Robinson’s artifacts from the Amazon on display in Hudson Museum exhibit
In 1979 and 1980, the late University of Maine archeologist Brian Robinson collected a range of traditional artifacts on a trip through the Amazonian rainforest in Peru.
Robinson, who was an associate professor in UMaine’s Department of Anthropology and the Climate Change Institute, died last fall after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Now, visitors to UMaine’s Hudson Museum can see some of the artifacts that captured Robinson’s imagination, during his tours of Shipibo villages along Peru’s Ucayali River. Items on display, as part of the exhibit “Adventures in the Amazon,” include textiles, fishing and hunting gear and pottery.
Some of the items were acquired directly from community members. Robinson purchased others from cooperatives in the region.
All the artifacts in “Adventures in the Amazon” were collected between 1940 and 1980. Other items in the exhibit come from Harvard graduate student Homer Virgil Pinkley’s two years living with the Cofan in Ecuador in the mid-1960s, and from members of the U.S. foreign service and employees of American corporations, living and working in South America.
“Adventures in the Amazon” is on display in the Hudson Museum’s Merritt Gallery until August. The museum is open 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturday.