Abstract
The Zallio Collection of Native North American basketry is an old and poorly documented collection comprising 106 specimens. Part of a much larger corpus of material amassed by Italian immigrant Anthony Giuseppe Zallio, it represents a late 19th and early 20th century era of anthropology that was largely on the decline during Zallio’s academic encounter with the discipline. Zallio taught anthropology at Sacramento Junior College from 1929 to 1940, when the college served as the city and region’s only institution of higher learning. The Zallio Collection includes both archaeological and ethnographic material and was donated to the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) by Maria Zallio Brugge in 1951, following her father’s death. This thesis examines the Zallio corpus of North American basketry as a reflection of the academic milieu and unrealized aspirations of a self-trained anthropologist working on the geographic and professional margins of anthropology during a period characterized by the emergence of sub-disciplinary specialization and the vigilant gate-keeping of the discipline’s increasingly professionalized ranks. Sources of Data In addition to the basket specimens, themselves, several other sources of data were consulted. These include the Museum accession files, inventories, and catalogs, as well as primary source materials related to Zallio’s family, professional life and relationship with professional and amateur anthropologists and collectors. This latter material was drawn from archival repositories in Berkeley, north central California, and Washington, D.C. Conclusions Reached Data shows that while Anthony Zallio aspired to join the ranks of professional anthropology, he was unable to achieve this status. His motivations for collecting Native North American materials were complex, but were clearly intended to support his classroom instruction and development of the Lillard Museum at Sacramento Junior College. His basketry collection serves as an important reflection of the contexts in which anthropology, as an academic field no longer dominated by four-field generalists and salvage ethnography, began to emerge in the Sacramento region.