Processing Legacy: Caring for and Learning from the WS Ranch Archaeological Collection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reckoning with Legacy Exhibits, Data, and Collections" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The WS Ranch Site (800-1300 CE) is an Upper Mogollon archaeological site near Alma, New Mexico excavated by a field school program at the University of Texas, Austin from 1977-1993. The collection remained unprocessed and unpublished in its original field bags at the university until 2018 when the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) acquired the collection. After pandemic delays, the WS Ranch collection came to DMNS in the fall of 2021 and work began in earnest in 2022. The collection contains approximately 500,000 diverse artifacts, and over the last 2 years, collections staff at DMNS have been processing and documenting the WS Ranch collection. The day to day logistical challenges and ethical questions presented by this large legacy collection makes it an ideal case study for reckoning with outdated collecting practices, archaeological documentation, and ethical standards in a current museum setting. In this paper, DMNS anthropology collections assistant Elizabeth Kriebel will discuss the process of rehousing, cataloging, and digitizing the WS Ranch collection, ongoing NAGPRA efforts (including the new Duty of Care provisions), and future ideas for ethical and collaborative research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reckoning with Legacy Exhibits, Data, and Collections   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52147