Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology

Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology A place for students and the public to learn archaeological techniques. The lab curates and houses various public and private collections.

Currently, we're finishing curation on a project from the banks of the Clearwater River and moving on to archiving and curating some our own lab collections. These include materials donated by Don Crabtree before his death in 1980, the Pacific Northwest Anthropological Archive, and the Historic Artifact Comparative Collection. We're also revamping our exhibit for the county fair in September.

Did you know that mules and oxen were the draft animals of choice for immigrants traveling the overland route to Oregon ...
09/25/2026

Did you know that mules and oxen were the draft animals of choice for immigrants traveling the overland route to Oregon Territory in the mid-19th century? ​Mules were preferred because they were faster and tolerated extreme heat better, but most migrants chose oxen because they were cheaper, calmer, and stronger. Ox teams had to pull wagons weighing upwards of 3,000 pounds over 2,000 miles! Lucky for them, they got to wear shoes while they did all that walking.

The ox shoe, or "cue," pictured here was found at the lower crossing of the Umatilla River, near present-day Echo, Oregon. Doctoral candidate, Meghan Caves has been developing educational materials about an archaeological site at Echo, with the help of our lab team. Bower's Collections Assistant, Tim Mace, has been working with her to create 3D-printed artifact replicas, like the resin-print seen here. Local farrier, Charlie Park, was also kind enough to make us some wrought iron replicas of ox shoes as well!

If you want to learn more about oxen on the mass-migration route we now call the Oregon Trail, check out the article linked below published in Overland Journal.

"Descending the Blue Mountains to the Columbia" by William Henry Jackson, courtesy of BYU Library Digital Collections

Meghan's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcaves
Charlie's Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cpshoeing/
Link to BYU digital collections for "Descending Blue Mountains" image: https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/Jackson/id/3383/rec/4
Oxen article in Overland Journal: https://www.nps.gov/cali/learn/historyculture/upload/Dixon-Ford-Oxen-Story-508.pdf

09/25/2026

Who is that person following our field crew around with the fancy camera and lavalier mics? Meet , a JAMM student filming documentary footage about IPAs work at MHS. Emily brings not only videography expertise and a much needed aesthetically-focused sensibility to our digital outreach efforts, but also has an amazing sense of humor. She keeps our project directors on their toes and in check, making sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re excited to share what’s she’s been working on soon!

Around the world, many cultures celebrate the Lunar New Year, which occurred in February this year and marked the beginn...
04/17/2026

Around the world, many cultures celebrate the Lunar New Year, which occurred in February this year and marked the beginning of the Year of the Horse in many Asian calendars. In this post, the AACC and the Bower’s Lab are teaming up to celebrate not just horses, but some of the communities and organizations who preserve these strong cultural traditions in Idaho.

Many Asian diaspora communities celebrate the Lunar New Year with gifts and firecrackers. They also associate the holiday with the color red, as seen in the ribbon on the Japanese horse figure (Figures 1 & 2). Figure 2 shows a collection of artifacts from the AACC that might have been used to celebrate the Lunar New Year or that are associated with horses.

The Bower’s Lab isn’t “horsing around” either with a temporary exhibit of material from the Appaloosa Museum, now on display in the CLASS Annex. This exhibit celebrates the history of Idaho’s state horse as well as the close relationships between humans and horses. Feel free to drop by!

If you want to join in the celebration, you can “trot” on down to the Hagerman Fossil Beds in Southern Idaho. With the largest assemblage of the prehistoric Hagerman horse (Idaho’s state fossil), they have a whole year’s worth of events to commemorate these magnificent creatures!

Image 1- The text “Why the long face? –It’s the year of the horse!” surrounds a Japanese artifact, a small, straw horse with a red ribbon (AACC-2001-85).

Image 2 – A collection of artifacts from the AACC including the Japanese straw horse (AACC-2001-85), a small horse shoe (AACC-2020-324), DOT firecrackers (AACC-98-12, AACC-2003-94), decorative firecrackers shaped like birds (AACC-2003-392, AACC-2003-396), and the books Firecrackers: The Art and History (Dotz, Mingo & Moyer 2000) and Good Luck Life: The Essential Guide to Chinese American Celebrations and Culture (Gong 2005).

Image 3 – Bower’s Lab comparative horseshoe collection, used by archaeologists and historians to identify historic horseshoes.

Image 4 – Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument calendar of events for the Year of the Horse.

Address

Moscow, ID

Telephone

+12088851771

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology:

Shortcuts

Share

Category