It’s in the Bag: An Analysis of the Skiffes Creek Archaeological Collections Assessment Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: The Importance and Usefulness of Exploring Old or Forgotten Collections" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Even a small collection survey can be a daunting prospect. Multiply that by 5 collections stores, 4 stake holding institutions, 42 archaeological sites, and more than 100,000 artifacts and that generally describes the Skiffes Creek Archaeological Collections Curation and Conservation Assessment Project. But despite the inherent challenges, time, and cost of collection surveys the rewards can be surprising. Surveys can direct curatorial focus, highlight the areas in most need of resources, set conservation priorities, and provide a means of communicating this information to stakeholders, directors, and grant agencies that can turn these recommendations into actions. In this paper, we discuss the challenges and discoveries from a large scale assessment and more importantly, why these assessments are crucial for older collections and how they can help direct collections-based research projects.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: The Importance and Usefulness of Exploring Old or Forgotten Collections   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology