complementary education," said Pereira.

"It has been a very good experience for me, personally, to see the architecture and the cliff dwellings. Those are very new for me, and I’m very happy to have that opportunity," Pereira said.

During his visit, Pereira visited museums and various archaeological sites in the Four Corners.

Pereira is responsible for overseeing archaeological work at Incallacta, an Incan ruin that dates to approximately the same time period as the Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings in the Four Corners.