"Re-excavating" Legacy Collections

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Solid archaeological projects are those that are driven by clear research questions coupled with innovative methodologies and theoretical approaches. Traditionally these have come from new excavation. More and more, however, research with museum-based legacy collections proceeds within a similar structure, reframing and to some extent "re-excavating" and reinterpreting the extant archaeological data. In this session, we examine the myriad challenges and probe the possibilities of such research. The papers demonstrate that legacy collections maintain great value and should not be relegated to warehouses. Instead, they are dynamic resources that can and should be used to stimulate innovation and inform fieldwork. By critically examining the basis of our classification systems, applying technological advances, and evaluating theoretical approaches, such archaeological inquiries move beyond the common hurdles often presented with legacy-based collections. In reshaping perceptions of legacy collections, we also open dialogue for revising the policy, protocols, and research of these materials moving forward.

Other Keywords
Museums, Collections, and Repatriation • Conservation and Curation • Woodland • Historic • Cultural Resources and Heritage Management • Migration • Ethics • Theory • Paleoethnobotany • Urban Archaeology

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • Delaware (State / Territory) • Georgia (State / Territory) • Mississippi (State / Territory) • Tennessee (State / Territory) • North Carolina (State / Territory) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • West Virginia (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Artifact Boxes and Cans of Worms; Navigating the 87 Church Street Legacy Collections (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Platt.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The collections excavated in the 1970s at 87 Church Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina play a crucial role as part of a repertoire of sites deployed to understand Charleston as a critical urban center and waypoint in the eighteenth-century American southeast. However, a full site report does not exist for these early excavations, and...

  • Bioarchaeology Legacy Collections: Varying Perspectives, Perceptions, and Challenges (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Van Voorhis. Ellen Lofaro. Neill Wallis. Donna Ruhl.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Legacy collections can prove quite valuable in research, but may bring with them additional ethical and legal concerns and challenges. Known for the intricate wooden effigy carvings on a mortuary platform above a charnel pond, the site of Fort Center, 8GL13, also contains more than 24 earthworks dating from 800 BCE to 1700 CE. This paper explores the...

  • Creating Context: Analyzing Legacy Documentary Data to Understand the Emergence of Enslaved Societies at Flowerdew Hundred Plantation (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Bollwerk. Jillian Galle. Lynsey Bates. Leslie Cooper. Fraser Neiman.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By late 1619, 15 of the first 25 enslaved Africans imported into British North America were laboring at Flowerdew Hundred, a thousand acre plantation on the James River in Virginia. They joined indentured Europeans, neighboring Weanock Indians, and elite European landowners in shaping the mid-17th century expansion of plantation settlements across the...

  • The Hidden Voice of Forests: Revisiting Archaeobotanical Legacy Collections from Southeastern U.S. Shell Rings (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruhl.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees as a metaphor conveys that we sometimes cannot assess situations while we are in the midst of them. Archaeobotanists often report that the most ubiquitous plant type at a site is charred wood. But have we really assessed what these once trees represent: fuel, building remains, indirect evidence of food, or something...

  • Lost and Found and the Peculiar Lives of Collections: Examples of Bridging Ethical Stewardship and Research with Florida National Park Legacy Collections (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Margo Schwadron.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many of our culture histories and chronologies were built by early generations of archaeologists who targeted superlative sites, often excavating voluminous areas or entire sites. Decades later, many of these collections remain uncatalogued, unstudied, or worse—relegated to garages, garbage piles, or lost completely. Contemporary archeologists and...

  • The Paper Chase: Legacy Collections’ Records (2019)
    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...

  • Relatedness, Circularity, and Place-Centeredness in Belle Glade Artifacts: Reevaluating South Florida Collections from an Ontological Framework (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Lawres.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Museum collections provide a quintessential database for archaeological studies, yet they are often overlooked in favor of new excavations that eventually add to museum collections. While new excavations provide us valuable insight into the communities of the past, reevaluating existing collections can provide us with entirely new interpretations of...

  • Rewriting Narratives by Challenging Old Ideas: The Potential in Applying Recent Innovations in Archaeology to Legacy Collections. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Hall.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Army Corp of Engineers Mobile District funded excavations in Mississippi to salvage a number of Native American sites along the Tombigbee River from the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee River lock and dam complex. Three of these sites, Tibbee Creek (22Lo600), Kellogg (22Cl527), and Yarborough (22Cl814) are...

  • Rose Red-Filmed by Any Other Name: Pottery Typology and Genealogy in the Southeastern US (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Bloch.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Working with legacy collections, it is common to come across labeled artifacts or reports listing now defunct names. Over the years, archaeologists have chosen to define ceramic assemblages based on any number of attributes; often the primary consideration being the site or region in which they were first discovered and described. These names are time...

  • Tale of a Test Pit: The Research History of a Midden Column from the Turkey Pen Site, Utah (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Battillo. R.G. Matson. William Lipe.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1972 R.G. Matson and a small crew excavated a dry, stratified midden at a Pueblo Cliff Dwelling site in Grand Gulch, as part of the Cedar Mesa Project. Materials from the column (excavated and kept intact) and the matrix surrounding it (bagged separately by layer) are curated at Washington State University’s Museum of Anthropology and have been used...

  • The Value of Legacy Collections for Recognizing and Reducing Error in Artifact Analysis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Alvey. Evan Peacock. Joseph Mitchell.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All data accumulated in field studies directed at the determination of formal variation in the archaeological record contain a source of variation that results from analytical error. This type of error, if of sufficient magnitude, may significantly affect interpretation. Recent ceramic and faunal analyses from the Southeast have identified important...

  • Who Tells Your Story? Utilizing Legacy Collections to Serve a Living Culture (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna De Boer. Samantha Wade.

    This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unlike most archaeological collections, those held and curated by the Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) represent a living culture, and tribal understanding of those archaeological collections is a fluid, dynamic entity. The unique relationship between the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) and STOF requires an adherence to and respect of...