Sampling Archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History

Summary

The Anthropology department at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History holds over 2.2 million ethnological and archaeological artifacts from the USA and all over the world in its collections, including archaeofauna and bioarchaeological specimens. Every year a handful of researchers sample from our collections for destructive and non-destructive sampling analysis. These analyses run the gamut from portable XRF on textile dyes, isotope analysis of oyster shells from middens, and ancient DNA from humans and prehistoric plants. The sampling requests have changed over the years as techniques have evolved- for example, we increasingly have requests to sample ancient DNA. Our curators must balance sampling requests with the need to conserve museum collections for posterity. If you’re interested in learning what we have to sample and how to go about getting access, stop by this poster. You will learn what kinds of sampling have been done in the past, and how to increase the likelihood of your future sampling proposal being approved!

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22694