Changing Hands: The Impact of Antiquated Acquisitions and Legacy Loans on Archeological 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.

As a response to New Deal construction, the Archeological Research Unit (ARU) was largely created to conduct salvage archeology in the Southeast. Since forming out of the ARU in 1966, the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) continues to provide curatorial support for legacy collections created through Depression-era work programs. Following these 1930’s excavations, pedagogies surrounding archeological field methods and analysis have drastically changed. Witnesses to these shifts, collections can tell us a lot about how archeological and curatorial practices developed. This paper explores SEAC’s legacy acquisitions and loans to better understand early collection priorities, shifts in curatorial approaches, and evolving collection policies. When collections change hands, they become prone to the loss of both physical records and institutional knowledge, and by revisiting the origins of SEAC’s archeological legacy collections, we are implored to identify more meaningful ways of dealing with these gaps in the record.

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