The Wild, Wild West: Materiality and Provenance of Ancient West Mexican Ceramics and the Future of Museum-based Collections

This research investigates decontextualized ancient ceramics in museum collections with a desire to connect the items back to sites, homelands and the cultures that produced them, or their descendants. The focus is on ancient West Mexican ceramic figures (300BCE-600CE) that are some of the most severely looted and prolific artifacts in the collections of Southern Californian institutions. 95 well-provenanced figures from excavated sites in Nayarit and Jalisco (mostly held at the Museo Regional de Nayarit or MRN) were examined and analyzed to create a baseline of information to compare with 142 figures at the Fowler Museum at UCLA (FM-UCLA) and the Natural History Museum Los Angeles (NHMLA). The research utilized non-invasive portable X-ray fluorescence to determine elemental compositions of the ceramics, slips, decorative features and modern additions in the form of restorations by looters, collectors and gallerists. Digital microscopy, endoscopy, ultraviolet induced fluorescence and X-radiography were employed as non-invasive techniques to reveal construction methods, repairs and areas of analysis. Key research questions center on the ability to successfully reconnect figures scientifically to cultures of origin using non-invasive instrumentation, the correlation of elemental data to predetermined styles and typologies, issues around post excavation restoration and further provenance information held in historical documentation. Beyond the goals of recontextualizing and linking figures in the U.S. to sites in Mexico, a major aim is to develop a collaborative and transparent environment between scholars and museums in Southern California and those in West Mexico, which lead to shared decision-making over the directives and future of the collections housed in the U.S. &nbsp

EXPLORING MULTICULTURAL ASPECTS IN ZADIE SMITHS WHITE TEETH.

<p>Zadie Smith made an astonishing debut novel White Teeth, published in 2000, when she was twenty four years old. She deals with many issue connected with living in a multicultural society and with the gap between the first and second generation of immigrants. Zadie Smith?s first novel White Teeth (2000) has been analysed as the diverse and multicultural society of the present-day city of London. The roots and history of the first generation of immigrants have made identity issues for the second generation in the novel. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the aspects of multicultural social space and instability of identity and family relations depicted in the novel. The second generation of immigrants, who live in London, tries to mix the dominant culture (English culture) with their familial culture in order to have a different identity. They also want to escape from their families.</p