Chicago Area Archaeological Collections at the Field Museum

Abstract

Abstract From surface finds to excavated collections, the Field Museum cares for thousands of archaeological items from the Chicago area. The collections reflect those put together by several key antiquarians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, materials recovered by early archaeologists starting in the 1920s using the Chicago Field Method, and material resulting from a pre–cultural resource management salvage excavation in the 1950s. The collections also include donations in the twentieth century by private individuals. This article contextualizes the history of these archaeological collections and their impact on recent studies and descendant communities, including the Hočąk, Baxoje, Nutachi, Jiwere, Myaamia, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, and Potawatomi. In so doing, we outline how the provenance of these collections reflects temporal trends of museum archaeology and curation and how various epistemologies are being brought to bear by recent work of archaeologists and Indigenous artists and craftspeople.