August 28, 2009

In which my faith in science is shaken

One of the exhibits I saw at Bishop Museum yesterday included a five-foot tall wood carving of a lesser god. It was a couple of centuries old and looked its age.

One of the things about me is that when I look at textual descriptions of artifacts in museum cases I read everything, so I noticed that this carving was described as constructed of "undetermined wood."

"Undetermined?" How could that be? How could it be that something as commonplace as wood couldn't be given the proper taxonomic rank?

I asked the Collections Manager about it and he said that he had been equally astonished that the botanists couldn't identify it, despite fairly strenuous efforts.

Huh.

Posted by Linkmeister at August 28, 2009 09:12 AM | TrackBack
Comments

That is odd. Before the arrival of Cook, there couldn't have been that many species of trees here. I would have thought that identifying the wood would have been a snap.

My husband and I were with a group that had a tour of the work efforts on the restoration some months ago. We'll have to go back soon and see the finished product.

Posted by: Illanoy Gal at August 28, 2009 11:08 AM

I saw that explanation on the card for that sculpture and wondered the same thing. In this age of DNA testing, how COUDN"T they tell what kind of tree it was carved from?

This is my guess. I'm thinking that the botanists took a look and weren't sure without a lab analysis of a small sample. Someone else then decided that taking even a tiny sample for testing would harm the integrity of the artifact. Or that the expense of doing DNA testing was too expensive just to satisfy museum geeks like you and me.

Posted by: Rob_in_Hawaii at August 28, 2009 12:07 PM

a five-foot tall wood carving of a lesser god

Were its children deaf?

Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) at August 28, 2009 02:05 PM

Heh. No, and they didn't resemble Marlee Matlin, William Hurt or Piper Laurie, either.

Posted by: Linkmeister at August 28, 2009 02:51 PM

Have they no Dendrologists in Hawaii?

Posted by: Karan at August 29, 2009 01:06 PM

Here's my guess: extinction. The wood was carved from a tree which has completely died out in the intervening centuries, so that no one now living has ever seen it. If you could bring back a native Hawaiian from the dead, he could probably identify it.

A sobering thought.

Posted by: hedera at August 29, 2009 01:44 PM