Working Towards Collaboration: a Model of Interaction between Archaeology Professionals and Avocationalists

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Avocationalists are a valuable asset for museum curators and collection analysts. Budget-strapped institutions can benefit from a structured program of volunteers trained to clean, sort, analyze, and catalog artifacts for inclusion into museum collections. From an existing strained relationship, archaeology lab managers and volunteers in Oklahoma have developed a working program that has significantly reduced a backlog of artifacts collected through the years. Our presentation examines the experience of artifact processing from an avocationalist's point of view. We will discuss strategies that resulted in meaningful accomplishments for our state archaeology labs as well as rewarding experiences for the volunteers involved.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23772