MSUM lends a helping hand

• Nobles County Historical Society

Brian Korthals/Daily Globe Minnesota State University graduate student Jared Langseth, formerly of Worthington, examines a skull which had been donated to the Nobles County Historical Society as part of a project to inventory items and artifacts with an emphasis to those of cultural significance at the museum in Worthington. The skull had originally been obtained in Belize. (Brian Korthals/Daily Globe)
• Nobles County Historical Society 2

Jared Langseth (left) and Nobles County Historical Society collection committee chair Pat Demuth discuss Langseth’s project of inventorying artifacts at the NCHS’s museum in Worthington. Langseth is studying anthropology with a focus on archaeology at the Mankato campus of Minnesota State University. (Brian Korthals/Daily Globe)
• Nobles County Historical Society Skull

Nobles County Historical Society records indicate the skull in their posession originated in Belize and had been donated by a Nobles County family in the 1990’s. Langseth is spearheading a project which will catalog artifacts with possible cultural significance. (Brian Korthals/Daily Globe)

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — A pilot program for anthropology students at Minnesota State University Mankato could give the staff at the Nobles County Historical Society a much-needed hand in getting their archives in order.

“There is no end in sight. It’s overwhelming and daunting, that’s why it’s never been done before,” said Pat Demuth, who volunteers as head of the collections committee. The society’s efforts to document and organize their artifacts would be helped by a slew of undergraduate interns eager to get their hands dirty, but he said they may never get through the whole collection.

The proposed program grew out of a project Worthington native Jared Langseth is working on for his master’s degree in anthropology at MSU.

“We’re trying to … just get out there and apply our knowledge of archeology for the betterment of the community,” he said.

The project would use anthropology majors with an interest in archeology to help assess collections in area historical societies. And, pending NCHS board approval, Nobles County would be first on the list.

“We aren’t going to firmly establish anything at this point, this is just a test run,” said Langseth. “If it works well, we can go to a different historical society.”

Langseth was in Worthington on Friday to talk to NCHS employees about a human skull they had found in an unmarked box in their archives. The skull was originally believed to belong to a regional native American tribe, but they later found a paper identifying it as a 1992 donation from Margaret Miller, the wife of local man Wes Miller, who was given the skull on a trip through Belize. Langseth said the skull likely belonged to a middle-aged person, but beyond that little else is known.

Once the skull is given to the university, students will examine dental records and try to determine from where it came.

“We should be able to figure out, if not a direct cultural affiliation, at least a region of the world where he came from,” explained Langseth. From there, he will contact the appropriate officials to help determine who should take possession of the skull.

The act of sending remains back to their origin, for example sending a native American skull back to a tribe, is known as repatriation, and it would be part of the work Langseth and his crew would be doing.

“It’s one of those things that needs to be addressed,” he said of his proposed initiative. “The benefit of doing that (is) we can find the human remains, we can find the things that need to be repatriated and get them back to the people who they belong to.”

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