A Final Report on the 2008/2009 NPS NAGPRA Project

Shirar, Scott; Ely, Aimee

During the fall of 2008 the University of Alaska Museum of the North (UAMN) began a National Park Service (NPS) funded project to inventory and assess all NPS accessions housed in the museum. UAMN currently houses 232 separate accessions from 12 national parks throughout Alaska and these accessions account for roughly 20,000 individually catalogued items. These collections are associated with multiple projects that occurred throughout the last sixty years and UAMN houses NPS affiliated accessions from every decade beginning in the 1940s. The first goal for this project was to compile a complete listing of all NPS-owned collections at UAMN including all lands now administered by NPS. This task was completed using national park maps in GIS, the AHRS database, and the UAMN archaeology accession database. First, a listing of all AHRS sites located on NPS land was created. We then cross-referenced this AHRS list with the archaeology accession database at the museum to determine which AHRS sites we have accessions for. Once this list was complete each accession including associated documentation (where applicable) was individually evaluated on several different levels including: ownership, NPS accession/catalog status, cultural affiliation, NAGPRA eligibility, completeness, and condition. All of this information was compiled in a spreadsheet (see attached Excel file) that also includes recommendations for future work (if any) that needs to be done with each accession. The last goal of this project was to upgrade the storage of all of the human remains at UAMN to current best practices curation standards.

A Final Report on the 2008/2009 NPS NAGPRA Project

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