Conservation and Curation of the U-Iowa Stanford Collection

爱荷华大学的人类学系和国家考古学家办公室最近获得了美国最大的有记录的人类骨骼遗骸收藏之一的合法所有权。1998年，斯坦福大学医学院（Stanford University School of Medicine）正式转让了这一非凡的藏品，这些藏品收集了近1100个人的资料，这些人都出生于19世纪中后期，是20世纪上半叶收集的。因此，它们是生活在现代保健措施重大改进之前的人的遗骸，这些改进包括抗生素和流行病学的出现、氟化物的广泛使用和其他现代牙科措施、关节炎等退行性疾病治疗的改进、维生素补充剂的可用性和其他基于营养的改进。鉴于美国人类骨骼材料的可用性迅速减少，爱荷华大学斯坦福大学的藏品因此为身体人类学家提供了重要的新资源，并大大增加了其他主要藏品（例如，史密森学会的特里藏品和克利夫兰自然历史博物馆的赫尔曼-托德藏品）中种族和地区差异的范围。这些藏品构成了体质人类学许多方面的基础研究资源，随着新的骨骼DNA提取和分析技术的出现，爱荷华大学斯坦福大学的藏品尤其有望为与健康有关的研究做出广泛贡献。今天不太可能获得如此庞大、系统地收集的人类骨骼，将来也不可能再次获得。因此，适当地管理和研究这些少数存在的可用性，是体质人类学的高度优先事项，也是当前项目的重点。

The Department of Anthropology and the Office of the State Archaeologist at the University of Iowa recently acquired legal possession of one of the largest collections of documented human skeletal remains in the United States. Officially transferred in 1998 from Stanford University's School of Medicine, this extraordinary collection of nearly 1,100 individuals was amassed in the first half of the 1900s from individuals born in the mid to late 1800s. They are thus the remains of people that lived prior to major improvements in modern health care practices including the advent of antibiotics and epidemiological science, the widespread use of fluoride and other modern dental practices, improvements in the treatment of degenerative diseases such as arthritis, and the availability of vitamin supplements and other nutrition based improvements. The U-Iowa Stanford Collection thus provides an important new resource for physical anthropologists given the rapidly shrinking availability of human skeletal material in the United States, and adds significantly to the range of ethnic and regional variability encompassed in the other major collections (e.g., the Terry Collection, Smithsonian Institution, and the Hamann-Todd Collection, Cleveland Museum of Natural History). These collections constitute the cornerstone research resource for many aspects of physical anthropology, and with the advent of new bone DNA extraction and analytical technology, the U-Iowa Stanford collection, in particular, promises to contribute widely to health-related research. It is unlikely that such large, systematically amassed human skeletal collections could be obtained today, or ever will be again in the future. The proper curation and research availability of those few that exist, therefore, is a high priority in physical anthropology and is the focus of the current project.