Multi-Generational Legacies: The Many Hands that Make Light, and Sometimes Confusing, Work of Legacy Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Hidden In The Hollinger: What We Can Learn From Archeological Legacy Collections In The National Park Service", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Oftentimes, archeological collections will pass through multiple hands, multiple labs, and multiple instances of processing before their final curation. The 1975 to 1986 Boston African Meeting House excavation produced a large-scale collection of over 78,000 artifacts that has been cataloged in different stages since its excavation. The most recent cataloging effort sought to update and standardize the artifact information, not only making the collection compatible with the adjacent Abiel Smith School, but also making it more accessible for future researchers. This most recent effort makes an interesting case study of the hurdles encountered and lessons learned from one collection over time. From the larger scale issues like changes in staff and worldwide events, to the small-scale minutiae of catalog quality control, legacy lessons from the Boston African Meeting House project can help professionals across the discipline better steward multigenerational collections.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Hidden In The Hollinger: What We Can Learn From Archeological Legacy Collections In The National Park Service

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow