Conservation and Curation of the U-Iowa Stanford Collection

爱荷华州大学人类学系和州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法律的所有权。 1998年正式从斯坦福大学医学院转移，这一近1,100人的非凡收藏是在20世纪上半叶从19世纪中后期出生的个人中收集的。 因此，他们是生活在现代医疗保健实践重大改进之前的人的遗骸，包括抗生素和流行病学科学的出现，氟化物和其他现代牙科实践的广泛使用，关节炎等退行性疾病治疗的改进，以及维生素补充剂的可用性和其他基于营养的改进。 因此，鉴于美国人类骨骼材料的可用性迅速减少，U-爱荷华斯坦福大学收藏为物理人类学家提供了一个重要的新资源，并显着增加了其他主要收藏中包含的种族和地区差异的范围（例如，史密森尼学会的特里收藏和克利夫兰自然历史博物馆的哈曼-托德收藏）。 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健康相关研究做出广泛贡献。 今天不太可能获得如此大规模、系统地收集的人类骨骼标本，将来也不可能。 因此，对现存的少数几个物种进行适当的管理和研究是体质人类学的一个高度优先事项，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.