Molly Lee

Catalogue raisonné of the Alaska Commercial Company Collection, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology

This book documents, with photographs and complete descriptions, the more than 2,200 Native Alaskan (Eskimo, Aleut, Northwest Coast, and Athapaskan) objects originally collected by the Alaska Commercial Company and donated to the University of California in 1897. Introducing the catalogue are essays on the historical background and cultural context and significance of the collection. Also included are indexes of personal and geographical names and a concordance.

If It's Not a Tlingit Basket, Then What Is It?: Toward the Definition of an Alutiiq Twined Spruce Root Basket Type

In this article I describe a twined spruce root basket type formerly attributed to the Tlingit Indians but now accepted as made by the Alutiiq (Pacific Eskimo or Chugach Eskimo) populations of Prince William Sound and Kodiak Island, although a few were also collected in Sitka because of the frequent relocation of Alutiiqs during the Russian occupation of Alaska. The research was carried out in several European museums having early Alaskan collections. For the research, I compared documented Tlingit baskets with those collected from the Alutiiqs as early as the 1778 voyage of Capt. James Cook and as late as the 1950s. The two have been found to differ in several ways, most notably in design motifs and their placement on the baskets. The research owes much to ethnographic data from Frederica de Laguna’s long-term research in Prince William Sound.