Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological methods often entail destructive forms of data collection, such as excavation, to approach research questions. Existing collections may be used to answer the same inquiries, reducing the need for excavation and providing less destructive alternatives when designing research methodologies. Emphasizing the analysis of stored material culture presents invaluable aide in conserving archaeological sites and landscapes. This, in turn, leads to the reduction of artifacts recovered every year, an advantage growing in importance as storage space becomes increasingly thin. The papers discussed in this symposium highlight research projects relying on collections instead of excavation as the main source of data collection. Material types discussed range from ceramics of the seventeenth-century American Southwest and third-century Roman amphoras to a variety of faunal remains. The rise in conservation archaeologies employing non-excavation research designs present the opportunity for a more sustainable practice of archaeology. Museum-based archaeology thus provides as meaningful a contribution to our discipline as excavation-based research. A methodology more inclusive of collections will not provide a solution to the storage problem but will aide in the growth of continued tenable efforts in conservation archaeologies.