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June 25, 2018

Handle

Between 1963 and 1964, Sheldon Rootenberg and his wife Geraldine traveled to Margarita Island, off the north coast of Venezuela, with plans for carrying out an archaeological survey of the island. At that time Rootenberg was a doctoral student at UCLA and the project was intended to provide the basis for his dissertation. In nine months they discovered and mapped about 170 archaeological sites across the island, collected surface materials and probed few sites with small trenches and test pits. Then, with support from a local foundation, they shipped the archaeological materials to Los Angeles to be analyzed and studied. As sometime happens, however, life took a different turn and he never completed his research.
In 1974, Mr. Rootenberg contacted the museum to find a home for the collections and his donation of more than twenty-five boxes was readily accepted by the museum staff. But then, surrounded by many other boxes of archaeological materials from California, Nevada, Africa and Central America that arrived to the museum in the same year, the Rootenberg collection ended up lying uncataloged and unremembered in the off-campus storage for over 40 years.



"tract homes" of La Isleta - alphabetically numbered, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

In the last two years all those materials have been transferred to the museum new storage facility and we had a chance to open lots of dusty boxes, evaluating their contents, and to plan for their future while revisiting their history prior to ending up in Berkeley. For the Margarita Island collection we were able to contact Mr. Rootenberg, and few months ago he came to visit the museum for a conversation about his old project. Five decades later, Sheldon and Geraldine still had vivid memories of that year in Venezuela and they told us stories about the project and some of the people involved in it, gave us clues about the the notes found in the bags and discussed about the maps, the field notes and the Kodachrome slides that had been in his care all these years and are now in the museum archives. The slides are the cherry on top of an already valuable collection; they supply an important addition  to the archaeological record and also furnish colorful, serene, and melancholic at the same time, glimpses of daily life in a landscape that is long gone.
















house more than 100 years old east of Flandes, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1963















"outdoor" bar and juke box in El Guamache, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

By the 1960's, only few north American archaeologists had worked in Venezuela and the Caribbean Area, collaboration with local scholars was at its beginning and literature, especially in English, is not abundant and not easy to find in California libraries. But a paper published in 1959 by Cruxent and Rouse, suggested that the islands off the north coast of Venezuela were populated as early as 5000 B.C., first by groups of hunter-gatherers and later by small farming and fishing communities that in time developed an extensive network with other Caribbean islands. In this context, Sheldon Rootenberg saw the opportunity to develop a project that could eventually turn into a doctoral dissertation and successfully applied for funding by arguing that "what is needed now is a number of extensive studies of the various prehistoric and historic stages, and the purpose of this project is to conduct a comprehensive study of the prehistory of the island through archaeological survey and extensive excavation."



Hearst Museum - uncatalogued
potsherd, rim and decorated handle
Venezuela, Margarita Island, Site 87
Collected by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

Few weeks before leaving Los Angeles, Rootenberg wrote to Irving Rouse at Yale University presenting his project and asking for comments and advice. Rouse had been involved in Venezuelan archaeology for some years and reminded the young student of previous excavations on the island, with the recommendation to review the old materials for comparison. Additionally he suggested more places of importance for future research and mentioned that his book - Venezuelan Archaeology - was going to be published within few months. Later correspondence between the two tells of some difficulties locating and comfortably viewing the old collections before returning home; and also that the notice of the book being actually published reached the island too late to secure a copy while still in the field. Some frustration is palpable but there is also a lot of excitement over his discoveries of new sites and of distinctive tools made of modified shells, all of it neatly documented in over 150 pages of notes and sketches.
For all that work the collection represents a lasting contribution to Venezuelan archaeology although it was destined to remain Rootenberg's last archaeological adventure. By 1966, prof. Rouse too had moved away from Venezuela to the Caribbean islands, just north of Margarita, to investigate the nature and origins of their early populations.




woman with freckles with cigar and basket on head in Loma de Guerra, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon  Rootenberg, 1963















costumed men dancing in streets of San Francisco on their "April Fool" day (December 28)
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1963

In addition to the progress in the field and exciting discoveries the documents tell another story, one that I am familiar with. The story of a graduate student coping with the ups and downs of doing research in a foreign country for the first time: money is short and everything appears to be much more expensive than at home, the car keeps breaking down in the middle of nowhere and your mattress have seen better days. And if that is not enough, an even bigger challenge is represented by your local colleagues that can be openly skeptic of foreigners and their ideas, and express sudden disappointment (in a different language!) over small things while you feel the pressure of having to impress and convince them over and over. I know how unsettling that could be: I have been through similar situations and not all my archaeological memories are happy ones. But while I will never know why Sheldon Rootenberg parted ways with archaeology, I am sure that if he had gone back to Margarita Island to work with the same people for seven or eight years the way I was fortunate to do, his diaries would have fewer and fewer mentions of those small inconveniences.