The Case of the Missing Artifact For his own aesthetic purposes, Marcus Randolph had collected Pueblo Indian arts and crafts for many years before becoming an anthropologist. Randolph’s fieldwork sites for ten years were located in Latin America. However, as a result of personal contacts, he was asked to conduct a brief ethnohistorical study in one of the Rio Grande pueblos. As his study progressed, he learned that an important item had been missing for about 20 years from the collection of paraphernalia used by one of the religious leaders in the community. According to this individual, ceremonies had never been complete since the item had disappeared. Crop failures and other community problems were partially attributed to this loss. After obtaining a full description from the religious leader and checking this against information about the item with colleagues in local museums and universities, Randolph realized that there was a good chance that the item in question was at least similar to, if not identical to, one he had purchased 15 years previously from a trading post. Randolph’s Dilemma: Should he offer the item in his possession to the religious leader? Should he even show the item to the religious leader? Or, should he simply make a note regarding the missing religious piece and not disclose his personal possession to anyone in the community? Randolph’s Decision During the time that Randolph was considering this problem, he learned that over a 30 to 50 year period, several regional museums had acquired a great quantity of religious items from many different Pueblo Indians. He told religious and political elders in the community where he was working about the items he had seen in these museums and asked if their absence from the Pueblos had had any adverse effects on the communities and whether or not they wanted to reclaim them from the museums. The opinions expressed by elders were that (a) the loss of these items was part of the loss of cultural heritage that could not be reclaimed, so (b) there was no value in asking the museums to return the items to them (at least not at this point in time). On the basis of these discussions, Randolph decided not to disclose his personal possession to anyone in the community, but kept a record in his field notes regarding his investigations into and discoveries of “missing” religious and other material culture items. This is a required discussion post that will be marked for your weekly participation grade. In this please post your reflection on the case study of your choice. You will be marked on your reflection, on your decision process, as well as your analysis of the case study result. Remember to use the perspective of cultural relativism that was discussed last week when approaching your reflection. Please respond to at least one of your peers responses to further the dialogue. The threads are started by the cases – please post as a reply in the corresponding thread. Case 8: The Case of the Missing Artifact For his own aesthetic purposes, Marcus Randolph had collected Pueblo Indian arts and crafts for many years before becoming an anthropologist. Randolph’s fieldwork sites for ten years were located in Latin America. However, as a result of personal contacts, he was asked to conduct a brief ethnohistorical study in one of the Rio Grande pueblos. As his study progressed, he learned that an important item had been missing for about 20 years from the collection of paraphernalia used by one of the religious leaders in the community. According to this individual, ceremonies had never been complete since the item had disappeared. Crop failures and other community problems were partially attributed to this loss. After obtaining a full description from the religious leader and checking this against information about the item with colleagues in local museums and universities, Randolph realized that there was a good chance that the item in question was at least similar to, if not identical to, one he had purchased 15 years previously from a trading post. Randolph’s Dilemma: Should he offer the item in his possession to the religious leader? Should he even show the item to the religious leader? Or, should he simply make a note regarding the missing religious piece and not disclose his personal possession to anyone in the community? During the time that Randolph was considering this problem, he learned that over a 30 to 50 year period, several regional museums had acquired a great quantity of religious items from many different Pueblo Indians. He told religious and political elders in the community where he was working about the items he had seen in these museums and asked if their absence from the Pueblos had had any adverse effects on the communities and whether or not they wanted to reclaim them from the museums. The opinions expressed by elders were that (a) the loss of these items was part of the loss of cultural heritage that could not be reclaimed, so (b) there was no value in asking the museums to return the items to them (at least not at this point in time). On the basis of these discussions, Randolph decided not to disclose his personal possession to anyone in the community, but kept a record in his field notes regarding his investigations into and discoveries of “missing” religious and other material culture items.

Think carefully about each of the following statements. For each one, indicate whether you believe it to be always true, generally true, generally false, or always false. For any item you judge to fall into the last three categories, describe your reasoning.

(a). Sales discounts are reported on the income statement as an operating expense.

(b). When a company writes off an uncollectible account against Allowance for Doubtful Accounts, the net amount of Accounts Receivables reported on the balance sheet does not change.

(c). Jabba Company purchased inventory for its retail store. Jabba should include in the cost of this inventory the amount charged by the freight company to deliver the goods to Jabba’s store.

(d). Most retail stores will report three categories of inventory: raw materials, work-inprocess, and finished goods.

(e). When merchandise is sold to customers, the entries to Sales Revenue and Accounts Receivable will be for different amounts than the entries to Merchandise and Cost of Goods Sold.

(f). A purchase of merchandise for later resale to customers has no effect on the income statement.

(g). Purchase discounts received from vendors should be deducted when determining and reporting the cost of merchandise.

(h). Ford Motor Company just received 1,000 steering wheels for a particular line of cars it manufactures. The cost of these items should be recorded initially in Work-in-Process Inventory.

(i). The cost of wages earned by factory employees should be reported on the income statement as Wages Expense during the accounting period in which employees earned them.

(j). Diggin Deep Company, a gold mining firm, sold gold bars to Lookin’ Good, Inc. The second firm is a manufacturer of jewelry. Diggin Deep sold finished goods but Lookin’ Good bought raw materials.