HMA announces an acquisitions and loan hiatus from summer 2024 through 2027 due to our upcoming museum move.

"Enhancing the Giddings/Anderson Research Archive through Oral History"

PI: Robert Preucel, James Manning Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

This project documents Native Alaskan archaeology and history through recorded interviews with Douglas Anderson, Director Emeritus of the Laboratory of Circumpolar Studies (LCS) and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. The interviews will create a research resource documenting Brown University's role in the growth and development of Alaskan archaeology and its relationships with Native Alaskan people. Two Brown professors, James Louis Giddings and Douglas Anderson, played a major role in training scholars in Arctic archaeology. The collections of the LCS are a unique resource for understanding the history of Arctic cultures and environments, as well as how human/environment interactions change through time. Methodologies include question-based interviews, unstructured in-depth interviews, and elicitation thorough examination of artifacts and related archival records. Interviews will be transcribed and transformed into a dynamic research resource through text markup of key words such as names, places, and dates. This project enhances an existing collaborative research project with the National Park Service on the content and history of these collections and their significance to Native Alaskan communities.

As part of an Anthropology Day celebration in mid-February, staff from Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology led visitors in a learning activity with objects from the museum’s collection.

Regulations aim to increase consultation with Indigenous groups during repatriation process.

Brown University looks to repatriate over 80 native remains

Plans are in the works to move the Haffenreffer Museum to 1 Davol Square, in the heart of Providence's Jewelry District. Doing so will "open up a host of new possibilities for scholarship, community outreach and partnership with Indigenous communities worldwide," Brown announced in a recent news release.

Contexts is the Haffenreffer Museum's Annual Report highlighting events, research projects, student projects, educational programs, recent acquisitions, and more. This is the 2023 issue, Volume 46.

This edition of Contexts is the first online version of the annual report of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. We have shifted to a digital format to provide greater access to our activities and programs and to allow for new ways of presenting what we do. We did not publish a report in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This issue covers 2020, 2021 and part of 2022.

This is the fifth installment of "Mellon Seeds." In the ongoing series, the Museum’s collection team shares stories emerging from their current work on two inventory projects funded by the Mellon Foundation: “Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the Haffenreffer.” The projects will culminate in the Museum’s move to Providence.

This is the fourth installment of "Mellon Seeds". In the ongoing series, the Museum’s collection team shares stories emerging from their current work on two inventory projects funded by the Mellon Foundation: “Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the Haffenreffer.” The projects will culminate in the Museum’s move to Providence.

This is the third installment of "Mellon Seeds". In the ongoing series, the Museum’s collection team shares stories emerging from their current work on two inventory projects funded by the Mellon Foundation: “Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the Haffenreffer.” The projects will culminate in the Museum’s move to Providence.

This is the second installment of "Mellon Seeds". In the ongoing series, the Museum’s collection team shares stories emerging from their current work on two inventory projects funded by the Mellon Foundation: “Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the Haffenreffer.” The projects will culminate in the Museum’s move to Providence.

This is the first installment of "Mellon Seeds". In the ongoing series, the Museum’s collection team shares stories emerging from their current work on two inventory projects funded by the Mellon Foundation: “Engaging the Americas” and “Transforming the Haffenreffer.” The projects will culminate in the Museum’s move to Providence.

The Journal of Archaeology Science has published a paper by the Haffenreffer Museum’s Deputy Director, Kevin Smith, that uses new approaches to analyzing radiocarbon dates to document a Viking Age ritual site deep inside Iceland’s massive Surtshellir Cave, and that he thinks was linked to the Vikings’ beliefs about Ragnarök, the end of the world.

GRoW @ Annenberg supports Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in its conservation of fragile archeological and ethnographic objects.

This October, the Haffenreffer Museum celebrated Rhode Island's Archaeology Month with a new virtual talk series, Women Do Archaeology. Inspired by 2020’s centennial commemoration of the 19th Amendment, we highlighted the work of women archaeologists and anthropologists affiliated with the Museum.