A Tale of Two Early Jails: Reconstructing the Archaeological Context at site 8ES1340 in Pensacola, Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As the cost and space associated with curating large amounts of excavated materials surmount available resources, researchers have justified curating such collections by advocating their research potential and contribution to new archaeological perspectives (Voss 2012; Voss and Kane 2012). Reanalysis of previously excavated, underanalysed collections requires an investigative, curational approach that differs qualitatively from traditional methodologies that preference excavation based research. This paper presents the curational research process, modeled from successful precedents, and applied to the archaeological collection associated with site 8ES1340. The site was a multi-component site that encompassed two of Pensacola’s early jails, a colonial jail (ca. 1771-1836) and an antebellum jail (ca. 1836-1861). The case study begins to address the mounting curational crises by restoring the utility and research potential of the underanalysed collection through a curational research approach.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 698