Museums, Collections, and Repatriation (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Ron Bishop.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on the ceramic collections from Q’umarkaj housed at the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, provides an opportunity to apply Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis to pottery from the site. This research has the potential to delimit areas of ceramic production and trade in the Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kassandra Rippee. Stacy Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology on Oregon’s Coast has been largely limited in scope and lacks a holistic viewpoint of coastal history. Archaeological investigations began in earnest around 1930 with avocational archaeologists like Marcus Seale interested in expanding their "trophy item" collections. The heavily male dominated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaye Smith. Jeffrey Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015, centenarian Ray Robinson wanted to find a permanent home for thousands of artifacts he collected from numerous sites in the Safford Basin, Arizona during the late 1950s and 1960s, including items from the Bonito Creek Cave Cache. Through a collaborative effort between Archaeology Southwest, Northern Arizona University and the Arizona State Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Odegaard.

The scale and diversity of objects held in archaeological repositories is enormous. Collectively, the actions taken to prevent or delay deterioration of these objects and their associated documents and sample collections are referred to as collections care. Preventive conservation identifies the short and long term priorities for collections care. This paper will explore current trends and topics in archaeological collections care including: object stabilization through storage packaging;...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Hoffman. Michael Black.

Museums use collection management systems to manage metadata about objects in their collection and track transactions such as loans and exhibitions. At UC Berkeley however, museums are turning the open source CollectionSpace system into a strategic platform for research, education, and public service. The Hearst Museum of Anthropology is in the midst of a major effort to improve the quality of the data documenting its collection of approximately 3.8 million objects. With this improved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan E. O'Neil.

This paper explores the collecting, repositioning, and separating of ancient Maya objects, both in the ancient past and the twentieth century. Archaeological context provides evidence of ancient Maya aggregation of disparate objects in tombs, caches, or sculptural tableaux as well as evidence of repositioning or separating things. These changes are fundamental aspects of objects’ life histories. Yet in the twentieth century, ancient monuments and object sets also have been divided -- and new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bustard.

This is an abstract from the "To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chaco Culture National Historical Park was founded to protect and preserve the cultural remains of an indigenous society whose high point was between 850 and 1150 CE. For the first 80 years of its existence, the park’s museum collection policy was straightforward because the artifacts recovered represented the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Viola Koenig.

Speakers of this session are dealing with collections and museums in the Americas as well as Europe. They are sharing knowledge on the role of collectors of Pre-Columbian and indigenous American objects that represent the Pre-Columbian era and the colonial and later periods. Many of them were collected in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Ever since collections were subject to all kinds of moves and treatments. Collections were divided, and objects have been dispersed. Can we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Lyall.

Museum collections resemble the tastes and character of the donors and curators that assembled them. This subjectivity lends them an idiosyncratic character. Nevertheless, the early network of dealers and donors connects many museums across the United States. Institutions like the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum, for example, are linked through such relationships. This paper examines the history of such relationships and the manner in which collection histories may shed further...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Lagia.

The capacity of humans to contribute positively even long after death includes not only donations and institutions but also one’s own body. The human body and its parts provide the opportunity to bridge time in archaeological and forensic contexts and appreciate human history. In 1996-7 this capacity was aptly evaluated by the scientific committee of the Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and the foundation of the modern human skeletal reference collection...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Dudar.

Since the inception of the Repatriation Office at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 1991, the documentation of Native American skeletal remains has been accomplished by the Repatriation Osteology Lab. The need for a computerized data entry system was recognized as a critical component to the success of this process along with a structured database for data access and management. The resulting software interface and SQL relational database, called Osteoware, is available to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Hoobler.

During the depths of the Great Depression and prior to and after World War II, Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Antropología undertook exchanges, or canjes, of archaeological pieces with a variety of museums, disseminating small portions of its collection across the nation and the world. Actual trades of archaeological works were completed in the early 1930s with museums in Yucatán, Mexico; Lima, Peru; and New York and Chicago in the United States. There were more limited exchanges of casts with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Siobhan Hart.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers archaeological curation in a private, small liberal arts college (SLAC) context. Many SLACs have archaeological collections acquired through donation from alumni or local residents, occasionally through purchase or orphaning, and increasingly through student and faculty research on and off...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morag Kersel.

