Coe With National Science Foundation support, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History will computerize the catalogue records of its Mesoamerican and South American archaeological collections. The collections have been acquired over a period of more than 130 years and constitute a significant body of material of great temporal depth and spatial breadth. They have been crucial in solving important culture-history questions and continue to provide a valuable resource for the study of pre-Conquest, complex cultures. The collections include material acquired through systematic excavations from the Andean area in the south to the Valley of Mexico in the north. Currently these collections are recorded in 66,000 catalogue entries in handwritten, bound ledgers. This paper-based format makes access to crucial descriptive data difficult and novel searches of the data are impossible. With NSF support, this information will be entered into Peabody Museum's computerized relational database system. This will permit quick and efficient access and significantly enhance the research potential of the collection. The system will also make the data available over Internet, greatly increasing opportunities for use. Museum collections contain valuable information which permit researchers to examine many scientific questions. The Peabody materials can shed new light on how complex societies develop and are maintained. They can illuminate principles of social organization and change in technologically simple societies and increase our understanding of human - environment interactions. This grant is important because it will significantly increase the research potential of the collections.
