No Longer Forgotten: Successful Academic Research Drawn from Rehabilitated Collections
Other Keywords
Collections •
boston •
Material Culture •
Research •
Methodology •
Collections Management •
Civil War •
industrial •
archaeobotany •
Massachusetts
Temporal Keywords
19th Century •
18th and 19th centuries •
18th-Century •
18th and 19th century •
19th-Century •
American Civil War, 19th century •
19th-early 20th centuries
Geographic Keywords
North America •
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
-
The Artifact Collection from Modern Greece: Using 50 Years of Conservation to Answer New Questions (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This paper analyzes the salvage of artifacts from Modern Greece, a Civil War blockade-runner off Wilmington, NC. The NC Underwater Archaeology Branch brought up over 10,000 artifacts in 1962-63. Parts of the collection underwent conservation, while others remained in storage at Fort Fisher. Recently, students from ECU completed a re-housing project to allow for identification of conservation targets and prevent degradation. This paper discusses the retrieval and housing as related to the...
-
Bringing the Neighborhood Back to Life: Working-Class Consumption and Immigrant Identity in 19th-Century Roxbury, Massachusetts (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Working with the past always presents a bevy of challenges for researchers, and when material collections fall into disuse, it can be especially difficult to appreciate their intrinsic value. Incorporating new technological methods (GIS) and primary document research allows archaeologists to synthesize original excavation and background information in innovative ways. The Southwest Corridor Project (Roxbury, Boston, MA), excavated in the 1970s, is a perfect collection for these purposes. ...
-
From Horse to Electric Power at the Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: An Old Collection Provides a New Narrative of Technological Change (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, was first excavated in the late 1970s by staff of the Museum of Afro American History. Researchers recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts related to the site’s life as a horsecar street railway station and carriage manufactory from 1860 to 1891, its subsequent conversion into an electric street railway until around 1920, and finally its modern use as an automobile garage. Using the framework of behavioral archaeology, this...
-
How to Reduce the Boxes in your Laboratory and Produce Good Research: Archaeobotanical Analyses and Rehabilitated Collections (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
We have all heard the adage that "one hour in the field equals ten in the lab". It is proof of this saying that nearly every archaeological laboratory boasts an impressive collection of meticulously collected soil samples. Nearly every complex archaeological excavation has the potential to yield hundreds or even thousands of liters of carefully collected sediment, despite the excavator’s knowledge that the mass majority will never be analyzed. Archaeobotanists can find great research value in...
-
Obligations and Opportunities of Old Collections, a Boston Perspective (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The City of Boston Archaeology Laboratory contains nearly two-dozen archaeological assemblages totaling 2,000 boxes and well over 1,000,000 artifacts. The vast majority of these collections were excavated between 1975 and 1995, which poses a monumental challenge of re-cataloging, re-organizing, and re-analyzing collections that have defined the early history of Northeast historical archaeology. These collections also represent a great opportunity for students and researchers to examine...
-
Revisiting Parting Ways Forty Years Later: Some Research Challenges and Successes (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Nearly 30,000 18th- and 19th-century artifacts were recovered during the excavation of the small African American community of Parting Ways in Plymouth, Massachusetts by James Deetz beginning in 1975. The artifacts are currently housed at the Massachusetts Historical Commission in Boston. Original interpretations attributed all the artifacts to the late 18th- and 19th-century African American occupation of the site, but subsequent research indicated that Parting Ways was occupied in the middle...
-
Revisiting Past Excavations: An In-Depth Look at Feature B7 from the African Meeting House, Boston, MA (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This paper analyzes a pit feature that was identified during a 1984 excavation in the basement of the African Meeting House, located in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. Full excavation of the feature followed in 1986; however, complete analysis of the resulting artifact collection was not possible at the time. Predating the construction of the prominent African Meeting House, the feature is likely the privy of Augustin Raillion, a hairdresser who occupied a house at 44 Joy Street with two...
-
Using Collections for Trans-Atlantic Studies: A Case Study in the Spanish Atlantic (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
For decades, archaeologists working throughout the Spanish Atlantic have excavated a wide variety of sites. Today, the artifacts from these excavations are stored in museums and at universities throughout Spain, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Because it can be difficult to locate and access appropriate collections, these artifacts are often overlooked or undervalued. In many cases, however, the collections have an extremely high research potential and are invaluable for conducting...