Donald Lathrap, the Ucayali River, and the Enduring Value of Archaeological Legacy Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reflections and Ripples of the Caiman: Papers in the Spirit of Don Lathrap" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The curation and stewardship of legacy collections has become a critical issue within the field of archaeology due to the high institutional costs in maintaining collections as well as the struggle to find adequate space to often store hundreds of boxes. These issues are further compounded by the ever-looming loss of intellectual memory as scholars pass away or otherwise leave the field. While giant strides have been made in the field of Amazonian archaeology in recent years, Donald Lathrap’s influence continues to be felt throughout the discipline as scholars address and build off the ideas that he proposed as the result of his archaeological and ethnographic work along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon. Unfortunately, many of the collections that formed the basis for these ideas have been scattered throughout the U.S. and Peru and are at risk of losing their associated intellectual memory. In this paper, I summarize recent efforts to track down Lathrap’s archaeological and ethnographic collections from the Ucayali River while also highlighting their potential (and realized) intellectual value, especially in light of new scientific techniques and renewed interest in Indigenous Amazonian cultural developments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reflections and Ripples of the Caiman: Papers in the Spirit of Don Lathrap   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50572