Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

What value are old collections that sit in a repository collecting dust and rust? If we are retaining objects simply for the sake of doing so, then their potential for providing new insights is zero. The field mantra of “keep everything” is at times the bane of any curation facility that has a mandate to care for its collections in perpetuity. Yet, researchers are finding new ways to re-examine and scrutinize long forgotten collections that continue to provide new insights about the past. This session sponsored by the SHA’s Committee on Collections and Curation, explores the continuing expansion of collections-based research in historical archaeology.