|
A major focus of our program development is the continuation and enhancement
of our curation facilities in order to encourage future scholarly and student
research. Cooperative efforts between ITARP and the Illinois Department of
Transportation (IDOT) will consolidate and upgrade collections excavated
under the auspices of IDOT.
ITARP curates all of the materials generated by the nationally known FAI-270
Project. This project conducted excavations on over 150 sites in the American
Bottom area. Additionally, ITARP curates materials from over 3,000 other Illinois
archaeological sites including Cahokia.
ITARP is a repository for many historical documents pertaining to the long
association with the Illinois Archaeological Survey (IAS). The Survey is
one of the country's
oldest professional organizations, and these documents are a critical resource
for understanding the development of North American Archaeology. In addition,
the Charles J. Bareis Library, specializing in Cultural Resource Management (CRM)
related documents and Eastern Woodlands archaeology, is maintained at the program
offices. The recent acquisition of movable shelving units (SpacesaverTM) has
greatly increased the storage capacity of our curation facilities. Due to the
increased volume of additional collections from recent excavations, this storage
furniture was necessary. For example, the Hoxie and the Janey B. Goode sites
(both still on-going) together generated about 500 cubic feet of artifacts, not
including associated documents.
Curation staff members at ITARP are currently in the process of re-housing the extensive collection of photographic records into archival-quality sleeves and boxes. As of April 2004 over 70,200 slides have been re-housed. Re-housing of prints and negatives is slated to begin in January 2005. Presently, we are cataloging and re-housing associated archaeological documents into acid-free file folders and boxes. This project, employing one part-time and two full-time staff members, will be completed by December 2004.
|
A major focus of our program development is to continue and enhance our
curation facilities in order to encourage future scholarly and student research.
In addition,
the staff continues to develop cooperative arrangements with other University
facilities, such as the Laboratory of Anthropology UIUC, the Spurlock Museum,
the Krannert Art Museum, the Illinois Geological Survey, the Art Institute of
Chicago and others, to both further the professional management and curation
of its collections and to make those collections available to research communities
and the public. As of February 2004, ITARP has about 12,500 boxes at all facilities.
The 2003 acquisition of 1500 boxes of artifacts & documents, and the comparative faunal collection from the Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois is a wonderful archaeological resource. The faunal collection will help ITARP staff to identify animal bones and shells from archaeological sites. Such a collection is integral to our understanding of diet, environmental exploitation, and shell & bone artifacts by people in the past. ITARP now curates the collection generated by Warren K. Moorehead, including his seminal excavations of Cahokia from the 1920Ís.
ITARP is committed to responsible stewardship of artifacts and documents
so they will be available for research, teaching, and public outreach for
years to come.
One of the key legislative directives that ITARP adheres to is 36 CFR Part 79,
Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archaeological Collections. The
text of this seminal legislation is available
here:
The following ITARP
policies are available upon request. Please contact Dr. Laura Kozuch, curator
(217) 333-0263):
- Copyright use and permission
- Deaccession
- Collections statement
- Destructive analysis
- Library use
For more information on archaeological curation:
|