Forgotten but Not Gone: Restoring the Research Potential of Older Perishable Artifact Collections from Southeastern Utah

Summary

During the 1890s, more than 4000 well-preserved textiles, baskets, wooden implements, hide and feather artifacts, and other organic materials were excavated by local “cowboy” archaeologists from Basketmaker and Pueblo-period archaeological sites in the greater Cedar Mesa area of southeastern Utah. Most of these artifacts were shipped to museums outside of the Southwest, where they were largely forgotten by archaeologists and the public. In 2010, the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project was born to “re-excavate” and interpret these remarkable collections and make them more accessible to researchers, the general public, and native communities. Our work with these 700 to 2000-year-old collections has revealed a wide range of fiber, wood, horn, and feather artifacts related to textile and basketry production, woodworking, hideworking, animal and bird procurement, farming, personal adornment, and other socioeconomic practices. In this presentation, I discuss some of what we have learned about the uses and manufacture of these perishable technologies, how our work has broadened our understanding of Basketmaker and ancestral Puebloan societies, and our efforts to create a perishable digital archive to make these collections more relevant for research and accessible for interpretation and study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Excavating the Museum: New Research on Old Collections

Keywords

Spatial Coverage