Amchitka Island Collections Management

Beginning with the 2008 fall academic semester, the UAMN archaeology department began a one year organizational project aimed at the Amchitka Island collections. These collections are from an area within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge which is located in the Aleutian Island chain and is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Currently, the USFWS owns approximately 450 museum accessions which account for over 46,000 individual artifacts, all of which were collected from one of sixteen National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska . The Amchitka Island project is a continuation of an ongoing partnership between the museum and the USFWS focused on managing museum archaeological accessions that have been collected from USFWS lands in Alaska . The goals of this project are to assess, rehouse, and stabilize artifacts and documentation from archaeological excavations that took place on Amchitka Island during the 1960s and 1970s. Funding for this project will also be used to update and/or add missing information in the department’s computer database program. The overall goal for this project is to bring as much of the Amchitka Island collection as we can up to current best practices archival standards.

Funding: US Fish and Wildlife Challenge Cost Share Program

Project Staff:

Roberta Eastwood