The crisis in the curation of materials generated as a result of excavation and survey is one of the most pressing issues facing the discipline. Storage is of constant concern as questions of how to store materials, where to store materials, and how long to store these items confront archaeologists and license/permit-granting agencies around the globe. This is an examination of an innovative approach to solving the curation crisis of Early Bronze Age ceramic vessels from the Dead Sea Plain in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Kimbell. Sara Lunt. David Drew.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1977, Dr Ann Kendall established the Cusichaca Trust, registered in the UK, to oversee her archaeological project work. Today the Cusichaca Archive documents forty continuous years of one of the largest multi-disciplinary projects ever mounted in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Vallejos.

This is an abstract from the "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition between the Paleoindian (13,000–8000) and Archaic (8000–1000) periods continues to elude North American archaeologists. It is inferred from archaeological evidence that human populations were nomadic hunter-gatherers during both periods. The creation of storage pits, however, provides...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Collins.

Dennis Stanford heads up the Archaeology division at the Smithsonian Institution and its Paleo-Indian Program. From the time he completed his graduate studies (PhD 1974, University of New Mexico), Dennis has held positions in the Department of Anthropology at SI, repository of the major archaeological collection in the United States. In his more than four decades at SI, he has fostered acquisition of archaeological (especially PaleoIndian) additions to the Department's collections, conducted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd McMahon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colorado was for many years the center of a curation crisis. In response, Colorado relied on the establishment of somewhat informal partnership institutions such as (Universities, small local museums and local regional repositories) that have now been strengthened by creating rules and procedures that have allowed turnkey, scalable, politically neutral,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariel Peasley. Georgia Fox.

Museums and their exhibitions are representations of archaeological research. Archaeological excavations, associated objects, and subsequent interpretations frequently end up in museums and are often the only access the general public has to this knowledge. How objects are acquired, cared for, and presented ultimately affect what people learn about them in a museum setting. It is crucial for museums and museum professionals to maintain standard practices and care for these objects to the best of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine McBrinn. Julia Clifton. Diana Sherman. Amy Montoya.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The care and preservation of cultural materials is viewed by the public as a vital role of the museum. Consciously or not, museums are seen as “society’s attic,” a high-quality, sophisticated storage space that contains valuable and irreplaceable objects while remaining infinitely expandable. In reality, space is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marieka Arksey.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Every year, museums, repositories, archives, and campuses receive requests by private citizens to accept donations of artifacts and archives. Putting aside some of the difficulties that can arise in confirming the provenience and the legality of non-research collections, some donors request that certain conditions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Britton L. Shepardson. Mario Tuki. Paula Valenzuela Contreras. Francisco Torres Hochstetter.

For fifteen years, Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) has provided local students from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) with hands-on experience to: (1) offer experiential learning opportunities about the local cultural and natural resources; (2) promote awareness and expertise in conservation measures and sustainable development; and (3) document and study the modern and ancient natural and cultural resources of the island. Three-dimensional ortho-corrected photogrammetry (3D OCP) is a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoko Nishimura.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper offers a heuristic tool to generate archaeological research questions that address the sociocultural lives of ancient people utilizing the strength of existing museum collections. Methodologically, it is necessary to select artifacts that are diagnostic on surface appearance and that can be linked, as a “diaspora” collection, to the “original”...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Malu Fleischer. Michael Nielsen.

In 2016, the Ersersaaneq project was instigated by three students from the University of Greenland to create an online repository of 3D models of the Gustav Holm collection. In Greenlandic the word ersersaaneq captures the idea of producing knowledge through the creation of visual images. The goal is to digitally re-unify parts of the collection and develop coherency within a global context. Project partners include Greenland National Museum, The Smithsonian Institution and The National Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Beisaw. Jayne-Leigh Thomas. Krystiana L. Krupa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is 30 years old, and the generation that opposed its passage is now approaching (or past) retirement age. For professionals that succeed them, repatriation has always been both legal and ethical practice and they must confront legacies of mentors/predecessors who found ways to avoid the...