Living in Balance: The Universe of the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Apache

From the preface:

This book is designed to accompany the permanent exhibit ";Living in Balance"; in the Ruth and Earl Scott Gallery of the American Southwest at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. The exhibit presents some fundamental ways of thinking about and living within the universe of four Native American peoples: the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Apache. Although the holdings of the University of Pennsylvania Museum limited the exhibit to these four groups, the inclusion of both farming and herding peoples offers the opportunity to encounter world views of different cultures living today in the shared environment of the Southwest.

The exhibit focuses on the perspectives about the world of these four peoples and some of the ritual means that maintain these beliefs. The objects are displayed as illustrations of concepts rather than as art or as remnants of a culture from a time long past. The exhibit does not celebrate the early explorers who excavated archaeological sites and sold the artifacts to the Museum, nor the early work by anthropologists, museum personnel, and other individuals who worked or traveled among the people of the Southwest. Although the ethnographic objects date largely from the turn of the twentieth century, making many of them true ";artifacts"; of the past, they are exhibited because of their enduring role in the making and preserving of aspects of the cultural lifeline of each of the four cultures.