Archaeological Collections, Government Warehouses, and Anxious Moderns: The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory

This paper focuses on archaeological curation repositories and their role as more than mere storage facilities. Archaeological collections are increasingly marshaled to confront anxieties about a seemingly ‘vanishing past’ and to arrest its disappearance. In Maryland, the state has invested heavily in a ‘state-of-the-art’ facility to protect and study archaeological collections in its custody. The facility has become the proxy for the collections and a form of cultural property itself, becoming part of the ongoing process that serves to recast this portion of the state as a place rooted in the past.