The Fiske Center Blog

Weblog for the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Conference on New England Archaeology annual meeting to be held Saturday, May 2

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The Conference on New England Archaeology will hold its annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, at Old Sturbridge Village in the Fuller Conference Center beginning at 9 AM.  This year’s theme is “When is ‘Enough’ Enough?: The Archaeological Curation Crisis in the 21st Century.”

From the current chair, Historical Archaeology MA student Danielle Cathcart:

“Ten years ago, the Heritage Health Index quantified the truth behind archaeology’s “dirty little secret” (http://www.heritagepreservation.org/HHI/full.html). It showed that over 60% of our national collections—nearly 3 billion artifacts—have sustained damage due to improper storage, with more than a quarter existing in a constant state of deterioration in institutions with no environmental controls. The passage of historic preservation legislation in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘90s ushered in an era of unprecedented discovery and collections gathering empowered by federal mandates to minimize the effects of development on buried and extant cultural resources. Subsequently, archaeological research in both academic and CRM endeavors has amassed a staggering amount of objects and information that now languishes in deteriorating bags and boxes—poorly curated, underreported, and orphaned from its associated contextual documentation. Awareness is no longer the issue. Immediate action and thoughtful planning is necessary if archaeology intends to remain a sustainable and meaningful enterprise. We must begin to develop workable solutions to a problem we’ve been facing for the past four decades—a problem that will continue to worsen until we can begin to think critically about what we collect, for what purpose, and why it deserves to be preserved in perpetuity.”

Historical Archaeology MA students Allie Crowder and Janice Nosal will also be presenting.  Pre-registration is not required.

For more details, see the event on Facebook.

Author: Jessica Rymer

Jessica Rymer is a historical archaeologist currently in the MA program at UMass Boston. She has dug at sites in Sicily, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Her interests include the archaeology of smoking, public archaeology, and heritage management.

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