Huguenot Heritage: Revisiting Curated Collections in NYC

Summary

Previously excavated and curated collections are often seen as unworthy of serious scholarly attention. The drive to produce using entirely "new" excavations, artifacts, and data sets underlies and reinforces this pattern. This paper discusses two major components of using decades-old collections: research and responsibility. It first summarizes recent research demonstrating the accretion of class identity among French Huguenots in early 18th-century New York City. It then moves on to offer fruitful directions for using curated collections while engaging with the ethical responsibilities researchers are faced with as they encounter the collection as an artifact in and of itself, having endured years of institution-based taphonomy. Far from offering a de facto resolution, this paper works to address key concerns about curated collections that might otherwise deter new researchers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Wealth of Data: Rising to the challenge of decades of curated collections   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 498