Around the world, archaeological collections are curated in museums, universities, foundations, government agencies, and other organizations. Some are carefully documented and readily accessible, while others are languishing in substandard conditions as a direct result of the curation crisis. This article highlights the value of collection-based research. It encourages the mutually beneficial approach of training students in both collection preservation and collection-based research and demonstrates other ways to obtain data for research projects, aside from excavation. Using my collections-based research carried out in Puerto Rico and the continental United States as a case study, I draw attention to the valuable information that can be derived from acquisition and accession documents and offer ways to incorporate new datasets. This allows for more accurate narratives of collections’ historiographies.

中文翻译：

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挖掘存储库：使用考古收藏的学术研究项目

在世界各地，考古收藏品在博物馆、大学、基金会、政府机构和其他组织中进行策划。有些被仔细记录并易于访问，而另一些则由于策展危机的直接结果而在不合标准的条件下苦苦挣扎。本文强调了基于收藏的研究的价值。它鼓励在收集保存和基于收集的研究方面培训学生的互惠互利的方法，并展示除挖掘之外为研究项目获取数据的其他方法。以我在波多黎各和美国大陆进行的基于馆藏的研究作为案例研究，我提请注意可以从收购和加入文件中获得的有价值信息，并提供合并新数据集的方法。