The Fort Brugwin research center was established in 1956 and is a permanent research and education facility operated by Southern Methodist University and located outside Taos, New Mexico. Its central focus is on archaeological research and it has for many years conducted summer field schools which focus on sites located in the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Excavated materials are curated at the center and collection holdings include over 1,000,000 cataloged objects from prehistoric and historic contexts in the Taos region. Associated materials include a catalog card inventory of collection holdings (22,000 cards) and approximately 45,000 pages of documentation, including unpublished excavation reports, field notes, maps and associated individual photographs, negatives and slides relating to the collection and site excavations. Because they are currently stored at Fort Burgwin in a non-environmentally controlled area, they are subject to potential deterioration and destruction. The data are not computerized and very difficult to use. This NSF grant will serve to remedy the situation. The materials will be moved to Southern Methodist University and rehoused in a controlled environment. The accessibility of these resources will then be enhanced by transferring collection documentation and photographic materials to microfilm and electronic formats. The collection catalog will be computerized and microfilms, CD-ROM discs and the computerized catalog inventory will be made available at SMU and Fort Burgwin and several other facilities. Eventually these data will be made available electronically to all interested researchers. The Fort Burgwin archaeological materials are important because they document the rise of complex cultures in the Southwestern U.S. Covering a span of thousands of years, they can be used to trace the change from a small band hunting and gathering form of social organization through the introduction of domestic plants and animals to the development of social entities which organized peoples on a tribal level. The materials also shed light on how people at a simple level of technology coped successfully with a harsh and unpredictable semiarid environment. Archaeological materials are only as useful as the documentation which accompanies them and therefore these records must be carefully preserved. To conduct effective research it is necessary to know what collections contain and where specific artifacts are located. To do this, computerization is necessary. This project is important because it will both preserve important records and make information rapidly available to researchers.
