New Insights from Ceramics Legacy Collections: Identifying Cibola Communities of Practice in Northeast Arizona

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent NAGPRA legislation and discussions of decolonizing practices have prompted archaeologists to reshape the ways they conduct research in the Southwest United States. Using legacy collections, or previously accessioned artifact assemblages, is one way to improve these research practices. This project implemented decolonizing practices, as well as the usage of legacy collections in archaeological research. Compliance legacy Cibola ceramic assemblages collected from ancestral Zuni sites in Arizona and New Mexico and curated at two institutions were compared. Implementing a collaborative approach with the descendant communities are essential to working to decolonize museum spaces. The collections were originally excavated in the 1970s and were cataloged using terms that Indigenous people have since deemed to be disrespectful and offensive. I updated the names and labels in the museum database to reflect the most up-to-date standard of naming practices and adhered to culturally-respectful handling protocols. There has been a crisis about what material can be utilized for research purposes in a museum setting since more artifacts are being covered under the 2023 NAGPRA legislation. My research outlines ways in which legacy collections are able to be used without violating these terms to address questions of regional style and communities of practice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53109