Conservation and Curation (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Wilson. Theresa Langford. Meagan Huff.

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. Since 1947, the National Park Service and its collaborators have excavated at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, a nineteenth-century fur-trade and U.S. Army colonial site in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Museum collections are dominated by archaeological collections from American Indian and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle. Griselda Pérez Robles. Edwin Pérez Robles.

In 2016, a pilot project began for the conservation of sculpted monuments including stelae, altars, and panels at the site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Since then, a team in conjunction with the international Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras-Yaxchilan has constructed new platforms with roofs to house the monuments, protecting them from further weathering, moisture, and biological agents. The results of the implementation of the innovative system—platforms of powdered lime and local stones,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Benden. Mara Taft.

Legacy collections—those typically generated decades ago that do not meet current professional curation standards and require a substantial resource investment for long-term preservation—are housed in nearly every archaeological repository across the country. Many are the result of under-funded university field schools or public archaeology projects that didn’t account for either the initial curation preparation or the long-term costs and maintenance of collections care. The deeply stratified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland. Arthur Vokes. Suzanne Eckert. Patrick Lyons.

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. For many decades, the Arizona State Museum (ASM) used a flat-rate curation model that proved unsustainable. It did not cover the costs of reviewing incoming materials for compliance with the Arizona Antiquities Act (AAA), preparing submissions for curation, or care in perpetuity. Furthermore, inadequate funding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolette Meister.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Culturally informed stewardship takes a holistic and culturally inclusive approach to the preservation, access, and use of cultural items, records, and images. It acknowledges that curation and care are political acts and that the stewards of cultural collections must do more than simply...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Salas.

This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In addition to the painted architectural surfaces recently unearthed at Pañamarca, a wide array of objects have been found in recent excavations. The objects found at Pañamarca demonstrate that the site has an excellent preservation environment. This paper will present conservation approaches to some of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Sinders. Alex Elvis Badillo. Stephen Aldrich. Brooke L. Drew.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2021, I started working on a privately funded preservation project doing 3D data curation for Old Union Cemetery of Marion County, Indiana in association with the Geospatial and Virtual Archaeology Labratory (GVALs) at Indiana State University. In this poster, I present our methods of processing the data that has been collected over the past 3 years...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Rogerson Jennings.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of collections management is changing with the ever-growing technology that is embedded in society today. The museum's visitor no longer receives information on an analog platform, or at least not the majority of it, so why is this the main form of communication between museums and patrons? This creates a necessity for museums to alter their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brittany Hundman. Alyssa M. Tate. Jonathan Heile.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Established field sample collection procedures have fostered misconceptions of the vulnerable nature of organic materials destined for radiocarbon dating. To address common contamination concerns and debunk these misconceptions, wood samples of known age were intentionally exposed to a variety of substances found in the field and the lab, including coffee,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Greg Pierce. Marieka Arksey. Marcia Peterson.

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. The Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist (OWSA) has become increasingly focused on implementing public outreach initiatives to more effectively engage Wyoming’s citizenry in archaeological investigations and collections care. Our office manages the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe. Nicole Smith-Guzmán. Luis Sánchez-Herrera. Diana Carvajal Contreras. Ilean Isaza Aizpurúa.

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. In the late 1980s, the Panama authorities became aware of extensive looting outside the modern city of La Villa de Los Santos. By the time archaeologists had been called to investigate, the area around the hill known locally as Cerro Juan Díaz resembled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elise LeCompte.

This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The analysis of legacy collections is often hampered by documentation that is fragmentary, preserved on obsolete media, or entirely absent. Like the physical material that makes up a legacy collection, the associated documents may be spread across institutions. This may include other museums, educational facilities, government agencies, and private...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Toscano.

