The History of Art department, in collaboration with the Gladys Marcus Library, has launched the Archaic Bannerstone Project, an online resource for the study of the aesthetically complex, anomalous ancient Native American lithics known as bannerstones, at bannerstone.fitnyc.edu. Led by Anna Blume, History of Art, and developed by Joseph Anderson, of the library, this project aims to bring bannerstone awareness and study to the broadest range of people, to reveal the deep history of the creative imagination of the indigenous people of eastern North America.
Included on this open-source website are a bannerstone typology, high-quality images, a glossary, a bibliography, metrics to better standardize the study of bannerstones, and a vast array of out-of-print or difficult to find texts relevant to bannerstone study. Molly Schoen and Nanja Andriananjason, both of the visual resources division of the History of Art department, provided metadata and visual imaging expertise to the project team.
For more information, contact Anna Blume, (212) 217-4646, or Joseph Anderson, (212) 217-4359.