Navigating Archaeological Research and Collections at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 1947, the National Park Service and its collaborators have excavated at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, a nineteenth-century fur-trade and U.S. Army colonial site in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Museum collections are dominated by archaeological collections from American Indian and colonial contexts associated with the National Park Unit and related, affiliated sites. Challenges to collections management include refining and sampling in the face of interest from multiple stakeholders, including academic and Indigenous communities, and changing theoretical directions in archaeology. The lessons learned from 20 years of collaboration between archaeologists and museum curators suggest that museum curators should assist in the formulation of archaeological research designs, including the development of protocols for artifact sampling to mitigate future issues with preservation, storage, redundancy, and potential deaccessioning. Archaeologists and curators should develop proactive protocols for archaeology that address collections management. This is particularly important for park units with collections that do not have permanent staff archaeologists and/or curators.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32081