Author Description

The chapters in this volume demonstrate the potential for older museum collections to yield important data for modern archeological research. Ten chapters and three appendices by seven scholars begin a reanalysis of the famous Ripley site on the Lake Erie Plain in Western New York that has been the subject of numerous professional and amateur excavations during the 20th century. Originally interpreted as a protohistoric Erie Village site with a defensive earthen enclosure and associated cemetery, the reanalysis of extant collections suggest that it was a mortuary site. The volume not only serves as a model of the use of old museum collections to address modern research questions, but also places traditional interprtations of earthwork enclosures as defensive structures in question.