Early Life in the Lower Ohio River Valley: Digitally Cataloging Culturally-Significant Archaeological Collections

FAIN: PW-290501-23

University of Louisville (Louisville, KY 40292-0001)
Thomas Jennings (Project Director: July 2022 to present)
Ashley Smallwood (Co Project Director: March 2023 to present)

A project to establish digital cataloguing procedures and a pilot searchable collections database of archaeological collections from the Lower Ohio River Valley.  

The University of Louisville’s Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (CACHe) curates collections recovered from culturally-significant archaeological sites throughout the Lower Ohio River Valley. The Ohio River is one of the longest rivers in eastern North America, and the river has long been a point of convergence and source of life for people in the region. CACHe houses objects representing 13,000 years of lifeways along the river, from early Native American settlement to European/African-American contact. In their current state, these collections are under-researched and unknown to the public. While archaeological fieldwork in the area has taken place for over a hundred years, there is no publicly-available and researchable database documenting the archaeological record of the region. CACHe seeks planning support to build a collections database to digitally archive objects, improve research accessibility, and share with the public the region's rich cultural heritage.