This is an abstract from the "La Restauración de Monumentos Prehispánicos en México: Principios, Práctica, y Visión al Futuro" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sureste mexicano tiene una larga tradición en intervenciones de restauración de edificios monumentales. Estos trabajos se iniciaron desde principios del siglo pasado, con la intención de conservar los majestuosos edificios que se encontraban en pie y que fueron dados a conocer al mundo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kellie Bowers. John Robert Elmore, III.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Alabama Department of Archives and History has actively engaged in NAGPRA compliance work since 2018. In that time our NAGPRA and indigenous collections care policies have changed as our perspectives have grown and been shaped by consultation and relationship building with tribal partners...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marybeth Tomka. Lauren Bussiere.

This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) is the oldest and largest archaeological repository in Texas, housing many millions of artifacts from more than 8,000 sites in Texas and beyond. Collections at TARL range from massive WPA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah McCurdy. M. Kathryn Brown.

In 2016, we discovered a sage’s chamber in the El Castillo acropolis at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. In the Late Classic Tut Building on the east side of El Castillo, all interior and exterior plaster walls are incised with "graffiti." The total number of elements documented is nearly 300 with themes ranging from human and animal forms to glyphs and multi-figure scenes. We expect to encounter more in future field seasons. Based on a variety of factors, we view this as practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Geller.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plastics present a paradox for archaeology. They are ubiquitous and inevitable, taking myriad forms—bags for artifacts, tarps for units, containers for storage, etc.—in excavation and archival settings. Their utilitarian value is predicated on the presumption of durability and stability. But for how long and in what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashleigh Breske.

This theoretically-oriented project engages discussions of historical arguments for the repatriation of indigenous cultural property that ultimately led to the creation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990. I will investigate how institutions and cultural values mediated changes in repatriation policy both nationally and internationally. By examining ownership paradigms and institutional power structures, it is possible to understand the ramifications of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Muros.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The summer of 2018 marked the first season of the Corral Redondo Project, a multidisciplinary project that aims to identify the function of this site which seems to have had a ritual purpose for both the Wari and the Inca (AD 600-1550). Though the site had been previously excavated, and subsequently looted since its discovery in 1943, archaeologists and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fermin Lopez. Bruce Bernstein.

This is an abstract from the "From Collaboration to Partnership in Pojoaque, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Protecting Pueblo of Pojoaque ancestral sites is a challenge. Inside our exterior boundaries are non-native encroachments. Cultural properties are often located within these checker board properties and more often than not have significant cultural meaning to the Pueblo’s culture and history. Tangible and intangible cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yann Ardagna. Emeline Sperandio. Bruno Bizot.

Following an evaluation between 2004-2006, it appeared that more than 200 anthropological series had been assembled following excavations led in Provence Alpes Côtes d’Azur (PACA) region. These extremely scattered series had not all been subjected to a precise inventory, were disparately curated or even lost. Therefore, most of these collections were not or no longer accessible to scientists. Faced with this question concerning the heritage preservation, different regional actors invested in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Wilson. Victoria Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Public outreach is a fundamental part of our mission, and as such, Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center has adopted a variety of methods for public outreach. (1) For landowners and site stewards, we produce short reports containing photographs, maps, and hyperlinks to 3D models and Gigapans that summarize and illustrate our observations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lupu.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A rumored tie to LGBTQ history has drawn people to the Halcyon House archaeological collection across several decades. In this talk, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer phenomenology that conceptualizes queerness as an “orientation” toward certain objects and bodies. What does it mean to seek resonance in the past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaye Smith. Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Linda Pierce. Chris Downum.

In 1957, Arizona State Museum director Emil Haury, ranch owner Ray Claridge and geologist/avocational Ray Robinson visited the Bonito Creek site in Arizona’s Safford Basin as reported by Wasley in 1962. Robinson returned to the site after that initial visit to "save" many objects that Haury did not take with him that day, along with "prospecting" other sites during the 1960s in the Safford Basin being threatened by development. For 59 years, Robinson preserved these objects along with limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Hoffman. Jake Fruhlinger. Linda Reynard. Erick Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dry Creek Rockshelter provides important evidence for the deep history of human occupation in the Boise foothills. Our recent reinvestigation of this site suggests a reinterpretation of its occupation history. This work provides a new model for collaboration between archaeologists and Native American...