Packing Box
date: label: Accession Date
content: 7 Jan 1869
name: label: Donor Name
content: Roderick R. MacFarlane
notes: label: Notes
content: Box and lid. Though catalogued as a packing box, "tool box" is written on the artifact itself. Card indicates this is Inuit made.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Inuvialuit Pitqusiit Inuuniarutait: Inuvialuit Living History, The MacFarlane Collection website, by the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre (ICRC), Inuvik, N.W.T., Canada (website credits here http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/posts/12 ), entry on this artifact http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/items/119 , retrieved 2-11-2020: Box made from wood. A long side piece has been bent into a 'U' shape, and has a smaller end piece attached to it with wood pegs. The bottom also is held in place with wood pegs. The lid is loose, but two holes drilled through at an angle near the curved end, and a similar hole at the other end that line up with corresponding holes in the side piece, likely were used for lashing the lid to the side. Grooves in edges of the lid near the straight end that line up with similar grooves on the side piece were probably made to hold a thong that encircled the box. Scratches in the suface of the lid indicate that the box had been used as a cutting board, in addition to being a container. This item is identified in the original Smithsonian Institution catalogue as a 'packing box'; however, the shape follows the traditional design for boxes. More information available here: http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/item_types/12: The MacFarlane collection contains a variety of wooden boxes. Boxes carved from single pieces of wood, and boxes with sides made from bent pieces of wood with bottoms pegged to them, are traditional Inuvialuit forms that were used for storing tools and other objects. Boxes with separate pieces for each side, bottom and top identified in the Smithsonian Institution's artifact catalogue as 'Packing Box Made by Esquimaux' may have been commissioned by MacFarlane for packing artifacts that were sent to the Smithsonian.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 21 Apr 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 2
place: label: Place
content: Northwest Territories, Canada, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Inuit, Inuvialuk (Inuvialuit)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 69A00012
label: USNM Number
content: E7836-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Box