Digging into the Collections: Mining Repositories for New Research Potential

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Public and Our Communities: How to Present Engaging Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

After decades of increased archaeological work thanks to the Archaeological and Historical Preservation Act, the existing corpus of archaeological material available for study is larger than ever.  As storage costs rise and space in designated repositories becomes more scarce, we need to take advantage of the wealth of data available in these collections by revisiting these assemblages.  These collections are an especially valuable resource for students who, because of financial, temporal, or programmatic restraints, may not be able to conduct an excavation.  This paper highlights some recent work done with existing collections, including my master's and doctoral research using collections from New York, St. Eustatius, and the Netherlands.  While these collections come with their own challenges, existing archaeological assemblages are a crucial, and underutilized, resource that archaeologists need to consider in their future research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• The Public and Our Communities: How to Present Engaging Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 377