What Guides Us with Collections? A discussion on Rethinking our Relationship with Artifacts

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "What Guides Us with Collections? A discussion on Rethinking our Relationship with Artifacts," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This forum is a structured discussion on how historical archaeology handles the volume of materials generated through excavation. HA has not critically evaluated the vast differences in material production technologies that create the artifacts we excavate or account for differential impacts on curatorial practices. A hand blown bottle from the 1700s and a 1920 Mason jar are largely treated the same despite one being the product of individual agency and the other produced by a machine. The impact of such differences are not factored into field and lab practices resulting in more contemporary sites generating tens if not hundreds of thousands of artifacts – which in turn result in overflowing curation facilities and ad hoc solutions that do not serve the discipline. The goal of this forum is to begin a dialogue to establish good practices guidelines for historical collections that are responsive to the complexities of the material world we work with.