NAGPRA-Era Collections-Based Research in the Academy: Insights from Investigating Collections at Five Institutions

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The passage of NAGPRA in 1990 has had a tremendous impact on archaeological investigations, museum curation practices, and active relationships with Native American communities, notably those federally recognized. Although many archaeologists fretted that NAGPRA would significantly curtail or outright distort archaeological research and interpretations, most view the outcomes as overwhelmingly positive. A less discussed change in the NAGPRA era is the shift from excavation-focused doctoral dissertation research at US universities to collections-based research, something starkly in contrast to prominent publications demonstrating peers attach a higher prestige to the former. In this talk, I present a summary of my doctoral research project during which I analyzed over a dozen site collections, analyzing ca. 80,000 ceramic artifacts, reconstructing excavation histories from field note archives, and dating 20 specimens curated by multiple institutions. I use the outcomes of my doctoral project to address how despite the existing NAGPRA-related restrictions, or already repatriated materials in some cases, these did not significantly curtail or limit. Rather, prior experience working for a tribal cultural resource agency and, separately, toward repatriation efforts informed how I approached and interpreted archaeological materials and ultimately led to more profound implications.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38358.0