• Quick Links
• Home Page
• First Time Visitors
• People in Life and Death
• The Hand's Hands: Tools
• Focus: Pottery
• Focus: Textiles
• Focus: Ornaments
• Learning Paths
• User Feedback Page
• Maxwell Museum

The Testimony of Hands

75.35.182, visor
Early Birnik (A.D. 500–700)
Walakpa Site, Alaska
UNM Research Collections (deposited by Dennis Stanford)
Photograph by B. Bernard

This is the sort of artifact that archaeologists have no trouble identifying! We know of the use of visors by modern Arctic peoples, plus the artifact's shape makes its use obvious. Visors were for more than convenience. They provided shade for a hunter's roving eye, and for faces otherwise exposed to hours of harmful solar radiation.

A second photo shows the same visor from a different angle.

To return to the North by Southwest learning path, click here.

All content copyright © Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. High-resolution versions of photographs may be ordered from the Maxwell Museum's photo archives. Please make note of the catalogue number. For more information please visit the photo archives web page