Conservation and Curation (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaye Smith. Jeffery Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As investigations continue into the Ray Robinson Collection by its dedicated team of volunteer researchers, we return our attention to the poorly documented Safford Basin of southeastern Arizona. In addition to the preliminary data previously presented based on Ray’s investigations on the Cork and Elmer’s Farm sites, we have completed our preliminary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaye Smith. Jeff Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As investigations continue into the Ray Robinson Collection by Archaeology Southwest’s dedicated team of volunteer researchers, attention now turns to assemblages collected by Robinson in the northern San Pedro Valley (and vicinity) of southeastern Arizona. During Ray’s consulting work for mining companies in the area, he documented four sites near the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Caitlin Shaffer.

In early 2008, twenty-eight archaeological iron and copper alloy artifacts belonging to the Andrews Air Force Base collections curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab) were identified as requiring conservation treatment by MAC Lab Federal Collections Curator, Sara Rivers Cofield. The conservation treatment was carried out by Cultural Preservation and Restoration, Inc. (CPR) between November 2008 and February 2009 under U.S. Air Force contract FA4416-08-P-0096....

DOCUMENT Full-Text Andrea Torvinen. Christopher Nicholson. Ben Nelson. Christopher Schwartz.

This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A long-running project in West Mexico, the La Quemada-Malpaso Valley Archaeological Project (LQ-MVAP) has entered the final stage of the data life cycle with a shift from long-term curation and analysis of the physical materials to an open-access digital archive with training guides for data reuse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland.

This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Arizona State Museum (ASM) Repository holds collections associated with thousands of archaeological excavations that span the advent of anthropologically oriented archaeology in the American Southwest. Encoded with these collections are various approaches to excavation and data management, which...

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 Marla Taylor. Laura Bryant. Laura Elliff Cruz.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For centuries, museums and academic institutions have acquired and amassed Indigenous cultural items for their own use and benefit with minimal consideration from descendant communities. The values expressed in stewarding those collections resonate...

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 Sara Pfannkuche. George Vassilatos.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological objects are frequently donated by private citizens to professional organizations. These include the legacy collections of professional or avocational archaeologists, many of which date to the period when the profession of archaeology was being formalized, and objects found in the attic of a grandparent’s house. These collections range from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine McEnroe. Sean Devlin.

This is an abstract from the "Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last three decades, archaeological approaches to the excavation of human burials have radically shifted. These changes have demanded a large-scale reevaluation of the decision-making processes and research practices deployed not only during these excavations, but also in the approaches...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Hansell.

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama has become a key repository for archaeological materials collected within the country over the past 50 years. A number of these collections are also currently housed outside of the country at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LisaMarie Malischke.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeologists revisit old collections, we strive to develop new, efficient ways to analyze complex datasets with thousands of artifacts. My own work attempts to do so through a reanalysis of the collection and architectural features of Fort St. Pierre (1719–1729). Almost wholly excavated in the 1970s, Fort St....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Domeischel.

This is an abstract from the "Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological curators struggle with the growing number of collections in our repositories, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the ‘curation crisis.’ Yet ‘crisis’ is an acute term, when the problem is instead chronic. The discipline of archaeology marches on, and so must repositories, even as the quantities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah Grant.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Deep Creek Investigation is a small legacy collection of artifacts and documents from the Deep Creek Site (CA-SBR-176), which is located in the Mojave River Forks region in San Bernardino County, CA, within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Los Angeles District. This collection was recently rehabilitated by technicians at the Veterans Curation...

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 Elizabeth Johnson.

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. When Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. purchased Thunderbird Archaeology in 2004, they found themselves responsible for some 800 boxes of artifacts from more than four decades of CRM projects. The story isn’t an uncommon one . . . boxes of CRM projects sitting in basements, sheds, storage units, or warehouses in...

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 Elizabeth Lynch. Mary Lou Larson. Marcel Kornfeld.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2019, we began a three-year project to digitize the collections from the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark. The site is well-known for its archaeological integrity and preservation of some of the earliest human activities in the Plains and the Rocky Mountains. The goal of the Hell Gap Archaeological Records Digital Archive Project (HGARDA) is to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Reid.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Skiles Collection, named for landowner Jack Skiles, consists of Indigenous, Euro-American, and Asian-American cultural material from the Lower Pecos Canyonlands Archaeological region. Beginning in the late 1930s, the Skiles Family amassed an exceptional collection of cultural material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Hynes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An artifact without associated documentation has limited archaeological value. Yet the need or desire for analysts and authors to retain associated documentation beyond the deposit of artifacts commonly results in the failure to transmit this essential part of the collection to the repository where the artifacts live. With the increase of born-digital...

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 Miguel Angel Galvan Benitez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La recolección y almacenamiento de agua pluvial es una de las prácticas más antiguas en Mesoamérica. La investigación arqueológica en diversos sitios ha permitido la identificación y documentación de sistemas de canales, depósitos subterráneos, galerías filtrantes y almacenamiento en recipientes, el sistema de desagües y el más común que son los depósitos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Kreuzwieser. Paul Nick Kardulias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, I examine how the Elephanta Caves (500 C.E. - 900 C.E.), off the coast of Mumbai, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, can best be preserved in the future. These man-made caves were a place of Shiva and goddess-worship for local Hindus, up until Portuguese contact and occupation in AD 1534-35. Interest in this topic stems from the caves’ exposure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamira Brennan. Maria Teresa Palomares. Georgia Abrams. Hannah Rucinski.

This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the ethical implications of using archaeological collections for education and outreach as well as the potential challenges that doing so poses to repositories and museums. We cover the benefits and burdens of accessioning donations, specifically discussing how to assess their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Goff.

Decisions regarding the use of museum collections in exhibits that interpret the history and culture of American Indians have often been made by non-natives, without the input of the people the exhibits are about. History Colorado was recently presented with a situation that allowed the museum to do the opposite. The Ute Indian Museum is one of History Colorado’s community properties and is one, if not the only, state-owned museum dedicated to an American Indian group-the Ute people. In 2013,...