For almost 150 years, professional and avocational archaeologists have been excavating sites around the world, generating both knowledge of the past and numerous archaeological collections. Artifacts from prehistoric and historic sites in the United States are curated by government agencies (federal, state, and local), universities, museums, foundations, and, sometimes, private individuals and families. These vast material culture assemblages have also generated a “curatorial crisis” of sorts regarding what to do with them and how to make them advance the future of archaeology. Many collections are scattered, disorganized, and poorly preserved, and they are often not widely accessible to archaeologists, descendant communities, or the general public.
Allen and Ford offer the first major survey of these issues in New Life for Archaeological Collections. The editors classify such collections into (1) “legacy” (large, professionally excavated, and to some degree documented) or (2) “orphaned” (smaller, possibly excavated by amateurs as well as professionals, and not well documented) collections. Since the volume contains 17 chapters by 47 authors and coauthors, these contributions cannot be adequately covered in a short review.
The volume is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on accessibility and how to make collections available to researchers and the public. Authors present excellent examples ranging geographically from California to Maryland and topically from slave plantations to state parks. One illustrative example is Chapter 4 by Galle, Bollwerk, and Neiman, presenting one of the most broadly based computer research tools: the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, an attempt to make accessible a survey of slavery and slave sites, initiated in 2000 at Monticello, Virginia. The archive of 85 sites in the American South and the West Indies, involving two million artifacts, now allows archaeologists to compare evidence from plantation sites in regard to domestic architecture, settlement patters, consumption, diet, and the very nature of slavery in the Atlantic world. Williams and Ridgeway conclude the first section by articulating perspectives of conservationists. In painful detail they outline bad storage, insect and rodent infestation, and the changing techniques of protecting past materials, especially metals. This chapter is particularly important and interesting because most archaeologists have little contact with or hold negative views toward the costs of and the needs for such work on older collections.
In the second part of the volume, discussion moves from accessibility to the potential for new and up-to-date research on old assemblages that can change our views of the past. Two chapters focus on items from extant zooarchaeological collections. Smith (Chapter 8) analyzes faunal materials from two taverns and one domestic structure at Hanna's Town, in western Pennsylvania. Both faunal and documentary data suggest that Hanna's Tavern may not have been a tavern at all, while Forman's Tavern is correctly identified and shows a mixed domestic and wild meat diet and on-site butchering. Kennedy's chapter (Chapter 9) about Chinatown in San Jose, California, is one of the most impressive in the volume, and he considers many negative and positive aspects of working with a legacy faunal collection by contextualizing his findings internationally and consulting with the descendant community. Kennedy offers many new insights, ranging from the introduction of exotic species to symbolic meanings of foodways transported from China to California.
The focus of the third and final section of the volume is the impact of past collections on the future of archaeology. Ehringer and Allen (Chapter 13) give a fine précis of the Cooper-Molera Adobe complex in Monterey, California, one of the best archaeological records for the Californio (Mexican period) phase in West Coast history. An innovative aspect of this chapter is the use of oral history, including interviews of past excavators and site maintenance crew members. A much more broadly based program involves the massive collections of the National Park System (Northeast Museum Services Center). Paresi, Costello, Walsh, and McCann (Chapter 14) have unpacked these collections for exhibits and visual presentations at Minute Man National Historical Park outside Boston. They turn to the new environment of social media—a Northeast Museum Services Center blog, Facebook, and Instagram—to open the holdings and start dialogue between professionals and the younger generation familiar with social media. Cofield and Shaffer (Chapter 15) explore the outer boundaries of public discourse by connecting archaeological sites with popular culture, including the Outlander series of books and TV shows. Although the settings are radically different, one fictional and set in Scotland, the other grounded and drawn from sites across Maryland, both sources share the material culture of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.
New Life for Archaeological Collections is a major work. Both the editors and the many authors are to be congratulated for outlining an important and optimistic foundation for the future of archaeology through consideration of artifacts collected in the past.
