Managing Archaeological Collections from Army Lands in Alaska

 

The archaeology department at UAMN recently started a two year project funded by the U.S. Army. This project is focused on managing museum archaeological accessions that have been collected from Army lands in Alaska . Currently, the U.S. Army is responsible for over 150 museum accessions which account for approximately 25,000 individual artifacts. A majority of these collections are from projects conducted on Ft. Wainwright ( Fairbanks , Alaska ) and Ft. Greely (Delta Junction, Alaska ) during the 1970s and 1980s. The first year of this project is aimed at assessing, rehousing, and stabilizing artifacts already in the museum and updating or filling in missing information for each accession within the archaeology department’s accession database. The second year of the project will focus on accessioning new collections from field projects that have taken place on Ft. Wainwright and Ft. Greely over the past decade. New collections will be given accession numbers, all relevant data will be entered into the department’s database, and then each accession will be incorporated into the collections storage range. The overall goal for this project is to bring all U.S. Army owned collections at UAMN up to current best practices archival standards and to update all associated information currently missing in the digital collections database.

Funding: US Army Alaska