Constructing Stories from Archaeological Evidence and Documentary Sources

Summary

The archaeological collections crisis we have been facing for the last couple of decades has forced many of us to rethink how to conduct research without adding to the problem. Although the idea that you need to excavate in order to do "archaeology" still permeates the opinions in academia, we have been seeing more research projects that revisit archaeological collections. Therefore, how can we make archaeology students aware of other research possibilities? The archaeological excavations conducted in five urban blocks of Ballajá, a 19th-century area located on the northwest part of San Juan, Puerto Rico yielded a large collection of urban material culture. Twenty-four years after the completion of the ex,cavations the majority of the collection still has not been analyzed, and there is limited access to researchers. As part of a larger project, I started developing smaller investigations with undergraduate archaeology students in an effort to rethink, and reinterpret this archaeological collection. In this paper, I will present the advantages of using the data from censuses and newspapers which can be included in writing stories about people, places and objects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Inter- and Multidisciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Research in the Caribbean

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16368