Basement Curation: Adopting an Orphaned Collection from Montserrat

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Galways Plantation collection, consisting of 28 boxes of artifacts excavated on Montserrat during the 1980s, was temporarily on loan in the United States when the Soufrière Hills Volcano erupted in July 1995. This catastrophic event led to the creation of an exclusion zone covering two-thirds of the island that remains officially unoccupied to this day. In addition to the loss of life, land, and livelihoods, the disaster destroyed archaeological sites—including Galways—and threw the cultural heritage administration into chaos. The Galways collection has now been off-island for over 25 years because, notwithstanding the aftermath of the eruption, the island does not currently have the capacity to curate the collection, which is a systemic issue throughout the Caribbean. Climate change, political instability, and lack of resources mean that many archaeological collections eventually find homes far from their sites and communities of origin. In fall 2023, the Galways materials will move from New Jersey to Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT, where they will be digitized into DAACS and used for teaching. Unpacking these boxes, and their history, will involve accounting for their past and present storage conditions as entangled sites of curation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41588.0