Millennia Molding and Casting Company
Millennia Molding and Casting Company
3708 Bigler Way
Sacramento, CA 95817
ph: (916) 396-5358
alschwit
Service APPLICATIONS
Cultural Heritage Appreciation and Preservation
Artifacts serve as the physical symbols and icons of Native American cultural heritage. Unfortunately, these physical symbols of Native American heritage often end up as institutional collections where most of the public has limited access. Millennia Molding and Casting Company owner Al W. Schwitalla has worked for many years to both preserve Native American prehistory and promote an appreciation and understanding of Native American cultural history through artifact reproduction and interpretation.
Artifact reproduction, coupled with accurate interpretation regarding their function, the cultural roles these objects and features played, and the people they represent, can help to foster an appreciation of Native American cultural heritage. Artifact casting provides detailed and accurate examples of the archaeological materials stored in inaccessible curation facilities.
Top Left: (Left) Original Clam shell bead artifacts in various stages of manufacture; (Right) Casts of the same clam shell bead manufacturing sequence. Clam shell beads were an important medium of exchange among hunter-gatherer populations living in California during the Late Prehistoric and Historic Periods. Top Right: Al Schwitalla and California Indian tribal members during an open house visit to the artifact reproduction lab on American Indian Day (1994). Bottom Left: Al Schwitalla and a Senior Cultural Resources Advisor of the Pit River Indian Nation during a archaeological mitigation construction project (2006). Bottom Right: Reproductions of Prehistoric elk bone (tibiae) modified into sweat scrapers from coastal archaeological sites in the San Francisco Bay region dating to central California's Early Middle Period (210 BC-AD 420).
Educational Applications
Teaching Assemblages
Millennia’s three-dimensional replicas and reproductions provide hands-on opportunities for students to handle and examine fragile, expensive, rare, sensitive, or irreplaceable objects that might otherwise be unavailable.
Teaching and type collections composed of original artifacts cannot be developed economically when multiple sets must be assembled. Special (and expensive) expertise is often required to obtain, identify, or select representative type specimens for teaching or type collections. In addition, rare or infrequent objects are often unavailable for teaching or type collections, molding and casting is an effective solution to the problem of reproducing teaching materials for rare and difficult to obtain objects.
Artifact Reproductions of Stone Tools
These casts of Projectile Points, Bifaces, Core and Blade, Antler Tine Pressure Flakers, Hammerstone, and Drill collectively represent the Paleo-Indian Period through Euro-American Settlement in North America.
Artifact Reproductions of Prehistoric Faunal Bone ToolsImplements of bone were used in a variety of specialized tasks and for more general purposes. The assemblage depicted here were used as prying tools, pins, needles, awls, drills, harpoon tips, saws, daggers, and as flakers in the manufacture of stone projectile points. Bone Tools and other organic constituents are often absent at many archaeological sites with acidic soils. Poor preservation of these materials can result in an incomplete or inaccurate interpretation of past human behavior.
Artifact Reproductions of Prehistoric Subsistence Processing Equipment
Artifact replicas and teaching modules can form the centerpiece of a course curriculum and they can be used separately to convey specific principles and ideas. Millennia’s educational materials can be used at different grade levels, making our materials an economical and strategic investment for fiscally challenged school systems. Introductory teaching materials include individual artifacts and teaching modules that draw students’ attention to the kinds of materials and basic concepts related to native lifeways. Older students and more advanced lesson plans can use the same materials, supplemented with additional information.
Student interest in contemporary subjects and disciplines can be fostered by demonstrating that native peoples relied upon a working understanding of mathematics, biology, botany, chemistry, physics, medicine, geology, art, astronomy, and natural and human ecology. Millennia’s educational materials emphasize the interrelationships between traditional tribal culture and these seemingly separate disciplines and professions. Interests expressed toward certain areas of tribal cultural heritage can be channeled toward disciplines that lead to contemporary careers.
Analytical Applications
Artifact casting can provide natural and cultural resource technical specialists and scientists with reference collections that are valuable, if not necessary, in identifying the types, species, or elements of their subject matter. Artifacts, rock specimens, bone, shell, archaeological site features, structures, and botanical materials such as wood and seeds, can be reproduced.
Artifact Reproductions of Charmstones, Net Weight Sinkers, and Plummets
These finely crafted objects were used primarily as fishnet weights. Charmstones were often highly stylized and were made from both clay and different types of stone. Within particular sub-regions of central California some Native American people would fashion their own distinct style of charmstone.
Casting produces identical and economically affordable type and teaching collections. Identical copies of type-defining objects eliminate variability between reference collections and minimize the potential differences in perception regarding the central defining characteristics of types. If variability is desired, casts can be created to provide multiple examples of a type that express the range of variability.
Artifact Reproductions and Original Type Specimens of Olivella Shell Beads
The beads depicted here range from actual size to 8X magnification.
Scientific Analysis
Millennia’s casting techniques reproduce microscopic details of the original. Our casts capture the surface detail of bone and seeds, the texture and structure of rock surfaces, and the evidence of artifact use including microstriations and polishes. This level of detail (>10X magnification) meets or exceeds the requirements for most high-power magnification use wear analyses.
Artifact Reproduction of Historic Butchered Faunal Bone
Saw marks depicted here (2 X magnification) help researchers determine what kind of tool was used to cut the bone. In addition, this analysis can provide information on the age of the faunal remains, dietary processing patterns and food choice, and in some cases the ethnicity of the butcher and/or consumer.
Artifact Reproduction of Historic Religious Metal
This religious metal was excavated at Mission Santa Cruz and was originally cast in bronze. Misión la exaltación de la Santa Cruz, founded in 1791, is one of 21 Franciscan Missions established by the Catholic Church along the California coast from 1769 to 1823. The cast reproduction depicted here (1.50 X magnification) is also a bronze cast.
Historic Preservation Requirements
State and federal agencies are, in some circumstances, mandated by law to repatriate certain kinds of archaeological materials to the Native American descendants of people associated with those remains. In many cases, compliance with such requirements leaves little time for detailed scientific study of repatriated artifacts, and precludes long-term scientific study and heritage appreciation.
Artifact Reproductions of Musical Instruments
Flutes and whistles made of hollow bird bone were sought after as musical instruments and personal adornment. The Prehistoric California coast provided many species of birds that were prized for their long wing bones in the manufacture of these musical instruments. The Short-tailed Albatross (Diomedia albatrus) and Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), were just two of the many species that held spiritual significance for Native Americans.
Artifact casting can preserve a considerable amount of physical information and may serve as an effective mitigation alternative for loss of original objects through repatriation. The original bone whistles depicted above were repatriated and have since been reburied.
Artifact Reproduction of Blade
(Left) Original Obsidian blade fractured at the tip. (Right) Reproduction of the same blade following conservation and reproduction. The original blade depicted above was repatriated and has since been reburied.
Millennia Molding and Casting Company
3708 Bigler Way
Sacramento, CA 95817
ph: (916) 396-5358
alschwit